Can Eating Fat Aid Weight Loss??

To think that all fats are fattening and to be avoided at all costs is just not true.

Fats – well these are what you find in butter, cheese, oils and, of course animal fats and fish fats.

It is constantly drilled into us that fat is bad for us, fat is fattening and is to be eaten in as small a quantity as is possible.

However if you stop and think, the story isn’t quite so clear.

There are various types of fat. Saturated fat (evil), polyunsaturated fat (good), omega 3 (good). However, using this knowledge, people end up thinking that these tubs of Just Like Butter stuff are actually better for you than butter itself. On the other hand, it is also increasingly known that omega 3 fats are a good thing. So what I want to do is break down some of this confusion and talk a little about the various fats and, indeed, fat itself and fight its corner.

So let’s start with something simple. Some people need more fat than others. Fat is not an inherently bad thing. Fat in a meal makes you feel satisfied with the meal. The amount of fat you need to achieve this does vary from person to person (and from the amount of stress they are currently enduring – more stress = more fat needed). And so if you eat a very low fat meal, feeling very virtuous, it is a sure fire thing that you will be assailed by cravings after the meal. Some nights you will be able to resist, feel herioc and in control of your destiny; on other nights you will end up bingeing which leads to you feeling fat and guilty. So if you want to lose or maintain weight, then you need to accept your need of fat and stop beating yourself up about binges if you ignore this!

Point of fact. Blood sugar. Fat stabilises blood sugar. When your blood sugar drops, you have to rush to the biscuit barrel/bag of crisps/ snarf a fruit juice and all these things do make you fat. Stable blood sugar is a binge preventer.

All fats are not equal. It has been generally thought that fats that are liquid at room temperature are better for you than those that are solid. But, surprise, this is way too simplistic.

Let’s take butter – a saturated fat. But something very very important first:

TOXINS ARE STORED IN FAT.

So it is very very sensible to buy organic butter. Otherwise you will also be consuming in your butter pesticides and fungicides and chemical fertilizers. Yum yum I think not.

Now butter is a good source of Butyric acid. This scary sounding stuff is needed by the body (it is vital in maintaining the integrity of the gastro-intestinal wall. It helps suppress tumours in the colon and helps the beneficial bacteria to establish themselves) and if you do any endurance form of cardio-vascular work, then butyric acid gets very depleted. If your guts are unhealthy then this can lead to a chain reaction of events going wrong throughout the body and brain. So the Reader’s Digest version = Organic Butter is very good for you. And don’t mess about with the pretentenders!



What about Coconut oil? Another saturated fat. Well this a great source of Lauric Acid. Well Lauric acid is a bit of a wonder food. It is found in abundance in coconut oil and in breast milk.. So amongst other claims to fame it is anti-microbial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, increases the immune system, speeds up metabolism (ie helps weight-loss), helps the metabolism of glucose so is good for diabetics. So perhaps rushing off to get some coconut oil right now would be an excellent idea (I’m not sure I’m allowed to say this, but I have found the Tiana brand to taste the best).

Let’s look at the dreaded animal fats. As I blarted out earlier, toxins are stored in fat. And this goes for all fat – whether it is in vegetables, fishes, animals or humans. So if you eat meat the animal of which had a short horrible life stuffed full of growth promoters never seeing the light of day, then the fat of that animal will be pretty toxic. Cheap food does come at a high price to health – both yours and the animals. However the fat of a grass fed cow, whilst not so healthy as coconut oil is still fine – if it was slaughtered in early summer it will be a good source of Omega 3 oil – and this is a very good thing indeed.



To put it another way. Man was designed to eat dead things since man was man – but the dead things we are designed to eat should have a natural life, eating things that are natural to the animal. Cows, sheep and hens are not meat eaters!



The animals that eat the best diet for them are the wild ones, so wild meats are without doubt the best. As it happens, they are low in fat. You virtually have to add fat to a wild duck! After the wild animals come organically reared ones and grass fed ones (well, not grass fed hens!). Cheaply reared meat is awful.

Having sorted out meat and birds, let’s look at fish. Let’s face it. We’ve made a right mess of the oceans, so much so that the government recommends eating oily fish only twice a week. And they talk of the huge amount of plastic waste in the oceans which pollute all fish. I repeat: toxins are stored in fat. The bigger the oily fish, the older it is and the more toxins it will have stored in it. So fish like tuna, swordfish and shark are heavily polluted. And not only with heavy metals but also with solvents, PCBs, dioxins and other contaminants. Therefore the advice is to eat oily fish salmon sized and smaller (sardines, herrings, whitebait etc). Why am I babbling on about fish? Because oily fish is an excellent source of Omega 3. But oily fish is also a good source of mercury, which is a dangerous thing.


