First of all thank you for your interest in last weeks post on how Big Food controls you. Now as we explained growing your own food is the best answer, a lot of fun and you print your own money. Good organic food that you can trust is expensive. We are building a system that will save us up to € 5.000,- a year !

The good thing is that it’s scalable. You can do it anywhere: even in an apartment in a city. At the moment we are building an Aquaponics system in our garden. We think there is a big future in providing for your own food.

What is an Aquaponic system ?

Aquaponics is the cultivation of fish and plants together in a constructed, recirculating ecosystem utilizing natural bacterial cycles to convert fish waste to plant nutrients. This is an environmentally friendly, natural food-growing method that harnesses the best attributes of aquaculture and hydroponics without the need to discard any water or filtrate or add chemical fertilizers.

You can watch a short animated video below.

In other words, Aquaponics is a system where plants and fish are grown together symbiotically. The waste product from the fish provides the food for the plants, and the plants in turn filter the water that goes back to the fish.

Why build an Aquaponic system ?

There are a lot of advantages having an Aquaponics system. It’s very eco friendly (no waste), it’s very easy and you have your won fish in your backyard to eat as well. Your produce is very healthy and super tasty. You cannot compare any of it with what you buy from you local supermarket.

Earth smart gardening

Necessarily organic produce — If you use pesticides or herbicides, you will harm your fish and bacteria. If you use hormones or fish medicines you could harm your plants. An aquaponic system necessarily produces food that is free of chemicals. It can’t work any other way.
• Grow using one-tenth the water of dirt gardening — Because the water in an aquaponic system recirculates rather than seeping into the groundwater, aquaponics uses far less water than traditional soil-based gardening. It is also far more water thrifty than hydroponics because the nutrient solution is never dumped and replaced.
• Turning a waste disposal problem into a valuable input — Aquaculture treats the waste the fish produce as a harmful byproduct to be disposed of. Aquaponics turns that around and treats the waste as a valuable input into the plant growing part of the system. In nature there is no waste.
• Growing plants hydroponically without hydroponic chemical fertilizers — Aquaponics offers the benefits of hydroponics — fast, closely spaced growth in a dirt- and weed-free environment — without the need for discharging chemically saturated nutrient solution on a regular basis.

Easy gardening

Waist-high, so there is no bending or digging involved — This is our favorite characteristics of aquaponics. You can set your grow beds at whatever height suits you, and your back. Let’s face it. We are all getting older and I for one find that as I age, the appeal of crawling around and turning soil no longer extends much beyond the first warm days of spring.
• Free from dogs,cats and bunnies — Another nice benefit of the grow beds being elevated is stopping pesky herbivores from getting the pick of your garden before you do.
• Weed-free — The other gardening chore that regularly wears us down by the end of the summer is weeding. Another reason why aquaponic gardening is so blessedly why aquaponic gardening is so blessedly wonderful is that there are no weeds.
• No dirt — Dirt gets on your hands, your clothes and your produce. Aquaponics is a much cleaner way to grow.
• No watering — This may seem self-evident, but is worth mentioning here as an important benefit of aquaponics. Autopsies on most deceased plants reveal that the cause of death was either under- or over-watering. Because of the automatic nature of a recirculating aquaponics system, this risk is now permanently removed from your gardening life. You will never overor under-water your plants again.

Growing fish for food

Convenient — Just as a vegetable gardener becomes used to having his produce grown close to his kitchen door, an aquaponic gardener enjoys both this convenience and the convenience of the protein portion of his meal at his fingertips as well.
• Fresh — Besides being convenient, the at-home accessibility of fish also means that it is as fresh as it can possibly be. An aquaponic fish can literally go from swimming in the water to sizzling on your dinner plate in twenty minutes.
• Safe — In addition to being convenient and fresh, an aquaponically grown fish is safer to eat than any other fish you can buy or catch. You know what this fish has eaten. You know what its growing and harvesting conditions were.

How to start building your own system ?

There is a lot of information you can find on the web, the Aquaponics community grows fast and shares knowledge all over the globe. We taught ourselves most secrets in one week benefiting from their knowledge. Our system will be in a 6 x 3 meter greenhouse (partly from recycled materials) and we started building it a few days ago.

IMG_1633

IMG_1635

IMG_1642

IMG_1648

IMG_1650

IMG_1652

IMG_1656

IMG_1657

The coming weeks we will give you more infomation on how to build it, the maintenance cost and payback. Our calculations so far have learned us that we will save about Euro 5.000,– a year, which is an amazing amount of money.

References to build your own:

1. We used some info in this article from this inspiring book and it helps us to build our system, here’s the YouTube channel as well.
2. The grandfather of Aquaponics is Murray Hallam, he lives in Australia, check the forum as well and here’s Murrays YouTube channel.

The post Go aquaponics and print your own money (1) appeared first on healthcoachFX.

Have you ever asked yourself why Food companies like Coca Cola, Nestlé, McDonalds, Frito-Lay (GMO corn chips Lays) and the likes can spend so much money on marketing and advertising? A bottle of Coke or a Big Mac is not that expensive. Here’s why. All the Big Food stuff is so bad that it can be produced so cheap that profits are still sky rocketing after marketing cost.

