Thanks for listening! This will be my last post because I am moving to another station and time. Go to www.xgym.com for details on my new show on Sunday nights at 5pm. Thanks KKOL listeners! I hope to hear from you tomorrow and every other Sunday on my new show!

Here is some of the new stuff covered today:

Depriving yourself of sleep makes you gain fat.

U r  tired in the day and serotonin levels dip. You crave high glycemic foods and calories dense foods to bring your energy and serotonin levels up. You eat more all day to keep you going.

Reverse diet is proof that the calorie in-calorie out theory is false

NWCR.ws is a great/free resource for those who want to lose fat and keep it off

 80% of persons in the National Weight Control Registry are women and 20% are men.

• The "average" woman is 45 years of age and currently weights 145 lbs, while the "average" man is 49 years of age and currently weights 190 lbs.

• Registry members have lost an average of 66 lbs and kept it off for an average of 5.5 years.

• Weight losses have ranged from 30 to 300 lbs.
• Duration of successful weight loss has ranged from 1 year to 66 years!
• Some have lost the weight rapidly, while others have lost weight very slowly--over as many as 14 years.
• 45% of registry participants lost the weight on their own and the other 55% lost weight with the help of some type of program.

7 habits of highly thin people in theNational Weight Control Registry:

• 98% of Registry participants report that they modified their food intake in some way to lose weight.

• 94% increased their physical activity, with the most frequently reported form of activity being walking.

• There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity. 

• 78% eat breakfast every day.
• 75% weigh them self at least once a week.
• 62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
• 90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.

The French students showed a low frequency of snacking and a high regularity in having breakfast, especially respondents with lower BMI. Very few were overweight (8%) and less than 1% were obese.

 

Your brain makes you lose fat. Dave Scott 6 time ironman world champion rinsed his cottage cheese because he felt that a low fat/ hi carb diet would give him the edge. This didn’t help, but psychologically it was valuable to him because he believed it to work and it was one more thing he was doing to cement his commitment to his cause.

This is how diet pills work. It’s the physical act of the pill to the mouth that reminds you of your commitment to lose weight. A simple belief in the product can be enough to change habits unconsciously and change metabolism mentally by belief.

Thanks for listening! Here is a recap of some of the points discusses today. Tune in next week same time same place!

-PJ

Bad sleep habits may set you up for poor blood sugar control. Sleeping for less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours per night was associated with an increased risk of diabetes in a recent study. These same poor sleep habits also were linked to impaired glucose tolerance, a condition marked by higher-than-normal blood sugar levels. Aim for 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night.

A recent study revealed that sleep deprivation reduces levels of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone. If you have trouble sleeping, practice good sleep hygiene: go to bed at the same time every night, avoid caffeine or large meals late in the evening, exercise regularly earlier in the day, sleep in a cool, dark room, and unwind before bedtime.

Add a good night's sleep to your checklist of helpful weight-loss aids. Sleep deprivation interferes with appetite-suppressing hormones, increases stress hormone levels, and decreases a person's glucose tolerance, all of which may contribute to weight gain. Another way sleep loss may help pile on the pounds: late-night munching. Go to bed and get up at the same time each day to help achieve sounder sleep.

Mind Meltdown
Brain scans of sleep-deprived people performing gambling tasks showed something quite revealing: The orbitofrontal cortex, an area that aids in learning from a loss or a bad decision, was less active. Researchers suspect that poor sleep, besides prompting risky behaviors, hinders the brain's ability to process emotions, such as regret. The result? You're less likely to think about the consequences of a decision. This leads to poor nutrition choices!

Overweight and obese adults are more likely to report skimping on sleep compared to people with healthy body mass indexes.

Shortchanging yourself on ZZZs makes your heart work harder.

Here's how: When you sleep, your body goes into a lower blood pressure mode. But too little time in this low-key state can eventually lead to high blood pressure. So set the list aside and give your heart a little holiday instead.

If you've traded sleep time for to-do lists, tight deadlines, or fretful toddlers, you're like most people over 30 who are getting historically low levels of sleep. One study of people aged 32 to 59 found that those who got fewer than 5 hours of sleep a night for several years were twice as likely to develop hypertension as people who got a healthy 7 or 8 hours each night.

Cutting back on a full night's sleep again and again comes back at you in several ways:

• It deprives you of the time when your blood pressure is lower.
• It means you spend more time dealing with stress instead of resting.
• And salt retention, a well-known contributor to high blood pressure, may increase with sleep deprivation.

Frozen, fresh, or cooked veggies?

You'd think that boiling veggies would suck the nutrients right out of them. But in the case of carrots and broccoli, that may not be so.

Seems that lightly boiling these two veggies can actually increase the concentration of carotenoids. The downside? It also depletes their phenolic compounds.

Steaming may be your best bet for both preserving phenolic compounds and boosting bioavailable carotenoids -- at least for broccoli. For carrots, you'll have to choose what's more important to you.

Whatever cooking method you choose for your veggies, keep in mind that frying or sauteing kills off the most antioxidant compounds.

Try out these other tips and tricks to make your veggies extra nutritious:

• Skip the thaw. Cooking straight from frozen retains more vitamin C.
• Spice them up. Adding cumin, ginger, and sage, rosemary, marjoram, and thyme will boost the antioxidant punch of both raw and cooked veggies.

Fresh is best when it really is farm-fresh and ripe. However, many commercial fruits and veggies are picked before peak ripeness -- which also means before their nutritional peak -- to avoid spoilage during transport and storage. And just a few days after harvest, fruits and vegetables begin to lose some of their nutritive goodness. What's more, the longer they sit on the shelf -- during transport, in the supermarket, and in your fridge -- the fewer nutrients they have left to pass on to you.

