Tag Archives: diet

What’s the Big Food Enemy These Days?

truth about fat

What’s the Big Food Enemy These Days?

truth about fat

By Travis Wade

I get asked the question “What is the big enemy these days? Is it sugar? Still sugar?” Nope. There’s something far worse than sugar these days, but sugar fits under the category. The answer is white food.

White Trash

I’m talking about certain fats like shortening that never goes bad or trans fats also known as hydrogenated fats that are to be banned. The government has given food companies lots of time to phase out trans fats so you must watch out for them yourself for now. At least it’s agreed that trans fats are something that should never be consumed internally.

Grains are in this category. Although grains are not genetically modified they are still sprayed with glyphosate. If you don’t know the dangers of glyphosate have a look at this article.

Even some grains that aren’t sprayed are still not good because they have been hybridized and developed over the years to have lots of calories and little nutrient. The flour is refined so much it’ll last forever and it is higher glycemic index than sugar. It mixes with the amylase in your saliva and turns to glucose before you even swallow it.

Of course, sugar is in this category too, but the worst thing about sugar is that it’s almost all genetically modified. A few things these types of foods do is they feed cancer, they cause inflammation which in turn increases sickness, they feed the bad bacteria of the gut, they increase insulin resistance causing diabetes and Alzheimer’s; they generally make people unhealthy and overweight.

What You Should Eat

multivitamin

My number one recommendation is to use food to get as much nutrient as possible. Eat as nutrient rich foods as possible. Always take the broccoli and spinach over the french-fries and ketchup. White foods take up room where you could have been putting good nutrients instead of empty calories mixed with toxins. I always tell my clients you’re either eating poison or medicine; it’s your choice with every single mouth full.

People in North America eat a lot of garbage for breakfast. People have been trained to believe this is what you should eat for breakfast. I like wine, but I don’t drink it for breakfast. If you’re someone that eats any kind of grain including oats or corn for breakfast and you can’t understand why it’s so hard to lose weight, then you need a paradigm shift. It’s time to change your beliefs.

Drop these highly addictive foods. According to Dr. Mark Hyman the food industry has discovered how to reproduce taste buds and they are very excited because now they can test to see what substances react on the taste buds in order to make their foods even more addictive. Are these foods harmful or make people fat? Look around you…

So, what do you eat? What foods are rich in nutrients? Have you heard of cruciferous vegetables? Kale (blanch these vegetables to reduce the oxalic acid [free radicals]), spinach (try to get organic if you can afford it, they are very high on the dirty dozen list), broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus. All the green leafy vegetables are very high in nutrients and fibre, and low in calories. Eat lots of colorful vegetables. They are our best source of carbohydrates because they are rich in the nutrients our bodies need.

So how do you get your calories? Fat. Not cheesecake. Not trans fat like margarine. Not shortening. I mean good fats. This might be another paradigm shift for some people. I know we have been taught to believe that fat is the enemy and causes heart attacks and raises bad cholesterol.

Ancel Keys

truth about fat

The study by PhD. Ancel Keys called the Seven Countries Study was the basis for this information. In the Seven Country Study, there were countries like France and Switzerland that had a high fat diet and lower heart disease that weren’t taken into consideration. In 1984 Ancel Keys did a follow up study that showed no link between fat and heart disease.

Ancel Keys did another study where he used 9000 people from a mental hospital and put half of them on vegetable oil and the other half on saturated fat in the form of butter. The people with the butter had higher cholesterol and less heart attacks. This study was hidden in Ancel’s basement for many years because it contradicted his theory.

The right saturated fats are good for you because dietary cholesterol is the precursor to hormones. Also, fat is used as building blocks for the body and used for energy. It is a much cleaner burning fuel source with way less oxidative stress on the body than sugar or carbs.

Eat fat. Good fats like avocados, nuts and nut butters (not peanuts, those are a bean), coconut oil, grass fed butter, fat from grass fed free from hormones and antibiotics meats and seafood, and high quality olive oil. Especially at breakfast time.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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How To Do A Ketogenic Diet

how to do a Ketogenic diet

How To Do A Ketogenic Diet

how to do a Ketogenic diet

By Travis Wade

It’s really simple and I’m not going to make it complicated. You need to get at least 75% of your calories from fats. You might have to weigh your food at first and use this keto macro calculator. There are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates, sugars, and proteins. There are 9 calories per gram of fat. Alcohol is not included in this diet, but there are 7 calories per gram of alcohol.

The Problems With Keto

how to do a ketogenic diet

One of the problems with a keto diet is compliance. Nobody wants to cut their carbs to just cruciferous vegetables and that’s what you need to do for the first 2 weeks. It takes about 10 days to get into full ketosis and after that you can keep track of your weight to decide if you want to add some extra calories to your diet. If you want to lose weight and you stop, then you know you’ve added too many calories.

