The Many Health Benefits of Adding Coconut Oil

The many health benefits of adding coconut oil

By Terrence Thomas

 

Coconut oil is an extremely health-giving oil.  It maintains it’s molecular stability when you cook with it. In other words, at high temperatures the oil will remain stable and not become toxic to the body like other oils.  For instance if you use olive oil and heat it above medium to medium-high, the fat becomes rancid and you actually denature the fat and it becomes toxic.

Aside from it’s stability, coconut oil has many other wonderful health building qualities, such as being anti-viral, anti-parasitic, acts as an antihistamine, anti-inflammatory, and coconut oil even increases metabolic rate.

If you look at a jar of coconut oil, you will notice the contents can transition depending on the room temperature. If it’s colder, the coconut oil will become more solid. If the room temperature gets warmer, it’ll become more of a liquid. At the sight of coconut oil, many people a psychosomatic think that because the oil is thick (in its solid state it is unhealthy or has the dreaded artery clogging effect.

 

What most people don’t realize is that what clogs arteries is actually the unsaturated fats; the lipid peroxides and the toxins that are created in the body.

 

So give coconut oil a shot. I’d start with maybe two or three tablespoons a day. Or try cooking some of your protein in it and just notice how delicious it tastes how long the meat stays edible without spoiling after you’ve cooked it in coconut oil.###

 

Why Eating Clean Sucks

Why “Eating Clean” Sucks

by Terrence Thomas

 

Let’s discuss a mental construct that I believe is one of the major causes of yo-yo dieting. The idea that I’m talking is the “eating clean” and I believe has infected the entire health and fitness industry.  Here are three concepts about eating clean that explain how this mindset can sabotage your health, fitness, weight loss, and physique goals and what you can do to make sure you are not doing this to yourself.

 

1. Stop using the term “eating clean”.

The very idea that you are eating clean means that at some point you are not eating clean.  In other words you’re eating in a way that supports health and performance during a certain time and then the other times you are eating like crap. I don’t know about you but that sounds very much like an eating disorder. The mindset behind eating clean is that you are in some way depriving yourself. When the mind is in a dynamic of deprivation, it is relying on willpower to resist temptation. Eventually you will run out of willpower and the natural tendency is to either quit eating clean or go to the other extreme, which is to eat garbage or binge eat. Having “cheat” days are supposed to help deal with the deprivation aspect of “eating clean” but the mental dynamic of resisting or succumbing to temptation is still in play.

 

If you are constantly bouncing from eating “clean” to not eating clean you are on a yo-yo diet. On average, when you ask someone what eating clean means, they say eating in a way that helps them lose fat or get healthy. Why not eat like this all the time or at least consistent enough that when you do choose not to “eat clean” that it won’t totally derail your efforts.  Follow the 80/20 rule. In other words, if your are eating, living and managing yourself in a way that promotes health, fitness and vitality 80 percent of the time then when you should be able to tolerate the occasional culinary, or recreational vice without irreparable damage to your body.

 

2. Send the idea of Bulking up back to the 1970’s. If you want to gain quality muscle that lasts for a lifetime, eat quality whole food all the time. Eating garbage foods and supplements that only make you look swollen and puffy will give you the illusion that you are BIG.  If you want to have a real, bona fide brick shit house of a body, you must feed your body real whole food, train intelligently and consistently. Training intelligently means knowing when to crank it up and push it to the limit but also knowing when to back off.

 

3. Stop playing Tug Of War with our mind.

If you want achieve your health and fitness goals with zero resistance and a feeling of peace, stop creating extremes in behavior. Think lifestyle instead of dieting. Eat real food all the time and sprinkle in some treats instead of eating pathologically strict and then totally flying off the handle and single handedly keeping a local ice cream shop in business.

 

Disclaimer: With that said, I am fully aware of what it takes to achieve extreme levels of fitness, leanness and muscularity. For example if you are a physique competitor and are in pre contest training, you are asking the body to do something that by nature it does not want to do. This takes some specific training, diet, and supplementation strategies to achieve this and when done with a relative degree in intelligence can be done safely and at a high level. The key here is intelligence.  #BeBeautiful #BeStrong  #BeHealthy

How Artificial Sweeteners Make You Fat

How fake sweeteners can make you fat.
by Terrence Thomas

In a mad dash to eliminate all things sugary,  we have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Here’s  what I mean.