On the other hand, fruits and vegetables intended for freezing are usually picked closer to the peak of ripeness and are flash-frozen immediately after harvest. The processing does deplete some nutrients, but it locks in the rest for up to 12 months. So in some instances, frozen fruits and veggies may actually have more of the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

Numerous studies show that getting more of the omega-3 fatty acid called DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) in your diet may boost your mood and your brainpower. Even people battling tough-to-treat depression may feel as much as 50% better when they get lots of DHA. To keep your chin cheerfully up, aim for 200 milligrams (mg) of DHA a day. 1 Farm egg (150 mg)

Spinach is full of folate, a B vitamin that's a must for making feel-good serotonin. Like DHA, folate may help ease depression, according to researchers.

· Add a 10-ounce packet of frozen chopped spinach to soups, stews, and casseroles, homemade or not.
· Use spinach instead of lettuce in sandwiches and wraps.

Eating lutein-rich spinach every day for six months was enough to improve the vision of people already suffering from AMD.

Lutein and Zeaxanthinis found in high amounts in:

• Kale and spinach
• Turnip and collard greens
• Romaine lettuce
• Broccoli
• Zucchini
• Brussels sprouts

There is about 0.25 mg of lutein in each egg yolk -- in a highly absorbable nearly ideal form. Egg yolks also have zeaxanthin in an equal amount.

Quite simply, the lutein in egg yolks is superior because it is more easily absorbed by your body. A study in the Journal of Nutrition even proved this.

Your Mother Was Right -- and Wrong -- About Washing Fruits and Vegetables

Soaking your food in water saturated with ozone will not only selectively kill all the microbes on your produce BUT, and more importantly for most of us, it will break down all the pesticides that are on the outside of the vegetables.

Ozone, unlike radiation or chemicals, will not damage the vitality of the produce you are going to consume. This is FAR safer than soaking your produce in bleach, which while it will work, is clearly toxic to you.

Ozone can be toxic if you breathe it in large quantities, but when it is dissolved in water and acting on the vegetables, it is completely harmless.

The name of the product is the Lotus Sanitizing System. You can pick up this handy, device at Amazon for a little over $100.

OR soak your vegetables in water from a www.wetcooler.com water cooler.

The FDA is Pushing Dangerous and Damaging Ways to Sanitize Foods

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been considering irradiation since 1999. What exactly is irradiation?

Irradiated foods are exposed to a radiant energy source such as gamma rays or electron beams, which create positive and negative charges. This process disrupts the genetic material of living cells, which kills pathogens, insects and just about anything. The process also extends the shelf-life of foods, as the FDA boasts that “irradiated strawberries stay unspoiled up to three weeks, versus three to five days for untreated berries.”

Irradiation Also Destroys Nutrients

It says so right on the FDA’s Web site:

“The process [irradiation] may cause a small loss of nutrients but no more so than with other processing methods such as cooking, canning, or heat pasteurization.”

Raw foods rule! The moment you cook, heat, pasteurize or irradiate most food you lose a major element of its vitality. The energetic element of food -- such as biophoton nutrition -- is largely undervalued in the United States, and the only way to get it is from raw foods.

Meanwhile, when foods are cooked or heated:

• Nutrients, like vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are depleted, destroyed, and altered.

• The biochemical structure and nutrient makeup of the food is altered from its original state. Molecules in the food are deranged, degraded, and broken down.

• The interrelationship of nutrients is altered from its natural synergistic makeup.

• All of the digestive-friendly enzymes present in raw foods are destroyed.

So imagine what would happen if ALL food, including your fresh produce, was irradiated before it reached your hands. These once lively and health-giving foods would be, literally, dead. And they would not provide the health benefits that raw, natural foods are known for.

Well, There Was That Spinach Scare

You remember, back in 2006, during which all spinach was pulled from store shelves.

Well, the researchers that are behind the above study are using that as a springboard to suggest that irradiation is necessary for fruits and vegetables.

A similar thing happened after a couple of salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 were traced back to raw almonds. The USDA then announced that they would require all raw almonds to be pasteurized. Now, if you want to buy truly raw almonds, you have to get them from a grower overseas.

So if the idea of irradiating fresh produce sounds like a long-shot, it may not be so far off. The USDA is applying its flawed logic once again, and suggesting that since it is possible to become sick from a raw food, you had best kill everything on it (good or bad) before you eat it.

You Can Avoid Irradiated Foods

For now, food that is irradiated must be labeled as such (except for spices, which are usually irradiated and not labeled). This may not be the case for long, however, as the FDA is considering allowing some irradiated foods to simply be labeled as pasteurized.

For now, though, keep a look out for foods labeled as "treated with radiation," "treated by irradiation,” or that contain the international symbol for irradiation, the radura:
 

Remember that what’s needed to keep your food supply safe is not a hefty dose of irradiation. What are needed are healthy animals and non-toxic growing practices. So if you want to find food that is safe for you and your family, avoid the symbol above like the plague, and buy your food from a local farmer near you who still takes pride in raising food the healthy “old-fashioned” way -- no irradiation required.

If the FDA gets its way, as long as the food looks and smells normal, chances are better than good you won't know whether that specific food has been "nuked" or not.

Rightly so, consumer groups aren't at all happy with the proposal that "would deny consumers clear information about whether they are buying food that has been exposed to high doses of ionizing radiation," according to Food & Water Watch. Industry groups like the Grocery Manufacturers/ Food Products Association are elated about it, however, considering the irradiated label has such a negative impact on consumers it acts like "a warning label."

Well, it should be a warning label!

Research has revealed a wide range of problems in animals that eat irradiated food, including premature death, a rare form of cancer, reproductive dysfunction, chromosomal abnormalities, liver damage, and vitamin deficiencies. Irradiation also destroys vitamins, disrupts the chemical composition of food, and masks and even encourages filthy conditions in slaughterhouses and food-processing plants.

All the more reason you should stay away from processed foods entirely, restrict your meat choices to grass-fed or organic meats and seek out local sources for the foods you eat.

