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Gabrielle Maston: I Quit Sugar – Book Review

Gabrielle Maston: I Quit Sugar – Book Review:

One fine sun shining morning a few weeks ago a client of mine, who works in the publishing business  handed
me over the new book by Sarah Wilson titled ‘I quit sugar’. My initial
reaction was: ‘what right does a popular journalist/editor have to write
about nutrition and diets? Clearly under qualified and trying to make
money out of pushing another ridiculous fad diet!’
Recommended review of this infamous book you may have heard of.
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Cereal vs confectionary? Really?

Click for the readable (larger) version.
Suffice to say they elected not to approve my comment.
I'm going to show you a comment I posted on an article last night, talking about breakfast cereals.

Now, we're not talking the sort of cereals you might be thinking about here, either. The sort for kids, with cartoon animals on the box or whatever. The ones you tend to assume are a bit too high in sugar and not terribly nutritious. We're talking about the "adult" type cereals, marketed as healthy choices.

This particular article had the usual stuff about gluten, although gluten fearmongering is old hat by now. That fad is on the way out already. People are already laughing about it, like "oh, yeah... gluten free. What was that all about? How'd we get sucked into that one, eh?"

It was like mass hysteria. Just an unexplainable phenomenon that everyone got swept up in, in sheer defiance of all logic and common sense. Like when everyone stopped listening to hair metal and got into grunge instead back in the early 1990s. Bizarre.

The gluten thing has been done to death, and responding that nonsense has been done to death as well. Most of the people making their living from scaremongering and shaming people over their food choices have moved on from gluten bashing to sugar bashing. And this article I'm referring to gets on the act there too, in a manner I find most... distasteful.

Let's get something straight here. Your body does have a use for the energy that it gets from food. Even more so than merely "having a use" for a certain amount of energy, you actually require that energy to thrive. To get through your day at work, at study, training, chasing around after your kids or pets... all of that requires energy, and falling significantly short on energy intake with an active lifestyle is too your detriment. Even if you're entirely inactive, you still do have energy requirements  although obviously they will be greatly reduced from those of a more active person.

Here's the problem. The way many supposed "health" bloggers and authors talk about energy, it's as if it's a bad thing that we need to avoid. Whether they're singling out sugar, or just fructose, or all carbohydrates, or just "calories" in general... there's an inference that what we do want is the other nutritional resources such as vitamins and minerals from foods, but not the energy content.

This is an entirely incorrect and disordered notion. Certainly there is a limit to how much energy we require, and it is in our best interests not to be in the habit of exceeding that amount significantly. However this is not to suggest for a moment that energy intake is something that needs to be restricted or minimised. Ideally, we want to meet our total energy requirement while also providing sufficient amounts of all of the other nutritional resources that we require for good health.

That is; total energy, protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals.

Getting back to what was wrong in this article I'm talking about and I'm sure you'll understand why I don't want to actually link to the article in question.

Have a look at the image on the right though. There were several like this comparing different brands of cereals with the suggestion that it is literally "no better" than eating a serve of confectionary for breakfast, due to the comparable sugar content.

That is some utter pro-orthorexic rubbish talk, right there.

The reason confectionary and similar items aren't what you'd call a "healthy choice" is because they really JUST deliver that serve of energy, without any of the other nutritional resources. That is not to say that we have no use for the energy, or that it would treated differently by the body than energy sourced from a healthier choice. It does mean that you would be closer to reaching your total energy intake requirement, without being any closer to meeting your requirements for other nutritional resources. By no means though does it make it impossible or even implausible to arrive at a suitable and appropriate total intake of all nutritional resources, or what we might reasonably call an "overall healthy diet".

The suggestion I have seen in this article and elsewhere over the past couple of days is that even if a cereal does provide a high fiber content as well as vitamins and minerals, the benefits are rendered null by any sugar content. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the opposite is what is actually true.

Within a suitable total energy content, fiber is a valuable resource and we should aim for as high an intake as is reasonably possible. Vitamins and minerals as well, it should almost go without saying. We can attain these resources from grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes and various other sources.

Within that suitable total energy range and while ensuring adequate supply of those other important nutritional resources, there is absolutely no reason to fear, avoid or shame others over the sugar or carbohydrate content of any individual food choice. Why would there be, so long as you are still within a suitable total energy intake? That's what the phrase "suitable total" means.
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If It Fits Your Maths

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Spinach. Is it even all that healthy, really?

Forgive the blatant clickbait headline. Of course it is fucking healthy, don't be ridiculous. Got your attention though, didn't I? Probably came in here all expecting to read something that would piss you off, right?

Well, read on it could still happen.

Everyone else? Stay with me because I'm going somewhere here. Somewhere I think is important right now with a lot of the talk we see about diet, nutrition, health and food choices these days.

Spinach, obviously, is good for you. It's a leafy green vegetable, full of vitamins and minerals, provides fiber or roughage if you prefer, and the energy content is so negligible you'd really be hard pressed to eat "too much" of it.

It's about as healthy as it gets. If you're sitting there thinking "well not really, I can think of plenty of more nutritious choices of vegetable" and about to scroll down to the comments box to let me know about it... then good, you're a part of the problem I'm trying to address here. So sit there, shut up, and pay attention.

The other great thing about spinach is that it is quite a non-challenging choice of vegetable, for those who might struggle a little to get enthusiastic about meeting their recommended number of servings. Make something else, serve it on a bed of baby spinach. Boom you just added +1 to your serves of vegetables quota. Easy.

Spinach is good for you. Popeye was correct.

Since spinach is healthy, if you eat spinach does that mean you have a healthy diet? A diet that is suitable to fuel your lifestyle and to produce your goal physical condition as an adaption to training?