Another problem comes around day 10. There are some cells in your body that can’t process fat for energy and they will have to go through a process called autophagy. This is the natural death of a cell and it must be replaced by a new cell. During this transition, you’ll have serious carbohydrate cravings. This is because your cells don’t want autophagy, they want to live. At this point you’re just going to have to suck it up. It will be over in a few days. Sorry about the crappy advice but after those few days you will feel better than you ever have 🙂

The most common problem people encounter with a keto diet is they eat too much protein. Protein digests like a carb in a sugar burning mode. It will increase your insulin and may pull you out of ketosis. Fat, for the record, does nothing to your insulin.

The Problems With Carbs

how to do a ketogenic diet

So why go through all the trouble? I hate to say it but a high carbohydrate diet for most people will make them fat. Carbohydrates go through sugar burning mode of the body and have a very high oxidative load on the body. They cause inflammation which leads to disease and sickness. Carbohydrates feed diseases like cancer.

Sugar is in almost every packaged food available in some highly refined form to make it as addictive as possible to keep people coming back. Sugar causes weight gain, hunger, and slowed metabolism. When you run out of energy from carb intake then your body is more likely to breakdown muscle for energy instead of fat. The more muscle a person has the higher their metabolism.

Another thing I need to mention is sugar is genetically modified these days. GMOs is my biggest nightmare as a personal trainer because people don’t know what they are or what they do to them. I need you to read this article on GMOs.

If you really want to see the problems with a high carb diet just look at our society. In the 50s, 2 Harvard professors were payed off to write articles explaining that fat was bad and sugar was ok. The evidence against this was stored in Dr. Ansel Keys’ basement for a very long time. Dr. Ansel Keys was trying to prove that fat was the cause of heart problems. Our society has been getting more obese ever since and for the first time in history people are dying faster than the generation before them. I believe GMOs do play a huge part in this but that’s a completely different topic.

The Benefits For Athletes

how to do a ketogenic diet

Listen up bodybuilders; this is the diet you should be doing! Same with you endurance sports people. You will burn through your carbohydrates in about 45 minutes of exercise and then your body will use fat and muscle for energy. As mentioned a high carb diet leads to more muscle burning and a high fat diet leads to more fat burning. The energy you get from fat will last much longer. You keep burning fat for fuel depending how much you eat and how much is on your body. I know when I use Brain Octane Oil for a pre-workout I have instant energy and sustained energy for hours! Lots of savy marathon runners have switched over to fat and exogenous ketones for energy from sugars.

What they will do is first induce full ketosis for months leading up to an event. Both marathon runners and bodybuilders. Then bodybuilders will start cutting weight and reducing calories in ketosis right up until they go back to nothing but cruciferous vegetables a bit of fat and high protein just before they compete. A marathon runner will induce ketosis and stay there until they compete. During their run they can use sources like Brain Octane Oil to get them to the finish line.

Intermittent Fasting

how to do a ketogenic diet

Which brings me to intermittent fasting. Without adding carbs to your diet in the morning you will have very low insulin and as long as you have low insulin, growth hormone goes up. That’s why you produce growth hormone at night when you sleep. Insulin goes down at night while you sleep and GH goes up. As soon as you add carbs in the morning your GH goes back down. GH burns fat and insulin stores fat.

A sneaky trick is to not eat carbs or protein (or alcohol) in the morning and your insulin doesn’t go up so your GH keeps increasing. I’ve heard an expert say that it can go up as much as 400% and I’ve heard another expert say it can go up as much as 1200%. All I know is GH goes way up when you don’t eat carbs/protein/alcohol in the morning and people get shredded.

I wouldn’t ask anyone to starve however, but as I said, fat does nothing to your insulin. One thing you can do is eat nothing but fat in the morning. Some people will do Bulletproof Coffee in the morning. Fat reduces ghrelin (also known as the hunger hormone), better than anything and it also increases CCK (Cholecystokinin), which is the hormone that makes you feel full. If you have the right amount of fat you won’t get hungry.

A Few Tricks Of The Trade

how to do a ketogenic diet

In either case, when lunch comes, a cruciferous vegetable is great with a source of protein and another fat. The sources of fat I recommend are nothing but healthy fats; coconut oil, high quality olive oil (the vast majority of olive oil is fake), avocado, nuts and nut butters (if you don’t have a food sensitivity and no peanuts, they’re a bean), and GRASS FED butter or ghee.

Coconut Milk

My secret ingredient is coconut milk. I get the stuff that has no additives and it’s 85% pure coconut extract. This coconut milk is 96% fat and it tastes great! I put it in everything. My soup in the morning, my frozen berries, my stir fries, all my curries and I’ll even sip it occasionally. I get it in the international section at Superstore near the spices.

