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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Low-Carb Diets Make You Dumber and Slower

October 1, 2008

Low-carb diets have had their share of weight loss success; and most of it can be attributed to dietary restriction of food choice. That’s how most restrictive diets work, from low-fat to low-carb and vegan: tell people they can’t eat something that’s clearly identifiable, and they will lose weight because choice is curtailed and they [...]

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When Aerobic Fitness is Not Aerobic Conditioning

September 23, 2008

Aerobic fitness is measured by the volume of oxygen you can process in any given time. This is called your VO2 maximum or VO2max. It’s mostly measured in millilitres of oxygen used per kilogram of bodyweight per minute. An elite marathon runner might have a VO2 of 80 and an obese, sedentary and very unfit [...]

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Walking is NEAT – Walk More – Lose Weight

September 16, 2008

As reported elsewhere, I just spent 5 days walking on Fraser Island, a World Heritage island just off the coast of south-east Queensland, Australia. It’s an amazing island built entirely of ocean sand deposits, yet it supports large freshwater lakes and huge forest and scrub wilderness — ideal for hiking with backpacks between specially built [...]

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How the Cholesterol Skeptics Can Harm You

August 26, 2008

Do a search for ‘cholesterol and heart disease’ in Google and you will see that many of the results in the first few pages are from sites that dispute the current medical view that cholesterol is a major factor in causing heart disease. Some of the advocates of this position are well known ‘alternative’, or [...]

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Exercise Really is Necessary to Maintain Weight

August 14, 2008

Recently I got into a discussion about whether exercise is really necessary in a weight loss program. The other guy was saying . . . ‘well, if you just cut calorie intake you’re going to lose weight . . . if you starve you lose weight; witness concentration camps and so on’. And of course, [...]

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Top 10 Antioxidants of All Time

August 8, 2008

Okay, I know that title is over the top, but it’s tongue-in-cheek as well. We hear so much about the value of antioxidants that I get a little unimpressed sometimes. But wait, this is the real deal. Everyone likes a list and the Nutrient Data Lab of the United States Department of Agriculture has released [...]

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EPOC, Afterburn and Weight Loss – Does It Work?

July 29, 2008

When we exercise hard or long, or both, we use the body’s resources in certain ways in order to achieve this level of performance. Glycogen (glucose) in muscles and liver is used up, lactic acid builds up in muscles, muscle gets damaged and broken down for energy, other energy systems are exhausted. It’s a demolition [...]

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Why You Need to Eat Your Greens

July 23, 2008

Green leafy vegetables like spinach, lettuce, Chinese vegetables, kale and many others are part of the evolutionary heritage of primates — and humans are no exception. Eating carefully selected green leafy plants for millions of years must have made human biochemistry beautifully adapted to these foods. Too bad many of us don’t eat enough. They [...]

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A 3-Day HIT Fitness Program for Busy People

July 16, 2008

The American College of Sports Medicine physical activity guidelines include the following recommendations for general health and wellbeing: Moderately intense cardio 30 minutes a day, five days a week, OR, Vigorous intense cardio 20 minutes a day, 3 days a week, AND 8 to 10 strength-training exercises, eight to 12 repetitions of each exercise, twice [...]

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What if You Could Prevent Prostate Cancer with Diet and Exercise?

July 10, 2008

Preventing prostate cancer with lifestyle behaviours may not be that extreme a proposition considering the latest research from a group studying gene and prostate cancer interactions. I should make it perfectly clear that this research is promising and profoundly interesting, but it is NOT a sure-fire cure for prostate cancer and you should not disregard advice [...]

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10 Ways Exercise Prevents or Manages Diabetes

July 7, 2008

  Trials in the US, Finland and China have shown that moderate weight loss combined with an exercise program can ward off impending type 2 diabetes by getting blood glucose (sugar) under control and generally improving markers for this disease of glucose, fat and insulin metabolism. Diagnosed diabetics also benefit from regular exercise in a [...]

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The Best Fat Loss Strategy That Really Works

June 30, 2008

Photo by: Twon It depends. It depends on how fat you are, how mobile you are, how much exercise you can do and not break, or get bored, or how well you can stick to a modified eating pattern. Many will need to start more moderately than this. But if you’re up for it, you [...]

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Tim Russert’s Heart Attack – What Went Wrong?

June 26, 2008

According to a New York Times article, Tim Russert, the well-known NBC news and current affairs television journalist who suffered a fatal heart attack, did not have any prior warning even though he did have some ominous signs in his cardiovascular risk profile. The essence of many articles about Tim Russert since his death have [...]

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