Ketchup Is Good For Me?

Dr. Oz said in a previous show that ketchup was good for you and your heart... Okay that's assuming ketchup is just some tomato sauce but it's not. It's ketchup which has a lot of salt, sugar, and high fructose corn syrup. None of which are good for your heart.

He just gave the people what they wanted, a magic bullet. Bam! Eat more ketchup. But there are no magic bullets in health.

The Composition Of A Meal

The composition of your meals will determine the composition of your body. Your muscle to fat ratio. You can eat less and still have a body that is over-fat (as opposed to overweight). I don't like the term "overweight" because someone who is skinny fat is not overweight but someone who is large with very little fat and nearly all muscle is "overweight."

A Typical Buffet Conversation

"If I eat too slow my food will settle and I'll be too full and I won't be able to eat enough..."

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Life Expectancy

My whole website is about the dichotomy of the US. How we are the fattest country yet we have the greatest athletes. Well now a new release in the life expectancy rankings in the world, the US which is the richest (up for debate with China now) and most advanced with the greatest medical facilities and the most food, is #37 in the world!

So not only are we being outpaced by other first world countries, but also by some third world countries. US women rank even worse than men in comparison to women of the world as far as life expectancy. (Adult males eat 187 more calories per day and adult females eat 335 more calories per day than they did 20 years ago. I wonder if this has anything to do with female life expectancy.) What a wake up call.

Find A Good Balance

If you make your diet changes too easy and your work outs easy as well it won't create enough momentum to sustain. When a diet is too hard to follow and your work outs and your work out schedule too hard to maintain, it will not be sustainable. You need to find a right balance of difficulty and training volume along with a sustainable diet change for it to work for the rest of your life.

Cravings

Let's be really honest with ourselves with cravings. People say they can't give up this food or that or eat in some certain way because they crave food. How often do we really crave anything?  Most of the time people don't even know what they want to eat because they lack any cravings. You go out to eat with someone and what do they always say? "I don't know what I want."

It means they don't want anything in particular. They could really eat anything. If you are truly honest with yourself about when you really crave something, I would be surprised if it was even once a week, or even once a month. But most likely not daily. People want something just because its available, its there, they see someone else eating it, they've see commercials, or they are just affected by marketing. Like in the checkout stand and they see all these sugary snacks.

If you really crave something, by all means eat it. But just make sure it really is a craving, not you just being hungry and seeing cake in your refrigerator.

Overweight Homeless Epidemic?

No one has discussed this. What about the spread of obesity...in our homeless community? Actually the homeless problem and lack of food is a serious matter and I am not trying to make light of it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There are many obese homeless people, at least in Los Angeles. I'm certain it's not from overeating, there are overweight homeless people who are dying of starvation. It's just the stuff they do eat isn't even real food most of the time, its stuff with no nutrition. It's stuff that makes you gain weight but doesn't help you survive, where you can even be obese and die of starvation of malnutrition. Get fat but still starve your body? What are we doing to ourselves? Sometimes people will offer me junk food and I will say no. When they ask why, I don't even tell them its because its junk food, I just tell them that stuff is worthless. Actually its worse than worthless, because if it was worthless it just wouldn't do anything to your body, good or bad. A lot of stuff we eat today does do our body harm.

Because we are so used to a high blood sugar, our body doesn't even know how to survive anymore, the way it was originally designed. To live off the fat storage like every other animal. Instead we live off of sugars and carbs. Its why a heavy person can show signs of starvation when there is still all this fat for its body to live off of. It's like having a body that no longer knows how to process water, so you are surrounded by water yet you die of thirst.

We need to retrain our bodies to live off of fat, to burn fat for energy. Like we used to do as babies.

True Irony

Starvation killed our ancestors. Now overeating is killing us.

The Best Results

Sometimes you get better results from under training than over training. Due to the fact that when you over train your body is always too diminished to show results, and often times you are sick or injured.

Energy In Energy Out Model

It doesn't work. The idea of counting calories eaten and burned doesn't work. The assumption is, I can eat as many calories of french fries or soda as I want as long as I burn it off. Then I will stay lean and healthy. This just isn't true. People actually have said to me, I work out a lot so I can eat as much as I want...

The assumption then is that all calories are the same. It's all equal. So if I put in 13 gallons of premium, I will get the same performance or same condition car as putting in 13 gallons of really cheap regular. Calorie is a unit of energy or more precisely a unit of heat. I can light a piece of wood on fire. I can also light a piece of rubber on fire that is the same unit measurement as the wood. They do not both produce the same type of flame, quality of fire, will not last for the same amount of time, but also both are producing energy but one is producing a much more unhealthy type of byproduct than the other unit of energy.

If it is an exact science and mathematical, why do so many people fail at this when they take such accurate measurements of whats being put in their body and what's being burned? How come sometimes they even put on weight? They say oh it's because of stress. Oh so this will only work if we have no stress hormones? Then why doesn't this work for low stress people? Why are there people who barely eat twice a day who still gain weight? Or why do some people eat all day and not put on anything? Why are they defying this science? And if stress hormones affect weight so much, shouldn't we be doing things that affect our hormones more? Like work out in a way that causes a hormonal response? I mean stress and even thyroid affects weight. Steroids affect weight and that's not based on any calories but on hormones. So shouldn't we be trying to work out really hard and sporadically to affect our hormones more and not worry about the calorie burn?

