Diet, Stress and Mood

Here's a little tip for everyone who is busy and/or stressed - keep eating well! Many times when everything is going well it is easy to eat well, but once time gets short and stress levels increase it's very tempting to turn to the junk food for convenience. The problem with this is what you eat can effect not only your body composition (amounts of muscle and fat), but also your mood, energy levels, sleep and basically your whole life!

The times when stress is high, time and sleep are short are exactly when your body most needs good food packed with nutrients in order to cope - if you turn to the junk food at this time you may end up in a downward spiral of sugar spikes, cravings, mood swings, weight gain and poor health! Therefore next time your life gets busy, prioritize good eating and you will find you can cope with what life throws at you much better!

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Run, Swim, Fly, Green Diet

Time for another fat loss phase, and I'm going to do a 2 week phase of the 'run, swim, fly, green' diet.

This is an idea Charles Poliquin came up with the kick start a fat loss phase, kicking the sugar addiction and getting used to eating good healthy food.

The system is simple, and it goes like this -- For 2 weeks eat only the following foods:
1) Foods that fly, swim, or run
2) Foods that are green and grow in the ground
Can it get any more simple? Probably not. Simply put, if it doesn't fly, swim, or run and isn't green and growing in the ground, you don't eat it for 14 days.

That's all. That's the plan. And it works...when you follow it for 14 days and then, after the 14 days, you appropriately transition off of the plan.

Junk Food In The House? Why?!?

This is a copy and paste of a post from Ryan Andrews, who is a professional dietician on the Precision Nutrition forums.

Here is a sample of a conversation that usually comes up with new clients on a weekly, if not daily basis:

Client - “Ryan, I ate some unhealthy foods last week and it is preventing me from reaching my health and body composition goals.”

Me - “Tell me why you chose the unhealthy foods.”

Client – “Well, I had this pack of cookies and bag of chips in my house and…..”

Me – “Wait a minute, why did you have chips and cookies at your house? Remember how we discussed the importance of building a safe home base and surrounding yourself with healthy, whole foods? Foods you actually plan on consuming.”

Client – “But Ryan, I have two kids and a spouse. They can eat those foods. I have to keep those foods in the house for them.”

This is about the time in the conversation where I have to slow my breathing and count to 10 or else my face turns red and I throw my computer monitor across the room.

People, listen. No matter if you are fat, thin, healthy, unhealthy, smart or stupid – no one should be consuming unhealthy junk foods. Period. End of discussion.

If unhealthy junk foods are “all your kids will eat,” then drop them off in Uganda for 2 months and see what happens. Kids will eat if they are hungry. Haven’t had anything to eat for a couple days? A root vegetable looks pretty darn good.


If your husband “loves his chocolate ice cream,” then tell him to go out and get an individual cup and be done with it. Don’t stock up on a 4 gallon container from Fat-Mart.

Convincing yourself that you need to keep unhealthy junk foods in the house for your fellow family members is a load of bull. That is rationalization rearing its head.

If you eat crappy foods at regular intervals, your health and body comp will be crappy as well.

Junk food is delicious!

Wow, junk food is great! A nice burger and chips, some pizza, fish and chips, mars bars, jelly babies....mmmm, lovely!

Or not.

Recently I've noticed that junk food SEEMS nice, but rarely is! The nice burger and chips becomes, in reality, a soggy lump of sub-standard meat in a bun that falls apart with a sauce of dubious origin. The pizza becomes either a floppy mess or overcooked (or if you're particullarly lucky, both). The fish and chips is horrible, batter so fatty you can see the years coming off your life as you eat it and half-cooked oily chips that normally resemble wilting celery. Sweets look good until you eat them, then are normally far too sweet or chewy.

This, however, is a good thing. The more bad experiences I can have on my 'cheat' meals the better, since next time I will probably remember that it wasn't really worth it. I just had a lovely meal of salmon fillets, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, radish and olive oil which was much nicer than any cheat meal I have had recently.

So remember, next time you are thinking of ditching your nutrition plan and going for that tempting junk food, it's probably not worth it in reality. And as Alwyn Cosgrove says, "Nothing tastes as good as lean feels!"

Chili - A burning sort of cool!

Recently I have been really getting into chili, with almost everything I eat being spicy enough to be used as a substitute for rocket fuel! As a side effect, I have been looking into the health benefits of it, and to my surprise, there are MANY great health benefits, including:



- High in vitamins and minerals

- Good for pain relief

- Reduce risk of cancer

- Kill intestinal parasites

- Clear nasal passages

- Control of blood sugar (reduced risk of diabetes)



Therefore, if you do not already, I recommend bringing a bit of spice to your life! There is a level for everyone, from a touch of paprika to extra hot chilli powder, so choose a level that won't blow your head off to start with! I like using fresh green chilies too, anyone that is brave enough can ask me for a sample of my chilli, but you'd better like it hot!



