Dealing With Depression From Exercise

We're talking about people who are at an emotional breaking point because of exercise. Don't worry, there are solutions! Depression from exercise hits almost everybody who takes fitness seriously (if you've never experienced it, then you are either not doing it right or are too green in the game). But firstly:

Make sure that exercise is causing the depression!

This is extremely important. The cause of depression is too often blamed on something else that is not actually the cause. Make sure that exercise is the reason for feeling depressed. For example, it might be something else like your financial, social or family issues that you are blaming exercise for. It may also be age, lack of sleep or even memories of the past that are starting to resurface. If you are not sure, you should see a psychologist to help you figure things out. They might be expensive, but totally worth it when your happiness depends on it. Also, trial and error works well. For example, try clocking more doze time to see if you weren't sleeping enough. I'll carry on assuming that you are 100% sure that exercise is causing your depression.

Before I go on to list why exercise can cause depression, it should be duly noted that exercise is in fact one of the best ways to combat depression. People who are less active are more at risk of suffering from depression and it is listed as one of the top ways to kick the black hole. Just as water is essential but can also drown you, exercise is necessary for optimum health and happiness; but can have its toll on mental health.

Reasons why exercise might cause depression, with solutions

Just one of those days

If this is the first time that you felt depressed during or after exercise, there is a 99% chance that it is just one of those days. We all have great, horrible and 'standard' workout days. On average, the bulk of your workouts should feel like standard; clock-in, clock-out days. On the odd occasion, you will have that great workout day when you feel like you can do so much more and end up smashing all of your previous physical limits. Equally, you will experience a few bad days when you wonder why you even walked into the gym. 

The Fix

Realize that this is normal and that it happens to everybody. I've had a terrible workout day that made me wonder what I was doing wrong and the next day I was back to normal. Your body works in waves, instead of a straight line. It is impossible to increase your performance every single day. If it was just one of those days, just push through till the end of your workout and come back tomorrow stronger. If you are not sure if it was just one of those days, and you have only been experiencing this recently, push through it for a few days and see what happens. If it lasts for longer than a week, it might be something else. Why a whole week? Sometimes you can just have a few bad days in a row. Your body works much like the graph below.
Read more about having a bad gym day and what to do about it.

Too young in the game

If you just started exercising recently, you probably just need time to get into it. Before exercise, your body was used to the amount of energy you expended in your daily life. Now that you are exercising, your body needs to get used to creating and using up more energy. It is not going to learn that overnight.

The Fix

Give yourself time to ease into things. Make sure you get enough rest (especially sleep), reward yourself for sticking to it and ensure that your body has the nutrition it needs to adapt. Drastically changing your diet and starting an exercise regime all at once could be too much for your body to cope with. In this case, I would suggest easing up (but not totally dropping) one of the two to allow your body to re-calibrate. It is normal to feel drained for the first while that you start exercising. It might only take you an hour or so to do your workout, but it is taking your body a whole lot longer to adapt. Give it time and don't give up.

Nutrition

You will be surprised how much nutrition impacts your body. It can affect your energy levels, sleep patterns, ability to recover, mental capacity and even those emotions. The emotional link with food is what causes so many people to have various food addictions. If you are experiencing depression from exercise, it might be because you are lacking certain nutrients. When your body does not have the energy that it needs in the form of calories, its energy levels drop. This causes a chain reaction that can lead to depression as well as other symptoms. What makes things more difficult is that fact that your body requires more energy from food because you are using up more energy by exercising. Many bodybuilders face a cascade of negative emotions when they are on a serious cut before a bodybuilding show, because they drop their caloric intake far below what their body needs to drop as much fat as possible in the shortest amount of time. During the process, they know that the negative emotions they are feeling come with the territory. Try going through the gruesome processes that the professionals undergo to polish up and look the best on stage and you'll see what I mean. Anyways, back to you. What if you've been eating the same thing you always did? Can your blues still be caused by nutritional reasons? Of course! This can especially happen if you have increased the intensity, duration and frequency of your exercise regime. You are spending more energy and teaching your body to adapt at a faster pace, but you are still giving it the same nutrients that you did when you started.

The Fix

If you think that nutrition might be the reason that you are experiencing workout woes, try adding more food to your diet or making smarter choices. Make sure to add the right food stuffs and determine if you need higher levels of protein, carbohydrates, fats or micro nutrients (the ones you get from fruit and vegetables). If you are trying to lose weight instead of building muscle; add more protein to your diet and don't eliminate carbohydrates completely. If you have a lot of fat that you are trying to metabolize, stimulants like caffeine can help to assist the body to break up and use fat for its energy requirements. I recommend that you don't use stimulants as a long-term strategy, though, because your body will adapt over time and the stimulants will lose their desired effect. Instead, you might end up depending on them to feel normal, instead of using them to boost your goals.