We have been taught to believe that sugar is the enemy and artificial sweeteners are the solution to this problem. In other words we get to taste something sweet without consuming the extra calories and subsequent rises in insulin that leads to the body storing fat. Unfortunately this idea could not be further from the truth and could be sabotaging your efforts to lose weight and/or gain muscle.

Here are the facts: These quotes come from Medical news weekly.

“Our results indicate that this artificial sweetener is not inert- it does have an effect. And we need to do more studies to determine whether this observation means long-term use could be harmful.”  It is my opinion that this statement is being objectively conservative due to the harsh reality that most research institutions are directly or indirectly funded by the very companies that produce these substances. But I digress.

If it tastes sweet you are still going to get an insulin response. This could partially explain why there are more “diet” foods on the market today but obesity rates continue to rise.

“Artificial  sweeteners react with receptors on the tongue that make people think they’re consuming something sweet even though they contain no calories.”

These receptors on the tongue trigger the pancreas to secrete insulin even though real sugar is not being consumed. In other words you are still getting an insulin response but with no nutrition. The publishers of this research did state that the mechanism by which artificial sweeteners affect glucose and insulin levels is not yet fully understood.  With that said, basic physiology tells us that if the body produces insulin and there is no sugar, protein or fat for the insulin to shuttle into the cells, the body is forced to produce higher levels of adrenaline and cortisol. Once this happens you are officially on the blood sugar roller coaster. Here is how it works…

Insulin receptors on the tongue cause the pancreas to secret insulin…But there is no sugar, fat or protein to metabolize so the body freaks out and then secretes adrenaline to release stored glucose and free fatty acids into the blood stream. Then cortisol is released to release amino acids back into the blood stream to be converted into glucose. This is called gluconeogenesis. In other words, you are breaking down protein to compensate for the for the false insulin response.   This happens every single time you eat a food containing artificial sweetener.

Chronic cortisol levels keeps the body in a catabolic state where lean muscle is lost, fats stores are increased and overall metabolism is lowered.  This explanation is why the low fat, fat free, fake sugar products are making people sick and fat.

As stated earlier, artificial sweeteners are not inert in that they do have an effect on insulin production. In addition to this insulin effect, they are also inert in that their metabolites do remain in the body, if not for one very simple reason. Liver detoxification for the majority of people is fair to poor due to poor diet, destructive lifestyle habits and environmental toxins. In other words most people will not have to ability to eliminate the artificial sweeteners from their system.  When you consider that people are consuming diet sodas, protein shakes, chewing gum and adding artificial sweeteners to their food and beverages, people can accumulate massive amounts of these harmful chemicals in their bodies.

Here are a few signs and symptoms that you could be getting sick from toxic overload connected to artificial sweeteners…

* chronic headaches
*joint aches not associated with exercise or injury
* skin problems (acne or rash)
* blurred vision
*sleep disturbances
*weight gain despite eating a low calorie diet
*feeling puffy and swollen.
*dark circles under the eyes

I encourage you to take an inventory of your ingestion of artificial sweeteners. At minimum, I suggest eliminating them from your diet for 1 to 2 months and see if you feel better or notice any improvements in the way your body looks and feels. Doing this could be the missing link you have been looking for to take your body, health and strength to the next level.###

The Physical Excellence Workout

The Physical Excellence Workout

by Terrence Thomas

 

Let’s discuss the five key principles that I use to design all of my exercise fitness sports performance weight loss and stress management exercise programs. The five principles of the Physical Excellence Workout are:

 

1. Infant development

There are certain skills that must be developed in the human body between the ages of zero and one years of age.  If these skills, reflexes and processes are not developed, it can predispose the body to injury, hormonal imbalances, neurodevelopmental and even emotional problems.  The Physical Excellence Workout uses infant development training to clear the runway to a fully functional strong, healthy and beautiful body. Infant development exercise can be used as a stand alone workout or in combination with other forms of training. Either way it will help build a balanced strong and healthy body.

 

2. Corrective stretching

The goal of corrective stretching in the Physical Excellence Workout is to balance the musculoskeletal system. It is similar to a guitarist tunes their strings.  Stretching is not about how limber you are but how balanced your body is. A balanced body is a beautiful, strong, and healthy body and the physical excellence workout will help you accomplish this.

