Why Organic? Why Gluten-Free?

Why Organic? Why Gluten-Free?

By Terrence Thomas

 

First let’s tackle organic food.  We’ve discussed organic food before, but it goes without saying, there are multiple studies that prove – without a shadow of a doubt -that organic food has higher levels of nutrition than conventionally farmed food.

I won’t get into a huge debate about this because there’s a lot of politics and a lot of bureaucracy around organic food. It’s now a profitable industry and people are changing the standards that govern organic farming, but organic farming and organic food in its original and pure state have more and higher nutritional values than conventionally farmed food.

 

 The second thing you should consider with organic food is that it’s going to have a higher level of the secondary nutrients. Primary nutrients would be your proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.  Secondary nutrients are all of your phyto-nutrients, that is; the thousands of plant based plant chemicals that are in foods that give it their anti-cancer, immune building and health building properties.

  In regards to organic meats and protein sources, you’re going to have fewer toxins in your body. A cow that has been raised strictly on grass and water and a plant based diet without it being injected with hormones and antibiotics and synthetic chemicals, is going to be a healthier animal.  Obviously if you’re eating a healthier animal you’re going to be healthier as well. Eating organic food is also better for the environment.  If you’re not spraying pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and giving the animals hormones and antibiotics, it’s going to be less stress on the environment. You’re not going to have any toxic run-off in the water, you’re not going to pollute the environment and the ozone with toxic chemicals, which in turn puts humanity in a better position to achieve optimal health.

Aside from these very tangible reasons for eating organic,  it tastes better, it more flavorful and it stay fresh longer.  It may be a little bit more expensive but you get what you pay for in terms of quality!

Now let’s talk about gluten. Some experts believe that 60% of white skinned people and 40% of people with colored skin are intolerant to gluten. What is gluten?  Gluten is a protein molecule, not only found in wheat, but also in rye and barley.  Gluten has been connected to everything from chronic inflammation, irritable bowel, Crohn’s Disease, even issues with hormones and fertility in women.  So if you’re having any of these symptoms or just general body aches, weight gain or hormonal issues, it’s worth eliminating gluten from your diet for a month or so and see how you feel. A month gluten-free will give your body enough time to clear it out of your system and then when you reintroduce it, if the symptoms come back, you’ll know gluten is most likely the culprit. ####

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

Who’s Running The Show?

Any time we eat, we have the opportunity to…

1. Bring our physiology into balance
2. Take the body away from it.

What will determine your outcome is your metabolic dominance..

The body will do it’s best to make energy out of any type of food that we feed it.

You can try to fuel a sports car on 87 octane but to the sacrifice of performance.

The question then becomes are we breaking the machine with the fuel source or are we supporting it.

More to come on this..

Proteins, Carbs and Fat: The Next Evolution (Part III)

I’d like to now discuss protein intake as it relates to fat loss, muscle growth and athletic performance.

Metabolic Type will dictate the quality and quantity that is needed to accomplish all of the above. Your training volume and frequency is a distant second behind your genetic based protein requirements.

Protein intake is vital for anyone looking to make quick, dramatic and permanent changes to their body. Every tissue in the body is protein-based and the body is quite sensitive to deficiencies. The function of Metabolic Enzymes, Digestive Enzymes, Hormones and Neurotransmitter (brain juice) are all dependent on adequate protein intake. Some common signs of protein deficiencies are;

chronic migraine headaches
thin hair
soft nails
flabby muscles despite doing large amounts of exercise.
chronic sweet cravings

Now the type of protein is just as important as quantity.

Certain metabolic types respond best to low fat proteins like white meat chicken, white fish and egg whites while others do better with the heavier, high purine and fat based protein like beef, lamb and salmon. Your metabolic type will determine which is better.

So how do you know if you are on target with your quality and quantity of protein?

Here are 3 things that you want to pay attention to after each meal;

1. How soon do you become hungry after the meal? (If your meal does not sustain you for at least 3 hours, you may want to look at your ratio of protein to carbs as well as your protein quality)
2. Cravings after the meal (are you craving sweets?) if so the same rule applies as #1
3. Increased energy level and mood: any good meal will be uplifting to your energy levels both physically and mentally.

To summarize:
What will determine your protein needs heavily based on your genetics.
Are you an Eskimo or an Indian? One needs heavy protein and the other light protein.

Proteins, Carbs and Fats: The Next Evolution (Part II)

Moving on to the new school view on carbohydrates, I want to explain how choosing the right types of carbohydrates for your metabolic type is critical.

The standard operating procedure is to take in a fair amount of starches in the off-season and take in little to no starchy carbohydrates as you get closer to competition.

This is a good rule of thumb but let’s take this concept up a notch.

