Fitness Through Health
"Are fats good for me?" this seems to be the age old question.....for many years, many of us have been taught to fear and avoid dietary fat for fear that it will instantly become bodyfat and lead us down a path toward poor health. This is typically beleived because dietary fat is 9 calories per gram, versus carbohydrates and proteins which are 4 calories per gram. Fears around cholesterol and artery health fuel the publics avoidance of fats. This coupled with increasing knowledge about agribusiness farming practices and the rise poor health we've seen in recent decades, the fears around fat intake have unfortunately been fueled by an industry seeking to profit from inventing new processed food items. Whereas this may be their right from a business standpoint, advertising & marketing tends to play into the publics fears. Many biased studies get funded with $ signs as the validating and motivating factor rather than having the health of the public in mind. As a result, flawed research leads to product developement and marketing campaigns which are based on trendy sound bite information.
Another side to this argument comes from the "law of thermodynamics". When chooseing meals it seems logical that if you consume proteins & carbs you will get a larger volume of food at a lower caloric value. Calories in vs. calories out isnt quite as accurate as we have been led to believe. David Getoff, of the price-pottenger nutrition foundation (www.ppnf.org) has taught a wealth of info on this subject. Food calories and nutrtional requirements are not a numbers game. There are many factors involved in metabolism in order to meet our many diverse metabolic needs. All living things have cells & various nervous systems which have very specific priorities. Each working in response to every facet of our existance in a synergistic, regulation & response oriented manner. The same way standing on the 4 train in NYC requires gauging your balance so you don't fall, every cell in our bodies is waging it's own balance act based on and in response to the constantly varying quality of how we live and what we are exposed to. Air, fluids, foods, sounds, light, forces, and rest weighed against physical, mental, emotional, & environmental stressors. I'd say "How we look" to ourselves and others is of no concern to our cells and organs and is more of a social contruct and a result of a consumer culture that is bombarded with marketing and advertising from birth on up. We are sold fantasy, luxury, and hope by association to impressionable minds, both young & aged. All with the idea that if we invest in new & nifty "health" products, life will be somehow improved or we'll get a fast result. Unfortunately this leads to conditioned or learned standards of beauty.
Yet, for the goals of our nervous system, how we look is of least priority. Compensation for survival and the allowance of repair is ultimately how we are designed as our systems attempt to reach homeostasis depending on the issue at hand. Fortunately, there are ways to become more aware of the many signals your body may be revealing. Dietary fat or fat that comes in varying levels in many foods is not only taste enhancing and hunger curbing, but may assist tapering back sweet cravings. It's very interesting that we seem to be the only species concerned with caloric values and a fear of overeating. Putting on a few extra pounds is not just a result of food intake alone. Lifestyle, genetic predispositions, activity levels, environmental toxicity and digestive efficiency can all play roles in ones seeming ease at gaining or reducing bodyfat, and I'm probably missing a few. In an amazingly detailed investigative report, Gary Taubes illustrates in Good calories Bad calories, how daily food intake & portion size between the obese, those of "normal" weight & the skinny doesn't vary all that much. It's usually an inabilty to process, assimilate and use the nutrients in our foods that seems to be a possible culprit. This likely stemming from the effects of commercialization and modernization in how we obtain our food supply, and how we live in general from day to day.
Eating should never be viewed in a 1 size fits all approach, because we all differ in how we process nutrients and we all have metabolically individual tendencies. One size fits all approachs tend to serve industry well, but the consumer ends up falling short. This is all too evident in the fitness & exercise industry as i have touched on in the accompanying article under "Force Play".
Our intestines have a beneficial population of living organisms that are usually termed gut flora. Probiotics can assist in keeping a healthy internal Eco system and population of gut flora going. Hence the name- pro-biotic. These bacteria help us to break down proteins carbs & fats as well as assist in helping accomplish many other metabolic processes involved in digestion.. If you have ever been sick or been prescribed an anti-biotic for any reason, chances are that it not only wiped out whatever you took it for, but the good helpful bacteria that assist your digestion as well. Once our digestion is compromised so goes our ability to digest food, this over time compromises the immune system. As a species, the greater the stress loads we encourage and accept, the more likely we will ramp up the compensatory choices that our Immune System, enteric, autonomic and central nervous systems ultimately make. We humans were nomadic and migratory in nature. We had to keep moving to avoid becoming food for predators, as well as follow the weather patterns & food supplys in their seasonal migratory paths in an effort to survive. From fruits, nuts seeds, vegetables, tubers and insects to animals, birds, and sea life, we were constantly on the go in an effort to stay fed, at least in the days before farming & agriculture. Much like most other living things.