Omega 3.. The most important fat we should eat is omega 3. When we were cave men and only ate wild things, they reckon that our intake of omega 3 roughly equalled our intake of omega 6 ie a ratio of 1:1. These days the ratio of omega 3:6 is 1:20 or even higher. This is immensely damaging to health. In point of fact, all diseases known to man are mitigated by supplementing with Omega 3 – and this is because it helps to restore the ratio of omega 3:6 to more natural levels, the ratio that we evolved to need.

Does eating fat aid weightloss? Well, you have already learnt that coconut .speeds up metabolism. Now Omega 3 switches off the fat storage genes and turns on the fat burning genes. This is a most wonderful thing! Omega 3 melts body fat. Hurrah. And boosts health.

But before you zip onto Google to buy some fish oils (for this is the other name for omega 3) just remember – all toxins are stored in fat.
And fish oils are no exception. You really do have to know the provenance of the fish oil to know if it is safe. If a fish oil was manufactured in Norway, then you will be fine.
In that country, by law, the oil has to be not only clean of heavy metals, PCBs, solvents etc but the cleaning agent has to be non-carcinogenic. If that doesn’t scare you then you are not concentrating. So I’m afraid that giving your children fish oils bought from any old shop is running a heavy risk of giving them heavy metal poisoning etc.

Assuming you have a good clean source of fish oil there are other benefits than fat loss. Fish oil is good for blood density. If your blood is too thick it thins it (ie lowers blood pressure), if it is too thin, it thickens it (ie raises very low blood pressure. This has to be a good thing. Those of you with low blood pressure – how would it be if you didn’t go dizzy everytime you stood up quickly?). The technical term for this is adaptagenic – ie it does what it needs to and does no harm if it is not needed in that department.

There are 2 sorts of fish oil = EPA and DHA. In short EPA is for inflammation in the body (high cholesterol is the result of inflammation in the body, for example), DHA is for the brain. Children need high DHA – but adults can benefit from it too.

The reliable brands of fish oil that I currently know of are Poliquin, Metagenics, Thorne. Eskimo is very variable so not trustworthy.

To gain some benefit from fish oil, you do need to take more than 1gm a day.

Readers Digest: Fish oils are fantastically good for everybody and everybody needs them and will benefit from them. They are a staple. But you must be careful of your source.

Omega 6. Well things could get very very confusing now. But rather than going down that street, I’ll just talk about what really matters.

Problem number 1 = the ratio of omega 3:6 is hopelessly skewed. So if you eat the omega 6s such as sunflower oil you further worsen the ratio. This is partly why OLIVE OIL is such a good thing. It is an omega 9 oil.

Problem number 2 = what happens when you heat oils up. This is when things turn nasty. The term is RANCIDITY. Rancid fat is as bad for you as transfats. It is the speed with which oils turn rancid with the addition of heat that matters.

So Flax and Hemp Seed Oil should not be heated at all.

Sunflower, safflower and pumpkin can be heated but only to 100° - ie use in baking.

Sesame, hazelnut and olive oil can go up to 163° = light sauteing.

Coconut (what else!!) Ghee (clarified butter, hooray), Palm oil and Lard can be used at high heat for frying or browning.

Even these fats will turn rancid if you reheat them. Repeated heating and cooling of fat changes the chemical structure to something closer to plastic.

There you are. If nothing else, just avoiding fat doesn’t help weightloss. Eating horrible fat is an unworthy thing to do. Eating good fat is a most wonderful thing to do.

So, can eating fat aid weightloss? A most emphatic YES IT CAN.

B Vitamins

There has been quite alot of excitement in the press recently when researchers at Oxford University discovered a link between Vitamin B and Alzheimers. It is good that this is coming into the public domain. As we are about to discover, the body needs the B group of Vitamins for prevention of many of the major diseases prevalent today – and, for many of us, uptake of these B vitamins is compromised.





The B Vitamins used in the research were B6, 9 (folic acid) and 12. The latter is interesting since its main dietary sources are clams and mussels, liver, red meat, oily fish and some dairy - which puts vegans at a distinct disadvantage.



These 3 varieties of B vitamins reduce something called homocysteine in the body.



