Best Exercises to Prevent Osteoporosis

March 23, 2009

Building bone strength and density at a young age and holding on to it as we get older is something everyone should be concerned about. Hip replacements and wrist fractures are painful and debilitating at any age. While adequate nutrition, especially the nutrients calcium and vitamin D are essential in early development and throughout life, physical activity plays a complementary role [...]

Read the full article →

Increasing HDL Cholesterol is the New Focus

March 2, 2009

Cholesterol from your diet or that produced internally by the body is carried in the bloodstream bundled into complexes called ‘lipoproteins’, which means fat-proteins, ‘lipo’ meaning fat. There are diffent types of lipoproteins classified by how dense they are, that is, how much protein they include. These include high density (HDL), low density (LDL), intermediate [...]

Read the full article →

Losing Weight and Keeping It Off

February 14, 2009

Weight Loss and Exercise Guidelines from ACSM The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has released a new Position Stand, Appropriate Intervention Strategies for Weight Loss and Prevention of Weight Regain for Adults, which addresses obesity and overweight in adults. Specific dietary and exercise recommendations are included. The paper also explores resistance exercise and pharmacotherapy [...]

Read the full article →

The Top 6 Lifestyle Tips to Prevent Heart Disease

February 4, 2009

If you read about healthy lifestyles, fitness and health regularly, some of these tips may seem like old territory — but wait — you may not know some of the finer details that I’ll share here. 1. Eat Less Animal Fats and Cholesterol and More Unsaturated Fats and Plant Foods There’s no doubt that diets high in [...]

Read the full article →

A Low-Fat Mediterranean Diet – Is It Possible?

January 23, 2009

This may seem like a contradiction in terms for anyone who has been used to the propaganda that the traditional dietitians’ low-fat diet and the traditional Mediterranean diet are poles apart. Frankly, it’s bunkum. In fact, the differences between the early Mediterranean diets of Crete and similar regions, and a well-constructed low-fat diet are not much at all. Here’s what it [...]

Read the full article →

Steady State v Intervals v Weight Training

January 13, 2009

If you’ve been reading about fitness and training for a while, you will know that various trainers and fitness experts have a view about which type of exercise is best for health, fitness and body composition — fat loss, muscle building, strength and aerobic and anaerobic  capacity. The truth is, if you want all round fitness with a [...]

Read the full article →

My Top 3 Internet Fat Loss and Fitness Gurus

January 5, 2009

I get to read a lot of articles from many different internet trainers, nutritionists and health and fitness experts. Sometimes it’s just curiosity and sometimes I really learn from what they have to say. Although I mostly rely on my own research of the scientific literature for assessing the worth and veracity of any particular aspect [...]

Read the full article →

The 7 Mega Principles of Diet and Exercise for Fat Loss

December 23, 2008

Yes, I am somewhat proud of the fact that if you do a Google search (at the main google.com site), an article of mine still comes up number 1 for the term fat burning. It’s an article I wrote for About.com Weight Training over 12 months ago. I am surprised at this because Google records about 3.1 [...]

Read the full article →

What You Don’t Know About Saturated Fat That Could Harm You

December 3, 2008

What you probably do know is that most dietary recommendations say that you should keep your consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol in food low in order to lower your blood cholesterol and consequently your risk of heart disease. The usual recommendations are that saturated fat should be no more than 10% of total calories [...]

Read the full article →

The Fitness Wars Are Futile

December 2, 2008

I’ve put up a permanent page called Fitness Wars because I thought it should be a little “sticky.” It discusses the very strange culture of strength trainers who seem to react to cardio and aerobics with a crucifix held at arms length. It’s a very odd response to a very important component of health and fitness [...]

Read the full article →

Dioxins in Food and Water Could Cause Diabetes

November 25, 2008

I’ve been aware of an increasing number of recent studies that seem to show that the chemical pollutants called POPs – dioxins and similar compounds – could be at least partly responsible for the current epidemic of type 2 diabetes. Now it’s not conclusive, but some aspects of these investigations are certainly interesting. Like the fact that when [...]

Read the full article →

Recommended Dietary Intakes – Do You Need Supplements?

November 13, 2008

Here’s a quick definition of RDIs — or RDAs as they are called in some countries. Recommended Dietary Intakes (RDIs) (or allowances, RDA) are the levels of intake of essential nutrients considered, in the judgment of national health and nutrition authorities on the basis of available scientific knowledge, to be adequate to meet the known nutritional needs [...]

Read the full article →

Burn That Belly Fat With High-Intensity Training?

November 8, 2008

A recent study by researchers at the University of Virginia found that high-intensity exercise training disposed of more belly fat in obese middle-aged women than lower-intensity training of the same energy expenditure. The idea that doing high-intensity interval training burns off stubborn fat and visceral belly fat has been around for quite a few years. The premise [...]

Read the full article →

The Diet Wars Really Are Over

November 5, 2008

John Tierney over at TierneyLab recently had a bit to say about the New England Journal of Medicine study that compared an American Heart Association low-fat diet with Atkins and Mediterranean diets. I’ve discussed the details and the implications in a longer page post called Diet Wars, but the upshot of this and many other [...]

Read the full article →

Does Stretching Work for Injury Prevention or Performance?

October 30, 2008

If you’ve been involved in any sort of physical activity for fitness or sports, you probably know that ‘stretching’ is highly recommended for the following reasons: Increase or maintain flexibility to prevent injury and increase mobility for day-to-day living Prevent injury during sports and exercise activity Increase performance in sport Offset muscle soreness after exercise [...]

Read the full article →

How to Boost Immunity With Diet and Exercise

October 21, 2008

How many times have you seen an ad for some wonder ‘erb or other that’s supposed to boost the immune system. It’s echinacea today and some Chinese herb the next, as well as a vast array of products that the supplement industry claim “support the immune system” — whatever that means. Diet and Immunity I’m [...]

Read the full article →

Food and Fitness Science Roundup

October 17, 2008

For this regular roundup, I try to find work that tells us something significant or new in the context of the field of study. New Recommendations for Vitamin D Intake for Children from the American Academy of Pediatrics A recommendation for a doubling of recommended dietary intake of an essential nutrient for any population sector [...]

Read the full article →

The Truth About Organic Food

October 13, 2008

I’ve been a keen gardener most of my life, following a strong family tradition. We’ve grown everything from flowers and ornamentals to fruit trees and vegetables — with varying measures of success. Organic growing in a home garden, and wherever feasible commercially, just seems like sensible environmental management to me . . . and it’s [...]

Read the full article →

New Exercise Guidelines Released in the US

October 8, 2008

New physical activity guidelines have just been released by the US Department of Health and Human Services. As they report 25.6% of adults in the US are medically obese — that’s a body mass index (BMI) of over 30 — there is an air of slight panic about this latest announcement. Here are the new adult guidelines, which [...]

Read the full article →

Food for Life, Fit for Life – Lifestyle Training Course Released

October 8, 2008

Food for Life, Fit for Life – Prevent Diabetes, Heart Disease and Cancer is a set of training modules in lifestyle preventive health.  It took me 12 months to write and it’s now available for licensing. You can download a free ebook version that describes the content. Here’s what’s included: Training and evaluation manual for course [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →