Tag: diet

Super Healthy Ingredients That Are Not So Super (3 of 4)[:id]Bahan Alami Super Sehat yang Tidak Super (3 dari 4)

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

So tea tree oil is not a super cornucopia to cure all your ailments. And chia seeds have its limits. Surely soy milk is a great dairy milk replacement right? After all the Chinese has been drinking this for over 3000 years right?

Soy Milk

Alleged benefits: healthier alternative to dairy milk that is low in saturated fat.

So what if dairy milk is high in saturated fat? Coconut oil has far greater saturated fat content than soybean oil but it’s been proven to be far healthier.  In fact, based on a study done by Soochow University di China, 40 grams of cheese consumption per day actually reduce the risk of stroke by 14%!  Have you ever tasted plain soy milk processed traditionally with no added sugar?  It tastes horrible!  This is why manufacturers dumped truckloads of sugar in soy milk to make it drinkable.  And although milk naturally has sugar in it, this is at far lower concentration, and the presence of fat in milk slows down the sugar absorption into the body.  The same cannot be said on soy milk.  Not to mention the fact that children fed exclusively on soy milk later develop abnormal secondary sex organs.

Conclusion: soy milk can be part of the occasional cold sugary beverage treat healthier than coca-cola, but is NOT a healthy substitute for dairy milk.

Unsaturated Fat is Good, Saturated Fat is Bad?

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

In high school, we were taught saturated fat is bad, mono-unsaturated fat is better, and polyunsaturated fat is the best for the heart.  Based on my experience when teaching high school biology under the Cambridge curriculum last year, this was still the case.  All the food shown on the featured image is considered unhealthy mainly because of their high saturated fat content.  How true is this?  After all, we were once taught that margarine is healthier than butter, fructose is healthier than sugar, non-dairy creamer is better than milk, and artificial sweeteners are good for you.  All of this was later proven to be false.

Every 100 gr of soybean oil contains 16 gr of saturated fat, 23 gr of mono-unsaturated fat, and 58 gr of polyunsaturated fat. Every 100 gr of coconut oil on the other hand contains a whooping 87 gr of saturated fat, 6 gr of mono-unsaturated fat, and a miniscule 1.8 gr of polyunsaturated fat. Hence if your high school biology text book is correct, then soybean oil is health food and coconut oil is junk food, right?

The Research

Researchers from University of California, Riverside recently conducted an experiment that split mice into four different groups. The first group was fed with only coconut oil (CO), the second group was fed a mix of coconut oil and soybean oil (CO-SO), the third group was fed with fructose and coconut oil (F-CO) and the last group was fed with a mix of fructose, coconut oil and soybean oil (F-CO-SO).  The total diet percentage of soybean oil and fructose was made to mimic the modern American diet.  The purpose of this mix is to investigate the effect of saturated vs unsaturated along with fructose on health.  The total fat consumption is 40% which is is quite large but not unnatural unlike what some researchers in Australia did by forcing rats to consume 80% fat.

The rats are monitored for significant increases in weight gain, adiposity, diabetes, glucose intolerance and insulin resistance among other things to see the effects of different diet mix on health.

The Result

The second group of mice (CO-SO) experienced weight gain, increased fat tissue, diabetes, glucose intolerance and insulin resistance compared to the first group of mice (CO). They also experienced fatty livers with hepatocyte ballooning and very large lipid droplets as well as shorter colonic crypt length.  The third group of mice (F-CO) did not experience as much obesity or diabetes as the second group, but experienced rectal prolapse and very fatty livers. Genetic markers for diabetes, obesity, inflammation and cancer all increased activity on the second group (SO-CO).  The healthiest group is the first (CO) while the worst off is the last group (F-SO-CO).

Conclusion

1. The Cake is a Lie

Basically all those theories taught at school was based on cherry picking data done to support certain industry agenda.  If the data doesn’t suit them, they would simply throw away the “bad” data.  In the past, reproducibility of a published research was simply not important, allowing these bad researchers to thrive.  There’s also the case like the Harvard researchers that was bribed by the sugar industry to promote more carbohydrate consumption.  Just because something is high in saturated fats, it doesn’t mean that it’s not healthy.  I’m talking about traditional foods such as eggs and cheese that has been misaligned for decades over their saturated fat content.  Of course I personally think cakes are still junk food due to their high content of highly refined carbohydrate.