It has been known for quite a while that homocysteine is the best predictor of heart attacks and diabetes. And, to lower homocysteine you take B vitamins. These, of course cannot be patented as Statins can be. (or - unlike Statins, these cannot be patented and sold by the drugs companies).



So what is homocysteine? Well, when you eat protein, the body breaks it down and uses the methionine which whizzes about the blood stream to be used in various ways.

It is all very complex, and the following is vastly simplified. It is all about methylation, which is a bio-chemical term for the body adding or subtracting a methyl group (=1 carbon plus 3 hydrogen atoms) to all the various systems of the body to keep things running – eg it is how noradrenaline gets turned into the adrenaline that you need when that sabre toothed tiger jumps out at you.



As the body goes endlessly through this methylation process, during the conversions homocysteine is produced. Homocysteine is a poison to the body. So the body rapidly changes it to either SAMe or Glutathione using long named things like homocysteine methyltransferase, methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (thankfully shortened to MTHFR) PLUS B6,9, 12 , zinc, magnesium and something else called TMG (trimethylglycine).



Well, all these chemical terms bring me out in the heebie geebies. However, I’ll batter on because it is about to get rather interesting.



What is SAMe (S-adenosyl methionine)? It is a natural anti-depressant, anti-arthritic and liver protecting agent. Glutathione is a powerful anti-aging antioxidant and detoxifying agent – ie critical in the immune system.



Also methyl groups are added to and taken away from our DNA. When not enough methylation is happening the DNA cannot properly repair itself, leaving us at higher risk from cancer and autoimmune diseases.



Unless you are a vegan, all this seems interesting, but why should it be relevant? Well, certain things reduce the methylation process in the body. The most important of which is if your pee smells if you eat asparagus. Now this is argued about. All I will say is that no, not everybody’s pee smells if they eat asparagus. And if yours does, it is extremely noticeable. Apparently is it a gene that comes from the Romans and it is dominant, so it is on the increase. This gene is called the MTHFR gene (shortened by industry insiders to The Mother Fucker Gene). So 3 paragraphs ago I said that this stuff, MTHFR, is a critical player in methylation. And if you have the gene, this pathway is broken so the body cannot use the B vitamins to complete the cycle. Eek. Also if you are on the pill, methylation is compromised.



There is good news and that is that you can take B vitamins as a supplement – but they must be in methylated form. So rushing down to Holland and Barrett to buy B Vitamins will not necessarily help (in fact if B6 is not methylated, it can cause nerve damage. Even more eeeks.) More good news: the B group of vitamins are all water soluble, like vitamin C, so if you have too many in a day, you will simply wee them away.



Bad news; here are some of the medical conditions associated with high homocysteine:



Pregnancy problems (inc miscarriages, pre-eclampsia, premature birth, infertility)

Alzheimer’s

Anaemia

Birth defects

Cancers (breast, colon, thyroid, leukaemia etc)

Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)

Coeliac disease

Crohn’s
H Pylori

Parkinson’s

Pernicious anaemia

Psoriasis

Strokes

Heart Attacks

Polycystic ovary disease



The list is long – the above is a small sample. And it all happens because the body is lacking the pathway to make those vital substances to keep these horrible things at bay. Yes, people get ill for genetic reasons. But there is more choice in this than the drug companies would have us believe. You do not have to get these diseases even if they are in your genes.



Avoiding genetic diseases (and cancer) is a long and inevitably complex subject – but as you see from the subject matter of this blog, sorting out your B vitamins is 1 answer. I want to finish with a very favorite quote of mine that I first heard from Jonny Bowden (who wrote books like Living the Low Carb Life): Genetics Loads the Gun. Environment Pulls the Trigger. Environment = how we live, eat, drink, breathe, rest and detoxify.

Protein

Man is an omnivore. We are designed to eat meat, fish, fowl and vegetables. We neeeed fat. The vitamins A,D,E and K are all fat based. The most important fat in the brain is DHA (the oil omega 3, commonly known as fish oil, has 2 components, EPA and DHA).



Barely a week goes by without us being warned not to eat red meat more than twice a week. Ditto with oily fish. We are constantly told to avoid saturated fat. And this is found in the fat of animals and butter – and other natural things like coconut.



Before I get onto the subject of protein, for some mysterious reason, manufacturers are now trumpeting that they are taking transfats out of their products. Since saturated fat is apparently public enemy number one, why should this matter??? Could it be that transfats are actually more dangerous to our health than saturated fat?? (The answer, if you are in any doubt, is a most emphatic YES, transfats are far far more dangerous to health than saturated fat).