Avocado

how to do a ketogenic diet

Avocado is the new apple. An avocado a day will keep the doctor away. There are many things you can do with avocado but I like them so I just eat them plain. You can mash them up and make guacamole or add some coconut oil, vanilla, organic cocoa, and just enough raw honey to make more of a dessert type thing. Avocado are also great in smoothies or cut up as a side instead of a grain.

A lot of doctors are trying to get the word out about the health benefits of eating good fats. It seems like every doctor has a book out and there is a summit with over 30 experts talking about the benefits of fats. If you’re still unsure of how to use fats properly then I highly recommend listening to this summit. Also, have a look at these 2 articles: Ketogenic Diet, Truth About Fat

What A Ketogenic Diet Look Like

how to do a Ketogenic diet

For the first 2 weeks your carbs are limited to cruciferous vegetables. These are spinach, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, horseradish, cabbage, kohlrabi, Bok choy, rutabaga, radish, and wasabi. Your proteins make up the rest of the diet after you factor in  75% healthy fats from the list mentioned above.  I’ve seen many clients track their macros (macros are macro-nutrients meaning proteins, carbohydrates, and fats or all of the calorie intake) on a Fitbit or measure their food and calculate their macros.

After 2 weeks you can slowly reduce the fat intake down to 65% and increase your carb intake if it still works for you. If you reduce your fat to 70% and you stop losing weight then return to 75% fat for a while and try again later. You can play with the amount of calories you take in, in a day as well. You don’t want to reduce calories too much or weight loss will stop.

The amount of calories you should be shooting for will vary from person to person. A 200 pound man should be shooting for approximately 1600 calories in a day. If he exercises more he will need more calories. If a person weighs more they will need more calories. If they weigh less and exercise less they will need less calories. Use this keto macro calculator to help determine your macros.

Once a week you will need to do what they call a carb load. Once a week you have a high carb meal and increase your insulin. When I say high carb I don’t mean eat garbage, I mean healthy carbs please.  This levels off hormones and keeps your body stable. Women need this more than men do. Try to do your carb load before leg day. You will still increase your insulin and hormones will stabilize but you will also have a great workout and burn off those carbs.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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Having Trouble Losing Weight or Increasing Muscle?

Having Trouble Losing Weight Or Increasing Muscle?

By Travis Wade

There’s a couple summits coming up that I feel are particularly important for those looking to lose weight or gain muscle. The Thyroid Summit is coming up and so is The Fat Summit. They are related in some ways and I’m sure there will be some of the same speakers at both.

The thyroid is the main driver in your metabolism. You need to take very good care of it and unfortunately it’s under a huge amount of unprecedented fire with the foods we eat and our environment. Thyroid problems have become a huge pandemic. Learn how to take care of your thyroid by attending this expert laden summit.

Own all of the expert talks to watch at your own pace

The Thyroid Connection Summit will help you:

  • Work with your doctor to get the right diagnosis/treatment

  • Address the root causes of thyroid dysfunction

  • Implement healthy dietary and lifestyle changes

  • Reclaim your health and vitality

  • And more!

The Thyroid Connection Summit is online and free from October 24-31, 2016!

Own all of the expert talks to watch at your own pace

I’ll see you at the summit!

There’s still so much confusion and misinformation out there about fat, both the fat on our bodies and the fats we eat. You’ve been told that eating fat makes you fat–and increases your risk for heart disease and other chronic illnesses–but fat is NOT the enemy. The truth is: eating MORE FAT can help shut down cravings, accelerate weight loss and potentially prevent or reverse disease!

WHY ATTEND?

Dr. Mark Hyman, Carrie Diulus and over 30 of the world’s top experts created The Fat Summit 2 to dispel the biggest MYTHS about fat, and reveal the latest research about how to eat, move and supplement your diet for improved health and longevity!

Own all of the expert talks to watch at your own pace

Dr. Hyman’s first Fat Summit was a major hit–The Fat Summit 2 has 30+ brand NEW interviews during which you’ll discover even more about…

  • Biohacking your biology and weight loss with healthy fats

  • Truths about saturated fat, cholesterol, butter, sugar, carbs and more

  • Review and discussion of the latest articles on fat and weight loss

  • Digestion of fats through supplementation

  • Effects of dietary fat on fertility

  • Importance of community for making/sustaining healthy lifestyle choices

  • How eating more fat complements/combats other dietary approaches

  • Best practices for maintaining your weight and healthy eating habits

The Fat Summit 2 is online and free from November 7-14, 2016!

Own all of the expert talks to watch at your own pace

I’ll see you at the summit!