Good Reason to Go Organic
According to John La Puma, MD -- RealAge expert and author of the new book ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine -- going organic with these 12 fruits and veggies could cut your exposure to pesticides as much as 90 percent!

Fruits

o                                         Peaches and nectarines

o                                         Strawberries and cherries

o                                         Apples and pears

o                                         Imported grapes

Veggies

o                                         Spinach and lettuce

o                                         Potatoes and celery

o                                         Sweet bell peppers

The Vitamin That Could Add Years to Your Life

If there were an Olympics for anti aging nutrients, vitamin D would have a good shot at the gold medal. Here's why: Scientists recently examined how blood levels of vitamin D affect aging on a cellular level. High intake was associated with as much as 5 fewer years of chromosome aging!

New Wonder Vitamin
D seems to be particularly relevant to a cellular yardstick of aging called a telomere. These "end caps" on your chromosomes get shorter and shorter with age, but having high blood levels of vitamin D seems to help ensure longer telomeres. That's a good thing, because when telomeres get really short and disappear, cells stop dividing and start to die. Translation: You age and become more vulnerable to disease.

Every time a cell reproduces, the telomere gets a little shorter. Over time, once the protective covering on the tip wears away, your DNA shoelace begins to fray. The cell stops dividing and can no longer replenish your body. Each time a telomere retires, you age a little.

So, get this: The telomeres of people who feel more stressed are almost 50% shorter than people who say they’re less stressed. Since scientists have a rough idea of what the average telomere length is for a specific age, they can estimate how much older the higher stress group is biologically: a whopping 9 to 17 years!

More D Delights
For years, D -- a vitamin found in food but also synthesized by your skin with a bit of sun exposure -- has been a nutritionist's delight because of its impact on bone health. Now, evidence is growing that the vitamin not only helps build bone and thwart aging but also defends against multiple sclerosis, several cancers, and inflammation disease. D is definitely moving into bona fide supernutrient territory.

Better Get Yours
Milk remains an excellent source of vitamin D, with 100–125 international units (IU) per cupful. Not into milk? Here are a few other sun-free ways to get your fill of D:

• Choose fortified foods. Food manufacturers are catching on: We want more D! Check the labels of everything to see if they're fortified.
• Eat fish. The richest source of D is salmon (360 IU of vitamin D in 3.5 ounces), but tuna and sardines canned in oil are good sources, too.
• Have an egg. D is in the yolk, and although 26 IU doesn't sound like much, it all adds up.
• Take a supplement. Just stay below 2000 IU per day from food and supplements combined. Ask your doctor for the best supplement and get your Vitamin D levels tested before you start supplementation.

Why You Should Snap Up Asparagus

Seems that getting lots of folate -- specifically from food, not so much from supplements -- may help protect you from pancreatic cancer. And just half a cup of asparagus delivers 190 micrograms of the stuff, more than 25 percent of what you need.

Your Pancreas, and More
Folate is a member of the B-vitamin group, and it has long been touted as a heart helper. Some early research also links high folate intake to a lower risk of colon, breast, ovarian, and lung cancers.

Food Is a Factor
Folate from both food and the stuff found in supplements (folic acid) helps your heart. But in scientific studies, when it came to defending against pancreatic cancer, only food sources seemed to have an effect. Folate-rich foods aren’t hard to come by if you go for the green -- as in artichokes, brussels sprouts, lima beans, avocados, soybeans, and broccoli and asparagus.

Nice Neck! It Must Be All the Flying

If your neck's in knots from stress and tension -- or too many hours in front of the computer -- it might be time to flap your wings.

Strength-training exercises aimed at toning arm, shoulder, and neck muscles can help soothe a chronic crick in the neck, research shows.

If you've got neck pain, talk to your doctor before you begin any exercise program. He or she may want to guide you to safe choices. In a study, simple dumbbell-in-hand exercises -- like lifting your arms straight out from your sides (kind of looks like you're flapping your wings) soothed people's stiff necks after 10 weeks of supervised strength training.

In terms of the "negative fat foods" theory, here's the real key: certain types of foods require a lot of energy (calories) to break down, absorb, and use inside of the body. Some of these foods actually force the body to call upon its energy stores - in the form of stored glucose and fat - to finish 'processing' the food.

Vegetables: Broccoli, Asparagus, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Celery, Cucumber, Endive, Green Beans, Onion, Papaya, Radishes, Spinach, Zucchini

Fruits: Apple, Blueberry, Cantaloupe, Cranberry, Grape Fruit, Honey Dew Melon, Lemon, Lime, Orange, Pineapple, Strawberry

Fat-burning Spicy Foods: Jalapenos, Habaneros, Cayenne Peppers, and most other chile peppers can all affect your metabolism by speeding up your heart rate. Studies have shown that eating a very spicy meal can acutally speed up the metabolism by about 25%....for up to 3 hours! Also, a recent study showed that men who drank coffee throughout the day and ate snacks containing red peppers burned almost 1000 more calories than a control group. (Note: many chile peppers also fall into the negative calorie foods category.)

Fat-burning liquid foods: Black Tea, Green Tea, Coffee, Yerba Mate. These drinks all contain caffeine and/or a chemical called EGCG, both of which directly effect metabolism. Caffeine speeds up the heart rate and also frees fatty acids stored in the body, making them more readily available for energy-usage. EGCG, found in high concentrations in Green Tea (another negative calorie food) seems to speed up the brain and nervous system, helping you to burn significantly more calories.

Fat-burning meat foods: Grass fed Beef, Chicken, Turkey, Pork, Buffalo, tuna, sardines, white fish, etc. Pretty much all lean meats help to speed up the metabolism and burn more fat simply because they require so much energy for complete digestion. Studies have shown that people who follow a high-meat/high-protein diet burn twice as many calories AFTER a meal as people who follow a high-carbohydrate diet.