What does protein do in the body? Well it builds and repairs muscles and connective tissue. It also does other things and one of those is its use by the liver as part of the detoxification process.



A constant problem I encounter is that because people can’t see something, they assume it doesn’t matter. It is rather like the men that go to the gym and just exercise the ‘beach muscles’ = chest, biceps, quads and abs. These are the muscles they can see in the mirror. The muscles the can’t see – the back muscles, the triceps, the hamstrings are ignored. So it is with the air we breathe and the food we eat and the water we drink. Pesticides cannot be seen. Fumes from aeroplanes/cars and their tyres cannot be seen. A shortage of vital minerals and vitamins cannot be seen (well sometimes they can in the form of skin disorders, for example). The damage you do to your liver by excessive alchohol, painkiller intake or inadequate protein intake cannot be seen. What you cannot see cannot harm you. Would that this were true.



The truth of the matter is that our liver in under constant assault from a cocktail of chemicals that we breathe in, rub on ourselves, eat or drink. In the past liver detox diets that excluded protein and involved fasting were succesful. Now the liver is under such assault that to undertake such a detox is very dangerous.



So the liver deals with the myriad of toxins it encounters on a daily basis in a 2 stage process to turn that toxin into a water soluble form that can be excreted by the body in the urine, sweat or faeces. The second stage is heavily amino acid dependant. Amino acids are what proteins are made of – the body breaks down protein in the stomach and then utilises the 20 amino acids it releases.



My point is that most people start their day with grains – in the form of cereals, porridge (or) toast. Protein is eaten rarely at breakfast on a regular basis. Lunch these days is frequently a sandwich – and how much of anything can you get in a sandwich? A sliver of ham, a leaf of lettuce, a couple of slices of tomato. Instead of eating a sandwich, what if you were to eat, say, a starch-free salad ? If this were to be satisfying it would have to contain rather more than the contents of a sandwich! Then comes dinner – and for most people this is the only time of the day that they eat an appreciable amount of protein. Poor old liver.



Another all too common problem I encounter is that people can no longer tolerate all forms of protein. I frequently hear ‘I only eat chicken and salmon; I can’t stand red meat – it is the smell that puts me off!!’. Many are vegetarians. And such is the misinformation given out that all this is seen as quite acceptable – if not desirable.



So what is going on? Why does the government recommend eating red meat only twice a week? Well protein is broken down in the stomach. For this to happen the stomach needs to make hydrochloric acid (HCL) – a highly corrosive acid. One of the main building blocks of HCL is zinc. In order to function properly the body needs about 42 vitamins and minerals everyday, a plant needs 17. Chemical fertilizers rely on just 3: NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Were we to farm naturally – and this means putting rotted compost that contains vegetable matter and waste products from mammals back on the soil, we wouldn’t have a problem. But for many years farmers have been encouraged to use agro-chemicals and so most of the vital minerals are being progressively leached from the soil. The principal ones in this case are zinc, magnesium and selenium. I run a very simple test for zinc levels in the body. And I have never ever had anyone come anywhere near passing this. Zinc is one of the unseens. What I find even more amazing is people don’t seem to be bothered by a catastrophic fail. Anyway, I digress. So with a lack of zinc comes a low level of HCL production. Sometimes people produce absolutely none whatsoever. So when they eat red meat, which does require HCL to break it down, the meat enters the stomach which bashes it about a bit but the lack of HCL means it stays in there for some time before reluctantly passing through and into the small intestine and on to the large intestine. The guts are a nice, warm, bacteria rich environment. Just right to make the undigested protein rot as it passes through. Now the brain is not stupid. It knows this is happening and it will discourage you from eating first red meats and then ultimately all forms of protein of animal/fowl/fish origin.



So rotting meat passing through the digestive tract is not healthy. Neither is a lack of fibre in the diet. This means people need to eat far more vegetables than they do. Different coloured vegetables. Lots of them. Rather more at lunchtime than a sandwich will provide. Unless, of course, you have the dislocating jaw of a snake and can eat a simply huge sarnie...



So I would argue that instead of avoiding red meat, which the government apparently urges, we need to sort out why we can’t eat it. This means restoring zinc levels, healing the guts and restoring optimal HCL levels. I have also yet to meet anyone with optimal HCL levels.