Over training

When last did you give your body a decent rest? If you have been working out non-stop for too long a period, your body won't have the time it needs for deep recovery. Depression is one of the major symptoms of over training, along with decreased physical performance and a weakened immune system. 

The Fix

Take a few days off and see if you feel better. Sometimes a good rest week is all you need to get your body ready for the next level. Don't worry about losing progress if your body is over trained. If over training is the case, you will come back even stronger and more capable than when you left!
If rest days drive you crazy, read about the perfect rest day here.

You've hit a plateau

We call it a plateau when you are no longer seeing any changes as a result from exercise. This can happen when you can't increase your performance or when your body isn't changing anymore. Plateaus can be extremely demotivating and can lead to depression when you feel like you are putting in the work but aren't getting any results. Plateaus can be a real nasty thing to face and are usually caused by doing the same thing over and over again. Eventually, your body adapts to the stimulus and decides not to respond anymore.

The Fix

There are a variety of things that you can do. Try changing your intensity, duration, diet or method. For example, you can do the exact same exercises, just with higher or lower reps under different weights. One of my favorite sayings is, "The best program is the one you haven't done yet".

Click here for more ways to beat your plateau

Sleep

If you aren't getting enough sleep, you aren't giving your body the time it needs to recover and adapt. Because your body is not ready for the next day, you are piling on more damage that it just can't keep up with. Depression might be your body's way of telling you that it needs to log all of the work you've been putting in and it just isn't given the chance. If you are battling to sleep well, you might be over-tired; but chances are higher that you might have a nutritional imbalance, could be overtrained or are lacking something else, like other daily needs (too much stress at work?)

The fix

Prioritize sleep. Add an hour a day for a week and see if you feel better. Also, look into making sure that you have an optimal sleeping environment. Aim for a dark and silent room, good temperature and start getting yourself in 'sleep mode' an hour or two before its time. If you jump straight off a bright computer or cell before closing the covers, your brain will take longer to realize that it's sleepy time and shut down.

Motivation

You could start associating exercise with negative emotions because you've lost your motivation and see exercise as a must-do that is actually a waste of time and energy. You might no longer see the point in why you put so much of yourself into exercise.

The Fix

This is one of the major reasons why it is important to set personal goals. Both long-term and short term goals are important. Take pictures and/or record performances. Give yourself reasonable time frames to beat these goals and celebrate them. Think about how far you've come from where you started. Add another element to your exercise regime to make it fun: add a social element by inviting friends or book yourself into a competition that you can't back out of. Create a picture journal of your transformation and share it on social media.

 Just like everything in life, we have our ups and downs. If winning was easy, it wouldn't be winning. Don't quit, just be smart. STAY STRONG!

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Absorption Rates Of Different Protein Supplements

Finally: you have access to a list of protein sources that are sorted by the rate at which they are absorbed.

Before we start: What does absorption mean and why does it matter?

Although this might seem obvious to most, I thought that it might be a good idea to include in case there are a few readers who did not know why absorption rates are so important. The absorption rate is the rate at which the protein that you digest enters into your bloodstream and is available for the body to use for protein synthesis. Protein synthesis is the process where your body takes the protein that is available to it and turns those protein building blocks into protein. Different forms of protein take different amounts of time before they are ready to be used to form new muscle. Knowing which protein sources work faster or slower will help a lot in determining which protein to use and when. For example, using a fast protein will be best for a meal before a workout; because faster protein absorption means that your body has the broken down protein resources it needs to start repairing and growing muscle. If you are using a slower protein in this case, your body will still be digesting and breaking down this protein so it will not be ready to be used when you need it. Also, faster proteins are needed as a post workout straight after your workout. This is because the 'anabolic window' only lasts for about 90 minutes, according to most. This anabolic window term refers to the fact that a large part of your muscle growth (as a result of exercise stimulus) depends on the nutrition that you have straight after (up to 90 minutes) after your workout. The sooner after your workout that you get the precious resources that your body needs to build muscle, the more it will be able to do so. This might sound like a small difference in the grand scheme of things, but if you get a small advantage because of this every day; it will build up over time to make a very big difference. Because you want your body to have broken down protein readily available for your muscles to rebuild as soon as possible at certain times (like before or after a workout), absorption rate makes a big difference. Slower absorption rates can provide advantages as well. For example, you would want to have slower absorbing protein sources before you go to bed. That way, your body has a ready-to-use protein for a longer period of time during your sleep cycle. Imagine if the protein you take before bed is all used up before it's time and your body is left empty for the rest of your sleep. That is a lot time that you spend in a state of missing building blocks to do so. If you can have protein available in your system for a longer period of time, your body will have the access it needs to usable protein for longer so that it can spend more time building muscle. There are other reasons why absorption rates matter, like when you are using a protein supplement as a meal replacement. When you want to lose fat and feel fuller for longer, you would use a slower absorbing protein so that your body takes longer to use up the food it has before feeling hungry again. Conversely, people that need to eat more regularly but struggle with appetite will use protein that is quicker absorbing; so that it is all used up and they are ready to digest more food sooner.