The trick is to make the customer hooked for life. This is how they do it:

1. Get the consumer hooked on sugar;
2. Control the food chain;
3. Control the water supply;

Big Food controls the entire food supply chain and in which farmers are squeezed on prices to raise Big Food’s profit. Therefore most farmes become forced to spray their produce to lower costs and make food look good.

Big Food doesn’t care about your health, it cares about power and profit

Sugar is the new cocaine of the free world. It’s both highly addictive and toxic. Most people don’t consider themselves affected, thinking ’I never take sugar lumps so I’m sugar free’. Forget it: Almost every processed food contains sugar. Milk for instance contains a lot of sugar. Jamie Oliver showed that on average a schoolkid takes about one wheelbarrow of sugar during his stay at school from milk alone. You can watch Jamie below.

Now Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck has some crazy ideas about drinking water and genetically modified food. The next video is from 2008 when mr. Brabeck just started as CEO, but he repeated his statement in the Guardian last February. The guy is clearly delusional to take away a basic right: the free access to fresh water. However from a profit & power point of view it’s quite clever: if you control water, you control the consumer and if you do that well, you profits will soar through the roof.

The second comment Mr. Brabeck made was on GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms): “We should not worry too much, it was all working and tested in the US so let’s get on with it” (short version please see the video below).

Now the truth is, like that other devilish Big Food company Monsanto, once you have modified food, you patent it and control it. Next you strangle all local farmers by asking big money for your seeds, than you bankrupt them or buy them and there you have it: You control the whole food chain ! Now some people don’t worry at all about genetically modified food whatsoever.  If you don’t, this article is not for you, but if you do or are seriously interested here’s an interview with Robert Scott Bell. He discusses the potential danger and why GMOs could be, what he calls, ‘one of the worst mistakes we ever made.’ He also discusses what you can do as a consumer to make sure you limit or eliminate your intake of genetically modified food.

Especially in the US GMOs are a huge problem. In Europe the presence of GMOs is still relatively small, but on its way. Yet the main problem in Europe is that almost any whole food is sprayed with herbicides and pesticides. You should buy organic, but can you trust the supply chain (producers and supermarket) ?

What to do about it ?

There are two simple solutions, both based on the principle “Grow local, eat local”. Buy it local or grow it yourself. In doing so there are major advantages:

1. You help the local farmers to produce the best food you can get;
2. It’s definitely cheaper;
3. You help your local community (and not the shareholders of Big Food)

Now growing yourself is a lot of fun. You can do it anywhere: even in an apartment in a city. At the moment we are experimenting with an Aquaponics system at our home. We think there is a big future in providing for your own food. It’s less labor intensive and uses almost no water and energy compared to traditional methods. We keep you posted on our progress and findings.

The post Big Food controls YOU appeared first on healthcoachFX.

According the the WHO (World Health Organisation) the total death in the world of heart disease in 2008 was 7,3 million people (12,4% of total). The industry and their lobbists make you believe its primary cause is high (bad) cholesterol. Well it’s a myth (to put it mildly).

Here are the are facts according to “The Cholestrol Myth” (1):

1. Cholesterol is a minor player in heart disease.
2. Cholesterol levels are a poor predictor of heart attacks.
3. Half the people with heart disease have normal cholesterol.
4. Half the people with elevated cholesterol have healthy hearts.
5. Lowering cholesterol has extremely limited benefits.

Yep, you heard us right, quite astonishing isn’t it !

Here’s the proof (and there’s much, much more)

Here’s number one: In the early 1990s, French researchers decided to run an experiment—known as the Lyon Diet Heart Study—to test the effect of different diets on heart disease.(2)

They took 605 men and women who were prime candidates for heart attacks. These folks had every risk factor imaginable. All of them had already survived a first heart attack. Their cholesterol levels were through the roof, they smoked, they ate junk food, they didn’t exercise, and they had high levels of stress. People like this give insurance underwriters nightmares. To be frank, these folks were “dead men walking.”

The researchers divided the participants into two groups. The first group was counseled (by the research cardiologist and the dietician during a one-hour session) to eat a Mediterranean-type diet which emhasizes fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nutes, healthy fats like olive oil, and seafood. The second group was the control group and received no dietary advice from the investigators but was advised, nonetheless, to follow a prudent diet by their attending physicians.

What was this prudent diet, you ask? Pretty much the standard (and, as we shall see, useless) diet that doctors have been recommending for decades: Eat no more than 30 percent of your calories from fat, no more than 10 percent from saturated fat, and no more than 300 mg of cholesterol a day (about the amount in two eggs). So what happened with the study?

Actually, it was stopped.

Why? Because the reduction in heart attacks in the Mediterranean diet group was so pronounced that the researchers decided it was unethical to continue. To be precise, the Mediterranean diet group had a whopping 70 percent reduction in deaths and an even more impressive 76 percent reduction in cardiovascular deaths. What’s more, angina, pulmonary embolism, heart failure, and stroke were also much lower in the intervention group. A huge victory for the Mediterranean diet and a big dunkin’ for the prudent diet.

So what happened to these folks’ cholesterol levels? Gosh, you’d imagine they dropped like crazy, because so few of them were dying of heart disease.

Um, not so much. Their cholesterol levels didn’t budge.

Let’s repeat that one more time: a 76 percent reduction in deaths from heart disease but not a whit of change in cholesterol levels. Neither in their total cholesterol levels nor in their levels of LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol). You’d think this would shake up the cholesterol establishment a bit, wouldn’t you?