Also if I somehow burn everything I eat, and I eat crap all day, but I'm lean, does that mean I am healthy? Can I be lean and be diabetic? Get cancer, acne, digestive diseases, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, etc? Maybe they won't suffer from obesity but they can still suffer from other ailments. There are even athletes who ate whatever they wanted because they worked out so much and later developed diabetes, or just got plain obese.

You heard it a million times, and it's the same for eating and exercise. It's quality not quantity. Have a really good work out, not a lot of easy ones. Eat quality foods, not too much or too little of bad foods.

Run All Day Run All Night

I know plenty of people who can run all day or hike all day but can't catch a ball or aim or have any sense of coordination.What kind of athlete can run all day but can't hit a ball?

Inspirational Speech

The Food Pyramid...

I've said its a bad idea to take diet and exercise advice from the government. Well the government has once again changed their own food pyramid. At least this time though there is more of an emphasis on fruits and vegetables.

Though I do wish they said, vegetables and fruits. The emphasis is always on fruits when it should be vegetables first and fruits second. Now where do nuts fit into all this?

Cellphones Cause Cancer???

World Health Organization thinks so.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html

Testosterone In The Modern Diet

The way people eat now, all the processed foods, chemicals, hormones, sugars, simple carbs, etc. lowers men's testosterone. The modern diet lowers men's testosterone in other words. Many obese men have more estrogen than women. This coupled with low testosterone scores over time and more and more cases of male infertility, we see a pattern.

Nowadays it's common to think a sport is barbaric or too violent. In ancient times almost across the board, men loved sport, especially rough ones. Look at the gladiatorial days. Look at the current rise of UFC, it's still within us. In those days, if a man didn't like sports, being active, being competitive, etc. they either questioned if he was depressed or mentally fit. Nowadays it's common place to not like any of those things.

Lots of little boys nowadays will probably not play sports, or even go out and play, need glasses because their eyes are inflamed from their diet, already overweight or obese because of the high glycemic nature of children's food, have acne because of the inflammatory nature of our foods (acne barely existed a hundred years ago and is still considered a new disease), and sit at home and play on their computers. Which has a whole other scary side, children no longer playing is bad enough, but being introduced to informational overload on the computer with no guidance or censorship, will be a sociological nightmare.

Changing our food supply, food portions, nature of our foods, has huge effects on our culture and society. And a very personal one for men.

Weight Training And Women

Women tend to feel that they should only do mild intensity exercises like running or an elliptical or some kind of low impact class like a step class or yoga or pilates, etc. And they should avoid at all costs anything to do with weights or heavy weights. But in fact women need weight training more than men due to their high risk for loss of bone mass over time and osteoporosis. Weight training increases bone mass along with high intensity exercises. It also will make them more athletic and give them a better hip to waist ratio. Meaning shapely curves with a small waist. As opposed to a nonathletic female body that has a hip to waist ratio similar to a man's. Meaning even, and having a torso like a box. Whether it be a skinny box or a big box, it's still a box. So without it you can have the shape of a skinny boy or a large man. Either way, avoiding certain work outs because you think its not for girls will only lead to brittle bones and a man's body.



About the Author:

Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.

Intense Exercise

Intense exercise uses everything. Unlike going to the gym for 2 hours to lift weights or jogging for an hour, an intense work out that lasts let's say twenty minutes will work everything. If the exercise is intense enough, you will be working your strength, balance, muscle endurance, mild cardio, moderate cardio, intense cardio, coordination, agility, speed, quickness, flexibility, recovery, lung capacity, nervous system, etc. Because it will be so hard on your body, every system has to coordinate to complete the task. As opposed to mild exercise that takes a long time like jogging or weight lifting where your body can rest a lot, use one system or one muscle at a time and take a break.

Believe it or not, not only will you save time, get better results, but you will get less injured. Most modern injuries are due to pattern overload, over use, or chronic repetitive trauma. Whereas with intense work outs, you don't need to do it every day or other day. Even once a week will tax your system to create beneficial change.

Kid's Menus

Why do kid's menus have the worst things? Parents should be appalled to order from this menu. No matter where you go or how nice the restaurant is, if they have a kids menu it will feature:

French fries
Soda
Deep fried meat
White bread or pasta
Sauce or gravy
Ketchup
Ice cream

So if this is what modern children start out with, no wonder they have no idea of what real food is.

Ketchup

You ever read the ingredients of ketchup? It's mostly made of corn!

Groceries Expensive?

Yes spend a little more on groceries, but spend less on eating out.

Dinner?

Every once in a while skip dinner and go to bed early. Sometimes catching up on sleep is more important than eating supper.

Meat And Veggies

It is better to eat meals with only vegetables than it is to eat a meal with only meat. Not to say you can never just only eat meat, but more of your diet should be made up of vegetables.

Food And Edible Products

Just because something is edible doesn't necessarily mean it's food. Edible things may be entertaining but it's not always food. It's high on convenience and fun factor, low on nutrition. Most of the modern diet is now made up of edible products/inventions and very little of it is real food.