Protein Supplements by Absorption Rate

Peptides

Protein peptides are made specifically for this purpose. Peptides are proteins that are scientifically broken down into smaller pieces so that it is easier for the body to digest and use. This reduces the time between digestion and usage. Peptides are commonly sold to endurance athletes more than bodybuilders. The reason for this is mainly because of price. Because of the extra (and costly) processing needed to make peptides, they aren't very financially viable for bodybuilders that require protein on a larger scale. Alternatively, peptides work well for runners and other aerobic athletes because only small quantities are needed. These athletes use peptides during races when the body is breaking down from stress. Because peptides are so easily absorbed, their bodies are able to recover and rebuild DURING the race or event. Additionally, runners only need smaller quantities of these when they are using them because they're goal is to reduce muscle breakdown during a race, instead of building or increasing muscle mass.

Whey

Whey protein is the most popular protein supplement by far. Reasons for this include its fast absorption rate and relatively cheap price. Whey protein is derived from dairy (milk). Did you know that there are three common forms of whey? These three forms are whey concentrate, whey isolate and whey hydrolysate. Whey concentrate is the most natural form of whey, and is the primary form of whey once it is derived from milk. Whey isolate is whey concentrate that is further processed to increase the protein percentage. Whey hydrolysate is whey isolate which is processed once again in order to break it down further for faster absorption. These are listed below, also according to absorption. ALL of these three forms are translated into usable protein faster than the other protein supplements that follow.

Hydro Whey

Hydro whey (why hydrolysate) is the fastest absorbing protein form of the three. It is also the most processed and therefore the most expensive of the three. Not many supplement brands sell whey hydrolysate on its own because of the higher price that comes with the extra processing. Hydrolysate can often be found mixed with the other two forms of whey protein in most post-workout drinks.

Whey Isolate

Whey isolate is the second fastest absorbing whey protein. It is a processed from of whey concentrate which is made and sold because of its higher protein purity. When whey concentrate is further processed to increase the protein percentage, it becomes whey isolate. Pure whey isolate protein forms can be found on their own more easily than whey hydrolysate because it is often used as an extreme cutting meal replacement. This is because the carbohydrate content of whey isolate is extremely low (almost non-existent) and it is almost totally made up of pure protein.

Whey Concentrate

Whey concentrate is the most natural form of whey protein, made directly as a result of concentrating the protein content of milk. It is therefore the cheapest of the three (since it takes the least processing to produce), but is also the slowest absorbing whey. Because of its price, whey concentrate is often the biggest component of whey protein blends.

Milk Isolates

Milk isolates are a combination of all the protein components that can be isolated from milk. While whey is the fastest absorbing and casein is the slowest (both come from diary sources), milk isolate has attributes of both of these. Part of milk isolate protein will be absorbed quite quickly while other parts of the isolate will take longer to absorb. This makes milk isolate a good source of protein for people who want fast AND slow absorbing protein from a single protein source (as you could always mix one source with another to have a combination of absorption attributes).

Soy

Soy protein is a protein supplement that is isolated from a plant source. Because it comes from a plant, it is a lot cheaper to make and therefore often serves as a 'filler' protein that supplement companies use to increase the protein content of their products without spending too much money. Soy is a good source of protein on its own and makes for a good meal replacement, but cannot beat the quickness of whey and the steadiness of casein.

Egg Protein

Egg protein is obviously protein that comes from egg (mostly made from egg whites). This is also a good source of protein, but neither digests at the fastest nor slowest rate. Like soy, this makes egg protein a good meal replacement because it is biologically ready for the body to use at a quick rate, but doesn't run out too quickly.

Casein

Out of all these, casein is the slowest digesting protein source. One of the reasons for this is because it forms a kind of gel-like substance in your gut. This makes it harder for the digestive system to digest and will stay in your system for longer. Casein is often sold on its own for people to take before bed, as a feel-fuller-for-longer option and as a component in meal replacements to even out the rate of absorption. Casein therefore has its own advantages, but it NOT recommended as a post-workout supplement. 

Did this help you with the information you wanted? Let me know in the comments below. STAY STRONG!