Children are very impressionable, which can be a good or a bad thing when it comes to their diet. Most parents want their kids to eat a wide range of healthy foods, but most parents don’t do that themselves. And asking a child to do something you won’t even consider is not only hypocritical but, more importantly, highly ineffective, as children tend to model their parents' behavior, not their recommendations.

If you’re doubting that kids really listen to their parents about healthy eating, consider a survey of almost 1,500 children conducted by the America on the Move Foundation. It found that 71 percent of children get information about how to be healthy from their mothers and 43 percent get such information from their fathers.

Meanwhile, most overweight children also have at least one parent who is overweight, because the children learn unhealthy behaviors from their parents at an early age.

Yet, as a result of eating too many junk foods and fast-foods, kids are getting what were once entirely “adult” diseases, things like type 2 diabetes and signs of heart disease. In children!

I find it absolutely astonishing that one study even found infants seven months and older are being given soft drinks in their bottles. And infants that aren’t even 2 years old are eating sweets at least once a day. To say this is irresponsible is an extreme understatement!

Not surprisingly, according to one federal report, America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007, U.S. kids need some major help with their eating habits:

• Among children ages 2-6, only 27 percent had good diets
• Among 7-12-year-olds, only 9 percent had good diets
• Among 13-18-year-olds, only 5 percent had good diets

It’s really up to parents to teach their kids about food very early on. Otherwise, their diets will only worsen as they grow older.

Have you ever wondered what effect forbidding foods has on you or your kids? Check this video out: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/05/03/does-forbidding-snacks-work.aspx?source=nl

Sorry so late getting this in, but I was preoccupied with studying for my FAA test for my private pilot license. It paid off though. I got a great score!
 
Here is the recap from last Saturday's show:

Reading the “Nutrition Facts” panels on foods may not be as reliable an indicator of a food’s nutrients as you may think.

"Good Morning America" hired a lab to test a dozen packaged food products to see if the nutrients matched the labels.

The government allows foods to contain 20 percent more diet-damaging ingredients than the label lists before taking enforcement action, and all 12 products were indeed over in one way or another. Three were actually over by more than 20 percent, including:

-David's Sunflower Seeds with 23 percent more saturated fat

-Ritz Crackers with 36 percent more sodium

-Wonderbread with 70 percent more total fat

Meanwhile, manufacturers are allowed to list "0" on the label even if their product contains up to half a gram of the item in question. Despite a "0" on the labels, there were small amounts of saturated fat in Baked Lay's Potato Chips, Rold Gold pretzels, Special K Cereal and Grape Nuts Trail Mix Crunch, and trans fats in Nabisco Cheese Nips.

Pet peeve of the day: Fitness and nutrition “experts” who are overweight! When listening to an “expert” on weight loss or any personal trainer on fitness, first ask yourself, “does it seem to be working for them”? This can easily be assessed with a quick glance at their belly or hips! Also, why do the “well known” trainers look so good on their product ads, but when you see them in every day life, they don’t look so good? Could it be photo retouching? Inconsistent lifestyle? Getting in shape for the photo shoot? Things that make you go hmmmmm……

Next, is my pet peeve of the week and a response to recent media attention about proper hydration. I was so peeved in fact, I wrote a whole article on it for my X Gym members (and radio show listeners). Please read it below.

Do You Really Need To Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day?

By PJ Glassey, CSCS

            No! That’s not enough! I’m really irritated with a few quacks (“Dorkters” I like to call them) blithering on recently about how we don’t really need to drink 8 glasses of water per day. They are just trying to get press time and create a stir by going against current wisdom and sound, healthy advice. They are also merely following the Dorkter who initially came out with this story a few months ago to get himself in the press to promote his new book.

Following the lead guy is a common technique Dorkters use, because they don’t have to do any research or work of their own. They just rewrite the original story in their own words and then claim it as their idea. I have seen several Dorkters saying the exact same thing since this story initially came out a few months ago, so it’s obvious they are just riding on his coattails.

The interesting fact to me, is that these Dorkters don’t cite any reasons that drinking 8 glasses of water is bad! They make the false claim that there aren’t enough well designed research studies proving 8 glasses or more is necessary, but totally neglect to cite a single study that supports drinking less than 8 glasses a day. It took me all of about 10 minutes to find the 12 research studies listed at the bottom of this article to support my opinion. Anyone can Google Pub Med online and see for them self how many well designed studies are out there now.

Shouldn’t doctors be spending their time telling us about stuff that would harm us or help us, instead of wasting their time talking about stuff that doesn’t matter if it isn’t true? This just proves my point that they are pointlessly blithering because they know it will get them some attention. There are no health problems associated with drinking 8 glasses per day, but many serious health problems have been proven to result from drinking less than 8 glasses a day, including death! Shouldn’t the Dorkters err on the safe side if they are doing us a service and not try to convert people to hypo hydration and all of its proven risks?

So far every “expert” I have seen who has claimed that we don’t need 8 or more glasses of water per day has a little fat to lose themselves, and every layperson who has repeated this message to me has also been at least moderately overweight. If I am only hearing this message from those with excess weight, it sure seems to confirm the fat loss benefits of proper hydration.

I did run across one water-naysayer who appeared to be relatively thin (at least between the ears), but I could detect a little “pooch” in his stomach area despite his loose shirt. He stated he was proof that my claim in the preceding paragraph was false, so I just responded, “OK, I’ll count to three, and then we will both pull up our shirts and do a quick comparison of my 12-20 cups a day abs to your 5-7 cups a day abs.” I started counting, and by the time I got to 2, he had already turned around and stormed off.

Our brains are 85% water, so it figures that only the dehydrated people are preaching the less water message in spite of all the scientific evidence available. Even if there were no scientific proof for proper hydration, it would still make for basic common sense. I guess us smart, hydrated folks have to “dumb it down” for the dehydrated population. If you are one of the 75% of Americans who are chronically dehydrated, I’ll try to type slowly for the rest of this article so you can keep up.