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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The Keto Summit

The Keto Summit

By Travis Wade

There is a ketogenic summit going on right now and I recommend everyone has a listen here. It seems like every doctor is writing a book on how fat is good for you and all the benefits of eating good fats. Then there’s the doctors writing books on how carbohydrates and sugars are causing all kinds of problems for people. The word is getting out slowly, but a lot of people are stuck on the stigma that fat is bad. I hope those people can have their minds changed with this summit.

A ketogenic diet is a diet that induces ketosis. Ketosis is a state of fat burning where your body takes fats and produces ketones to use as energy for the body. The reason why so many doctors are writing books on healthy fats now is because of the abundant amount of benefits a high fat diet has. Some of the favourites are weight loss, better immune system, better athletic performance, thinking clearer, prevention of so many critical diseases like Alzheimer’s, and increased homeostasis.

Some of the books written about sugar and the negative effects are “Grain Brain” by David Perlmutter , “Wheat Belly” by Dr. William Davis, and “The Blood Sugar Solution” by Dr. Mark Hyman. This list could go on for a very long time and so could the list of books written about how fat is good for you. “Eat Fat Get Thin” by Dr. Mark Hyman is a great start.

Listen to some of the world’s best experts talk about the topic at “The Keto Summit“.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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The Ultimate Health and Happiness Plan

stress relief

The Ultimate Health and Happiness Plan

stress relief

By Travis Wade

I’ve been an EMT for over 18 years now and it’s great to be able to help people out especially when they need it most. The down side is most of the people we deal with are people who don’t help themselves so we have to help them. There is way more depression out there than I ever thought and people have what they call “failure to thrive”. They don’t die. They live out their life on our stretcher. It’s not a great way to live and the number one reason why we get called is loneliness. What I do now is help people before they get to that point. I help people who want to help themselves. I keep people off the stretcher.

The main reason I do what I do is because I’ve seen what fitness has done for me. Of course it does a lot physically, I’m faster, stronger, feel better, look better, and move better in general, but it does way more. It created a lot of confidence for me which spilled over into every aspect of my life. That’s what I see in others as well. It starts with getting fitter and then confidence starts when someone accomplishes a goal. Confidence creates success for people.

What I Do…

blue zones

“The Blue Zones” is a book by Dan Buettner. He talks about the 4 regions of the world where people are living the longest and what they all have in common. Research shows that people who live happy are the people that are living the longest. The 5 things that these people have in common is:

1. They have a sense of purpose. In other words, you can’t retire. The people that retire and sit at the coffee shops complaining about the world around them are miserable.

2. They have friends and family around them. They don’t believe in moving out. They live together. You can’t move to paradise island and be happy. You will last about 3 months and then it’s time to come home.

3. You have to surround yourself with the right people. You could have the best job in the world, but if you go to work with a bunch of dirt balls everyday it’s going to suck.

4. Proper diet with proper proportions.

5. Proper exercise.

What I do creates happiness and longevity.

My mission is to create a community of happy people around me that are beautiful on the inside and out. I encourage volunteering and altruism when I can and try to help out when I can as well. This is why I do what I do.

How I do It…

meditate

Exercise

The first thing I try to do is get people exercising doing things that they will enjoy. You have to like it or you won’t continue with it. You’ll have the initial motivation and after a while you’ll have all kinds of excuses to not show up.

Diet

The next thing I do is to try to get people to eat healthy. The number one thing you want to do with food is get the nutrients your body needs. The book I most commonly use to help my clients eat well is called “The 10 Day Detox Cookbook” by Dr. Mark Hyman.

Sometimes diet and exercise is all people need and they feel great and get their goals. I heard a trainer say once that people aren’t fat because their bodies are broken. He’s partially right. There is usually something more going on, but almost everybody has underlying physical health issues these days that contribute as well.

So my next step after diet and exercise is to look at nutrient deficiencies. Without doing a panel on someone I just address the top nutrient deficiencies in north America.  Sometimes this is all people need to accomplish their goals and feel great.

Meditation

Next, I educate people on the importance of meditation. It’s an easy concept to laugh about because people appear to be doing nothing but people that overachieve dedicate their ability to overachieve to all the meditation they do. Many cultures have been doing it for thousands of years and they know the benefits.

More recently in our culture we have been studying the effects with MRI and other technology to see what’s happening in the body. Activating the relaxation response is the only intervention known to man that actually makes a person’s biological age younger. It also allows a person to focus to get more done.

Other Resources

neurotropic factor

Microbiome

After that I will get to know someone and get a feel for other possible resources to make them as healthy as possible. viome.com will test a person’s microbiome to see what they have going on inside them.

We are made up of 10x more bacteria than we are human body cells and we have 10x more viruses than we do bacteria cells. We have a huge ecosystem going on in and on us and it has a massive, massive impact on us. One example is there are two main types of bacteria in us; bacteroidetes and firmicutes. Bacteroidetes is skinny person bacteria and firmicutes is fat person bacteria. You need to know how to manipulate these to your advantage.

