The vegan shopping list

What foods do you buy to safeguard body composition and health whilst following a vegan diet?

Where is the steak? My kitchen top after a vegan food shop

I’m currently following a flexitarian diet. It’s been, uh, interesting.

Flexitarian means you eat as few animal products as possible so, meat once a week or once a month depending on how hardcore you are. In practice I’ve been eating only vegetable based products at home and when eating out I go with meat choices – this makes life a lot easier as vegans are so poorly catered for in restaurants.

However, given the fact that if you go vegan you’re not going to be eating a lot of food we were (arguable) designed to eat, what do we do to guard against nutritional deficiencies? By structuring our diet choices and looking at macronutrients and the sources and types of micronutrients that we’re getting from our diet we can try to cover the bases and work from there.

Missing Micronutrients Read more..

Physical Recovery Hacks for the Masters athlete

…or, How I Learned to Avoid Overtraining

Coach Dan John: masters athlete, teacher, mentor, coach, wise man and all round good egg.

Recovery is the bedrock of health, fitness and athletic training. You must address recovery if you’re to get the most out of your gym time!

NB: this was first published at Muscle Talk in their Over 40 training forum but applies to EVERYONE

Let’s face it 40 isn’t that old any more 50 isn’t even that old anymore, and your training should reflect this. As the body ages and types of training needs do not change just the ways you train and amounts of training that you use. The different tools you use and the amount you use them change. Recovery techniques are such tools.  Whilst this may seem like a serious disadvantage it can actually be used to change training for the good making it more efficient, effective with less injury and more result.

So what does training smarter mean and what facets of recovery should you look at? Below is a little introduction to training the Masters athlete, the changes you make for a them and the practices you encourage. Read more..

The flexitarian experiment begins

In a world short of resources and rife with poor farming practices, how much can your conscience stand?

So my girlfriend lost an argument with a vegetarian, that’s how this all got started.

Thanks love.

The challenge is this: go from eating animals and animal products 4-6 times a DAY to being a vegan save for 2-3 servings a WEEK, and stay happy and healthy doing it.

I’m a nutritionist who experiments on himself a lot, trying different diets to see the advantages and disadvantages, not because I think there is a fix all ‘diet’ out there, I just need to live them for a while from the inside to experience the problems for myself. Veganism is something I had wondered about undertaking for a long time I just couldn’t find the excuse to make such a huge change. Now I have that excuse.

I. LOVE. MEAT.

If there is a heaven, surf and turf is on the menu. Proper surf and turf with a T bone and a lobster not rump and scampi. Read more..

Poly unsaturated fats bad for your health?

Shocker! Research out recently demonstrates that higher intakes of omega 6 fats are linked to bowel disease. Could everything you understand about ‘good fats’ and ‘bad fats’ be wrong?

Yet again new information highlights the fact that though food producing companies use the potential benefits of  certain nutrients as a selling point,  the truth is usually far more complex…..

Poly unsaturated fats (think omega 6, omega 3, fish and flax oils etc) have been pushed and pushed on the strength of their health benefits. Encouraging effects on heart, brain and joint health and been demonstrated but there’s also information that you don’t hear a huge amount about. Much of it surrounds omega 6 in particular.

THIS article on the BBC highlights the findings of a group of multinational group of researchers looking at the effects of different levels of dietary fats. They found that high intakes of certain poly unsaturated fats could have a severe impact upon  gut health. In a sentence:

‘Those with high intakes of omega 6 polyunsaturated fats were almost twice as likely to develop ulcerative colitis’

In fact some of the conclusions were startling;

An estimated 30% of cases could be attributed to having dietary intakes higher than the lowest quartile of linoleic acid intake.

Startling but not completely unexpected. Why? Below we’ll look at the why’s and hows: Read more..

Food Inc. the film: Is modern agriculture making you sick?

Much has changed in the way we grown, process, transport and prepare our foods but is this rapid change responsible for a rapid decline in our health?

A new film on the heals of books like Fast Food Nation, the Omnivore’s Dilemma and Good Calories, Bad Calories seeks to tackle what is seen as the growing problem of the industrialization of food manufacture. The issues debated include

• Food quality and health
• Food pricing and food as commodity
• Labeling and health, misleading claims and ‘hiding’ of foods.
• Power and size of food producers: global companies versus the small producers Read more..

