Today's Motivation

Fitness and Honesty

Gloria Kaneko's wonderful article looking at fitness, honesty and societies current support of ill health. Worth the read. 


Let’s face it, getting into shape takes hard work. That’s why it’s commonly said that to lose weight and get into great shape, the first step is wanting it. If you don’t want it badly enough, you won’t be prepared to put in the work, so you’ll never achieve it, right? Simple!

Well, for a lot of women there’s one step that comes before wanting it, and that’s getting honest with themselves. The first thing they need to get honest about is the fact that they actually DO want to look good.

I’ve heard so many overweight women in the past say that they’re happy the way they are. When I hear that, I ask them this question . . . “If a genie granted you a wish that you could suddenly be in fantastic shape, right now, without any exercise and eating what you’ve always eaten, would you accept it or not?”

Of course the answer is always yes, because as I said, everybody wants to look good. The truth is that they just aren’t prepared to pay the price of getting into shape, because the pain of doing that is greater than the pain of staying the way they are. But that’s very different to being happy the way they are.

It’s human nature to want to avoid pain as much as possible. So when our beliefs tell us that we can’t achieve something or that it will be too hard to achieve, and we have to accept that we can’t have it, we do whatever we can to make ourselves comfortable without it, including lying to ourselves.

Imagine if you were convinced that getting into shape was either impossible or absolute torture, and every day you gave yourself grief about being overweight. Your life would be a misery! So naturally, you lie to suppress the pain. It’s understandable.

The problem with this lack of honesty is that it removes any incentive to change. It gives you permission to give up the fight or not even try. Why would anybody go through the pain of improving themselves when they’re perfectly happy the way they are?

To make matters worse, the people around overweight women also encourage them into believing everything is fine the way they are. People and society in general are very sensitive about suggesting to anyone directly that they’re overweight. This is because they themselves are afraid of being judged, of hurting people’s feelings, or of being labeled as cruel. So they add fuel to the dishonesty around being overweight.

We have all heard about people and companies who support the use of more so-called plus-sized (overweight) models. This is so that average and overweight women can feel happier about themselves. Once again, this isn’t helping anybody. They’re trying to spread the message that this is what real women look like, which may be true, but it’s not what they should look like.

And while it may make overweight women feel more comfortable in the present, it takes away from a potentially healthy future for them, by encouraging them to believe that they’re like everyone else and being overweight is OK. So in reality, this is very harmful.

So what’s the answer then? Should they continue to use the skinny fashion models that we see in magazines today? Definitely not. Society has a responsibility to discourage unhealthy behavior, and being grossly underweight is very unhealthy. But so is being overweight!

At the root of the problem is the incorrect belief that overweight people can’t change, that it’s out of their hands. This is why people that are overweight lie to themselves and why society is so willing to perpetuate that lie. This is why society believes that making them feel bad about being overweight is just cruel and has no benefit.

As with any area of life however, honesty is always the best policy. If you’re not in the best shape, be honest and admit that you would prefer to look better. Then you can go about working out what you’re prepared to do to make changes. If you’re only prepared to do a little, that’s OK, it just means it will take longer to get there. There’s nothing wrong with that.

If you’re not prepared to do anything at all to get into shape, that’s OK too, as long as you’re honest with yourself and admit that you can change, but simply choose not to. That’s your choice. There are many things that I would like to do in my life which I probably never will, simply because there are only so many hours in the day, and I have higher priorities. So I choose to do those things instead and I’m OK with that.

As for the media and society in general, on the one hand it’s well aware of the obesity epidemic and the cost of poor health and obesity on our health system. But on the other hand it’s reluctant to create a culture where being fit, athletic and healthy is most desired. It simply doesn’t have the courage to be “cruel to be kind”.

Imagine if trainers and sporting coaches took this attitude, and kept their protégés in the dark about world champions and only had them train with second-rate opponents, to make them feel better about their own limited abilities. Would they be helping or hindering their growth?