Hormones

I might ask people to work on hormone imbalances. A place called True Balance does a full panel including nutrients, blood cell counts, hormones, and even antigens. It’s great to see this and they educate people about their particular situation and offer treatment as well.

DNA Test

A couple other resources available are The DNA Company. They test your DNA and tell you what things you need to avoid and what things you should be doing.

Detoxification

Another resource is Wendy Myers who deals with toxicity and minerals. We are exposed to over 200 toxins before we are born and 3000 more are being created every year. A hundred years ago our liver could take care of us, but not anymore. Toxins accumulate in the brain and in our mitochondria which are responsible for creating our energy. We become slower and can’t think as well over time. We need to detox.

Mental Barriers

I guess I should mention Jon Gabriel. My friend that talked about how people’s bodies aren’t broken has a point. We’ve all been through some mental trauma in life. Sometimes it’s enough to prevent people from attaining their goals. Jon Gabriel deals with that side of things and his website is thegabrielmethod.com.

Journaling

Finally, I try to get every client I have to journal. My coach journals twice a day. I journal once a day in the morning. If I give you the formula to happiness, it doesn’t mean you will be happy. You have to implement the formula. The best way to hold yourself accountable to implement the formula is to journal. These are some of the key factors to implement in your daily life that have been proven to significantly increase happiness. 

Journal in the morning because starting your day by taking time for yourself is the best way to start a day. If you start your day on a positive note then you will live your day on a positive note. If you start every day on a positive note that is how you will live your life. Rate your happiness out of 10 and journal for a month and rate your happiness out of 10 again.

Journaling allows us to relive the good things in our lives. No matter what happens to you in a day, no matter how good it was, journaling will be the best part of your day because you get to relive whatever happened without the bad. 

When good things happen it creates dopamine which is the “feel good” neurotransmitter. When we journal we relive the good things without the bad and we get the dopamine again. We all need dopamine! Some people get it by eating sugar, I’m asking you to get it by journaling.

If you want more information on journaling watch this Tedtalk with Shawn Achor. If you want to know what I journal, contact me and I will send you the happiness template.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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Why Do People Eat Breakfast Food At Breakfast?

breakfast

Why Do People Eat Breakfast Food At Breakfast?

breakfast

By Travis Wade

I know, cuz they’re hungry. I know, I know, but why do they eat breakfast food? And why are they hungry? Some people eat differently than others. What’s all that about? Let’s have a look at some of these questions and the answers.

Breakfast food. Eggs? Bacon? Fruit? Cereal? Toast? Jam? Ham? Hamburger??? Why does someone eat hamburger at breakfast? And another is vegan and sticks to tofu and oats? How active is the vegan? And do they care about building muscle?

If you’re a bodybuilder, you’ll need a lot of protein and your body is begging for protein in the morning. Is there such thing as a vegan bodybuilder? There aren’t many and that’s cuz a bodybuilder craves meat. The vegan is probably a little more sedentary; they don’t want the meat.

Carbs or Fats

breakfast

Want to know why I eat bacon? Besides the addiction, which could mean I have a food sensitivity to it and that can be common with pork products. Besides that. I like bacon because I like a keto-diet. A diet where I get my energy from fats instead of carbs. I still have carbs in the form of fruits and vegetables, but not in the morning.

Carbs are good before and after a workout and towards the end of the day because they can make you sleepy. You’ll get the initial rush with the increase in insulin, then the crash. I never eat anything white due to its high calorie content and high glycemic index which is perfect for storing fat. Also, the number one thing you are trying to accomplish with food is to get the nutrient your body needs. All things white like sugar, salt, trans fats, grains, potatoes, parsnips are low nutrient and high glycemic leaving you tired.

Fibre

breakfast

So why do people eat fruit in the morning? Well, there are 3 parts to the digestive system and you have to keep all three running smooth. Eating is first, then using the food, then excretion. What part do you think the fruit helps with…? Lots of fibre… After everything in your gut is sitting and fermenting all night, fruit is a good idea for excretion of waste.

Intermittent Fasting

bulletproof coffee

Why do people do bulletproof or intermittent fasting at breakfast? The idea is to remain in ketosis for as long as possible in order to lose weight. Ketosis is the process of using fats for energy. You can get the fats from food or from your stored fats and your body doesn’t care where it gets it from; it’ll take from both until you run out of the fats from food, like in the morning, and then it has to take from your stored fats.

So why the bulletproof? It provides your body with much needed energy in the morning and if you do it the Dave Asprey way, (he’s the guy who founded Bulletproof Coffee), you’ll be in full ketosis right away. It usually takes about 10 days to be in full ketosis when you stop eating carbs and use fat for energy. Compliance is the hardest part of a ketogenic diet but, it certainly works.