If you are planning on trying out adding some spice to your cooking, I thought it may be prudent to add a link to this page on how to cool chili burns!



http://www.wikihow.com/Cool-Burns-from-Chili-Peppers

Bacon gives you lung disease?!

This was brought to my attention by a client – there was a story in the paper recently about bacon giving you a fatal lung disease. I have also researched this and as far as I can see there is no real substance to it (note: just because I can’t find any evidence doesn’t mean it’s not true!). The disease is called COPD, and I have looked into it a fair bit as I said before. I have found that taking a certain supplement considerably reduces your risk of getting the disease. Anyone that has read this or known me for any period of time should be able to guess what it is, the supplement that does pretty much everything, fish oil! So if you are worried about this disease, you now have another reason to take copious amounts of fish oil. At this rate I’m going to have to open a fish oil distribution company!

Sweating the small stuff

In recent times, I have seen and received a lot of questions about the little details. Examples are:
“Do I need to have my metabolic rate tested?”
”Should I do squats or deadlifts?”
“What brand should I use for my workout shake?”
”Should I do 20 minutes or 30 minutes of cardio?”
..or the best one…
“What fat burner do you recommend?”

These questions generally reflect a lack of focus on the important things, and my answer to 99% of people is “It doesn’t matter!” Unless you have the rest of your nutrition, exercise, supplement, rest and recovery regime at 90+ percent, there is NO point in worrying about whether you should use the protein shake with 78g protein and 4g fat or the one with 76g protein and 6g fat. Similarly, if you are eating Mars bars 3 times a week because you ‘don’t have time to prepare food’, getting your metabolic rate tested to see how many calories you require is a total waste of time! If you are thinking of starting training, or even if you train currently, ask the following questions in this order:

• Am I training often enough?
- If yes, move on to the next question, if no, remedy the situation

• Is my diet good 90% or more of the time?
- If yes, move on to the next question, if no, remedy the situation

• Am I taking all the basic recommended supplements? (multivitamin, fish oil, whey protein)
- If yes, move on to the next question, if no, remedy the situation

• Am I getting enough rest?
- If yes, move on to the next question, if no, remedy the situation

• Am I moving towards my goals?
- If yes, carry on doing what you’re doing, if no, THEN think about the small details!
This process should keep you on track to achieving your goals without getting distracted by the little details.

My diet isn't working!

Have you ever heard someone say something like that?

- "Oh, I'm on Atkins, but it's not working"

Ever asked the question -

- "Really? What are you eating?"

The fact is - most diets work. Some work better than others, but if you eat calories than you expend, you will generally lose weight. However, it's dependent on eating less than you expend!

Now, if your diet says 'Eat chicken and brown rice 6 times a day, every 3 hours' (and some bodybuilders will do this!), and you eat chicken and brown rice 4 times, chicken and white rice once and a hamburger and fries once, you're not on the diet! In fact, you have a 60% compliance ratio. If someone said to you,
"I don't understand, I've been driving in the right direction for 60% of the time, I don't understand why I haven't got where I am meant
to be going!" what would you say? Would it be along the lines of, "Of course you haven't got there, you're not following the map!"? Now think about the diet example above. Is the map wrong if you don't get where you wanted? Or is the blame laid squarely at the feet of the driver who
chooses not to follow it?

So next time you think, "why is my diet not working?", first look at the nutrition plan to see if the principles are sound (note: I recommend Precision Nutrition, see http://www.precisionnutrition.com/system.html for more details). If the principles of the nutrition plan are sound, the next step is to ask, "Am I following the plan?". If the answer to this is "No", or "Sort of", you're not following the plan, so don't complain about it not working. 'Get with the program', as they say in America, THEN if it doesn't work, look for factors outside yourself that may be inadequate!

It's March already, how is your year?

Unbelievable how fast 2007 is going isn't it? Think about it, this year is more than 15% GONE already! It's time to think about those New Year's Resolutions - how are you progressing?

If you wanted to lose 2 stone this year, you've already lost 4 or 5 pounds right? If not, guess what you'll be doing on New Year's Eve this year? Yep, you guessed it, sitting there saying "NEXT year will be the one I get in shape"! I am as guilty as anyone about not keeping on top of certain goals (although I have lost 8 pounds this year so far!) so I will be setting new targets and working diligently towards them from now on.

This is one of the reasons I don't believe in New Year's resolutions - if you have to wait until the end of a YEAR to start doing something, how important is it to you?! I believe instead we should all regularly set targets, and assess if we are on the way to achieving them or not. How many people do you know who want to do something 'one day'? And how many of them ever actually DO anything? Don't be like the rest, set your goals, find out what you have to do to achieve them, and DO IT.