2. This Is Strictly for Soybean and Coconut Oil

The scope of this research compares soybean oil and coconut oil (regular type, not extra organic virgin harvested from the mouth of an active volcano). It does not encourage you to consume 40% of your diet from oil as there is no study comparison on humans (not rats) with differing level of oil consumptions. It also does not say that saturated fat is better than unsaturated fat. 100 gr of olive oil contains 14 gr of saturated fat, 73 gr of monounsaturated fat 11 gr of polyunsaturated fat, and is still considered as health food despite its high smoke point (unsuitable for frying).  Simply said, food cannot be classified as healthy or not due only to their saturated fat content.

3. Natural Foods Are Better

The problem with highly refined foods is that it separates ingredients that are naturally meant to be consumed together. Just like how fruits are healthy but fruit juice are not.  Soybean oil can only be extracted from an industrial chemical process while coconut oil has been traditionally used societies across South and Southeast Asia for generations.  This is why the main ingredients of Magnus Breakfast Mix are whey protein that is a natural by-product of cheese processing and whole grain rolled oats.

Why Magnus Whey?

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

Currently there’s so many protein supplement product on the market. Do they actually do anything? Are they all the same?

Of course every brand will claim that their “patented mix” of protein is the best available on the market. But do they have independent research to prove that is actually the case?

5 Reasons To Choose Magnus Whey

  1. Helps Protects The Heart

Research done by University of Reading UK, showed that whey protein consumption lowers your risk of heart disease.

  1. Can Be Used for Fat Loss and Maintenance

Increased protein consumption has been proven to help people in achieving their ideal body weight and maintaining them via different mechanisms, all scientifically proven by different leading universities.

  1. Better Than Leading Vegan Proteins

Consumer Research recently did a study on over 150 leading protein brands globally and found that that using whey protein actually contains the lowest amount of heavy metal contaminants while those from vegetable sources had the highest heavy metal contamination.

  1. Free from Artificial Sweeteners

Browse the whey protein rows on your favorite supplement store and look at the ingredients label. You will find exotic names like Sucralose, Ace-K, Aspartame etc that are all artificial sweeteners and have been linked to Obesity, Type-2 Diabetes, even Stroke and Dementia. The latest research shedding these horrendous side effects being done by Boston University. This is why Magnus Whey is free of artificial sweeteners.

  1. Best To Grow Strength

If it’s one thing both young men and seniors both want, it is more strength, especially for seniors where loss of strength leads to less mobility and hence quality of life.  Northern Illinois University has proven that Whey protein is the best supplement to enhance strength and lean muscle mass.

Hence why you should choose Magnus Whey to help you achieve your healthy ideal body.

Gluten and Diabetes

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

One of the latest diet fats that came over the past 5 years is definitely the gluten free diet. Your favorite fitness guru probably extolled how going gluten free helped him to finally get rid of his facial acne (that you don’t remember of).  Your friend probably insisted that she lost her weight (that is quietly creeping back up) because of her gluten free diet. Surely, there’s nothing wrong with going gluten free right?

What is Gluten Anyway?

Gluten is a type of storage protein found in grains (i.e. rye, wheat, barley and oat). It has viscoelastic property that gives bread and pasta its distinctive chewy texture. Many vegetarian foods also use gluten to create meat imitations.

What is Gluten Intolerance

Some people could develop gluten digestion issues at some point in their life, although it most commonly occurs in childhood. For people highly intolerant to gluten, also known as celiac disease it could cause cancer or even death. The global average of people that suffers from celiac disease is somewhere between 1 to 100 and 1 to 170.

Most people that are self diagnosed having issues with gluten are actually gluten sensitive. Different kind of grain and variety have different kind of gluten in it. And depending on the food processing involved, it could also cause different reaction. Wheat is simply the most commonly used cereal in processed food that happens to have high gluten content. For example, I would get slightly bloated after eating pasta, but no problem eating udon and sourdough bread. A truly gluten intolerant person will get hospitalized if he or she consumes my typical gluten consumption.

Why Many People Initially Loose Weight With This Diet?

Most heavily processed foods use gluten to improve their texture. Many of these foods also contains a high amount of refined carbohydrate (sugar and flour) and hydrogenated vegetable oil (margarine, etc.). None of these are good for your waist line. So when you first go gluten free, they will initially avoid all these vices, think of instant noodles, cakes, cookies, etc. By avoiding these food, you will naturally lose fat.

As gluten free diet becomes mainstream, more heavily processed foods simply became available in a gluten free option.  The longer you stay on a gluten free diet, the more you are aware of these options.  If you are a midnight fridge raider who simply switches to fruits at the beginning of your diet but start switching to gluten free cheese cakes once you are aware of the option, it is a given that the weight you initially lost will simply bounce back gluten free or not.

