Sugar is the new fat!

I spend a lot of time thinking about ways to be healthier. It’s my job and my passion. I’m constantly looking for the latest research on health and nutrition. Lately, I’ve had something sweet on my mind: sugar!
We’ve spent so much time thinking about fat for the past few decades that research on sugar has only recently caught up. Let me tell you, the results are not good. It turns out that added sugar can be toxic to your liver like alcohol, and it contributes to a set of symptoms called “metabolic syndrome”, which can damage your organs, ruin your mood, contribute to diabetes, and even cause weight gain without consuming extra calories.
It’s a commonly held belief, even among scientists and doctors, that a calorie is a calorie and in terms of weight loss, calories in minus calories out equals gaining or losing weight. However, In a recent documentary called “That Sugar Film”, Damon Garneau was able to gain weight without changing his calorie intake or activity level, because the excess sugar he was consuming caused changes in his body that led to more fat storage.
Over time, consuming too much sugar can damage the liver and pancreas. These organs both help regulate blood sugar, and if they are overwhelmed, they trigger your body to store blood sugar as fat, usually around the waist.
The good news is that sugar in its natural state–in fruits and vegetables–comes packaged with fiber, which slows down our body’s absorption of sugars and reduces their impact on the pancreas and liver, which are the organs most affected by over-consuming sugar. This does not apply to other natural sources of sugar, like honey, maple syrup, and fruit juice. These concentrated forms of sugar, even though they are natural, act on the body more like processed sugar, since they are not incorporated in whole foods with fiber and other nutrients.
Just because sugar is bad, doesn’t mean you should jump on the “sugar free” bandwagon either. Most products that advertise this use artificial sweeteners instead. There is some evidence that specific artificial sweeteners have toxic effects or are carcinogenic. In general, there is also evidence that eating artificial sweetener causes your body to crave sugar and make up for lost calories elsewhere. Be careful with the Splenda.
Fat has a lot of calories in it, so it’s gotten a bad rap over the years. But now we know that WHERE you get your calories matters, and the worst place to get calories is concentrated sugar. It hides in all kinds of food, and companies use over 61 different names for it on ingredient labels: high fructose corn syrup, cane juice, sucrose, glucose, dextrose–the list goes on and on. It’s a lot to pay attention to, but your health is worth it.

If you know anybody who could benefit from this information, please share it!

Invest in your success!

A Harvard psychologist released a study concluding that you are the sum total of the five people you hang out with most.  If you hang out with smokers, you are likely to be a smoker. If your friends are overweight, you are likely to also be overweight. Are your friends rich and successful?  Guess what you’re most likely to be?

I’m a very goal-oriented person, so the five people I “hang out” with most are: Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, and Thomas Edison.  When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is read inspirational passages from these men and people like them. It helps me set my mind on course for a good day.

Napoleon Hill is one of my biggest inspirations.  His book “Think and Grow Rich” is a classic source for the secrets of success.  He lays out 17 keys to achieving your goals, and the first one is this: Definiteness of purpose.

Definiteness of purpose means that you must have a specific goal in mind in order to be successful, otherwise you will drift aimlessly through life.  What that means is that your goal must be specific, and it’s best to write it down so that you can remind yourself each day what your goal is. Napoleon Hill also recommends writing down what you are willing to give up to achieve your goal.  He’s clear that nothing comes for free, and that you must be able to control your own mind and actions to accomplish anything meaningful. My definite purpose is to live a healthy, fit, organic life, while educating people on the correct way of exercising and moving.

Mr Hill’s second key to success is called the “Mastermind Alliance.”  This rule refers to securing inspiration and cooperation from like-minded people.  This is why I wake up each morning and read the writings of people I admire. It’s also why I attend so many conferences and belong to several mastermind groups relating to health, fitness, and nutrition.

The third key to success is “Applied Faith”, which means having faith not only in a spiritual sense, but also faith in yourself.  The faith is that the Divine has given you all you need to succeed, and all you need to do is to tap into that potential. If you pray or meditate or do anything where you call on the universe for assistance, don’t ask for success.  Instead, ask for the ability to tap into your already-existing potential to achieve it.

I have faith in myself, and I also have faith in my clients–I know they have the strength to achieve their goals.  My hope is that I can pass along some of the wisdom I’ve gathered from the “five people I hang out with” so that they can tap into that potential to live healthy, wealthy lives.

Titleist Performance Institute: Get get smarter, get stronger.

As many of you know, I’ve made golf fitness a key part of my practice.  For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been certified as a level one trainer by the Titleist Performance Institute for some time now.  I recently upgraded my certification from level one to level two. That doesn’t make me a golf pro–I can’t teach golf, but I can expand the limits of what a golfer can do.  TPI’s philosophy of the swing is: “We don’t believe there is one way to swing a club; we believe there are an infinite number of ways to swing a club. But we do believe that there is one efficient way for everyone to swing a club and it is based on what they can physically do.”  In other words: the efficiency of your golf swing is only limited by what your body can do. What I can do for you as a TPI golf fitness pro is to assess your body’s limits and work to expand those limits as much as possible.

By training and testing to upgrade my certification, I learned better and more precise techniques to assess and develop power and strength.  I can also now design a comprehensive program for golf fitness, including nutrition, cardiovascular development, and advanced golf swing biomechanics.  I learned specialized techniques and practical applications for motor learning. I also trained in how to spot golf-specific injuries before they get serious, so that I can adjust your program to help you heal, and teach you how to move so that it doesn’t happen again.

Titleist has 7,000 golfers under contract, so they have a huge sample size of highly skilled golfers to perform research on the physical and mental conditioning of golfers.  The techniques I’ve learned incorporate lessons from years of study with thousands of individual athletes, and they take into account physical conditioning, course management, mental and emotional state, and many other factors to make sure that your program is tailored to you personally.

I have a passion for this stuff, so if you have a passion for golf and want to expand your boundaries, give me a call.  If you contact me in the months of September and October, you’ll get a complimentary one hour assessment and functional movement analysis.  We’ll work together so you can stay sharp in the off season and come back next year stronger than ever.

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