The advent of industrialisation & creative farming practices paved the way toward insuring a continous food supply, only as of the last few hundred years we have seemed to allow the change over of the tradition of farming and land husbandry to megacoporatised factory farming with an emphasis on volume and numeric turnover using GMO technologies. This may be genius for many forms of business, and actually may bring food to communities living in non arable locations, however, but what will ultimately be the cost? When it comes to our food supply, e.g. What goes into our bodies and that which we purvey globally with our "good health" seal, one can't help but to ask if the emphasis of our food production are profit driven. Can processed shelf life based foods sustain life? If so, a high quality of life & health? Everything lining most supermarket shelves and even health food stores are processed foods that are designed to make life easier, give you a break, & save time & effort. Prior to the last few hundred years, if you happen to decend from a social class that had any level of struggle, be it social, political, colonial, financial or otherwise, the whole world basically, it is not likely that calorie counting nor concern for fat intake was at the forefront of your forefathers/mothers concern. Hunger was the ever troubleing daily experience to curb and manage, even if one pushed paper for a living. Most meals were cooked at home, and it's highly probable that if you ate out, your meal was cooked in nearly a home cooked manner. Processed foods were not so widespread and available. The concept of skim, low fat, low carb, high & low protein, egg whites, artificial sweetners & numeric ratios and food phobias that are tied to many of today's waist reducing, body image, self esteem building programs wouldn't have gone over very well. Let alone eliminating or curbing ones fat intake for fear of caloric values or a thickening waist or hips. These concepts are very "one size fits all" and all too often you only see the success stories for which they work on a purely physical level. Their success may also be attributed to those individual just so happen to be thy metabolic type. We never see the pictures of those a given diet didn't work for, what happened to them? Health and happiness should, in theory, come with acheiving a great body. If not, we have to look deeper in our fitness pursuits and lifestyle choices. To have any sort if endurance to keep moving, thinking & working hard all day in a physical or intellectually challenged environment, one would eat to fulfill an appetite and to satisfy hunger while providing the brain & cells whatever they require. What we require tends to be mistaken for opinion, belief, emotional attachments, & sound byte science. It is likely that we were far more metabolically efficient prior to the industrial & technological revolutions. The appeal of modernity and our desire to "make life easier" in the workplace coupled with ongoing creative new inventions to problem solve & get things done in less time lend themselves to a less physical indoor work setting. However, physical daily activities that possibly lend themselves to greater metabolic efficiency, prove that hunger would likely creep up on us that much faster. Fat that was naturally occurimg in foods was not only important but necessary in delaying the digestion & processing speed of nutrients following digestion. This was and still is key to creating a sense of satiety following a meal. Some folks will eat a full meal and an hour later find that they are still hungry or have a salt or sweet craving. For others, hunger sensation may not even creep up, and they can go many hours on seemingly little to no food. These examples explain some of the tendencies which can occur in 2 different people.
Eating high quality pastured proteins, which contain naturally occuring healthy fats and beneficial oils along with whole grains and organic provisions from the ground in origin are our best bet if we are to build, maintain and sustain life and fend off disease states. Cravings and overeating are just signals that the body throws out to let you know that something is missing from the daily food intake based on your metabolic type, your individual needs. Identifying your metabolic type as a platform to success is a great start, as this can help you identify what will work with and against you.
Try to source your foods locally from farms, farmers markets and community based coops and make food choices that naturally occur in nature as best you can. Avoiding packaged foods with a shelf life should be emphasized as much as possible. Calories, don't worry, eat real foods for your individual metabolic needs, and eat well! A well operating metabolism, will get rid of what it doesn't need (excess bodyfat), cutting your food intake for fear of too many calories or fat, well, may compromise health and stress your body out.