Well... not necessarily. Adding 100g of spinach to whatever your usual diet is right now will make it healthier by ensuring you exceed your Vitamin A requirements, and by providing a good amount of Iron and Magnesium amongst other valuable nutritional resources. If you were short on those particular resources before, your diet is now somewhat healthier.

Does the addition of spinach necessarily mean that you have a "healthy and appropriate" diet meeting your total energy and protein requirements though? Absolutely not. As described, it will certainly go a long way towards meeting your micronutritional requirements, but it doesn't automatically ensure that you have met all of those requirements, either. Other than Vitamin A which it knocks out of the park.

So spinach is an excellent, sensible, not terribly challenging and healthy choice that is advantageous in meeting your requirements for a healthy diet. A healthy diet would be one that is neither excessive nor insufficient in total energy intake, providing adequate protein, adequate fiber, and your required intake of vitamins and minerals via your "5 + 2" recommended serves of vegetables and fruit, respectively.

I hope I'm making my point clearly enough. Spinach (or any other vegetable) is an excellent choice that may make up a part of a healthy diet. But just because you eat your spinach like a good chap, it doesn't necessarily mean you have "a healthy and appropriate diet".

Similarly, just because spinach is healthy... you probably wouldn't insist that this means anyone not eating it regularly doesn't have a healthy diet. That'd be illogical, wouldn't it?

If you were wondering if I have a point, well yes I do and here it comes.

What about a less healthy choice though?

Including one isolated healthy choice does not necessarily mean your diet is healthy and appropriate. I mean... it probably does. It probably means you're likely to be in the habit of making sensible and healthy choices, but just adding spinach to an otherwise excessive and unhealthy diet doesn't suddenly mean you have "a healthy diet".

The exact same thing is true in reverse.

So often on the internet, everyone wants to give their opinion on what other people should or should not be eating. It might be bread, or breakfast cereal. At the most infuriating it might even be fruit of all things, that "isn't healthy enough" for some people on the grounds that you can get more vitamins from a vegetable instead. As if... I mean really, do I even have to explain why that is so ridiculous as to actually be offensive to anyone with an ounce of sense? I am going to start slapping people in real life for that sort of talk.

Let's consider something like a can of artificially sweetened soft drink, providing absolutely zero nutritional value. Or the regular kind, providing only "empty calories". People shouldn't drink them, right? Because that would mean their diet is unhealthy, and therefore they'll be unhealthy, right?

Of course not.

Just as including one healthy choice doesn't automatically make a diet healthy and appropriate, including an entirely frivolous choice doesn't necessarily make for an unhealthy diet. Your diet on the whole, your total daily intake is either of appropriate energy, macronutrient and micronutrient intake suitable to good health and results from training, or it is not.

There is no reason to believe, imply or infer that an appropriate total intake cannot be achieved without total avoidance of... well, whatever it is. Bread, cereal, processed foods, more than two pieces of fruit a day, ice cream... whatever. People who are training towards a performance or body condition goal have relatively high energy requirements, and with a little mindfulness they can probably fit some of whatever they fancy into a plan to meet but not exceed those requirements.

Singling out individual food choices outside of the context of your total intake and how that relates to your actual requirements is pointless. Criticising someone else's individual food choices, especially with no reason to assume you know what their requirements are or how that choice fits into their total intake... that just makes you a jerk who needs to shut up.

Ready to learn how to meet your nutritional requirements with your choice of foods, rather than restricting your choices? Drop your email in the box for a free education program.
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Precision Style Side Lateral Raises

OK these videos aren't all that great because I just decided to film them on the spur of the moment by leaning my phone against a nearby object and hoping for the best.

Disregard the 40kg dumbbell press, we're going to talk about the side lateral raises that come after.



In my program, side lateral raises are what I consider a PRECISION movement. Of course the program is based on compound exercises for example heavy ass deadlifts, squats, various heavy ass pushing and pulling movements for upper body. These I refer to as POWER movements as it's just about developing that brute strength and encouraging our body to promote and preserve muscle and bone mass at the expense of body fat.

Obvious, right?

With these PRECISION or isolation exercises though, the strategy is a little different. We're not just trying to recruit as much muscle as possible over multiple joints to produce the most powerful contraction and move as much weight as possible as per the POWER section of the program. As the category name would imply, this is more about a precise movement targeting a specific muscle or muscle group. In this example, the lateral deltoid.

So, you'll notice I am sitting down. This means I can't rob myself of the effectiveness of the exercise by bobbing up and down from the knees or however else you might see people generate some momentum to swing some heavier weights up into the air on this exercise. That's not the point. It isn't what we're trying to do. Go lighter if necessary, and perform the movement with precision.

You may notice that I'm trying to perform a strict shoulder abduction movement, without the rotation that a lot of people utilise when performing this exercise. Through experimentation I found that this was the best way to activate and isolate my lateral deltoid as per the aim of this exercise. I would be open to other opinions on this point, but this is how I like to perform and instruct the exercise.

Here's the main point of this post. Watching this back I'm surprised how fast I'm actually performing each rep. What I am trying to do here is raise the dumbbells to shoulder height via shoulder abduction, pause at the top, and then lower slowly.

Note that I do not lower all the way back to the starting position. I want to maintain that muscle activation at all times while performing the exercise. In theory, I pause at the top... and then, I used to say "gradually release the muscle contraction to slowly lower back to the starting position". Really it is more like maintaining that muscle contraction to a level that is just short of what would be required to hold that position at the top of the movement. Then BOOM snap that contraction back on at 100% to raise back up again.

Even with a relatively light weight, targeting a relatively small muscle, this is very demanding and you'll have earned your minute and a half rest after 12 to 18 reps.

Here's a better video from a couple of weeks ago demonstrating the same principle on front raises, targeting the anterior deltoid.

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