HCL in the stomach is highly corrosive, and its other job, apart from breaking down protein into it’s constituent amino acids is to bathe the other foods we eat in HCL which will kill off most of the bacteria living there. This is a good thing.




Other useful things found in animal proteins are vitamin B12 and carnitines. Now carnitines are fat burning enzymes – so not all parts of food are fattening. Hurrah. BUT you do need to break the protein down to access the fat burning potential.



More good news: meat protein is what they call thermogenic. This means the body has to work quite hard to break it down and this tends to raise metabolic rate. Starchy carbs are easily broken down – bread can be digested in the mouth. So no thermogenesis from your pasta with tomato sauce or pizza marguerita.



So Eat More Dead Things - they are surprisingly good for you. And those Dead Things you currently can't eat - if you sort out why, you will become an awful lot healthier on the inside.

Stress

I do a very advanced form of fat callipering called The Biosignature. Basically where you store your body fat tells you alot about your health. And if you hold most of your fat around your navel, this is a sign of stress. Guess what one of the most common profiles in the UK is? You got it, stress. Profiles are different in each country – the Americans have much more of a problem with the insulin sites. The Australians have problems with pesticide detoxification. But we have stress.

OK, if your house is falling down, your significant other is having affairs, awful illness is found in your nearest and dearest, you will be stressed. But fortunately most of the time most of us are not experiencing this degree of stress. Yet still we collect that fat around the belly button.

So what exactly is stress? The simplest explanation is that it is when a sabre tooth tiger jumps out with the intention of making you lunch, you get stressed. The body mobilises all it’s energy into running away – and you either get away or get eaten. Job done. Ho, ho. No more sabre toothed tigers now. The stress response is when the body mobilises itself to move in order to survive. In response to a stressor, it releases cortisol into the blood stream which shuts down digestion, reproduction and any repair jobs being done around the body and raises the heart rate in preparation to feeding oxygen to the limbs in order to survive. It also releases Glucocorticoids. These things are like the back up guns – they essentially prepare more bullets for the fight for survival. Temporarily your immune system is ramped up. And you charge on through life.

Did you notice what I just said in the middle of that? It shuts down digestion, reproduction and any repair jobs being done around the body. This is hardly the time to repair the roof (read thyroid/pancreas/liver etc etc etc). The guts are lined with mucus to protect the stomach and small intestine from the Hydrochloric Acid and various digestive enzymes necessary to break down food. And the large intestines are similarly lined with mucus. Under stress, this vital mucus production is turned down. In other words the body is geared up to save you at every unnecessary expense. And we in Britain are highly stressed.


So why is our life so stressful? Here are some factors - not exhaustive, depressingly.

Missing breakfast. Body thinks it is a famine. It gets stressed. Mobilises you to get some food.

Skipping lunch – same as above

Eating lunch at your desk. Body not relaxed and able to digest food properly – not enough mucus lining the intestines, no production of HCL and digestive enzymes to properly digest the food.

Not eating regularly – going for more than 4 hours between eatings.

Poor diet – not enough protein and fat and too many carbs. Amazingly common in the UK. Body keeps on producing insulin exhausting the pancreas (which isn’t being repaired, remember) and blunting the response of the insulin receptors. (Carbs are all sugars, the worst offenders being starches (pasta, bread etc) and things like biscuits and sweeties. Ie too much sugar therefore increases the stress load on the body).

Not crapping enough.

Not getting enough sleep. Huge issue. It does matter. When on earth is the body meant to repair itself????

Daily hassle of commuting.

Squeezing too much in in the day

Pollution – we are an old and overcrowded country. It is very stressful on the body to constantly have to detoxify the very air we breathe – never mind the rest (eg painkillers for that irritating headache or cold you keep getting and won’t go away). The liver gets overworked. And not repaired.

Reverse breathing patterns. Unless you sang or played a brass/woodwind instrument, it is likely that you have reverse breathing. This means when you breath in, your tummy goes in. When you breath out, it sticks out. This is not good. It means your breath is shallow and akin to panic breathing.. Just as you would if a sabre toothed tiger suddenly appeared.

Perception of personal wealth. If you feel you are poorer than you would like = stress. Go, kill more tigers. But the bloke next door has already killed them all.

Not enough proper laughing. Find your favourite comedian on You Tube – and laugh out loud. It’s good for you. It helps you relax and lets the body get on with things other than mobilisation of the troops.