Think again. The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine refused to publish the study. (It was eventually published in another highly regarded medical journal, The Lancet.) We have a hunch that the reason the New England Journal of Medicine didn’t publish the study was precisely because there was no difference in cholesterol levels between the two groups of people, the ones who did so well and the ones who did not. The American medical establishment is so firmly locked into the notion that cholesterol and fat cause heart disease that any inconvenient evidence to the contrary—and there is a massive amount of it, as you will soon find out—has to be ignored or explained away. Leaving away findings that are not convenient is a well-known trick in the scientific community.

As the writer Upton Sinclair said, “It is very difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Here’s proof number 2: Conducted by Harvard University, the study has followed more than 120,000 females since the mid-1970s to determine risk factors for cancer and heart disease.(3) In an exhaustive analysis of 84,129 of these women, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, five factors were identified that significantly lowered the risk for heart disease. In fact, wrote the authors, “Eighty-two percent of coronary events in the study . . . could be attributed to lack of adherence to (these five factors).”

Are you ready for the five factors?

1. Don’t smoke.
2. Drink alcohol in moderation.
3. Engage in moderate-to-vigorous exercise for at least half an hour a day on average.
4. Maintain a healthy weight (BMI under 25).
5. Eat a wholesome, low-glycemic (low-sugar) diet with plenty of omega-3 fats and fiber.

Of course, there’s not roughly $30 billion plus a year to be made peddling that advice (a number that represents the gross revenue from statin drugs (lowering cholesterol) alone), and popping a pill is a lot easier than changing your lifestyle, but there it is. The inconvenient fact that lowering cholesterol has almost no effect on extending life is simply ignored by the special interests that profit enormously from keeping you in the dark.

What you need to know

Do wonder: The true cause of heart disease is inflammation, not cholesterol.

1. Cholesterol is the parent molecule for sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) as well as vitamin D and bile acids needed for digestion.
2. The only time cholesterol is a problem is if it’s oxidized (damaged).
3. Damaged or oxidized LDL cholesterol sticks to the lining of the arteries and begins the process of inflammation.
4. Inflammation is initiated by damage from free radicals (oxidative stress).
5. The concept of “good” and “bad” cholesterol is outdated.
6. There are several types of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and several types of HDL (“good”) cholesterol.
7. It is far more important to know whether you have a pattern A or pattern B LDL cholesterol profile than to know your total amount of LDLs.
8. A cholesterol level of 160 mg/dL or less has been linked to depression, aggression, cerebral hemorrhages, and loss of sex drive.

Sugar: The real demon in the diet

The number one dietary contributor to heart disease is sugar, which is a far greater danger to your heart than fat.

1. Sugar contributes to inflammation in the artery walls.
2. Sugar is the missing link among diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
3. High sugar intakes drive up the hormone insulin, which raises blood pressure and increases cholesterol.
4. Sugar and processed carbs raise triglycerides, which are an important and independent risk factor for heart disease.
5. When sugar in the bloodstream sticks to proteins, it creates damaging and toxic molecules called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs.
6. This same process also damages LDL, contributing to inflammation and ultimately to heart disease.

Who’s making money from the cholesterol myth ?

Amongst the main players in the market include Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugs company; US-based Merck; and Britain’s second-biggest drug company, AstraZeneca.

Pfizer’s Lipitor was the world’s top-selling medicine last year, according to IMS, raking in sales of $13.3 billion. AstraZeneca’s Crestor, which garnered $5.38 billion in sales during 2009, is one of the company’s best selling medicines.

Total sales last year of cholesterol-treating medicines – including statins – were $35 billion, according to IMS.

Dr Navid Malik, a pharmaceuticals analyst at Matrix Partners, said the global statin market has grown significantly over the past ten years.

“Statins enjoyed superior growth in the market because they could be shown to lower bad cholesterol whilst raising good cholesterol,” he added (4).

For the Netherlands we looked a Becel and their claim to reduce cholesterol with their product. There are no hard numbers publicized by Unilever but we suspect they make about €190 million from Becel alone.

Yes, it’s BIG BUSINESS for Pharma and Food !

Sources:

(1) The Cholesterol Myth, Stephen Sinatra M.D, Jonny Bowden Ph.D., C.N.S.;

(2) Michel de Lorgeril et al., “Mediterranean Alpha-Linolenic Acid-Rich Diet in Secondary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease.” The Lancet, no. 143 (1994): 1454 –59.

(3) F.B. Hu et al., “Primary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease in Women Through Diet and Lifestyle,” New England Journal of Medicine 343, no. 1 (2000): 16–12.

(4) The Telegraph, January 19, 2011

The post Cholesterol isn’t bad, it’s a goldmine! appeared first on healthcoachFX.

Last week we asked for five participants in a low profile attempt to start our pilot test. We did get very, very nice applications, but unfortunately Facebook did not send all our emails out or spammed our mail and fans did not get our info. So we now rely on our own site .

10-15 years younger …

The benefits of a healthy body and mind are huge. You’re energized, feel great and above all much younger. We have tested all building blocks ourselves and our metabolic age is now 10-15 years younger than our biological age.

Our online healthcoach does now have all the building blocks to build the site as well, but before we do that we would like to make sure if we got it right. This is were the pilot test comes into play.

