lifestyle ARTICLES
I’m a lover of the buffet. What’s not to love? Firstly, you’re taking away the stress of ordering the wrong meal or not having enough of a good one. I know with quantity, the quality can go down, but when you find the right balance between quantity and quality, it’s a beautiful thing.
Lately the term “Metabolic Flexibility” has been thrown around a lot lately. To keep things simple, “metabolic flexibility refers to the body’s ability to efficiently switch from one fuel source to another. To me, metabolic flexibility simply means the body’s ability to burn fat when the appropriate conditions are made. To kick things off, I’ll immediately say that the ketogenic diet is one of the more straightforward ways to improve metabolic flexibility because of its ability provide the body with the machinery needed to utilize fat more efficiently.
The most asked question I get when it comes to nutrition and performance is “what do I eat before or after I workout”. The minimalists will say that meal timing is in the details and that timing your meals in relation to your workout doesn’t really matter in the greater scheme of things. This is somewhat true.
I understand there are a number of detailed resources that get into the specifics of magnesium, but I wanted to share with you an easy and quick guide to the most popular forms of magnesium. With that being said, I’ll start off by saying I’m a huge fan of supplementing with magnesium. In fact, magnesium is one of the most deficient minerals in the world.
I’m currently in the midst of travelling and it got me thinking about how I’m going to find balance with all the good food I come across. So far, the last 10 days have become one big food tour and prior to travelling, I made sure not to put any restrictions on what I eat while I’m away. To give you an idea of some of the “challenges” I’ve come across, I’ve eaten at a Vegas buffet, had my first fried chicken meal from Jollibee’s, wined and dined in Napa Valley and stuffed my face with crab in Oakland.
It would be a safe answer for me to tell you that the diet you choose is simply the diet that you’re most compliant with, but that answer is only part of a bigger answer and it’s not a sexy way to end a blog post. The nutrition scene has really become a war of tribes. Lately the landscape seems to be predominantly owned by the Paleo, Keto, Vegan and IIFYM tribes.
On paper losing weight is easy. To be quite honest, there’s enough literature that can be found in books and the Internet that can show you how to lose weight. There’s no secret to it. The reason why it seems like there’s a new revolutionary diet that comes out every year is because people have learned to re-package and market diets that have existed for years and found a way to make it new again.
For anyone unaware, the Macrobiotic diet is more of a blueprint to healthy eating than a diet. It’s origins stem from Japan. I wont get too deep into the origins and history of it, but just know that this diet is known as the “Art of Prolonging Life” and follows a set of rules that promotes principles such as eating locally, seasonally and in moderation.
I’ve been playing around with my most ideal way of conveying my message through this blog, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my style is “simple and digestible information”. So just like the topic of this blog post, I’m going to keep my information “simple and digestible” (see what I did there?).
I’m currently sitting in Whole Foods right now inspired to write a quick post on silence. Here’s the story. I just got off the train after taking the subway uptown and while I was on the train an older gentleman said he didn’t appreciate the fact that I had put my foot up on a seat.
Every time I see my girlfriend have a glass of wine, I’ll see her instantly turn red. I walk into a room and find myself always asking her “how much did you have?” The thing is, she’d usually only have a glass or two but it would make her turn super red. The reason for this? The “Asian Flush”.
Sometimes we don’t have the time to cook and sometimes you need to eat and you need to find something fast. There’s nothing wrong with that. In today’s post I wanted to share with you some of my favourite “fast food” options. Of course when tackling on a specific weight gain/weight loss goal, its better to be prepared, but ideal foods can be found outside the house if you do your proper research. The following “fast food” choices are based on taste, macronutrient content, the amount of time it takes to order and affordability. Here we go…
My goal isn’t to breakdown inflammation at the cellular level in this post. I’ll admit that the title sounds pretty broad and general. I’m also not here to tell you that your goji berry, mint and arugula salad will magically heal your nagging knee pain. Mostly because I don’t see the combo of those ingredients tasting good together (in my opinion) but most importantly, because there’s so many factors that come into play when addressing an injury and saying that food alone will heal everything would be untrue.
Carbs aren’t bad. Especially when your working out or doing something energy intensive. I’ll admit that I’ve dabbled in the Keto, Intermittent Fasting and Paleo world and through it all I’ve realized how important carbs are to the body (positively and negatively). This holds especially true if you’re training at a high level. You just can’t recover and be explosive without carbohydrates.
“I used to be skinny before the baby”. “I used to bench more when I was younger”. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard someone talk about how they used to be healthier, slimmer, stronger and sexier back in the day. Unfortunately, life can push you in different directions and for whatever reason, you’ve gained some weight or lost some strength.
The word detox carries a lot of meaning. To a health practitioner, it’s an intervention much more complicated then a 5-day juice cleanse. The hardcore practitioner will scoff at the idea of a juice cleanse and say that detox protocols are much more intense and calculated. For the purposes of this blog post, lets just use the word detox and reset interchangeably. Here are my recommendations for executing a proper reset.
This post is inspired by two good friends who just had a beautiful baby (Congrats guys!) We were having dinner and the topic of gut flora came up and sparked me to share a little info for new and expecting mothers and fathers regarding gut health.
I wanted to talk to you about ketosis. It’s a pretty sexy topic right now and just about everyone’s friend, aunt and uncle seem to be an expert on being fat adapted. The question is if you’re active, should carbohydrates really be eliminated in the diet?
I remember the time an Ayurvedic practitioner told me that hot water was a simple way of losing fat. I never forgot when he said this because of his reasoning for fat loss. He asked me “have you ever tried cleaning grease/fat off a stove with hot water instead of using cold water?”
Nutrition is easy. Of course, this is easier said than done and the wide array of health issues can attest to the idea that nutrition is anything but simple. There is one thing that we can make easier for us, and that’s the stress that we should be eating one way and one way only.
The thing is, without some aspect of routine, our lives are a mess.
The process brings you back to a balanced place where you become aware of your body, it’s sensations and it all starts with your breath.