Another side to this argument comes from the "law of thermodynamics". When chooseing meals it seems logical that if you consume proteins & carbs you will get a larger volume of food at a lower caloric value. Calories in vs. calories out isnt quite as accurate as we have been led to believe. David Getoff, of the price-pottenger nutrition foundation (www.ppnf.org) has taught a wealth of info on this subject. Food calories and nutrtional requirements are not a numbers game. There are many factors involved in metabolism in order to meet our many diverse metabolic needs. All living things have cells & various nervous systems which have very specific priorities. Each working in response to every facet of our existance in a synergistic, regulation & response oriented manner. The same way standing on the 4 train in NYC requires gauging your balance so you don't fall, every cell in our bodies is waging it's own balance act based on and in response to the constantly varying quality of how we live and what we are exposed to. Air, fluids, foods, sounds, light, forces, and rest weighed against physical, mental, emotional, & environmental stressors. I'd say "How we look" to ourselves and others is of no concern to our cells and organs and is more of a social contruct and a result of a consumer culture that is bombarded with marketing and advertising from birth on up. We are sold fantasy, luxury, and hope by association to impressionable minds, both young & aged. All with the idea that if we invest in new & nifty "health" products, life will be somehow improved or we'll get a fast result. Unfortunately this leads to conditioned or learned standards of beauty.
Yet, for the goals of our nervous system, how we look is of least priority. Compensation for survival and the allowance of repair is ultimately how we are designed as our systems attempt to reach homeostasis depending on the issue at hand. Fortunately, there are ways to become more aware of the many signals your body may be revealing. Dietary fat or fat that comes in varying levels in many foods is not only taste enhancing and hunger curbing, but may assist tapering back sweet cravings. It's very interesting that we seem to be the only species concerned with caloric values and a fear of overeating. Putting on a few extra pounds is not just a result of food intake alone. Lifestyle, genetic predispositions, activity levels, environmental toxicity and digestive efficiency can all play roles in ones seeming ease at gaining or reducing bodyfat, and I'm probably missing a few. In an amazingly detailed investigative report, Gary Taubes illustrates in Good calories Bad calories, how daily food intake & portion size between the obese, those of "normal" weight & the skinny doesn't vary all that much. It's usually an inabilty to process, assimilate and use the nutrients in our foods that seems to be a possible culprit. This likely stemming from the effects of commercialization and modernization in how we obtain our food supply, and how we live in general from day to day.
Eating should never be viewed in a 1 size fits all approach, because we all differ in how we process nutrients and we all have metabolically individual tendencies. One size fits all approachs tend to serve industry well, but the consumer ends up falling short. This is all too evident in the fitness & exercise industry as i have touched on in the accompanying article under "Force Play".
Our intestines have a beneficial population of living organisms that are usually termed gut flora. Probiotics can assist in keeping a healthy internal Eco system and population of gut flora going. Hence the name- pro-biotic. These bacteria help us to break down proteins carbs & fats as well as assist in helping accomplish many other metabolic processes involved in digestion.. If you have ever been sick or been prescribed an anti-biotic for any reason, chances are that it not only wiped out whatever you took it for, but the good helpful bacteria that assist your digestion as well. Once our digestion is compromised so goes our ability to digest food, this over time compromises the immune system. As a species, the greater the stress loads we encourage and accept, the more likely we will ramp up the compensatory choices that our Immune System, enteric, autonomic and central nervous systems ultimately make. We humans were nomadic and migratory in nature. We had to keep moving to avoid becoming food for predators, as well as follow the weather patterns & food supplys in their seasonal migratory paths in an effort to survive. From fruits, nuts seeds, vegetables, tubers and insects to animals, birds, and sea life, we were constantly on the go in an effort to stay fed, at least in the days before farming & agriculture. Much like most other living things.