We would like to have 5 participants distributed over sex, age, motivations and objectives to join us. The pilot test will take 3 months. All participants will take a plasma test and some of you a hormonal test as well if necessary. The plasma test consists of 3o markers in various areas like cardiovascular, inflammation, metabolism, liver & kidneys and others. Your online ‘real life’ healthcoach will determine what program you have to follow. As you might know the building blocks of our online system is nutrition, excercise and rest.

Nutrition

We coach you to adjust your nutrition based on your specific markers and what your preferences are. If you need supplements we get them for you, but we always try natural (super)foods first. You will be amazed what progress your body makes if your nutrition is as it should be. Don’t get us wrong: you don’t have to live as a monk and you still can eat a lot. We tested our building blocks already individually and the majority of clients have got more taste and much more appreciation for good food. Your biggest improvement will come short term from the right nutrition.

Excercise

We have now over 6.000 workouts in our database so there will be something there that suits you. You get your excercises online, directly from your coach, based on your profile and test results. You can do your excercise at home or in your club (with a pdf or with your iPhone or iPad on video). If you connect your iPhone or iPad to your TV you can also view your excercises on TV. You can even do it from your laptop or PC/Mac. Whatever suits you best !

You have to excercise 2-3 hours a week on average. Now if you do this at home this will save you a lot of time. Your busy schedule will be a part of the test as well, to help you to maximize your results in the time available. This kind of convenience is an important factor in our system.

Once every 2 weeks you measure yourself on a special scale. This special device measures your muscle%, fat% in arms, legs and torso and metabolic age. We can analyse your progress closely and also hormonal imbalances.

Rest

We will measure your stress levels as well and if necessary coach you on your work life balance. Yoga can be a perfect workout to reduce your stress levels. We have excellent yoga workouts in our program as well. You will experience that once your nutrition and excercise is personalized this will reduce your stress already and your sleep patterns will improve. Part of the pilot can be to measure these patterns as well. We still haven’t decided yet to put sleep patterns in our online system as well and hope to find out what to do.

Participation

You can participate HERE. The cost of the pilot is free for fans of our Facebook page, you only have push the ‘Like’ button . We will document your progress and may use it for marketing purposes. Keep in mind that it is a pilot. So it will not be perfect and we will learn from our mistakes. The separate building blocks however are tested already and quite promising.

We can’t wait to test it as a whole and finally ‘Give back what was yours in the first place !’

The post Take our pilot test! appeared first on healthcoachFX.

Many thanks to you all who participated in the burner type test. We hope it gave you some insight in your metabolic type. You can download the results here. What you probably really would like to know ofcourse is if you are healthy, but what is “Health”?

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its broader sense in 1946 as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. If you agree with that definition (health is more than the mere absence of disease) than a person with the right BMI who is depressed or lonely is still not healthy. Let’s take a look at our burner type test of last week. There are some interesting results to report. 8% of the participants (n=70) have reported to be a sugar burner, 57% a mixed burner and 35% are muscle burners. This is quite a surprise if these results are compared to what is happening in the Netherlands. Most (so not all) people with overweight are sugar burners. The number of Dutch overweight rose sharply to nearly half of all adults (48.2%) in 2011.

One reason for the difference is that we believe that people who filled in the test are very much interested in their health and would like to stay healthy, there are 57% mixed burners in the test (which is a high average score) the best metabolic type you can have. The big question ofcourse is are the participants really healthy and if you did not apply for the test are you?

How do you KNOW if you are healthy ?

Most muscle burners think they are healthy but are not

There are over 1/3 muscle burners in the test. Muscle burners tend to eat not as much as they should, skip meals and excercise too much with a focus on cardio. Most muscle burners are anxious to gain weight and can have high cortisol (stress hormone). They constantly put pressure on their body. Some are just obsessed with their weight. Let’s take a closer look at Kim.

Kim is in her mid-twenties and was thin by anyone’s standards. She lived on the treadmill at her local gym and took Pilates classes twice a week. She exercised 5 hours a week. Her diet was simple: cereal and low fat yoghurt in the morning or no breakfast at all. Salad, hummus, croissants, and carrot sticks for lunch (sometimes skipped). Maybe miso soup and white rice for dinner, sometimes combined with chicken or canned tuna. No small meals in between.

When measured on this segmental body composition scale, Kim clearly didn’t have enough muscle. Her body felt flabby and without tone. Despite her constant running regimen, her arms, butt, and thighs never tightened up.  She looked anorexic. Think supermodel but a bit heavier. We like to see women with at least 95 pounds of muscle on them, especially if they are taller than 5 feet, 5 inches. When confronted with her cortisol levels through a bloodtest she admitted to have daily stress and sleeping disorders.

Kim was upset with how her body looked because she had “no tone, cellulite, and a small but flat butt.”  Since she ate hardly any protein, which is essential for muscle mass, she was robbing and burning her muscles to make sugar. People like Kim eat mostly pasta, rice, breads, and other carbohydrate-laden foods. By skipping meals, not eating enough protein, and doing all that (boring) cardio exercise, Kim was starving herself by robbing her muscle mass for energy.