Eggs

breakfast

Why the eggs? The yolk is packed full of nutrients your body needs and the whites are full of protein. Like I said before, your body needs protein in the morning. Eggs are great because they can keep you in ketosis and you get some protein. Add some bacon and bamb! That’s enough protein and fat to keep you going for a while.

Addictions

breakfast

So why do most people eat the white foods in the morning? Oats, toast, cereal, jam is so much sugar. Cuz they’re hungry! We’ve been over this. They are all addictions. They provide almost no nutrient but, they feed visceral adipose tissue on the stomach. It’s a hungry fat that causes you to crave the white foods so you eat the white foods then more visceral adipose tissue gets created leading to more cravings and the slippery slope continues. These foods cause much more damage to your body then the fat on your stomach; that should be the least of your worries. Check out the article on bread here.

You are what you eat? Hell ya! I eat fat and protein for breakfast. Want to see my abs? It’s not easy to quit all the foods that create visceral adipose tissue but, I can help and I have seen amazing results. Time and time again people lose weight and put on muscle and feel great! They talk about their increased energy and how they keep looking better and better. I love results!

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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It’s Time You Knew the Truth About Why You’re Fat!

truth about fat

It’s Time You Knew The Truth About Why You’re Fat!

truth about fat

By Travis Wade

There are 2 thoughts when it comes to food. I hear the comment “Food is meant to be enjoyed”.  Agreed. To a point. Alcohol is meant to be enjoyed as well. The other way to think of food is, the number one thing you are trying to accomplish with food is to get the nutrients your body needs. Hopefully you can learn to do both at the same time.

Let me start by saying it’s not your fault that you’re fat. Mostly. I’m not enabling here. Let’s say our society advertised for alcohol and we were told that it was healthy, nutritious, and makes us happy. Have you ever played the game one truth and two lies? Let me get back to this.

The Food Industry

truth about fat

A lot of people don’t realize how huge the food industry is. It is really, really, big business! The food industry wants your money and they hire people to make their food as highly addictive as possible. They’ve done very well. This practice is nothing new. We all know Coca-Cola used to put cocaine in their drink.

Then they advertise it very well. I heard once that if the food needs to be advertised then it’s not good for you. It sounds pretty accurate. So we have foods that are extremely addictive and are constantly advertised to us as being amazing. Then almost all restaurants offer genetically modified grains in the form of some kind of bread. Do you blame people for being fat?

The biggest addictions are sugar, salt, fat, flour, highly processed foods, refined carbohydrates, and almost all packaged foods have some form of these addictions. If you don’t understand what the word is, it’s likely one of the above in some hyper-addictive form or a toxin used to preserve the food to make it taste better.

Part of what makes these foods so addictive is their high glycemic index. When you eat high glycemic foods you get a sugar rush. It’s drug like and your mind relates to whatever you just ate as energy. When you start to lack energy you’ll need your fix. When sugar was compared to cocaine they found it lights up the pleasure centres of the brain 4 times as much as cocaine. Sugar isn’t the most addictive culprit. Flour is even worse with a higher glycemic index. On a side note, a rule of thumb is, if it can last forever on your shelf it’s not good.

Visceral Adipose Tissue

truth about fat

We need to talk about visceral adipose tissue (VAT). This is the fat stored around the belly area. It is a super fat. A hungry fat. A dangerous fat. When you eat high glycemic foods the energy goes into the VAT and then you’re hungry again. You eat more creating more VAT. It is a cycle that continues once you’re on it. It’s a very slippery slope.

Maltodextrin is a glucose attached to another glucose attached to another in a long chain of simple sugars. Maltose is two simple sugars attached to each other. The list of ingredients that is worse than table sugar is long and widely used in almost every package of food made. High fructose corn syrup is one of these that is sometimes disguised as “natural flavours” or just fructose.

I’m going to part with a secret I have kept my whole life. Please, no need to spread this around. I can’t stand watching a fat person eat sugar filled foods. It’s a lot like watching an alcoholic reaching for the bottle with a shaky hand. It’s really hard to watch and I want to help these people. “Food is meant to be enjoyed.”  Agreed. To a point.

truth about fat

So how do you kick these incredibly overwhelming addictions?  If you’re an emotional eater it is going to be very difficult to quit your addictions, especially during hard times. My best suggestion is to take it seriously like any other addiction and see an addictions counsellor. One resource I found is Jon Gabriel with The Gabriel Method. He is a good man that dealt with his emotional eating and now teaches others how to do it.

The first method I try is to get my clients to follow the 10 day detox by Dr. Mark Hyman. Pick a time when you’re ready and drop the bad stuff all at once, cold turkey. It resets your system and the cravings go away within just days. The hard part is figuring out how to eat properly and finding good food that you like and learning how to prepare it so it tastes good. I see great results and lots of weight loss. It’s an amazing place to start. No gimmicks, just healthy eating habits.