Sometimes the truth hurts, but in the end it will always set you free!

Px

Today's Motivation

Nutrition Motivation

May you day be filled with conscious and clean eating! 

Px

Today's Motivation

Why Sugar Makes You Fat!

"Next time you hold a package of something in your hand, I want you to make a conscious effort to look at the nutrition label. Yes, that’s right, actually LOOK at how many grams of sugar are in what you are about to eat. 

The first step to changing something is becoming aware of the consequences of your actions.

Divide the number of grams of sugar by 4, and you will know how many teaspoons of straight up SUGAR you’re consuming by having that little snack in a pack. Scary isn’t it? Would you actually take 4 teaspoons of sugar by themselves and eat them?

I get this question all the time. “How does sugar make me fat if there is no fat in it?” First of all, let’s be clear, processed sugar DOES make you fat and fat-free foods are loaded with sugar. Therefore fat-free foods are fattening. The joke is on us, or at least those of us who are uneducated about this.

First of all, you should know that sugar isn’t inherently evil. Our bodies use sugar for survival, and they burn sugar to provide us with the energy that is necessary for life. Many whole, natural, and healthy foods are actually broken down to sugar in the body- through the conversion of long and complex sugars called polysaccharides into simple sugars called monosaccharide’s, such as glucose. In addition to the breakdown products of fat and protein, glucose is a great energy source for your body. This means that your body needs fat, protein, and glucose to function optimally.

However, sugar can and WILL sabotage your body if you misunderstand it.

One problem that is fairly common, is that people tend to eat more fuel than the body actually needs.

This is VERY easy to do when you eat processed, packaged foods that contain high amounts of sugar content and artificial ingredients. These packaged and artificial flavored foods are a huge issue and one of the major causes of obesity. The massive amount of hidden calories coupled with the lack of knowledge the people have, are a recipe for overweight, sick, and unhealthy lives. This is mostly because by the time you eat enough of these low quality foods to feel full, you’ve already consumed way more sugars and calories than your body can possibly use, not to mention having also put ingredients into your body that it has no idea what to do with.

Anytime you fill your body with more fuel, or sugar than it actually needs, your liver’s sugar storage capacity is exceeded. When the liver is maximally full, the excess sugar is converted by the liver into fatty acids (that’s right - FAT!) and returned to the bloodstream, where it’s taken throughout your body and stored as FAT, wherever you tend to store it, such as the stomach, thighs, hips, butt, and breasts.

Unfortunately, once you store enough fat in those regions, and you cannot store anymore there, the fat will begin to spill over into your organs, such as your heart, liver, and kidneys. This makes for a weak and sick body, and an ineffective metabolism, and a really unhappy mood. I am not kidding! This will literally reduce your organs ability, raise your blood pressure, decrease your metabolism, and weaken your immune system.

NOT IDEAL! Don’t you agree?

Whilst you must be educated about all of the above, you should also be aware of another major reason for how sugar makes you fat.

EXCESS INSULIN.

Insulin is a major hormone in the body, and is released in high levels anytime you take in certain types of foods. These "certain types of foods" can also be referred to as SIMPLE SUGARS. Some examples of simple sugars are things such as fruit juices (unless they are freshly squeezed or juiced straight from the fruit/vegetable), white bread (most wheat breads are just darker versions of white bread because they may have a tiny bit more fiber in them), white rice (because the brown shell has been removed which is why brown rice has more fibre and vitamins and nutrients, whereas white rice is just the white carbohydrate inside the brown shell), white potato, bagels, croissants, pretzels, graham crackers, vanilla wafers, waffles, corn chips, cornflakes, cake, jelly beans, sugary drinks, Gatorade, beer, and anything that has high fructose corn syrup on the label.