Her nutrition now includes 10 (organic) eggs per week,  Greek-style yogurt, whey protein shakes (after strenght excercises), plenty of fruits and vegetables. We balanced her hormones with avocado, maca and strength training. She takes fishoil and an enzyme to digest protein better. She occasionally eats (organic) chicken and fish 3 x a week. She now also invest an hour per week in yoga. Her cardio has been reduced, she does HIT training for 2 x half an hour per week. Her total excercise has been reduced to 3 hours a week. Two at her home and one in the gym.

It’s quite remarkable, she’s doing less, she eats more and has much more result.

After 12 weeks (!) Kim looked like a totally different person. She gained 8 pounds and her body fat went down to 22 percent. She added close to 12 pounds of muscle and lost 7 pounds of fat. Lean and toned, Kim completely transformed her body and reduced her stress levels.

You can only take the path if you know the path

As you all know we are developing a online healthcoach in which you achieve the same results as Kim, whatever problems you have. We do this online to make it as cost effective as possible. Last week we finalised our online blood and hormonal test and it is now ready for testing. The test has over 30 biomarkers and will give you a clear indication about your  health. We keep you all posted. We will select 5 people for pilot testing. The pilot will consist of the tests, the online coaching, nutrition and excercise and will take approximately 12 weeks. If you’re interested please fill in this form, we will select participants based on their motivation.

We would like to give back what was yours in the first place !

The post Do you know if you’re healthy ? appeared first on healthcoachFX.

The Metabolic Effect Diet or Hormonal Based Lifestyle as we would call it, works based on a scientific approach to change the body’s fat burning hormone response to exercise and dieting, rather than working to ensure you are exercising more and eating less. Rather than focusing on how long you exercise, you are now advised to focus on how hard you exercise and the types of exercise you are doing. Research indicates that while cardiovascular exercise such as running, jogging or walking will definitely burn calories during your workout, after your workout the exercise can work against the hormones that are responsible for burning calories while your body is at rest. When you use short bursts of “smart” exercise, you will get focused results that keep the fat burning hormones at work even when you are resting, to give you better results in less time and with less overall effort.

When your fat burning hormones are not working like they should be, it results in stress hormones accumulating, which can lead to cravings for traditional “bad for you” foods, such as sugar, salt, and fat. When your hormones are doing the right thing, these cravings go away and enable you to make smarter food choices.

The body has three fuels—protein (muscle), sugar, and fat—at its disposal for burning. When protein is burned, it becomes sugar, making us all either sugar or fat burners. We burn both fuels all the time, but individual metabolic tendencies make some of us burn more sugar and others burn more fat. We are in the process of making a test with specific biomarkers to determine your health profile. In the meantine this simple questionnaire can determine whether you are a sugar burner, a muscle burner, or a mixed burner.

The test is derived from the book the “The Metabolic Effect Diet” we really recommend this book to you and we give a way 3 free copies to all participants who have taken the test on our Facebook Page. The definitions of the various type of burners are quotations from the book. It’s ofcourse a simplification, as always with these kind of tests, but it gives you a nice indication.

What to Eat If You’re a Sugar Burner

 If you are a sugar burner, your body has become very inefficient at burning fat for energy and relies almost exclusively on sugar. This is because the predominant hormone balance in a sugar burner turns off fat-burning enzymes while enhancing sugar-burning and fat-storing enzymes. Your hormonal situation is likely one in which cortisol and insulin are elevated to the point of hormone resistance, making you a very inefficient user of fat and forcing your body to burn sugar instead. Along with this, your body is probably not getting the signal the hunger hormone leptin is sending. You feel hungry all the time and have frequent cravings for foods rich in sugar and fat. Diabetes and other hormonal disorders, including hypothyroidism, may run in your family.

The good news is that you probably have plenty of muscle on your frame. Good because muscle tissue is a prime mover of hormonal metabolism. Once you begin to exercise and eat appropriately, you will trigger your hormonal fat-burning machinery. To turn your body’s fat-burning machinery on, you have to switch your hormones back into a fat-burning balance. The best way to do this is to slowly force the body to use its fat, an impossible task if you keep feeding the body sugar. The body burns what you feed it. Switch your nutritional choices to protein, fiber, and the right fats and the body will shift from using sugar to burning fat. This, along with tailored hormonal exercise, will change your metabolism for good.

Every single time you eat according to this plate, you will set into motion a hormonal software program that will elevate fat burning in the body. Eat plenty of food—meals and snacks—and don’t allow yourself to get ravenously hungry. Focus on lean protein, lots of vegetables, low-sugar fruits, and very little starch and sugar.

What to Eat If You’re a Mixed Burner

As a mixed sugar and fat burner, you have an advantage over sugar burners and muscle burners. By changing what you eat, your hormonal signals can trigger a fat-burning mode. You naturally have a well-regulated metabolism, are probably neither too thin nor overweight, and have a good amount of muscle on your body.

Mixed burners are usually products of their environment and can quickly adapt to other lifestyles. You have a steady amount of energy, so focus on getting a good balance of nutrients from lean protein sources, healthy fats, and a wide array of fruits and vegetables.

To push your metabolism into a higher state of fat burning, you will need to regulate your metabolic fire with sugar/starch foods that are burned slowly while providing plenty of protein to maintain your muscle mass. Enjoy old-fashioned oatmeal, brown rice, and baked potatoes with their skins. Avoid bread, pasta, and sweets.

Every time you eat according to this plate, you set into motion a hormonal software program that will raise the fat-burning mechanism in your body.

