The Dangers Of Drinking Morning Coffee!

Drinking coffee in the morning on an empty stomach raises cortisol levels that are already high from having been sleeping. If this is done over time it will cause extreme stress on the adrenals glands which will make you tired, increase belly fat, and weaken your immune system. Make sure you eat something before you drink your coffee and it will make a huge difference.

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