With the lack of water intake, abundance of coffee, sodas, and alcohol, it’s no wonder everyone is always sick and overweight! The bottom line is that even if you doubt what I am saying here, the risk of getting too little water is much worse than the risk of getting a little too much. If I’m wrong, you are only making more trips the bathroom. If I’m right, your whole life changes, and I’ve seen that happen over and over! Let’s just look at a few of the most common general knowledge side effects of both sides of the coin:

Negative Side Effects of Chronic Dehydration         Negative Side Effects of Slight Over hydration       

Slow to no fat loss                                          More trips to the bathroom

Kidney stones

Headaches                                                      

Decreased strength

Decreased concentration

Muscle cramps

Indigestion

Heart problems

Liver problems

Elevated blood pressure

Irregular body temperature

More frequent illnesses

45 – to 79% increased cancer risk

Joint pain

Vertebral disk degeneration

Sodium retention

Water retention

Bad breath

Gallstones

Urinary tract infections

Gout

Osteoporosis

Skin problems/acne

More skin wrinkles

Chapped lips

Decreased circulation

Intestinal problems

Decreased endurance

Increased appetite

Slower healing and repair

Increased muscle soreness

Mood swings

Hormone regulation problems

Eyesight degeneration

Slower metabolism

            The low-water “Dorkters” also waste their time talking about the dangers of drastic over hydration. Drinking too much water to the point of upsetting your electrolyte balance (hyponatremia) is very hard to do. This would require drinking at least your weight in ounces over a 12 hour period, so hyponatremia really isn’t an issue for people without Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Some extreme endurance athletes and babies of stupid parents can fall victim to hyponatremia, but it takes such high water volumes to cause problems (especially in our high sodium culture), it’s hardly worth mentioning.

If you want to know how much water your body uses in a day, just weigh yourself right before bed, and then again right when you wake up. You will be 1-2 pounds lighter in the morning, simply from exhaling water vapor while you slept! This means that if you stayed asleep for 24 hours, you would breathe out 48-96 ounces of water in that time. This equates to 6-12 glasses of water right there! Now add normal daily activities with some conversation, and you are already over the traditional 8 glass recommendation even before exercise!

Our thirst mechanisms do not work right when we are chronically dehydrated. Our bodies are forced to pull water out of our food to keep us alive, and this teaches our system to tell us we are hungry when we are really just thirsty! I’ll restate this point for those of you who are dehydrated and may be falling behind by now: You have taught your body that it must get its water from food, so it craves food instead of water when it needs water!

If you don’t believe this, try drinking your proper amount of water for 3 weeks, and you will see for yourself that you get thirsty more often than you get hungry instead of vice versa. This is because when you are properly hydrated, and your body is getting its needs from water instead of extracting it from food, it just asks for more water! Many people have lost fat from proper hydration alone, because their food consumption goes down so much after their thirst mechanism gets dialed in properly.

Fat loss from proper hydration is also tied into your liver function. When you are dehydrated, your kidneys need help and your liver comes to their rescue. One of the liver’s main jobs is to extract fat out of your tissues to be burned off, and when the liver is busy helping the kidneys, guess which job it’s not doing anymore?

Water also keeps your immune system functioning optimally. When we are ill, we lose water at an accelerated rate because we are blowing our nose, sweating, coughing, expectorating, and in the worst cases, launching out one end and/or the other. Lots of fluid is being lost and it must be replenished quickly, because our cells are 70-90% water and this is where the war is waging between the good guys and the virus or bacteria!

Your blood plasma is mostly water. Plasma acts as a reservoir that can either replenish insufficient water or absorb excess water from tissues. When body tissues need additional liquid, water from plasma is the first resource to meet that need. Plasma circulation plays a vital role in regulating body temperature by carrying heat generated in core body tissues through areas that lose heat more readily, such as the arms, legs, and head. It’s pretty easy to see the damage done when you are dehydrated while you are sick with a fever.

Your skin is your first defense against infection. When you are dehydrated, your skin cracks and your lips chap. This provides nice little gateways for tiny little viruses and bacteria to sneak through. Mucus membranes are also one of your first lines of defense. When those are dried up from a lack of water, bad stuff gets by them too. White blood cells are the internal defense mechanisms that take care of the stuff that gets into your bloodstream. Guess what their main ingredient is? Yep, water. They can’t fight for you effectively if you are not hydrating them too!

Another reason we preach water so hard at the X Gym is because muscles are 75% water. When you train with us, you are breaking down your muscles, much like a tornado would break down your house (appropriate analogy don’t you think?). If you give your body a little excess water, you are providing excess building materials to rebuild. This is like Home Depot dropping off too much lumber to rebuild your house after the storm. You get to add on and make it better than before!

Most gyms make you buy your water so they can make more money off of you. If they do have free water, it comes out of a drinking fountain straight from municipal sources with all the toxic city chemicals included for your convenience. You probably don’t want to drink out of the fountain anyway because you just saw Bruno Barbell Head wrap his lips around the nozzle and then spit some back out to clear out the extra saliva production from the steroids he’s on.

 Instead of charging you for water, we pay for the best possible filtration process and give it to you free. Our WETCOOLERS.COM systems filter the water through three different stages, ending with reverse osmosis filtration, for the purest water available. Then it goes to a stainless steel holding tank, where it is sterilized by activated oxygen so you get pure, sterile, filtered water in your cup.

We have the best water system because we have the best workouts, and for you to get the best results, you need the best water absorption. We encourage members to bring extra water bottles so they can take this water home too, so fill up! It’s another benefit of being an X Gym member!

The only way you can depend on your thirst mechanism to accurately tell you when you need water (and not more food) is to be properly hydrated. To calculate your water needs, divide your body weight in half and then drink that many ounces of water each day. Some people under 100 pounds might need more, and others over 250 pounds might need less, but it’s a good general rule.