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6 Ways Exercise Boosts Productivity In Your Career

When you are trying to lose weight or focusing on another health goal that generally involves exercise, finding time to show up for your workouts can turn out to be challenging enough. So if you have a career (or a business) that you have been working with in order to build this; it can turn out to be double whammy, as it is common that you put your work time ahead of your exercise time. Given here are a few reasons why you might want to reconsider.

Exercise keeps you alert and focused

Here is a quick lesson; exercise helps to increase the blood flow in the brain. And that sharpens the awareness. According to a study conducted by Jim McKenna from the University of Bristol, once an individual finishes exercising, the work performance is consistently seen to be higher when compared by the better time management and improved mental sharpness. A client of mine recently came across this experience during a long week leadership development program. And as a part of the program participants including the client started the day to day exercise, yoga, walking, or strength training.

Increased energy

The more and more you move, the more energized you feel. Regular physical activity helps in improving your muscle strength, boosting up your endurance, giving you the energy you need to think clearer and come up with new and different ideas. A good 15 minutes of moving around even just around the living room makes your body produce more and more energy on a cellular level.

Exercise improves mood

Need an emotional lift? Or need to blow of some steam after a stressful day? Having a work out at the gym or a brisk thirty minutes' walk can help you deal with it at ease. Physical activity helps you stimulate various brain chemicals that may help you feel happier and relaxed. You also continue to feel better in terms of your appearance when you continue to exercise on a regular basis, boosting up your confidence and improving your self-esteem.

Tracking and limiting how much time you have been spending on tasks

You might think like all others that you are pretty good at engaging how much time you have been spending on various tasks. However, research studies conducted suggests that only 17% of the people around are actually able to accurately estimate the passage of time. A tool like Rescue Time can help the employees and the other individuals by letting them know exactly and how much time you will wish to spend on daily tasks, including social, email, word processing and apps.

Stress management

Regular exercise has generally been shown to decrease the overall levels of tension, improving sleep and boosting self-esteem in an individual. It is thought that even five minutes of an aerobic exercise can stimulate the anti – anxiety effects. If you feel that you do not have enough time to put in a full cardio work out each day then even incorporating short bursts of activity in your daily life can turn out to be beneficial. You can even try out a 15 minute walk during the lunch time, or just take the stairs rather than the lift. If you don’t want to exercise alone then you can also join a fitness centre with your friend or colleague.

Just say no to meetings

Meetings are generally considered to be one of the biggest time sucks around, and yet somehow we continue to book them without asking any questions, attend them and invite others. Everybody inevitably continues to complain about them. According to Atlassian, the average office worker generally spends more than 31 hours each month during unproductive meetings. Before booking your next meeting, do ask yourself if you can accomplish the same goal or tasks via email, phone or web based meetings, and whether they will be slightly more productive enough in the long run.

About the Author

Michael is the Marketing Manager at Ampliz, specializing in email and marketing database management software, editing blogs, case studies, and guides. Beside work he is a fitness freak and a Marathon runner. He tries to make the world just a bit more pleasant enough by working on strategies that would help them prevent and eliminate spam in terms of email marketing.

So what are your best work productivity related tips? What other tips have you come across in order to maximize your own productivity at work or in the office. Do leave your thoughts and comments below. STAY STRONG!

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Fasted cardio myth debunked by science

Maybe it is time bodybuilders start training like cyclists

Fasted Cardio Myth Debunked

By Clint Latham – www.BikeALatteCO.com 

 I Wipe the sleep from my eyes, fumbling blindly in my closet for my bibs and ask myself time and time again; “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?”

I would slowly make my way downstairs while carrying my bike; just thinking that this won't even last an hour, as I try to find some way to grip any bit of motivation left from the depths of my soul.

I’m sure that you’ve heard it a million times; especially if you are involved in the body building community.

If you want to maximize fat loss, you need to wake up early and hit the cardio before a single calorie hits the pit of your stomach. But the science would actually indicate otherwise. If you lived during the late 1990’s you have likely heard of the health craze sweeping the nation: Body for Life.

It was a health and fitness challenge put on by sports supplement company guru Bill Phillips. I was especially fascinated by this challenge as it was based out of my home town of Golden, CO.

  In Bill’s chapter on cardio he had two basic principles:
1) Hit the cardio early before eating your 1st meal
2) Perform short, high intensity interval cardio or High Intensity Interval Training

The idea was that the body had been fasting all night while you slept; reducing blood sugar levels, decreasing muscle glycogen stores and further decreasing insulin levels. Thus if you hit the cardio before your first meal the body would have no choice but to use fat as its primary fuel source.

This would send the body's fat burning potential into high gear. Ever sense countless cyclists, bodybuilders and anyone else has been looking to cut weight; they have been clawing their way, tired and hungry, through high intensity cardio in the hopes of shedding a few extra pounds.