 

3. Core conditioning

Proper core conditioning will teach the body to dissipate forces away from the spine. Real core training involves more than just training the abdominal muscles or putting the body under a balance challenge. The Physical excellence Workout core conditioning program involves training the entire musculoskeletal system to function as a unit in order to dissipate forces, stabilize joints, reduce wear and tear,  improve performance and  overall health and vitality.Anti-aging and the ability to stay youthful, beautiful and vital is directly dependent on the body’s ability to maintain a strong and functional postural system.  The Physical Excellence Workout strengthens the postural system to preserve longevity and vitality in the body.

 

4.  Scientific strength training

Strength training when done correctly provides a therapeutic response in the body. Yes, the Physical Excellence Workout strength training method is about increasing force and lifting heavy weights, but it is done in a way that promotes health, balances the system as well as strengthening the body. Choosing the right movement at the right time for the right person is how clients get  amazing results and lifelong success with the Physical Excellence Workout.

 

5.  Primal pattern development

Primal pattern development is a functional training technique that develops all of the body’s natural movement patterns that would be used in a primal or primitive environment. There are seven basic primal patterns and they are squats, lunges, bend, push, pull, and twist. The seventh pattern is gate, Which consists of walking jogging and sprinting. In the Physical Excellence Workout, clients are evaluated and then a program is designed according to their current level of skill and fitness levels. This aspect of the Physical Excellence Workout allows us to transform a couch potato to a well conditioned athlete.

 

Whether you were a couch potato, a professional athlete, a stay-at-home mom or someone just trying to look and feel their best, the physical excellence workout will help you reach your goal methodically professionally and efficiently. Give us a call and let us show you how we can help you get results like these satisfied clients!

 

—————->Success stories!

“Changing my energy level from an all time low to the highest its ever been..Changing my time spent training from inefficient to incredibly effective..Changing weak link aspects of my physique to the high levels of core strength..Terrence Thomas is the coach who has helped me get into the best shape of my life! Beyond teaching me to master exercise techniques specifically tailored to address my fitness challenges, Terrence suggested a diet suited for my metabolic type and advocated eliminating depleting cardio sessions. Thanks to his expertise and devotion to helping me reach my goal, Terrence has vastly helped me improve my quality of life -a priceless reward I’ll surely appreciate for the rest of my life.”

-Bari A.

 

“Terrence is one of the most interesting people I have ever met. Besides looking like a real life Super-Hero, he lives by the very high standards he preaches. He is relentless about results and will not stop until any willing person around him has reached their full potential. In other words, he cares very well for himself and also for everyone around him (that is, if you are fortunate enough to be around him).

I met Terrence through my wife (they went to school together) and since then he has not stopped impressing me. So much so that I decided to engage him as my health and fitness coach. The results have been outstanding… inside and out.

To expand on that, one of Terrence’s “Super Powers” is the ability to understand the human body from a level I have never seen anyone be able to do. I call him “The Body Doctor” because he has this interesting talent to derive what a person’s needs are and to easily guide them to overcome their limitations (present and future). In my case, I sure had many… suffering from all sorts of muscle constrains and joint pain, it was hard for me to get around to do the things I loved in life. It was as though I had aged prematurely, and Terrence has been instrumental at taking me from that point of limitation to where I am now. Today, I feel so incredibly better and much more able to do the things I like.

Furthermore, Terrence possesses many other skills, not limited to the workings of the mind as-well-as potentiating one’s metabolism and biochemistry for optimal digestion and healing. Terrence ensures a complete and holistic physical and mental state of excellence for anyone that is fortunate enough to partner with him in their pursuit of happiness.

At this time, I invite you to make a strong determination and decision in your mind to contact Terrence and go over any limitation or goals you may have.”

-Marcello.

 

For a FREE consultation today call, 954-454-5305!

 

Working In Vs Working Out

I would like to share with you a very unique concept that is probably exclusive to C.H.E.K. practitioners and Chek trained holistic lifestyle coaches. This is the concept of “working in” versus “working out.”  Here’s what I mean.

When the average person begins an exercise program, their primary goal is to get back into shape. They have not done physical exercise in a long time. Their diet is poor, their vitality slipping and energy levels are low. In other words, their stress levels are high.

Consider that exercise is inherently stressful.  When highly stressed people begin an exercise (workout plan), they are adding stress on top of stress.  This approach may work short-term, but the reality is that in most cases their body ultimately rejects the exercise.  Rejection  means they get injured, get sick or become so tired and sore they just lose the desire to stick with their workout program.