Another important point the Dorkters fail to mention is that heavy people, well-muscled individuals, and genetically heavy sweaters will suffer much worse effects from less than 8 glasses a day than those of “normal weight” and sweat rates. Under-hydrated individuals with weight problems will crave food to satisfy their broken thirst mechanism even more than normal weight people, which further perpetuates their weight problem.

Children are at greater risk for dehydration than adults due to their higher surface-to-mass ratio. Additionally, children have different thirst sensitivities and body cooling mechanisms than adults. Children differ from adults in total body water content, and boys and girls differ in body water content with maturation. Research in young adults shows that mild dehydration corresponding to only 1% to 2% of body weight loss can lead to significant impairment in cognitive function. Dehydration in infants is associated with confusion, irritability, and lethargy; in children, it even produces decrements in cognitive performance.

The research makes the case for proper hydration indisputable, and simple common sense verifies it. Water is free, so I’m not getting anything out of being on this soap box other than the satisfaction of seeing you succeed in your fitness and health goals. Just do it!

J Am Coll Nutr. 2007 Oct;26(5 Suppl):549S-554S

Br J Nutr. 2004 Jun;91(6):951-8.

AMA Arch Intern Med. 1955 Aug;96(2):142-52.

Trans Am Neurol Assoc. 1955-1956;(80th Meeting):217-9.

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J Am Coll Nutr. 2007 Oct;26(5 Suppl):555S-561S

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J Am Coll Nutr. 2007 Oct;26(5 Suppl):604S-612S.

Matcha (MAH-cha)  When you drink a cuppa matcha (also spelled maccha), you're getting green tea's powerful antioxidants to the max, because you're actually consuming the whole green tea leaf in powdered form. In Japan, slightly bitter matcha is traditionally served syrupy thick. But in the US, you'll find matcha stirred into lattes, sprinkled on ice cream, and used to bolster energy drinks and turn smoothies into pick-me-ups (it's said to boost alertness). Just be respectful of matcha if you're caffeine sensitive: Ounce for ounce, it has almost as much caffeine as coffee.

Açaí berries (ah-sigh-EE or ah-SIGH-ee)  Packed with twice the disease-fighting antioxidants of blueberries, açaí has already made Oprah's list of Top 10 Superfoods and The Washington Post called the blackberry-flavored fruit the "new pomegranate." Celestial Seasonings sells an açaí-green tea blend. açaí juice is available at most health-food stores.

Just one sausage a day can significantly raise your risk of bowel cancer. Eating 1.8 ounces of processed meat daily -- about one sausage or three pieces of bacon -- raises the likelihood of the cancer by 20%.

According to estimates, if everyone cut down on processed meat, one in 10 cases of bowel cancer could be prevented.

Source: World Cancer Research Fund: Food Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective November 2007

90% of the money spent on groceries last year went towards the purchase of processed foods. 100 years ago, it was exactly opposite, with 90% spent on real food like unprocessed meat and vegetables!

A big belly in your 40’s can boost your risk of Alzheimer's disease decades later.

Previous research has already shown that obesity raises your chances of developing dementia, but a new study found a separate risk from storing fat in your abdomen. Even people who weren't classified as officially overweight were endangered.

The study involved over 6,500 people who were monitored for an average of 36 years. Compared to people with normal body weight and a low belly measurement, people with normal body weight and high belly measurements were 89% more likely to have dementia. And the risk increased even more among overweight and obese people with high belly measurements.

It’s not known why abdominal fat may promote dementia, but it is speculated that this type of fat pumps out toxins and cause inflammation that harms your brain, the researchers said.

Source: Neurology March 26, 2008

Research shows that eating a diet high in sucrose (the stuff found in your sugar bowl and most candies and sweets) and other high-glycemic-index items can increase your risk of colon cancer. But candies aren't the only place you'll find sucrose. Check the labels on salad dressings, spaghetti sauces, and condiments, too. (Ketchup has 4 grams per tablespoon!)

Your metabolic set point is only half genetic, or more specifically, located in your cell’s DNA. The other half of your set point is located in your brain! Both halves can be changed, so neither is permanent. Genes can be altered over time, and so can your brain’s wiring.

The brain’s metabolic set point is based on what you saw modeled growing up. This modeling came from your parents, TV, society, friends, teachers, and so on. You developed habits, cravings, and emotional eating habits based on these past experiences.

Even if people lose weight, they usually rebound because of their brain’s set point, more than their genetic set point. The experts mistakenly attribute rebounds to the genetic set point. This is impossible however, because if someone can lose the fat by following certain habits, it only makes sense that they can at least keep it off with the same habits. It’s the brain’s set point that causes the habits to relapse and the resulting fat to come back on.

People fall back into old habits without even realizing they are doing it because of their mental wiring.! You must rewire your brain if you wish to lose the fat and keep it off. Altering your brain’s set point is the first step, because that is the only way to keep the fat off. Keeping the fat off is the only way to alter your genetic set point, so the horse must certainly come before the cart here!

The most important point to learn is that your thoughts are the key to changing your brain and your mental set point. Even if you don’t believe yourself when you say, “I’m going to get leaner today”, say it anyway because eventually, with enough repetition, your subconscious will buy into. Thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions lead to results.

Your subconscious controls your actions more then your conscious mind does, and programming your subconscious is as easy as repeating the messages you want it to believe more than the messages you don’t want it to believe! I know I’m repeating this message over and over, but that’s part of the process isn’t it? The most important thing you can do is to tell yourself every day (whether your conscious mind believes it or not) that you are getting leaner and that your metabolism is getting faster.

Thin people model that lifestyle and can relate to other thin people. Fat people model that lifestyle and relate to other fat people. Fat people are often resentful of thin people, and that attitude actually helps keep fat people fat!