As I traveled the country to the world's biggest bodybuilding events - The NY Pro, the Arnold and the Olympia - I would hear this time and time again. You've got to do your cardio fasted if you want to burn fat. It is as if it had been inscribed into the 10 commandments.

As I would head down to the hotel gym in the morning for a spin, I would see countless bodybuilders knuckling the cardio equipment in the hopes of shedding a few extra ounces of fat, being so tired and hungry that they could barely keep a steady pace, let alone reach the intensities required for High Intensity Interval Training.

Could this really be the best way to burn fat? They looked absolutely miserable. As I started to get back into the racing scene, a friend and training partner (Gareth Thomas - the national triathlon coach for the UK) used to always harp on me before our rides. "How many grams of carbs have you eaten?"

But I always brushed him off. Here I was working with some of the fittest people on the planet, who can get to 3% & 4% body fat and your telling me to eat!? Yeah right!

But that's when I got curious. We have bodybuilders performing fasted cardio and we have cyclists cramming as many carbs as possible. Yet both are extremely lean.

What's the truth? How does the body oxidize fat?

The human body does not operate within a vacuum

The body is constantly adjusting its use of fat or carbohydrate usage depending upon a variety of factors. Kent Hansen, in his study, The Effects of Exercise on the Storage and Oxidation of Dietary Fat, found that, "Generally if you burn more carbohydrates during your workout you will burn more fat post workout".

While research does show that fasted cardio can increase the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue, this only occurs at very low levels of intensity. In the study Regulation of plasma fatty acid oxidation during low- and high- intensity exercise, "Our data suggests that, in addition to sub-optimal FFA availability, fatty acid oxidation is likely limited during high-intensity exercise because of direct inhibition of long-chain fatty acid entry into mitochondria." 

If a bodybuilder performs HIIT, they may see an increase in fat mobilization but that does not mean an increase in fat oxidation. This results in all those fatty acids being re-packaged and stored back into the adipose tissue.

After all of that suffering you put it right back where it came from! Furthermore Jeffery F Horowitz in his article in the American Journal of Physiology, found that; “When trained subjects exercised at 50% of the their maximum heart rate, an intensity that equates a slow walk, there was no difference in the amount of fat burned - regardless of whether the subjects had eaten or not.”

These results continued to be the same until the subjects, that were fasted, exceeded the 90 minute mark. Only then did the fasted cardio begin to show favorable results. Thus what are we left with?

The body will burn more fat cells when fasted at a lower intensity, but the duration has to be longer than 90 minutes. Anything shorter and it's a wash. And if we try to increase the intensity, there is an inhibition of fatty acids being able to enter the mitochondria.  

Why bodybuilders should think like an endurance athlete

As a competitive cyclist my goal for each workout was to make my engine bigger, stronger & faster. The way to do this is to increase the size and density of your mitochondria. Mitochondria are what produce ATP and is the only place in the cell where fat can be oxidized. It is the cell's fat-burning furnace.

The more mitochondria my body has, the bigger my engine and the faster I can ride. Think about it like a car. If you have a V12 and a 4 cylinder engine both sitting at idle, which one is going to use more gas? The V12, right!

Thus we would be better suited to turn our bodies into a V12 mitochondria machine so that we are constantly burning more fat cells. The study: An acute bout of high-intensity interval training increases the nuclear abundance of PGC-1α and activates mitochondrial biogenesis in human skeletal muscle found that low volume, high intensity interval training increases mitochondrial biogenesis.

Within 24 hours of maximal intensity exercise, new mitochondria were being formed.

I preach to any new cyclist I that work with to always eat before their rides. Why? Because without the fuel to fuel your muscles, you can't reach the intensity levels required to produce the enzymes that lead to mitochondria growth.

I know countless bodybuilders who will preach, “You got to eat before you lift bro! You need to fuel those muscles.” Why doesn't the same principle apply to high intensity cardio? You need to fuel the muscles to perform at a high level in order to induce growth. In this case, increase mitochondrial growth and fat burning potential is the goal.

In the same study, they found that a combination of both endurance and resistance exercise causes a significantly higher degree of mitochondrial biogenesis then endurance exercise alone. Bodybuilders have the resistance training part down, but what about the endurance?

Most bodybuilders I know cannot wait for their cardio sessions to be over. In fact, most of them dread cardio. Enter the popularity of the high intensity interval training workout. It's short and sweet. We also know that one of the best ways to cut fat is calories in vs calories out.

As bodybuilders get closer to show prep they begin cutting calories drastically to start leaning out.

Now it is even more important that our mitochondrial engine is huge. We want to run the fat tank on empty.