What I am saying is that if you reduce the stress on the body, you will lose belly fat – and feel an awful lot happier. Do you really want to stay up late to watch the telly -having drunk too much wine and stuffed down the nibbly bits MORE than you want a flatter belly and a happier and healthier life? For make no mistake about it – apart from giving you a belly, stress really is not awfully good for you....

We are meant to drink water. If you want to know quantities, it is your body weight in kilos multiplied by either .033 if you are inactive or .044 if you are active. Oh, they argue away, the dehydrated - “There is water in the fruit and vegetables I eat. I do not need to drink extra water”. Blah blah blah. Nice water helps flush the kidneys and keeps that brain going. Fruit juice, sweetened water or vitamin water won’t do. Grow up. You’re not a baby that needs to be tempted to eat something. Strangely, if you’re dehydrated, water tastes awful. But if you are overhydrated, water tastes so great you can’t get enough. Most peculiar.



Now some people do drink their water. I have seen them do it. I have seen people drink about a litre and a half of water during about 50 mins of gym time!! But, apart from exercising, they never drink water because they prefer the infantile sweetened stuff. Utterly amazing. If you are exercising for a couple of hours, you need to hydrate regularly. But, if your hydration levels are good, you can survive a 50 minute exercise period on a few sips. Not half a gallon of the stuff!! And sure, after exercise, drink plenty of water, but also drink plenty before. Water is drunk bit by bit throughout the day. Water. The Drink of Adults.

Summer Holidays

The busiest time of year for me is May – early July. Why? Because the summer is arriving and shortly people are going to have to lose those carefully cut clothes they wear in order to disguise the blab beneath.

So, I find, people work hard to reduce the blubber and indeed do look an awful lot better for it by the time they are deposited a frazzled heap by Ryanair in a nice hot place.

And then what on earth happens??????!!

They Eat. And Eat. And Eat. And, of course, Drink.. Well, they are on holiday, you say to me disbelievingly. What else are holidays for? It is utterly amazing. So all that hard work they put in goes for absolutely nothing. They generally re-gain any blab lost plus a bit more. They arrive back in Blighty like pink porpoises and wobble their way back to work, depressed and lethargic. Never mind, winter is coming and it all gets carefully hidden again.

I suppose it shows the unhealthy relationship people have with food. Cakes, Jammy dodgers and Ice Creams are all known to turn you into a fatty so are eaten with a degree of guilt. But, when on holiday, people wolf these forbidden foods down in order to relax.

So perhaps on your next holiday, if this sounds a little familiar, you could go there thinking of other ways to de-stress. This will involve doing something nice for yourself – you know, the usual stuff. Something that you don’t do at home because there isn’t time – or, even better, it seems a waste of time. Reading a good book, having a nice massage, taking a nap in the afternoon, going for a long walk, having a bit of sex. Food is meant to be enjoyed – and were we all lean, then I wouldn’t be ranting. What isn’t realised is that life is made of choices - discipline doesn’t come into it. When we make poor food choices there is always something driving that choice – and it isn’t lack of will power.

Children's Lunch Boxes

See Jammy Dodgers blog 1st for the implications of high blood sugar. Read, remember and concentrate as much as your carb/wheat addled brains will.

Ok, so first there was the Glycemic Index. The carbohydrates you eat raise your blood sugar – and this index worked out by how much, by using white bread as a marker. Because there were problems with this system, it’s been replaced by a newer one called the Glycemic Load. This is an improvement because it takes into account both the fibre in the food and the realistic amounts of the food you eat. In the GI, carrots rate worse than pasta at raising blood sugar. This is patently rubbish, and indeed, under Glycemic Load, to raise blood sugar with carrots as much as you do with the average portion of pasta (5oz), you have to eat 7 full sized carrots at one sitting. Must be Eeyore’s birthday, I think.

On the Glycemic Load system, it’s recommended to eat foods that score under 100 in order to avoid excessively high blood sugar. Here are some lunch box numbers to get you into the GL picture:

1 slice of white bread has a load of 107. This is just one slice, so half a sandwich.

1 small bag crisps: 62

1 medium banana: 85

Peanut M&Ms – snack size pack: 43

Snickers Bar: 218

Carton of Orange Juice: 119

Coca-cola 12oz can: 218

1 rounded teaspoon white sugar: 28.

Remember, on the G Load system, it is recommended to eat foods that score under 100. Children have smaller bodies than we do. Therefore whatever they eat has more impact upon them than it does on us. So let’s just think about this. Does someone weighing 2 stones have less body mass than someone weighing 9 stone? So 1 teaspoon of sugar will have far more impact upon a child than it does upon an adult won’t it?