Q&A Two views of workout and sports nutrition

What to have for maximum recovery from training and when to have it

I recently was asked to join James Collier on stage at the BodyPower expo at the NEC for a nutrition Q&A. By way of introduction James is a ex dietician and now a Registered Nutritionist and probably the UK’s foremost specialist nutritionist for bodybuilders. Various topics were covered in the seminars we gave but here is a short excerpt on sports nutrition.

James (in the distance) kicks off going into good detail about the products available to the trainee like whey protein, various carbohydrates. I follow (in the foreground) up talking a little on the timing aspects of the issue. My view is that whilst you should look into things like hydrolyzed whey, vitargo, waxy maize starch etc but keep in mind that the timing dogma often followed “drop the weight and start on the recovery nutrition” is a little short sighted.

So there we go, the sports nutrition question covered from two different angles by two different nutrition specialists:

(starts 20 seconds in)

James & Drew at BodyPower Expo

Clinical nutrition update: a new mechanism governing hunger? Sterols and cancer

Two interesting reports from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition this month…..

GI and satiety

We all know that eating lower GI carb sources is the smart choice, what is being discovered now is more and more info on the actual mechanisms of this contribution to health – as well as the odd suprise.

Glycemic Index (GI) is a measure of the rate at which carbohydrate hits the blood after you consume a carbohydrate containing meal.  When you consume a meal with high GI carbs, a significant portion of the carbs are released speedily into the blood….

Read more..

Taking the plunge with Vibram Five Fingers

Sometimes you see something so stupid that it just might work….

There’s a lot of hype surrounding these shoes so I was reluctant to take the plunge and buy a pair, however I was on the look out for something thin soled and light to replace my Nike aqua socks, and a piece of footwear more suited to the outdoor martial arts and kettlebell training I do.

When I lived in Aus I basically lived in flipflops for 9 months of the year and since returning I’ve noticed a real reduction in foot endurance and strength – a problem for what I like to do. These purport to the be the answer. Why? Read more..

Get out there and MOVE!

There’s a world of information out here in internet land but what exercise program should you follow? Which is best for  fitness and dropping fat the quickest? What SHOULD you do???…  Just MOVE!

Picture: Or Hiltch

In a world of information and the overload it brings, it is easy to end up doing nothing, hell, forums and chat rooms are full of people so busy discussing health and fitness they forget to do the important bit and actually act upon the information.

There’s a whole load of different ways to train out there but though the methods may differ the programs, packages and everyday practicalities have the same qualities. Look for

• Safety: injured isn’t a good way to get fit is it?
  
• Quality: this can mean a lot of things but what it doesn’t mean is slogging your self mindlessly
• Variety: yoga, weights, running, pilates, kettlebells… the list is endless. They are all just TOOLS in a toolbox. Do a variety of different tasks and ones that involve different levels of resistance, time and other qualities like flexibility.
• Progression: look to make things a little more challenging as you get fitter.
• Consistency: you need to repeatedly train to get the full effect, this doesn’t mean doing the same workout out day in day out or even for the same day each week but rather consistently training hard. This isn’t of course going to happen for most unless to have…
• FUN!: training should be challenging but also fun. Fitness is a journey not a destination. I want my clients to be healthy now, I want them to be healthy in years to come. Do what you like doing and enjoy the ride.

So what does this mean practically? How do you get these qualities into your training? Here’s some tips…

1) Join and gym with a partner or friend and try different classes and explore different section of the gym

2) Don’t confine yourself to weights only or cardio only – cross train

3) Use cardio wisely and get a variety: do short fast rows, longer runs, cycle sprints… mix it up

4) Join a sports club!

5) Most importantly…. develop and active hobby or one that involves activity when you’re doing something else. I do Aikido, you may choose cycling, walking, gymnastics, parkour…. JUST DO SOMETHING!

With obesity on the rise you can’t afford to become part of the statistics. Remember health, vitality and fitness is not found in an infomercial product or the latest slimming pill, it a lifestyle. You have to internalise that want drive and desire to stay fit – but remember it is a lot easier when you’re having fun at the same time.

Training, overtraining and recovery Part 1

What is this ‘over-training’ that people always go on about? What are the symptoms, how does it hamper your training and decrease health, how at risk are you and what can you do about it?

Training

We train the body in order to acquire skill, adaption and/or and condition the body for our chosen task be it rowing, bodybuilding or Olympic lifting. The training stimulus needs to be sufficient in order to requite the body to make an adaptive response, this response, most of which happens between periods of training for periods of similarly structured training (such as a ’strength day’ or session) gives us our heightened performance. Read more..

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