When performing an HIIT workout at the correct intensities, the body uses roughly 75% carbohydrate and 25% fat.

 The body, fully stocked full of glycogen stores, has roughly 90 mins worth of fuel for a moderately intense workout. In order to maintain optimal levels of glycogen, a daily carbohydrate intake of approximately 3 to 5 grams per pound of lean body mass is recommended when accumulating between 1 to 5 hours of training daily.

If a bodybuilder cuts (and especially limits) their carbohydrate intake, they are already running on empty before they hit the gym.

The bodybuilder's worst nightmare

Muscle tissue is made up mostly of protein which, in turn, is made up of amino acids. Normally, your body does not use protein to produce energy. If you run out of glycogen stores and no glucose is available, however, your body will then break down its own muscle tissue to release amino acids.

These amino acids are sent to your liver where they are converted into glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis.

When your body starts to use muscle tissue for energy, you lose muscle mass.

Starving without any glycogen left in the muscles to fuel their cardio efforts, bodybuilders still hit the treadmill in the hopes of shedding more fat.

What's really going to happen is your body? It's now going to use the protein in that hard earned muscle to fuel your HIIT session.

Think about a Tour De France rider. (If you're asking what the TDF is, it's like the super bowl of bike racing) Why are they so dang skinny? They burn so many calories during the race that they cannot eat enough to restore glycogen stores.

What happens? The body starts eating the muscle. A bodybuilder is doing the same thing to a lesser degree during the cutting phase. The question becomes, why not have 20-40 grams of carbohydrates pre-cardio, to be able to hit the intensity requirements needed to build more mitochondria and save that precious muscle mass?

You will be a constant fat burning machine and not have to sacrifice any muscle mass! In my Ride to 75 programs for new cyclists, one of the key principles is fuel.

We want to ride to lose weight. Cycling for Weight loss requires that we build a big mitochondrial engine to be a 24/7 fat burning machine. Now it is never a good idea to make a major change before a big show.

However, you can start focusing on building your engine between shows by fueling your HIIT workouts which will burn more fat cells.

You will also have to suffer less during the cutting phase. If you or someone you know who is interested in achieving happiness and health on two wheels please share with them, Cycling for Weight Loss, the FREE resource guide is found here.

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Stop giving children sugar

There has been a culture in society that dictates that it is okay to give children sugar, because they like it. Is it really all in the name of innocent fun or are we actually causing more harm than good?

Sugar addiction

Sugar addiction is a worldwide epidemic that affects every country in the world. It has been called the world's deadliest addiction, killing more people than illegal drugs and other diseases. Some believe that more than half of the western world's population may have an unhealthy addiction to sugar. By allowing children to eat sugar-filled sweets; laden with other harmful colorants, artificial flavors and toxins, are we subconsciously teaching them how to become sugar addicts?

Some people probably think that I am going too far in this post. If we lived in a world where unhealthy foods were not the norm for those who can't even make decisions for themselves yet; would obesity, diabetes, heart failure and other related diseases are as prevalent as they are in adults?

Imagine two children who were born exactly the same: identical genetics, lifestyles, social groups and disciplines. Now imagine that one of them follows the same typical diet as what is considered normal. Imagine that the other child is raised on a diet that consists of nothing but healthy, wholesome food 99% of the time like fruit, vegetables, diary, meats and grains in balanced proportions. Which child do you think would get the best marks in school? Which one would be the healthiest and get sick less often? Which one would do better at whatever hobbies and sports they chose? Which one would get the least pimples in puberty and which one would turn out to be the best looking? Ultimately, which one is most likely to make the healthiest life choices in adulthood and which one would be the happiest in life? Which one of these two children got the best chance at the best possible life?

I'm not saying that parents don't care for their children. I'm saying that they don't know how badly a sugar filled diet will actually affect them. The problem is that we raise our children according to the way everybody else does. It has become the norm to have cake and sweets at birthday parties and other events, for children to be rewarded with sugar and for children to drink carbonated drinks when they are thirsty. I can remember all the different kinds of sweets I used to have regularly at school and at home. Whenever I visited my grandparents' house, I got to choose 3 sweets out of the 'sweetie bowl'. I remember all the sweets we used to buy from the shop at my school, and my sports teams were given nice sugary treats every time we played against other schools. It was the norm.

Perhaps now would be a good time for you to pause for a moment and do a quick search on the negative effects of sugar and the other additives commonly found in sweets on childhood development. 