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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10 Reasons Why Bread Is Bad For You

bread

What The Baker Doesn’t Want You To Know!

bread

By Travis Wade

1.      Bromide- binds to thyroid hormone carrier.  This prevents T4 from being converted into the active T3 thyroid hormone. Thyroid hormone is a big part of what depicts your metabolism. Less T3 means a slower metabolism.

bread

2.      Sugar- is one of the products used by the food industry to make food as addictive as possible.  When tested against cocaine, sugar lights up the pleasure centres in the brain four times as much. The fast absorption makes sugar drug like and gives a person a quick high, then a crash.  The end result is fat gain and left feeling tired and wanting more.

bread

3.      Flour- is refined to be higher glycemic index than sugar. It mixes with enzymes in your mouth and turns to glucose right away. This makes flour a great fat gainer. It doesn’t have much nutrient content; anything that will last forever on your shelf is not good.  It is more fattening and possibly more addictive than sugar due to its quicker absorption rate. The average american eats 152 pounds of sugar and 146 pounds of flour a year. This sugar and flour combination is the vast leader causing alzheimer’s. A famous book written on the subject is Grain Brain and a famous movie that is a documentary is Bread Head. Click on the link for a trailer.

bread

4.      Yeast- like bacteria of the body you have good bacteria that you want to grow and the bad bacteria to die. Same goes with yeast and unfortunately the bad kind of yeast is in bread.

bread

5.     Gluten– is the protein in bread that makes it stick together and is one of the highest allergens in our food supply. It breaks down the lining of the gut and gets absorbed into the blood. It’s a big molecule that the body doesn’t recognize and your body forms antigens against it. These antigens can’t tell the difference between the protein in your thyroid and the gluten. Your thyroid gets attacked by the same antigens attacking the gluten. This is the main cause of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. Once again, your thyroid depicts your metabolism.

bread

6.      The number one thing you’re trying to do with food is get the nutrients your body needs.  Bread is very high glycemic and very high calorie with very little other nutrient. It’s a quick fat gainer and takes up room where you could be putting much healthier foods that your body desperately needs.

bread

7.      Glyphosate– Monsanto has gotten to be my biggest nightmare. Their glyphosate is sprayed on grain crops 3 days before they are harvested for quick ripening. Of course it gets in the food.  It is a really good chelator and binds to minerals to clean them off stuff. It binds to minerals in our body and depletes our body of minerals. It causes massive amounts of cancer in animal studies. There have been no human studies, (no volunteers). It’s known to mutate human cells leading to cancer. Wherever glyphosate gets sprayed at the time it gets sprayed cancer and other diseases have increased significantly. We are now officially allowed to call it a carcinogen. One of the side effects isn’t just the massive increase in diseases but significant weight gain as well.

gmo

8.       GMOs– Some grains are GMO which means they are genetically modified to be highly toxic to keep bugs and pathogens and birds away. Natural toxins are increased and others are added. All these toxins massively increase inflamation and disease.

bread

9.      Toxins– It is common to find over twenty different toxins in bread. Toxins like bleach, high fructose corn syrup, mycotoxins, and bacterial toxins.

bread

10.     Phytic acid and wheat fibre. They deplete your body of nutrients. Phytic acid decreases your body’s ability to absorb minerals like zinc, calcium, and iron. The wheat fibre depleats your body from vitamin D which is the highest nutrient deficoency in North America.

I hope you liked the article. If you did, share it with friends. These are the types of issues I deal with daily with my clients in order to accomplish their fitness goals. I believe in a coach like approach and I help guide my clients to do the things they deem relevant for them and they are seeing really great results. For me the reward is the happiness it creates and seeing the new found confidence in people.

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What Vegans Know That You Don’t

vegans

What Vegans Know That You Don’t

vegans

These are the secrets vegans are keeping!

By Travis Wade

Oxidative Stress

Oxidants are highly unstable compounds because they are missing an electron. They steal an electron from their neighbor, but now the neighbor needs an electron, so it steals one from its neighbor, and so on. When this happens in the body, it is called oxidative stress and it’s very damaging to our cells if it’s not stopped.

How do we get the oxidants in the first place?

Free radicals or oxidants can be caused from processes in the body like metabolism, exercise, phagocytosis, and inflammation. External causes of free radicals are toxins, radiation like the sun, and medications or drugs. I looked on the internet to see if I could find a table that shows the oxidative stress of foods, but there is no such table. One thing people should know is carbohydrate metabolism causes exponentially more oxidative stress than fat metabolism.

We need a balance between antioxidants and prooxidants. However, if you look at the list of things that cause free radicals it’s easy to see we have enough prooxidants. All the toxins we are exposed to make it vital to get as many antioxidants as we can.