The advent of industrialisation & creative farming practices paved the way toward insuring a continous food supply, only as of the last few hundred years we have seemed to allow the change over of the tradition of farming and land husbandry to megacoporatised factory farming with an emphasis on volume and numeric turnover using GMO technologies. This may be genius for many forms of business, and actually may bring food to communities living in non arable locations, however, but what will ultimately be the cost? When it comes to our food supply, e.g. What goes into our bodies and that which we purvey globally with our "good health" seal, one can't help but to ask if the emphasis of our food production are profit driven. Can processed shelf life based foods sustain life? If so, a high quality of life & health? Everything lining most supermarket shelves and even health food stores are processed foods that are designed to make life easier, give you a break, & save time & effort. Prior to the last few hundred years, if you happen to decend from a social class that had any level of struggle, be it social, political, colonial, financial or otherwise, the whole world basically, it is not likely that calorie counting nor concern for fat intake was at the forefront of your forefathers/mothers concern. Hunger was the ever troubleing daily experience to curb and manage, even if one pushed paper for a living. Most meals were cooked at home, and it's highly probable that if you ate out, your meal was cooked in nearly a home cooked manner. Processed foods were not so widespread and available. The concept of skim, low fat, low carb, high & low protein, egg whites, artificial sweetners & numeric ratios and food phobias that are tied to many of today's waist reducing, body image, self esteem building programs wouldn't have gone over very well. Let alone eliminating or curbing ones fat intake for fear of caloric values or a thickening waist or hips. These concepts are very "one size fits all" and all too often you only see the success stories for which they work on a purely physical level. Their success may also be attributed to those individual just so happen to be thy metabolic type. We never see the pictures of those a given diet didn't work for, what happened to them? Health and happiness should, in theory, come with acheiving a great body. If not, we have to look deeper in our fitness pursuits and lifestyle choices. To have any sort if endurance to keep moving, thinking & working hard all day in a physical or intellectually challenged environment, one would eat to fulfill an appetite and to satisfy hunger while providing the brain & cells whatever they require. What we require tends to be mistaken for opinion, belief, emotional attachments, & sound byte science. It is likely that we were far more metabolically efficient prior to the industrial & technological revolutions. The appeal of modernity and our desire to "make life easier" in the workplace coupled with ongoing creative new inventions to problem solve & get things done in less time lend themselves to a less physical indoor work setting. However, physical daily activities that possibly lend themselves to greater metabolic efficiency, prove that hunger would likely creep up on us that much faster. Fat that was naturally occurimg in foods was not only important but necessary in delaying the digestion & processing speed of nutrients following digestion. This was and still is key to creating a sense of satiety following a meal. Some folks will eat a full meal and an hour later find that they are still hungry or have a salt or sweet craving. For others, hunger sensation may not even creep up, and they can go many hours on seemingly little to no food. These examples explain some of the tendencies which can occur in 2 different people.
Eating high quality pastured proteins, which contain naturally occuring healthy fats and beneficial oils along with whole grains and organic provisions from the ground in origin are our best bet if we are to build, maintain and sustain life and fend off disease states. Cravings and overeating are just signals that the body throws out to let you know that something is missing from the daily food intake based on your metabolic type, your individual needs. Identifying your metabolic type as a platform to success is a great start, as this can help you identify what will work with and against you.
Try to source your foods locally from farms, farmers markets and community based coops and make food choices that naturally occur in nature as best you can. Avoiding packaged foods with a shelf life should be emphasized as much as possible. Calories, don't worry, eat real foods for your individual metabolic needs, and eat well! A well operating metabolism, will get rid of what it doesn't need (excess bodyfat), cutting your food intake for fear of too many calories or fat, well, may compromise health and stress your body out.
Eating high quality pastured proteins, which contain naturally occuring healthy fats and beneficial oils along with whole grains and organic provisions from the ground in origin are our best bet if we are to build, maintain and sustain life and fend off disease states.
- ADAMS PHILOSOPHY
- Fitness through Health
- FORCE PLAY
- INNER EYE
- HLC3
- RTSM
- NATURAL PHYSIQUE
- HEALTH BITES
- M.A.T.
- METABOLIC TYPING
- SUPPLEMENTS
- RECIPES
- CERTIFICATIONS
- A-LIST
- TESTIMONIALS
Try to source your foods locally from farms, farmers markets and community based coops and make food choices that naturally occur in nature as best you can. Avoiding packaged foods with a shelf life should be emphasized as much as possible. Calories, don't worry, eat real foods for your individual metabolic needs, and eat well! A well operating metabolism, will get rid of what it doesn't need. Cutting your food intake for fear of too many calories or fat may compromise your health and stress your body out.