We are only likely to become like someone if we admire them. If you resent rich people, you are telling yourself over and over that is wrong or bad and your subconscious will make darn sure that your actions prevent you from ever becoming rich. The same goes for your body. If you resent thin people, those thoughts turn into negative feelings about thin people, which changes your actions, and cause you to stay fat. Again, I’ll repeat the message, thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions lead to results.

If you instead force yourself to admire thin people, you will become thin yourself. You can do this by sending a feeling of love to a thin person every time you see one. Think about blessing them instead of resenting them. Tell yourself every morning that you love thin people and are becoming one of them. Bless that which you want and it will be yours. Anything you negate, you will never have.

See you next Saturday at our new (and better) time slot of 9-11 am!

Lots of good stuff to talk about yesterday! Check out the recap below. Remember that the show moves into a better time slot this Saturday the 19th. We are at 9-11 am now instead of 8-10 am!

Artificial sweeteners cause obesity.

 I always thought it was funny to see a very large person order a Big

 Mac, large fries -- and top it off with a Diet Coke. I also found it 

 peculiar that I rarely saw thin people drinking diet sodas.

 research indicates that just the thought or smell of

 food initiates a whole set of hormonal and physiologic responses that

 gets the body ready for food.

 This is familiar to us from Pavlov's dog experiment, where he

 trained dogs to salivate by associating the ringing of a bell with

 the presentation of food. By doing this repeatedly, he eventually

 trained the dogs to salivate in anticipation of food simply by

 ringing the bell without any food at all.

 Think of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners as ringing the bell

 for your physiology.

    Our brains know how to get our bodies ready for food. It is called

 the cephalic phase reflex. Your brain is preparing for

 food even before your fork or cup crosses your lips.

 This allows you to anticipate and prepare for the arrival of

 nutrients in your intestinal tract, improves the efficiency of how

 your nutrients are absorbed, and minimizes the degree to which food

 will adjust your hormonal balance and create weight gain.

 So in a way, your body is already preparing to regulate your energy

 balance, metabolism, weight, calorie burning, and many other things -

 - just by thinking about food.

 Any sweet taste will signal your body that calories are on the way

 and trigger a whole set of hormonal and metabolic responses to get

 ready for those calories.

 When you trick your body and feed it non- nutritive or non-caloric

 sweeteners, like aspartame, saccharin, or sucralose, it gets confused.

 An exciting new study in the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience has

 shown conclusively that using artificial sweeteners not only does 

 not prevent weight gain, but induces a whole set of physiologic and

 hormonal responses that actually make you gain weight.

 The researchers proved this by giving two different groups of rats

 some yogurt. One batch of yogurt was sweetened with sugar. The other 

 was sweetened with saccharin.

 They found that three major things happened over a very short period

 of time in the rats that were fed artificially sweetened yogurt.

 First, the researchers found that the total food eaten over 14 days

 dramatically increased in the artificial sweetener group -- meaning

 that the artificial sweetener stimulated their appetite and made

 them eat more.

 Second, these rats gained a lot more weight and their body fat

 increased significantly.

 And third (and this is very concerning) was the change in core body

 temperature of the rats fed the artificial sweeteners. Their core

 body temperature decreased, meaning their metabolism slowed down.

 So not only did the rats eat more, gain more weight, and have more

 body fat, but they actually lowered their metabolism. THIS EFFECT STARTED BEFORE THEY STARTED EATING THE FOOD as their bodies became trained to the response.

 As I have said many times before, all calories are not created equal.

A chemical in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables may help to restore your immune system as you age. UCLA researchers found that the chemical, sulforaphane, switches on a set of antioxidant genes and enzymes in specific immune cells, which fight the damaging effects of free radicals.

Free radicals are a supercharged form of oxygen that can cause oxidative tissue damage -- for example, they can trigger the inflammation process that causes clogged arteries. Oxidative damage is thought to be one of the major causes of aging.

According to researchers, treating older mice with sulforaphane increased their immune response to the level of younger mice.

The ability of sulforaphane to reinvigorate the immune system abilities of aged tissues could play an important role in reversing much of the negative impact of free radicals.

• The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology March 6, 2008

Stress can ratchet up your blood pressure, but a fit physique might cancel out the effects.

It's true: Being a well-muscled machine helps your blood pressure return to normal faster following a stressful event.

Fat and Your Stress Response
The more body fat you pack, the more trouble your body will have in getting your blood pressure cooled down after stress. And this relationship probably explains, in part, why stress and obesity are connected to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. 

Two out of three people are overweight — and one out of three are clinically obese. Every year the overweight and obese spend $50-90 billion on products and services to lose weight.

Berries lower BP

People with high BP who ate berries daily as part of a study saw a 7-point dip in their systolic blood pressure -- after just 8 weeks of berry love!

Bursting with Goodness
Berries have a lot going for them: They're jam-packed with polyphenols, like flavonols. Plus, they're loaded with vitamin C, folate, potassium, and fiber. With so much in such a tiny package, it's hardly a surprise that it took just 4 ounces of berries each day to boost the health of the study participants. Not only did their blood pressure go down, but their HDL ("good" cholesterol) went up, too.

The berry medley in the study contained everything from bilberries and lingonberries to strawberries and raspberries. Blueberries and strawberries are the best. Given that you can eat berries one by one, they're the perfect alternative to chips when stress calls for some hand-to-mouth action.

Vitamin E Linked to Lung Cancer

Taking high doses of vitamin E supplements can actually increase your risk of lung cancer.

A study of 77,000 people found consuming 400 milligrams of vitamin E per day increased cancer risk by 28 percent. Smokers were at particular risk.

An expert writing in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine said that people should get their vitamins from fruit and vegetables rather than supplements.

Vitamin E is known to be an antioxidant that protects cells from molecules called free radicals. But in high doses, it may also act as a pro-oxidant, causing oxidation and damage to cells.

Sleep deprivation puts your body into a pre-diabetic state, and makes you feel hungry, even if you’ve already eaten.