Antioxidants

vegans

Antioxidants are a molecule that have an electron to give without becoming unstable itself or it can steal an electron from its neighboring antioxidant buddy.

The compounds in fruits and vegetables giving them all their colors are called polyphenols and flavonoids. They are very potent compounds and thousands of them are found in plants. They are only found in plants; nowhere else. They serve as a defense for the plant against the oxidation of the sun. The reason plants don’t get sunburned is because they have these flavonoids, and carotenoids to some degree, that protect them from the oxidization of the sun. They are very potent antioxidants.

They have the same function in us. They lower inflammation very dramatically, they quench the carcinogens directly halting cancer growth, they improve our immune system, they affect our stress response system making us more likely to be calm, and they support detoxification. They do it in a way no other compound can.

Your cruciferous vegetables are high fibre, low calorie, and high nutrient making them essential daily. Check out World’s Healthiest Foods to see the nutrient content of these superfoods! All the nutrients and antioxidants may be the reason fruits and vegetables may be the cure for cancer. Any diet that staves off cancer has to be good for you! Check out Chris’ story here.

The Problem Vegans Encounter

Iron, zinc, coenzyme q10, collagen, protein or certain amino acids, omega 3 fats, and Vitamin B12 are very difficult for vegans to get from their diet. These nutrients are essential. Check out the links on these nutrients to find out more about how they are beneficial. I can’t explain all that here or this article will get really long!

Juicing Recipe

vegans

Because I don’t like vegetables, I juice them daily. One of the key ingredients Chris used to cure his cancer is carrots. And by the way, he used his method because he read God’s Way to Ultimate Health by Rev. George Malkmus with Michael Dye; he is not the only one who was successful curing their cancer with raw vegetables.  There has been many. One thing I may add is, some doctors will use vitamin C intravenously to help with cancer treatment.

This is what I juice daily.

Ingredients:

1 bunch of spinach
2-3 carrots
1/2-inch knob of ginger
4 celery stocks
5 leaves of cabbage

Directions: Juice ingredients together and drink.

These are a great combination of vegetables for antioxidant and nutrient benefits. Spinach is on the Dirty Dozen list on ewg.org which is a great resource for toxic rating of all kinds of products. If you can get organic, it’s preferred, but if not make sure you wash your spinach really well. Celery is also on the Dirty Dozen list so the same goes. You can usually get organic spinach, carrots, ginger, and celery at Superstore. Cabbage is on the Clean Fifteen list.

vegans

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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Morning Mojo

morning mojo

Morning Mojo

morning mojo

By Travis Wade

I just wanted to share one of the recipes from the 28 Day Challenge. It’s called Morning Mojo and one of the important things it does is it helps increase stomach acids. A lot of us suffer from low stomach acid and that can mimic high stomach acid. If you go to a conventional doctor you may get treated for high stomach acid making the situation worse. All you really need is Morning Mojo or Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar in water.

The reason stomach acids are so important is because they help us absorb nutrients from our food. One of the substances that causes low stomach acid is antibiotics. With each course of antibiotics, you will produce less and less stomach acids causing you to have trouble with absorption of nutrients.

Got anemia? Lack of iron? Here’s all the things you have going against you. Possible low stomach acids from too much antibiotics. Low nutrient in the soil because farmers use chemical fertilizers which causes lack of nutrients in our food. Heavy metal toxins block absorption in the gut. GMO foods prevent absorption in the gut and binding to nutrients in our bodies depleting them further. Bread.

Grains get sprayed with glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup), 3 days before the crop is harvested. It ripens (kills), the crop and kills the weeds for the next season. Glyphosate is patented as an antibiotic and one of the widest chelators known to man. It is used to clean minerals off things. It binds to minerals in our body and depletes our minerals. Let’s stay away from grains and up our stomach acids for better nutrient absorption. Here’s the Morning Mojo recipe.

morning mojo

Morning Mojo: Lemon Ginger Detox

Ingredients:

12 oz. glass water (at room temperature)

½ lemon

Either:  ½ inch knob ginger root OR pinch of cayenne pepper

Directions: Add the lemon juice to the glass of water.

If ginger: finely grate the ginger using a zester, and add the zest to the glass of water.

If cayenne pepper:  add a pinch of cayenne to your water. Perfect way to start your day!

If you have a good blender, get organic lemons and blend all the ingredients including the lemon peel. The peel has the essential oil in it, and it’s very beneficial.

This is just one of the recipes found in the 28 Day Challenge. Everything is in place for a reason and has it’s health benefits. The side effect happens to be weight loss for people looking to lose weight. It also teaches good habits. I hope you like the recipe and if you are interested in trying the 28 Day Challenge, click the link and sign up!

I wish you lots of health, love and happiness!

Travis Wade

The only holistic personal trainer in Edmonton

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