What will determine one’s need for starch is the Carbo-Oxidation rate and Pathway..

Biochemistry 101 tells us that our body will try to produce energy from whatever fuel source that we give it. This is done via the Krebs cycle.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s just say that there are two main pathways that the body can use to get to the energy promised land. Depending on what your metabolic type is, you will have a preferred pathway.
That pathway will require more or less need for starch.

If you happen to be the type that needs more starch, you could conceivably eat starch all the way up to the show IF you know what you are doing. Or at least eat them closer up TO the show as to help you be able to train harder and help preserve muscle mass.

Take this in for now..

more to come.

Protein, Carbs and Fats: The Next Evolution

Let’s take fresh look at some long standing beliefs about nutrition. To be more specific let’s explore some long standing strategies as it relates to dieting for weight loss and physique transformation.

This first of a 3 part series will cover an important issue related to fat intake.

When the goal is maximum fat loss, the obvious thing to do would be to limit fat intake as much as possible. This may sound good in theory but when that theory is applied here’s what happens..

Consider that your steroid based hormones (needed for fat loss) are fat based. In other words, fat (saturated fat in particular) needs to be there for the body to make, estrogen, testosterone etc. When the body’s saturated fat reserves gets too low, your hormonal system will suffer.

The reality is that, it is the insulin/glucagon balance and cyclic amp pathways that will determine your rate and magnitude of fat loss. (more on this later)

To take this a step further your metabolic type will determine how much fat you will need and in what ratios.

Certain Metabolic Types can get the job done with lower amounts of saturated fats while others need TONS of it.

Summary:
1. Find out with absolute certainty what your fat requirement is by knowing your metabolic type.

some food for thought.

Fat Burning Blueprint: Part 2

How We Burn Fat?

Ori Hofmekler in his book Maximum Muscle Minimum Fat, he gives a great explanation as to how the whole fat burning process starts.

This jist of it is that your adrenal glands send a chemical called cAMP to the fat cells which gets it all started. So the variable in the fat burning equation is your adrenal glands to remain functional and responsive. That’s the cliff note version of it.

There are 2 ways that you can insure that this metabolic pathway stays open and active…

1. You can support the pathway with proper nutrition, increasing and decreasing your training loads and volumes at the right times in order to prevent burnout.

Or…

2. You can jam the pathway if it’s sluggish or not working at all. The pros to this method is that you do get it working again. The downside is that you risk breaking something in the process.

In other words you kicking a dead horse.

For example: Let’s say you’ve been dieting for 12 weeks and been using fat burners the entire time. Since you’ve been jamming the pathway with stimulants for that long, the pathway will no longer be receptive to any more “jamming”. So you loose the only real benefit to jamming a pathway which is to take your body beyond it’s natural limits.

So what do you do? Increase your fat burners? You could and risk doing some real damage to your system. Or you can focus on method #1, get the same result and come out better on the other side.

Just some food for thought.

Much Chi,

The Fat Burning Blueprint

One of my coaching mantras is that fat loss is a chemical event, not mechanical.

If losing body fat was as easy as jumping on a treadmill, burning 875 calories and getting off a quarter pound lighter, everyone would be in great shape all the time because there is no shortage of people doing this type of training.

For any exercise program to work, your metabolism (i.e. your physiology) must be able to respond to your training.

Your hormonal system will play a LARGE role in determining how and IF your body will respond to your training program at all.

All of your glands must be functional (adrenals, Thyroid, Pituatary, gonads and even the pancreas).

If your body is responding to your exercise program then thank your lucky stars.

If your body is no longer responding to your training and diet, and/or you have reached a sticking point in your fat loss, it will be from one or all of the following:

1. Your hormonal system is compromised. Is it your adrenal, thyroid, pituitary, gonads or a little bit of all of them?
Find out what it is and you will turn the fat burning machine back on.

2. Your training program is not matching you current metabolic needs.
Are you over-training or under-training? Do the opposite of what you are currently doing and watch the magic happen.

Summary:
Pay attention to your body.
When we are working with deadlines like getting ready for a contest, wedding, reunion or vacation, it is easy to get anxious.
As long a you stay in tune with what your body is telling you, you will make the right adjustments and reach your goal with ease.

Get Your Metabolism Working For You..

I have officially declared this the week of metabolism.

All Tips will be about getting your metabolism to work for you and not against you.

Tip #1:

To Know Your Metabolism is Know Your Results!

If you want to have full control over your body, you must first know the nature of your metabolism.

Here are some questions to consider…

Is it slow.. Is it fast.. or somewhere in between?

What are the specific nutrient requirements?

When do you need those nutrients?

What are your specific exercise needs?

Is your current exercise program serving your current metabolic needs?

More to come…

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