 

Zap Stress and Grow Younger with a Sniff of This

Feeling overwhelmed? A quick liaison with lavender may help keep things under control.

Seems a scant 5 minutes of exposure to mild lavender aromas helps curb the release of cortisol -- a key stress hormone that can prematurely age you by triggering inflammation.

In a recent study of Japanese co-eds, sniffing lavender not only lowered cortisol levels but also may have enhanced antioxidant activity in their bodies -- a double blow to the aging process.

10 random health facts you probably didn’t know

Banging your head against a wall burns 150 calories an hour.

The word ‘gymnasium’ comes from the Greek word gymnazein, which means ‘to exercise naked.’

There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee; of these, only 26 have been tested, and half of those caused cancer in rats.

The average American eats at McDonald’s more than 1,800 times in their life.

There are more bacteria in your mouth than there are people in the world.

According to U.S. FDA standards, 1 cup of orange juice is allowed to contain 10 fruit fly eggs, but only 2 maggots.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

It is possible to go blind from smoking too heavily.

You are about 1 centimeter taller in the morning than in the evening.

During your lifetime, you’ll eat about 60,000 pounds of food -- that’s the weight of about 6 elephants.

Carcinogens Found in "Organic" Personal Care Products

A new study commissioned by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) found that many leading "natural" and "organic" brand shampoos, body washes, and lotions contain the carcinogenic contaminant 1,4-Dioxane.

To avoid 1,4-dioxane, OCA recommends reading ingredient labels and avoiding products with indications of ethoxylation, which include: "myreth," "oleth," "laureth," "ceteareth," any other "eth," "PEG," "polyethylene," "polyethylene glycol," "polyoxyethylene," or "oxynol," in ingredient names.

The side effects of prescription medication can be horrific. Is it really worth taking medication if the cure is worse than the disease?

Here are some side effects that come with many common prescription drugs currently on the market:

1. Drainage, crusting, or oozing of your eyes or eyelids
2. Swollen, black, or "hairy" tongue
3. Changes in the shape or location of body fat
4. Blue lips or fingernails
5. Purple spots on your skin
6. White patches or sores inside your mouth or on your lips
7. Irregular back-and- forth movements of your eyes
8. Unusual risk-taking behavior, no fear of danger
9. Extreme fear
10. Hallucinations, fainting, coma
11. Fussiness, irritability, crying for an hour or longer
12. Paralysis
13. Thoracic Hematoma (bleeding into your chest)
14. A blood clot in your lung
15. Liver damage
16. Kidney damage
17. Decreased bone marrow function
18. Congestive heart failure
19. Shingles
20. Nerve pain lasting for several weeks or months
21. Bleeding that will not stop
22. Coughing up blood or vomit that looks like coffee grounds

One drug on the market, EvaMist -- a treatment for menopause symptoms such as hot flashes -- has possible side effects that include cancer, stroke, heart attack, blood clots, and dementia!

But this is only a partial list of the potential side effects of prescription drugs. There are, unfortunately, many more out there.

Alli Side Effects In Layman's Terms
by Jeff Kay http://www.thewvsr.com/alli.htm

Alli is a new over-the-counter weight-loss pill which, predictably enough, has proven to be a massive best-seller from the moment it became available. The drug, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, reportedly works by blocking the absorption of excess fats by the body. And folks are waddling, not walking, to their local drug stores for a chance to start on the Alli "program."

As is the case with most drugs, Alli comes with a risk of certain side effects. Or, as they're known on the company website, treatment effects. 

A person is reportedly limited to 15 grams of fat per meal, and if they go over (or even if they don't), there's a significant chance they'll find themselves out behind a shopping center somewhere, crying and clutching a wad of horrifyingly soiled undergarments, searching for a place to ditch it. 

As best as I can tell, anyway...

Since a lot of this stuff is couched in language that is technically truthful, but very carefully worded, I've taken it upon myself to go through the list of side (treatment) effects and warnings, and translate it all into layman's terms. 

I'm no scientist or doctor, and don't pretend to have any special knowledge. I'm just a person who's fairly good with words and reading between the lines... The highlighted phrases below are direct quotes from the Alli website, with my translations in between.


Undigested fat cannot be absorbed and passes through the body naturally. The excess fat is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it in the toilet as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.
The website mentions seeing the undigested fat in a toilet, but that’s clearly a best case scenario. You might also see it on the tops of your shoes, across the hood of a car, or way up the shower curtain, near the loops.

The fat passes out of your body, so you may have bowel changes, known as treatment effects.

Bowel changes. Notice how they phrase that? It means stuff will be happening the likes of which you could never have imagined. It’ll be like a daily Dean Koontz novel inside your underwear.

You may get:

gas with oily spotting

You’ll be farting Wesson oil straight through your Dockers…

Eating a low-fat diet lowers the chance of these bowel changes. Limit fat intake in your meals to an average of 15 grams.

The McDonald’s Big Mac has 34 grams of fat, and the Burger King Whopper has 40. Eat either of these while taking Alli, and you’ll very likely be transformed into a diarrhea cannon.

Learning how to manage treatment effects is an important part of being successful with alli. Here's how to take control:

Start trimming fat from your diet now, even before you begin taking alli. Then pick a day to begin taking alli, such as a weekend day so you can stay close to home if you experience a treatment effect. Make the timing work for you. If you're getting ready to travel or attend a social event, hold off on starting with alli until the event is over
Blowing liquid feces down a row of bridesmaids, for instance, could be viewed negatively in certain circles. Further, an unexpected bout of the power-squirts while riding “The Bullet” at the county fair might not ingratiate you with your friends. Or anyone on the fairway. Or the folks in the parking lot walking to their cars.

While no one likes experiencing treatment effects, they might help you think twice about eating questionable fat content. If you think of it like that, alli can act like a security guard for your late-night cravings

You see, when you think about it, crapping yourself is actually a positive.