What to Eat If You’re a Muscle Burner

Although your body type burns sugar for energy, muscles, rather than food, supply the fuel. Muscle burners are often high-strung type-A people who seem to run on “nervous energy.” They release a larger amount of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Muscle burners tend to be thin in their youth, but often develop what is called the “skinny-fat” look, in which they appear to be thin though their bodies are flabby, with an unfavorable muscle-to-fat ratio. Any pronounced fat storage is concentrated around the belly. This look is often seen in models, actors, and long-distance runners. They often skip breakfast.

Muscle burners can often go for long periods—from 3 to 6 hours—without eating, may suffer from anxiety, and may have been considered underweight much of their lives. Diabetes, loose connective tissue, and degenerative disorders such as osteoporosis, arthritis, sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass), and fibromyalgia are often consequences for muscle burners who yo-yo diet and don’t eat properly.

Muscle burners need to balance out the biochemical overdrive created by the adrenal hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol. High amounts of these hormones break down muscle tissue to supply the body with sugar. While it’s important to consume enough sugar to slow the adrenal hormone burst and feed the body, it’s just as crucial to eat a balanced diet of protein and fat for a steady supply of energy. That is why eating breakfast is so important. Once the nutritional hormonal inputs are corrected, the body will begin to spare its muscle stores and burn fat more readily, leading to an overall toned body and more consistent energy.

Every single time you eat according to this plate, you will set into motion a hormonal software program that will elevate fat burning in the body. Eat as many vegetables and fruits as you like with no limit.

Reference:

(1) The Metabolic Effect Diet: Eat More, Work Out Less, and Actually Lose Weight While You Rest
Jade Teta (Author), Keoni Teta (Author)

The book has a message from the writers on the first page with which we couldn’t agree more “This book is dedicated to the dream that one day nutrition and exercise will replace pharmaceutical drugs as the cornerstone of a physician’s education and will be used as the first line of defense for both the treatment and prevention of disease” We encourage you to buy it.

The post What kind of burner are you ? appeared first on healthcoachFX.

Diets don’t work at all. Here’s why.

1. 95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it in 1-5 years. This is a scientific fact. Since dieting, by definition, is a temporary food plan, it won’t work in the long run. Moreover, the deprivation of restrictive diets may lead to a diet-overeat or diet-binge cycle. And since your body doesn’t want you to starve, it responds to overly-restrictive diets by slowing your metabolism which of course makes it harder to lose weight. You distort your hormones and at a certain point of time you will store fat locally: you increase your problem.

2. Fad diets (diets that promote short term weight loss) can be harmful. They may lack essential nutrients, for example. Moreover, they teach you nothing about healthy eating. Thus, when you’ve “completed” your fad diet, you simply boomerang back to the unhealthy eating patterns that caused your weight gain in the first place! This is the beginning of “yo-yo dieting,” which can bring its own health problems in its wake: you increase your problem.

3. Overly restrictive diets can take all the pleasure out of eating! Healthy food is delicious per definition and your body knows when to stop if you eat healthy.

4. Dieting, along with the frequent and compulsive weighing that accompanies it, can lead to eating disorders. People who diet are 8 times as likely to develop an eating disorder as people who don’t.

5. Unscrupulous people can peddle “magic weight-loss potions,” such as “special” powders and pills, to desperate people, costing them their money and time at best. Skip the magic potions–it’s the healthy eating, exercise and rest that are actually the only effective ingredients.

Finally, there is this reason as well:

6. Obesity and overweight can be conditions that are caused by early life trauma. In one early study of 286 obese people, half had been sexually abused as children. In these cases, “…overeating and obesity weren’t the central problems, but attempted solutions.”

What’s the solution?

Here are 3 simple steps to start with.

• Step 1 towards permanent healthy weight loss is, somewhat ironically, to not focus at weight loss at all. If you do, diets become immediately irrelevant. End of story.
• Step 2 is to love your self. This sounds perhaps a bit soft and strange, but (self) love is very powerful and there’s lots of hard-core science that self-love changes your body and changes your mind. Without self-love nothing will be sustainable. In the next section we’ll give you a simple 30-days exercise to practice it.
• Step 3 is to understand that a healthy body and a healthy mind only need 3 simple things: nutrition, exercise and rest. We’ll give you some simple tips hereafter.

The 30-day “love yourself program”

Collect 10-15 photos from your past at which you looked great. Looking at these photo’s makes you feel wonderful inside. If they have that profound, happy impact on you, you’ve selected the right ones. You also write on a 10×15 cm piece of paper the following: “I accept myself unconditionally, right now”. Now stick it all around a mirror, on a notice board or simply on a wall in your bedroom. Look at the whole twice a day, at a quit moment, for a few minutes. The first 15-20 days you will be overwhelmed by all kinds of negative thoughts. However this will change, you will re-program your subconscious mind to a positive state. You’ll get the willingness to change.

The health triangle: nutrition, exercise and rest

• Start to eat lots of fresh and organic vegetables. Reduce processed foods. Get rid of refined sugars. After one week you already feel a great difference.
• Take a walk for 30 minutes a day, preferably in nature and before you go to sleep. It’s a great start for your body and mind.
• Get 7-8 hours sleep a day, try to laugh as much as possible, be compassionate.

After a month you start to loose weight, fast.