Inflicting high intensity exercise “workout” program to a stressed out body causes one’s stress level to rise to a destructive tipping point. Stress overflow equals physical and metabolic shutdown. It’s a natural survival mechanism. The body is saying “Ok, if you don’t have the common sense to shut it down, let me do it for you in the form of an injury, illness or pulling the plug on your energy levels”.

The concept of working in means that when you’re beginning an exercise program, your initial goal is to train in a way that brings energy back into the body rather than making withdrawals on an energy account that’s already in the red. Working in involves paying attention to your exercise volume and intensity. In other words controlling the number of sets, reps, and training frequency. The goal here is to achieve successful fatigue, and not feeling like you’ve been run over by a truck after your exercise training session.  Any good training session will have the ability to be duplicated.  If you can’t duplicate a training session–because it was too intense, it was not a training session but a maximal effort or a competition level event.  If you’re working in properly, you’re creating successful fatigue, which will bring energy back into the body, reduce stress levels and build energy reserves. #workoutworkin

Diet Tip Lesson #1: Blood Sugar Management

The Secret To Permanent Weight Loss

The #1 Secret To Life Long Physical Excellence

Do you remember when you first learned how to drive a car?

The mere act of getting behind the wheel totally consumed you. Driving required so much of your attention and energy that you couldn’t even have the radio on.

But as time went on something magical happened.  Not only were you able to  drive with the radio on but you’ve now added talking on the phone and text messaging to the mix.

What was the variable in having the confidence and faith to safely and effectively navigate a 2 ton machine towards your chosen destination?

It was the Acquisition Of Skill.

When you gained the required skills of driving your car, the energy demand to perform the task was much less than when you first started.

The acquisition of skill  allowed you to divert your energy towards other tasks. It allowed you to drive with less effort. Gaining the skill gave you the confidence and the faith to know that you can succeed at will.

If you have achieved any level of physical excellence (i.e. weight loss, strength, endurance, etc) and are struggling to maintain your gains, then it is time to explore the concept of skill acquisition.

Real physical excellence, once achieved is a non struggle. It will still take effort but your efforts will be more effective because you are doing it with skill. If you have lost weight, acquiring the skill of weight management will help you keep it off. If you have truly acquired the skill of strength, then your training will be ever evolving. Elite physical excellence students rarely hit training “plateaus” because they understand that adjusting their nutrition and training by listening to their body is a skill that helps them continue to make progress despite changes in their energy levels and environment.

The mindset for achieving permanent physical excellence is to turn your goals into a quest for skill.

If you focus on mastering the skill the final result will be all but guaranteed…forever.

Much Chi..

###

How The Body Thinks Part 2: Exercise The New Addiction

Let’s take a trip down memory lane..

It all started way back with the first Mr. Olympia Eugene Sandow. He was considered the world’s most perfectly build man of his time. He was lean, symmetrical, muscular and strong. Eugene was truly the total package. He not only had the “show” muscles but he had the “go” as well. His feats of strength was his original claim to fame but is audiences soon became more enamored with his bulging muscles than what he could lift. From this point on the era of Bodybuilding began.

The concept of bodybuilding has evolved quite a bit since Sandow’s day. During the early days of physical culture, there was a pride and focus on not only looking good on the outside but living a healthy lifestyle and feeling good on the inside.

Within the last 5 to 10 years, there has been a shift from physical culture to the era of extreme fitness. High-tech gyms and super-charged supplements have created the great divide between form, health and function.

Extreme exercise has literally become the new addiction.  At least in the 70-80’s you had somewhat of a clear boundary between physical culture and the party crowd.

Now people are replacing their hard drugs with hard exercise.They are replacing the high of narcotics  with the train till you puke mindset. Think about it. If you’ve ever exercised until you threw up, didn’t it feel the same as a hangover?

At it’s core they are one and the same.  People are trading narcotics for stimulants and extreme exercise in the name of health. It is a step up the evolutionary ladder but I feel that we can and must keep moving up.

Just because an exercise is possible does not mean it is to be done. Not all exercise is for everyone and until we understand this, we are going to have millions of people brainwashed into thinking that they have to kill themselves to get in shape. This is not a good thing if we are trying to inspire millions of overweight and out of shape people to exercise.

These extreme workouts is not training. They are events. It is the equivalent to  running the full 26 miles at every session if you are training for a marathon.