Health has become a choice

Here is one of the biggest problems in the world: health has become a choice, not the norm. Those who follow healthy diets have chosen to do so. Eating healthy is not a standard. You either eat a healthy diet, or eat like a 'normal' person. Has this got anything to do with the way we were raised? If eating healthy was the standard, wouldn't everybody be doing it because that is what they know, instead of mainly for other reasons like weight loss or disease control? Then again, is eating healthy was the standard; would anyone need to 'diet' for weight loss? And how much disease would actually trouble the western world?

Spotting the 'crazy' in the 'normal'

• Ask a parent what their child's favorite sweet is, then ask what their child's favorite vegetable is. 
• Vegetables are the things we need to finish quickly on the plate, but sweets are the things we can have fun with.
• Have you ever seen a parent say 'hmm, yummy!' when giving their baby their first taste of cake? They are saying that because they expect their child to like the taste, not realizing that they are actually suggesting that their baby should like the taste.
• Children are told to finish their greens, and then have a choice of desert afterwards. The healthy stuff becomes the work; the unhealthy stuff becomes the reward.
• Look at cafeterias in schools. What kind of food is offered to children there?
• How often are sugars present at fun childhood events, and which foods have the most interesting colors and shapes?
• A child runs to a parent and says, 'I'm hungry'. How often will the parent say, 'there is an apple in the food bowl'?
• At the age of 7, compare the number of different sweets a child has tasted to the number of different fruits they have ever tried.

At the risk of sounding negative, if this article has made you think twice or given you a new perspective, it was well worth the write! STAY STRONG!

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Supplement Basics

This article is intended for the beginner who wants to amplify their bodybuilding efforts by starting to add supplements to their bodybuilding routines. The information contained here is very basic and therefore won't be of much value to most bodybuilders who already know what supplements are working best for them.

First things first: supplements are not essential

Supplements are not essential. It is possible to get all the nutrients you need for muscle growth from food. Supplements, as per the name, were originally made to supplement the diet to make up for any shortfalls in nutrition a person might not be getting from their current diets. They are also convenient. It is easier to drink a protein shake to give your muscles what they need straight after a workout than to eat a chicken and a loaf of bread on your way home from the gym. They also help to achieve a person's caloric goals. For example, a person needing to increase caloric intake can do this much easier by adding a mass gainer (high in calories) to their diets and a person looking to decrease calories (for fat loss) can take a low calorie (and low carbohydrate) protein shake instead of a meal which would typically be high in carbohydrates and fats. They are also cheaper regarding macro nutrient content. Gram for gram, it is cheaper to consume protein from certain nutrition shakes then other sources like meat. 

Do not depend on supplements only

It is not healthy to leave food altogether and use supplements only. Firstly, a lot of nutrients can only be found in real food. An apple, for example, has a great variety of minerals, vitamins, anti-oxidants and other micro nutrients that are not found in supplements. Supplements are mostly made to be easily absorbed by the body. When you stop eating normal foods regularly, your digestive system gets used to easily digested, powdered foods and will (after a period of time when it has only been using powdered nutrition) struggle to digest normal food.

Supplements are not steroids

There is a big difference between supplements and steroids. Do not expect them to do the same thing. Supplements sold in stores are not as potent, but do not have the same risks and side effects as steroids.

Can you take supplements if you are under the age of 18?

Yes you can, but not all supplements are considered safe for people under the age of 18. It is not recommended for people under the age of 18 to use creatine, testosterone boosters or high levels of caffeine and other stimulants. Meal replacements, protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals are fine for younger people to take, as long as they don't have the other stuff. Some argue that under 18's should not take a supplement at all because they don't need to, though. As with all age groups, supplements cannot replace a healthy diet, but add to it.

Supplement timing

Here are the most common times for people to use supplements.

Pre workout

Pre-workouts are usually mixed with water and used half an hour before exercise. They are usually high in stimulants like caffeine and are used for energy, to increase endurance and strength during exercise, to increase muscle pumps and to amplify a workout's ability to grow muscle. Ingredients often include creatine, beta-alanine, caffeine, HMB, nitric oxide boosters, testosterone boosters and vaso-dilators.

Intra-workout

These supplements are used during a workout. This is also usually in a juice-like form, mixed with water. They are used to re-hydrate, give energy, and keep the body in an anabolic (muscle building) state, reduce muscle break down and increase endurance. Common ingredients for these include electrolytes, amino acids, carbohydrates, sugars, creatine and beta-alanine.

Post workout

Post workout supplements are the most common, supplying immediate nutrients that a muscle needs to recover and grow straight after exercise. People trying to lose weight will mostly opt for high protein and low carbohydrate shakes; and people looking to gain mass will mostly opt for high carbohydrate and moderate protein shakes. These shakes are similar to hick milkshakes and are usually mixed with water or milk, depending on caloric goals. Common ingredients for these are protein, carbohydrates, creatine, testosterone boosters, amino acids and fats.