The health triangle is our basis to build your healthcoach on the web. Your body age will drop 10-15 years, not because we say so, but because your friends will tell you. That’s the moment to take some new pictures.

Sources

“…about 95%…” From the National Eating Disorder Information Center (NEDIC) website, http://www.nedic.ca/knowthefacts/statistics.shtml(accessed 10/07/08).

“people who diet” Matz, Judith. “Beyond the Diet Mentality,”http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/currentissue/923-in-consultation (accessed 10/19/10).

“early life trauma” Wylie, Mary Sykes, “As the Twig is Bent,” The Psychotherapy Networker, Sept/Oct 2010, or http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/currentissue/1107-as-the-twig-is-bent

“hungry for change” http://www.hungryforchange.tv

The post Diets don’t work at all appeared first on healthcoachFX.

Love handles are caused by your hormones

You may be surprised to learn that your hormone levels have a very great deal to do with where you store your fat – this goes for both men and women.  There are two hormones involved when love handles are around: insulin and cortisol.

What is insulin?

What is insulin resistance?

The post Lose your love handles appeared first on healthcoachFX.

What is cellulite ?

Its name makes it sound like a medical condition. But cellulite is nothing more than normal fat beneath the skin. The fat appears bumpy because it pushes against connective tissue, causing the skin above it to pucker. Cellulite isn’t harmful. Many people, though, would like to get rid of it because of the way it looks.

You can get rid of it permanently without any extra cost of expensive special products, for most women this is a real surprise.

What causes cellulite ?

Cellulite is more common among women than men. If other women in your family have cellulite, there’s a good chance you will too.

Other factors that influence how much cellulite you have and how visible it is include:

• Poor diet
• Fad dieting
• Slow metabolism
• Lack of physical activity
• Hormone changes
• Dehydration
• Total body fat
• Thickness and color of your skin

Having cellulite doesn’t mean you are overweight. Even thin people can have it. If you are overweight, however, losing weight may reduce cellulite. Cellulite tends to be less noticeable on darker skin. If you have light skin and plan to be out in a bathing suit or short shorts, applying a self-tanner may make the bumps and dimples on your thighs less noticeable.

What to do about it

The fitness regimen that celebrities take are intense squats and lunges and a nutrition plan which cut out all sugar except fruit.

There is mounting evidence that foods that break down fat, slow down the breakdown of collagen, and improve circulation and blood flow help to combat the appearance of cellulite.¹ Just as celebrities cut out sugar, you’ll want to cut back, too. Plus, add these foods to your diet and watch those unsightly lumps and bumps fade away. There’s problaby a little nice side effect as well: Your love handles get lesser.

Take the right nutrition

Add these foods to your diet and watch those unsightly lumps and bumps fade away:

• Whole grains, fruits, beans, and vegetables contain key nutrients and phytochemicals that burn fat and help reduce cellulite. But, as we keep saying, try to cut back on bad, refined carbs like white bread, cookies, and
  muffins.
• Coffee, tea, and cocoa are high in caffeine and can also help burn fat. To really accelerate your fat-burning results, take a nice green tea.
• Celery, onions, eggplant, asparagus, and watermelon are natural diuretics and will help reduce fluid buildup. Stay away from foods high in sodium, which have the opposite effect.
• Water (and lots of it!) helps eliminate waste and toxins from your body and maintain normal blood pressure and blood flow.
• Salmon and other fatty fish have omega-3 fats that expand blood vessels to improve circulation and blood flow.
• Red wine, red grape juice, and red grape skins block the function of two enzymes that break down collagen, which is believed to prevent the production of cellulite.²

Do the right excercise

Just adding red wine to your diet won’t do the trick (regardless of what those banner ads tell you!) unless you also follow an effective workout program. It is realy worth it to hire a personal trainer for the right workouts, but if you can’t here’s what you need to know about two that really work (lunges & squats):

How to do the perfect lunge

Lunge with curls

Stand up straight, with your abs lifted, arms hanging by your sides, and your feet together. Inhale, and take a large step forward with your right leg, keeping your arms by your sides. Bend both knees so your right knee is directly over your right ankle and your right thigh is parallel to the floor. Hold for two seconds and then exhale as you straighten both legs. Repeat this motion with the left leg forward. Make sure to keep your body weight centered. Special Tip: If you’re having trouble, use a chair for support.

How to do the perfect squat

Stand up straight, with your abs tight and your feet at hip width. You can clasp your hands in front of you or let your arms hang straight down. Inhale and bend your knees as if you were going to sit back in a chair, lowering down until your thighs are nearly parallel to the floor. Pause at the bottom of the motion, then exhale as you slowly stand up. Special Tip: If you’re having trouble, start by sitting in a chair and standing back up, using your hands to help you.

Sources

1. ^1,2 Kleiner, Susan M., PhD, RD, FACN, CNS. The Ultimate Anti-Cellulite Diet. Fitness RX. October 2005
2. www.webmd.com
3. www.beachbody.com

The post Cellulite Away for Free appeared first on healthcoachFX.

Cold hands and cold feet usuallly come from an underactive thyroid, mostly combined with other specific symptoms.