Breakfast:

Muesli 1oz: 95

Shredded Wheat 1 oz: 142

Puffed wheat 1 oz: 151

Instant oatmeal (cooked) 8oz: 154

Cornflakes 1oz: 199

If we eat a pile of sugar, our blood sugar soars and we feel as high as a kite for a little while. Then the blood sugar drops (apparently this happens over 4 hours) and we feel very hungry, frequently grumpy and quite unable to concentrate upon anything other than needing something to eat. It’s likely that all those around us feel the same. And at school, our children are constantly trying to learn new things – this is what school is all about, after all. Quite a task, really. Of course, if the child is too difficult, there is always Ritalin. So much easier than reducing the sugar load on the child.

It is a wonder that children can learn anything at all. So, if your child is rather difficult – or won’t go to bed at night, maybe you may have some ideas as to where to start. And it isn’t Ritalin.

Maybe the much villified Jamie Oliver was right on the money. Children should have a good school dinner. Don’t plant your addiction to starch onto them. Do you think there may be a blog on the way on this subject??

Public Gyms

Public gyms for me are always variations on a horror theme. There is the bloke whizzing up and down looking like a funny little monkey on the chinning bar –all curled up. Then there is the hysterically funny female hanging on on the treadmill. Why do I say hanging on???? Well these females (I have to say I have never seen a man do this) have set the incline on the treadmill to the highest setting and are hanging on the the bar for grim life as they bobble along for hours and hours – presumably wondering why they never seem to get slimmer no matter how often they go to the gym. Of course afterwards they always have nice skinny latte with their mates – and a biscuit (never a Jammy Dodger here – one of those nice ones with oats in) afterwards. Tee Hee Hee

It seems to me that people leave their brains in the boot of the car and go completely into auto-pilot when entering the gym. On each machine, the manufacturere has gone to some effort to make it clear what part of the body this machine works. But people heave away on these machines with shoulders in the ears, elbows flailing madly, backs flapping about like the washing on a line. News, people. If you can’t feel a muscle working, then that is because it isn’t. Other muscles are – and they shouldn’t be.

So we have the famous bicep curl. Worthy of a blog in itself. You know, I go on courses with men with HUUGE muscles. And I have witnessed The Biceps Curl. Why don’t people think????? (And yes, personal trainers are at the sharp end of this particular rant) What is the elbow – a hinge joint. To do a bicep curl, the only movement is at the elbow which hinges up and down. It does not involve the shoulders or the back. At all. Doing a standing biceps curl with a bar should not look like you are in the act of making love!! Shimmying your way through a set of hammer curls leads the physiotherapist’s funds for a new BMW. To do a biceps curl really really well, the weight may just be a little lighter than the ego likes – but, hey, engage a brain cell or two and you will not only grow bigger biceps, you will save yourself a trip to the sports massage parlour.

OK, girlies. Cardio sucks. So: typical gym = blokes heaving away with weights. Girlies doing CV. Hours and hours of it. Grimly plodding – or zooming - away for hour after hour. Eyes on the TV - brains in handbag. In fact I am so cross about Cardio Vascular I am going to write a separate blog on the subject. Anyway, for now, girlies, as Charles Poliquin would have it Insanity Defined = Keep Doing the Same Thing and Expect a Different Result.

M & S

So I went into M& S for a chicken, since I am reliably informed their chickens are very nice, and I wanted some of their very organic lets save the poor farmers and the world coffee. In the basket paying queue I found myself following a woman who was rather wobbly of butt, but not a total weeble yet – then I saw her son who was, I guess, about 10 years old. Well, he was well on the way to weebledom. Poor lad. Then I saw The Shopping. Out of an unladen basket was poking 2 packets of Jammy dodgers. Good Grief. What on earth is going on?? Can she not see her son is fat? Soon she will have to also buy him a bigger mirror so he can see the full magnitude of himself. Why can people not connect eating sugary things with wobbliness around the middle bottom? Since you are all convinced a Balanced Diet works – which set of scales are you using?? Those of an elephant?