Before bed

Supplements used before bed are usually slow release proteins like casein, so that the body has a steady inflow of protein to feed muscles during a long period where nothing will be consumed for the body to use. They can also include testosterone boosters, glutamine and growth hormone boosters to speed up recovery.

Meal replacements

Meal replacements, as per the name, are supplements used in the place of a meal. These are used due to costs, convenience or better management of macro nutrient balances like decrease carbohydrate or increased protein intake. These are often in the form of shakes and bars. They are also taken as snacks (between breakfast and lunch; or between lunch and dinner).

Remember to keep whole foods in your diets, especially foods that are rich in fiber and micro nutrients. Supplements can also be costly, so choose wisely and try a few brands and products out to see what works the best for you. STAY STRONG!

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High Fat Diets: Just Another Fad

Are high fat diets really the best way to lose weight that the world has seemingly just discussed? The answer is a resounding NO! Trends come and go. There was a big anti-fat movement years ago. Now it has changed to the anti-carbohydrate movement. Both movements (or trends, rather) promised better health and weight loss. Before you jump on the anti-carbohydrate bandwagon, consider a few of the points below/

Carbohydrates are macro nutrients

There are 9 calories in 1 gram of fat, 4 calories in one gram of carbohydrates and 4 calories in one gram of protein. For those of you who would like to know, there are 7 calories in 1 gram of alcohol (and no, this is NOT a macro nutrient, wink wink).

Carbohydrates are good for you

Carbohydrates are good for you and should not be banned from our diets. This excludes sugar (the simplest carbohydrate), which should be brought to an absolute minimum except for fruits and vegetables or used to spike blood sugar before or after exercise. Our bodies break carbohydrates down for energy faster than fats and proteins. They are a great way to fuel up before exercise and refuel straight afterwards to put the body in recovery (muscle building) mode as soon as possible. Carbohydrates are also broken down into glycogen which is stored (along with other places like the liver) in the muscle, which attributes to their size. The more glycogen a muscle contains, the larger it is. Carbohydrates are not bad, but western diets almost always contain too much of them. The problem is therefore not carbohydrates, but the proportion in which they are consumed.

Fats are good for you

Fats are not bad for you either, except for plant oils used in extreme heat like deep frying. When plant oils are super-heated (like they are when they are used to fry things), they become very unhealthy for the human body. They contribute to unhealthy cholesterol levels, create unhealthy heart environments, increase risk of diabetes and can lead to obesity. Fats are more calorie-dense than carbohydrates but take longer to be broken down in the body for energy. Fats also keep you fuller for longer than carbohydrates. Fats are great in the morning because they take longer to break down so that you feel fuller and it therefore takes longer before the body starts to hunger for more calories. Because the body craves less for longer as a result of a fatty breakfast, it learns to break down its own fat for energy instead of relying on the quicker energy release from carbohydrates.

Protein is good for you

At the risk of being doctor obvious; protein is good for you, too. It cannot be stored in the body (except for in muscle mass, a storage we do NOT want to tuck into) and therefore should be accompanied by fats in the morning, when your body has not had any protein for hours of sleep. Your body needs protein to grow and build your body and muscles. Protein is also beneficial straight after your workout so that your body can recover and start the recovery/rebuilding process. High protein, low fat and low carbohydrate diets are okay for short periods of time to drop fat quickly, but can't be sustained for long periods of time because your body will start to break down muscle for energy.

Proportion

As you should be able to see from the three points above, the key to a healthy diet which supports your goals is proportion. There should be a healthy balance between all three macro nutrients. Focus on eating fats and protein in the morning, protein and carbohydrates around (before and after) exercise and a balance of all throughout the day, depending on your goals.

Price

This is my personal guess as to why trends are often swaying between high carbohydrate and high fat diets. Unfortunately, protein is more expensive than both carbohydrates and fats. Furthermore, the healthier foods are more expensive than the less healthy foods. This makes sense when you look at how well carbohydrates that trick the body into thinking that it is a protein are sold. Examples of these are beef and chicken flavored chips and noodles. People might be satisfying their cravings for more protein with cheaper versions which are actually carbohydrates or fats.

Calories

The best way to drop weight is to drop total calories consumed to levels below expenditure (the bodybuilding industry has been saying this for years). You can do this by increasing caloric expenditure, decreasing calories consumed (through diet) or a combination of both. It is important for optimum health to keep a good balance between carbohydrates, fats and proteins without completely avoiding any of them.

The real culprits to avoid are sugars, super-heated plant oils, additives and processed foods; not entire macro nutrients like carbohydrates or fats. Keep everything in balance and focus on having fewer calories than what is expended instead of excluding a food group that your body needs. STAY STRONG!

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