Underactive thyroid: The Most Common Thyroid Disease

Underactive thyroid accounts for the majority of thyroid disease cases — up to 80 percent according to some estimates. If you have 3-5 of theses symptoms you probably have an underactive thyroid:

• Frequent cold hands & cold feet
• Fatigue and general sluggishness
• Unexplained weight gain
• Dry skin
• Constipation
• Pain, stiffness or swelling in joints
• Achy muscles and muscle weakness
• Heavy menstrual periods
• Depression
• Elevated blood cholesterol level
• Puffy face
• Brittle hair and nails

Don’t accept your cold hands & cold feet (and/or other symptoms) much longer. If left untreated, this can lead to obesity, joint pain, infertility, goiter (thyroid enlargement) and heart disease, but because the symptoms can mimic other diseases, or even be attributed to aging, many people do not realize the thyroid connection. Further, the symptoms may be mild at first, becoming increasingly severe only after a number of years, making them easy to overlook.

What to do ?

As often, the right nutrition is the answer. Your food is your medicine.

Easy recipe: Sushi omelet (10 minutes)

Sushi omelet

Bake an omelet in coconut oil (increase metabolism and promote weight loss) with 3 eggs (don’t believe the cholesterol bull). Put a few layers of smoked salmon on it (read omega 3 fats + selenium), season to taste with pepper and keltic salt (iodine amongst other goodies), finish off with a layer of nori. Don’t turn the omelet but wait for another 30 seconds (you don’t want the nori to melt.

Put another layer of nori on a plate and put the omelet on it and roll it (like you would with normal riced based sushi). Take a sharp knife and cut gently: Done. It’s delicious, healthy food should always be.

Thyroid Nutrition: Why the Sushi omelet ?

As with virtually every bodily function, your diet plays a role in the health of your thyroid. There are some specific nutrients that your thyroid depends on and it’s important to include them in your diet:

Iodine

Your thyroid contains the only cells in your body that absorb iodine, which it uses to make the T3 and T4 hormones. Without sufficient iodine, your thyroid cannot produce adequate hormones to help your body function on an optimal level.

According to a nutrition evaluation conducted by the CDC, up to 36 percent of women of childbearing age may not get enough iodine from their diets  and it’s thought that iodine deficiency is on a slow but steady rise. Because iodized salt is heavily processed, some recommend avoiding iodized salt and instead getting iodine naturally from sea vegetables (seaweed), such as hijiki, wakame, arame, dulse, nori, and kombu. It should be noted, however, that too much iodine can actually trigger thyroid problems and worsen symptoms, so it’s important to have a healthy balance.

Selenium

This mineral is critical for the proper functioning of your thyroid gland, and is used to produce and regulate the T3 hormone. Selenium can be found in foods such as shrimp, snapper, tuna, cod, halibut, calf’s liver, button and shitake mushrooms and Brazil nuts.

Zinc, Iron and Copper

These metals are needed in trace amounts for your healthy thyroid function. Low levels of zinc have been linked to low levels of TSH, whereas iron deficiency has been linked to decreased thyroid efficiency. Copper is also necessary for the production of thyroid hormones. Foods such as calf’s liver, spinach, mushrooms, turnip greens and Swiss chard can help provide these trace metals in your diet.

Omega-3 Fats

These essential fats, which are found in fish or fish oil, play an important role in thyroid function, and many help your cells become sensitive to thyroid hormone.

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is made up of mostly medium-chain fatty acids, which may help to increase metabolism and promote weight loss, along with providing other thyroid benefits. This is especially beneficial for those with hypothyroidism.

Antioxidants and B Vitamins

The antioxidant vitamins A, C and E can help your body neutralize oxidative stress that may damage the thyroid. In addition, B vitamins help to manufacture thyroid hormone and play an important role in healthy thyroid function.

What Should You Avoid Eating for Thyroid Health?

There are certain foods that should be avoided to protect your thyroid function. These include:

Aspartame

There is concern that the artificial sweetener aspartame, sold under the brand name Nutrasweet, may trigger Graves’ disease and other autoimmune disorders in some people. The chemical may trigger an immune reaction that causes thyroid inflammation and thyroid autoantibody production.

Non-fermented Soy

Soy is high in isoflavones, which are goitrogens, or foods that interfere with the function of your thyroid gland. Soy, including soybean oil, soy milk, soy burgers, tofu and other processed soy foods, may lead to decreased thyroid function. Fermented soy products, including miso, natto, tempeh and traditionally brewed soy sauce, are safe to eat, as the fermentation process reduces the goitrogenic activity of the isoflavones.

Gluten

Gluten is a potential goitrogen and can also trigger autoimmune responses (including Hashimoto’s thyroiditis) in people who are sensitive. Gluten is found in wheat, rye and barley, along with most processed foods.

Enjoy your Sushi omelet !

REFERENCES:

1, 2. Thyroid.About.com “Thyroid Disease 101” June 19, 2006
3.. MayoClinic.com Hypothyroidism Symptoms
4. American Thyroid Association “Hypothyroidism FAQ”
5. American Thyroid Association “Graves’ Disease”
6. American Thyroid Association “Hyperthyroidism FAQ”
7, 9, 12. WomentoWomen.com “The Simplest Way to Support Thyroid Health – Food!”
8. World’s Healthiest Foods “Selenium”
10. Thyroid.About.com “Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill”
11. Mercola.com “How to Help Your Thyroid With Virgin Coconut Oil”
13. Suite101.com “Thyroid Disease Triggers” March 21, 2006

The post Cold hands & cold feet ? appeared first on healthcoachFX.