Elite Strength Coaches,(I’m talking about the Real Elite Coaches) know that the extreme fitness programs are just fads.

The definition of a training program is being able to duplicate an executed session.

If you cannot duplicate the session without injury or burnout, then it was not a training session, it was a maximal event.

If I did a maximal event 3 times a week, I’d need a Red Bull or Red line or Nitro something to get by as well. Here’s a novel concept..

Train to tolerance and then rest.  Gradually and systematically  progress your way to higher levels of intensity. This way your results “stick” and you build long lasting results.

Give it a shot..

Much Chi##

How The Body Thinks Part 1: Death By Gym

What you are about to learn could save your life.

To truly understand how exercise affects the body, there must be an understanding of human biology, physiology, and psychology.

All of these factors are affected by an exercise program.

Stay with me please…This is going to get a little deep.

Evolutionary biology tells us that ANY threat to the organism will create a stress response in the body.

Let’s define what threat means in a bit more detail.

A threat is anything that compromises human survival. ANYTHING..

We are hardwired to detect any and all stressors that can kill us. This  can be at the conscious level (i.e. what we are aware of) or at the subconscious level (i.e. what we are not aware of.)

Ok.. let’s now define both conscious and unconscious stressors.

First the conscious..

* being trapped in a burning car.
* falling off a motorcycle
*getting mauled by a hungry grizzly bear.
*being diagnosed with a terminal illness
etc…

Now here are some of the possible subconscious stressors

* poor breathing pattern; if your breathing is compromised in any way.. your body thinks you are going to die.. And there are 8 ways to Sunday that breathing can be disrupted, so this threat is real and quite prevalent.

*poor posture: if your physical frame is out of alignment, your body thinks it will not be able to effectively run from predators or hunt effectively and therefore thinks it will die. Consider that 90+% of society has some type of postural disorder.

*suboptimal food choices: if you are eating a food that your DNA sees as incompatible with life… your body thinks it will die. In other words any time you eat a meal that is not according to your metabolic type, your body thinks it a poison and goes into a state of stress.

I don’t think I need to give you a statistic for this one. Just look around.. Has anyone close to you to been diagnosed with cancer? How about heart dis-ease? diabetes? anybody obese? how about just a little overweight? How about can get pregnant? Etc….

It is the subconscious forms of stress that eventually produce conscious forms of stress (i.e. sickness and dis-ease).

Finally here lies the lesson..

Many people have a desire to improve their health, fitness and body image.

They are willing to put in the time and effort to exercise and “diet”.

A fundamental principle of Physical Excellence is that any exercise program will serve to do three things:

1. Improve the structure of the body: This goes beyond biceps, triceps and abs and emphasizes the development of the physical qualities needed to develop, restore and maintain a healthy, functional and vital human frame. If this happens, the fitness, fat loss and the aesthetic results will be all but guaranteed.

2. Improve movement skills. Your exercise program will promote the ideal expression of human movement. In other words, your body will move and function the way it was designed to.

The best way to describe this principle is with the following analogy:

What if you took your car to a mechanic to get a full service on it (i.e. brakes, tire rotation, alignment, tune up etc.). And the mechanic also threw in a free car wash and wax.

Now imagine as you drove the car home that it drove and performed worse than it did before you took it in to get fixed? Would you focus on the fact that your car is shinny or would you have a problem with the fact that the car is running like crap?

Yet I have consulted with THOUSANDS of people over the last 20 years that have been “working out” and they come to me with poor posture, dysfunctional movement patterns, and are “fit but sick”.

This phenomenon was unheard of 30 years ago.

It is only since the advent of diet pills, cheap garbage supplements that we now have people with six pack abs like a world class athlete and toxic livers and polluted intestines.  I digress for a moment but I think you get the point.

In summary: If your exercise and nutrition program is not in line with your specific needs, and are not accomplishing the above, then your body thinks it will die and produce a stress response.

Prolonged stress responses are detrimental to your health and that is not Physical Excellence.

Listen.. with the new changes in “health care (i.e. disease management)” in the United States, more of the onus will be on us to take personal responsibility for our health and well being, as it ought to be in my opinion.

We have more people getting terminal illnesses at younger ages than ever.

We as a society must approach our health and vitality from a different perspective.

A perspective that will serve to promote Physical Excellence to the next generation.

Will you help me do it?

Your tip for today,

Much.. Chi..

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