Two actions occur when the insulin levels are spiked. First, the body will immediately shut down it's fat burning process, so it can use the newly ingested sugar for energy. It cannot burn fat AND use the sugar at the same time. Then, the insulin will attempt to balance out your blood sugar by carrying all the sugar into your muscles. However, since most of us already have pretty full muscles, meaning there is not much extra room for new glucose to be stored, there will be an excess of glucose with no place to go. Anytime there is excess glucose, or sugar, the body will have no other option but to store it as FAT. Whatever you cannot use, will become FAT. Since we are all already carrying around unused energy, the last thing we need is an excess of more, unless of course you enjoy watching your waistline grow thicker??

But that's not all.

Once the insulin does it's job, and gets the blood sugar to lower by taking the sugar to the muscles or storing it as fat in the liver, then the feedback mechanism that tells the body to stop producing insulin becomes delayed. This means blood sugar levels continue to fall lower, which ends up taking the blood sugar in the opposite direction than the sugar was taking it, and it drops below normal measurements. So the body experiences a spike in blood sugar after we eat the sugar-filled foods, then the insulin gets released in high amounts in an attempt to lower the blood sugar. Therefore the insulin takes the sugar to the muscles and then takes the left overs to the fat stores in the liver. As a result the blood sugar goes from too high, to too low which then causes two things:

1) You will immediately become hungry again, because that is the natural response to low blood sugar. So this will most likely cause you to eat more.

2) It will cause the production of a stress hormone called Cortisol.

Cortisol triggers the release of stored sugar from the liver to bring blood sugar levels back up, which, combined with the meal you eat from your appetite increase (the result we just mentioned in #1, from the blood sugar dropping too low and the hunger following so you eat to get it back up again.), begins the entire "fat storage, metabolic decrease" process over again. So you enter a vicious cycle of eating, blood sugar spikes, insulin gets released, sugar gets shuttled to muscles and stored as fat in the liver, blood sugar drops too low, you eat again because your hunger comes in an attempt to balance out the blood sugar, cortisol is released, blood sugar spikes too high again, and insulin gets released, and so on. It's a disastrous cycle.

This process of destabilizing blood sugar levels and sending your body on a roller
coaster ride can occur throughout an entire day, week, or month. The excessive
cortisol that accumulates in the body eventually distresses your hormonal system
and results in other problems, including a further decrease in metabolism, obesity,
depression, allergies, immune weakness, chronic fatigue syndrome and other
serious side effects.

So what kind of carbohydrates can you eat to avoid de-stabilizing blood sugar
levels, constantly sabotaging your weight loss, and spending hundreds of thousands
of dollars in health care as you get older?

Here is a list of carbohydrates do not trigger such a strong insulin response and instead provide long-term, stabilized energy:

Apples, oranges, pears, plums, grapes, bananas (not overly ripened), grapefruit, oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat spaghetti and egg fettuccine, whole- wheat pasta, bran cereal, barley, bulgur, basmati, Kashi and other whole grains, beans, peas (especially chick and black-eyed), lentils, whole corn, sweet potatoes, yams, milk, yogurt (preferably low-fat or fat-free) and soy.

Again, stay away from processed and packaged foods as much as possible, because they are highly likely to include artificial sweeteners (which basically have a similar effect as sugar), as well as simple and refined sugars. Keep your eye out for ingredients that include sucrose, maltose, dextrose, fructose, galactose, glucose, arabinose, ribose, xylose,
deoxyribose, lactose, and other fake names for sugars. Even "healthy" juice and
many health food products will need to be avoided if they contain high levels of
sugar.

Remember, the goal of eating healthy is to feel great, to have an even amount of energy throughout your day, to give you the life force you need to be the best you can be, to live a happy and joyful life, and to bring vitality into your life experience. Eating foods that are in their most natural state, will be the most supportive of long-term health and happiness.

So, what healthy thoughts, actions, and experiences will you choose to have today? Your optimal well-being is in your hands. Here's to your happiest body and most healthy life!"

With thank to the Ashy Bines Bikini Body Challenge. Check out this amazing trainer's facebook page here! 

Today's Motivation