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So let’s examine her Jammy Dodger. White flour, lots and lots of white sugar, poor quality fat (this is M&S, so presumably not transfats), more sugar cos there is the Jam. The deluded you thinks that because Jam is made with fruit, it is in someway a Good Thing. So you eat a biscuit (or 3 or 10). It is sweet, blood sugar rises – this is dangerous for the brain, so the body produces insulin to lower blood sugar. Insulin, incidentally, is the fat storage hormone. Weeble weeble weeble. So immediately on eating the biscuit, you get a high. This is why you eat sugary things. Then you get the most dreadful low because insulin is efficient and lowers your blood sugar – it lowers it too much, which is also dangerous for the brain. So your brain makes you feel really really really hungry – and you need your next sugar fix. Don’t blame your brain for this – you do have to stay conscious. So you have a nice fruit juice – or you raid the fruit bowl. Good good, you think. No FAT in this – and not a Jammy Dodger. But hey, it is still nice and sugary. Insulin, that Fat Storage, hormone rises, etc etc etc.
And sooner or later you have to buy that bigger mirror. And guess what? Children’s bodies work in the same way as ours. Yes, there will be a BLOG on packed lunches.... In the meanwhilst, no doubt you are well stocked on those nice fruit yoghurts. Low Fat, of course. Must keep that insulin up. Weeble weeble weeble.

Grotwoski

We like to be "scientific", by which we mean discursive and cerebral, since this attitude is dictated by the course of civilization. But we also want to pay tribute to our biological selves, to what we might call physiological pleasures. We do not want to be restricted in this sphere. Therefore we play a double game of intellect and instinct, thought and emotion; we try to divide ourselves artificially into body and soul. When we try to liberate ourselves from it all we start to shout and stamp, we convulse to the rhythm of music. In our search for liberation we reach biological chaos. We suffer most from a lack of totality, throwing ourselves away, squandering ourselves.

Jerzy Grotowski - Toward a Poor Theatre

Acton No, Biosig Yes

I've just spent a week in a hotel room in Acton, which really is one of the least important places in the country. From my window I could see such anti-climatic sights as the Carphone Warehouse head office, which standing proud in the drizzle next to the A40, welcoming our friends from Slough and Reading as they whizz into London in eager anticipation of an afternoon waiting on the slip-road listening to Chris Moyles.

Despite this backdrop, I had not been kicked out by my husband. Nor was I on holiday. I was spending time with Charles Poliquin, over from America, at a course for Biosignature Practitioners.

Biosig is great. Its principle is simple: take off your clothes, then let me pinch your flab with my callipers. Ok, not all your clothes. Just your t-shirt will do – I’ll let your body fat tell me what's been going on with your internals. Love handles, for instance, are the result of too many carbohydrates. A big stomach suggests a life of stress fatigue. Fat around the knees is the result of liver problems.

Since finding this out in 2005, I haven't had to faff around making my poor clients run on the treadmill if their problem is to do with their hormones. I can stop them having to neck handfuls of dangerous thyroid drugs or anti-depressants too. When I first incorporated Biosig into my training, I noticed that certain clients who often wept or complained about low energy suddenly perked up when they started taking enough magnesium (a supplement which is very dear to my heart, having rescued me from both fatigue and insomnia). This meant we could focus on their fitness, instead of blowing our noses into soggy tissues.

So, with their higher levels of pizzazz and my callipers to guide them, my clients find themselves more in control of their lives and much perkier too. Our work seems much simpler. If this means having to spend the odd week in a rainy Ramada hotel in suburbia, so be it...

Why I Run

Running's not for squares. I don't wear a spandex body suit. I spit. I stare down cars. I swear at builders. I master the technique of blowing air down one nostril. And, in the fray, I get to think things through.

I've just run. After a tough start, I arrived at the following conclusion: New Year's resolutions don't break.

The classes I teach, which always swell straight after Christmas, have stayed swollen for the third year running. There are even men in them now, right at the back, twice a week and proud. They're not leaving. My mum still gets remedial massage, my aunt refuses to take her mis-prescribed statins. Clients curb their workaholism. Some cycle to work, play sport, drink too much, but feel better. New Year's resolutions don't get broken. It's just a comforting myth. When we feel crap, we change our habits. When we change our habits, we keep them changed.

This is why I run.

Client of the Week

It's been a tough fortnight. Mis-spent cash, mis-placed jokes, merciless mothers, Schindler's List, sausage meat and a glass of Merlot spilt on the Bravia. Weeks like this, it's a challenge to dedicate time to your ham-strings.




Meriel. You did this.




Even though you had an extended family to look after. Even though your conscience was in constant, boozy turmoil. Even though your husband had fallen prey to a geneaology addiction, you still found the time to come and get some Ednacises happening on your calfs. That's dedication.




Meriel. You are client of the week.