Gluten Free And Type-2 Diabetes

As mentioned before, gluten is actually a plant protein. And protein is good for a healthy diet. One of the functions of gluten is actually to slow down the absorption of carbohydrate in the digestive tract.

Based on the research by Professor Carol Johnston of Arizona State University, for the general public to maintain their level of processed carbohydrate level using the gluten free variation in the form of bread, biscuits and pasta will actually increase the risk of developing Type-2 diabetes. This is due to the fact that without the presence of gluten, the carbohydrate absorption rate will increase. Having a repeated high spike of carbohydrate absorption increases your risk of getting type-2 diabetes. This is the same reason why eating whole fruits is good for your health, but drinking fruit juices are not.

Conclusion

If you are Gluten Intolerant, then yes, you must avoid gluten. Consume healthy natural alternatives instead. Lucky for you, the Paleo movement have created plenty of natural, healthy gluten free alternatives. If you are Gluten Sensitive, simply find what triggers you and then avoid it. Simply consuming any kind of junk food and snacks labeled “gluten free” will actually cause more health damage than simply consuming regular junk food and snack.

Why Most Diet Pills are Either Illegal or Ineffective (1 of 3)

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

I was teaching at my biology class the other day and one of my students asked about what is the diet pill I would recommend. My answer is basically in the title. To be fair, for people that have imbalanced diet, some supplements might help their weight loss. Some natural supplements can also help when combined with exercise. But the active ingredients for these items are usually very cheap and once its packed and branded by the big brands (cough.. cough… G*C), then it would be priced way above what it should be. Below are my list of common effective but illegal drugs in most western countries. It is meant as a warning when you look at the product ingredient so you can avoid them, not the opposite.

The Illegal Ones

DNP (2,4 Dinitrophenol)

Other names: 1 Hydroxy-2,4-dinitrophenol, Solfo Black, Nitrophen, Aldifen, and Chemox

Yes, it actually works. Basically we consume food mainly as a source of energy in the form of ATP. And this substance lowers the efficiency of converting food to ATP. It is so effective that a person weighing 100 kg can loose 5 kg in 10 days. This product has been banned by the FDA since the 1940’s. So if its so effective, why is it forbidden? Basically use it too much (and depending on your bodyweight, effective dose could be less than 200 mg) and you could ended up increasing your metabolism so much that you will fry your internal organs. It is so hazardous that its other usage are insecticide, wood preservative, herbicide and explosive.

Sibutramine (chlorosibutramine)

Other names:  Reductil, Meridia, and Siredia

If you can’t increase the “cost” of converting the food to energy, what do you do? You suppress the appetite. And this drug actually works. Except that this drug also increase your chance of getting heart disease and stroke, along with possible side effects as  dry mouth, paradoxically increased appetite, nausea, strange taste in the mouth, upset stomach, constipation, trouble sleeping, dizziness, drowsiness, menstrual cramps/pain, headache, flushing, or joint/muscle pain. Hence this drug has been banned and taken out of the market since 2010.

Ephedrine

Other names: Bronkaid, Primatene

Mammals such as rats have “brown fat” which unlike “white fat” commonly found in humans, continuously burn calories. Ephedrine mimics this effect in the skeletal muscle, along with slowing down gastric emptying (makes you feel full longer). This product was widely used for a long time until piling evidence of increased risk of stroke and heart disease along with common side effects such as trouble sleeping, anxiety, headache, hallucinations, high blood pressure, fast heart rate, loss of appetite, and inability to urinate leading it to be banned from most advanced countries by early 21st century.

Rimonabant

Other names: Acomplia, Zimulti

Another appetite suppressant drug that was introduced in EU in 2006, never approved in US and Canada, and was withdrawn from EU market in 2008. Why? Because it increases suicidal and depression tendency along with common risk of developing gastroenteritis, anxiety, irritability, insomnia and other sleep disorders, hot flushes, diarrhea, vomiting, dry or itchy skin, tendonitis, muscle cramps and spasms, fatigue, flu-like symptoms, and increased risk of falling.

Fen-Phen

Other names: Fenfluramine (Podimin) combined with Phentermine

Both drugs are proven effective on weight loss and the combination of both further increases its effectiveness. Problem is that both drugs have well known harmful side effect and the combination of both have the potential to cause fatal pulmonary hypertension and heart valve problem. As of 2005, Wyeth Pharmaceutical, the manufacturer and marketer of this product had to settle billions of USD in court over the damages.

Clenbuterol

Other names: Dilaterol, Spiropent, Ventipulmin

Word on the street is that this is the drug of choice for Holywood stars to gain muscle mass and loose body fat. Unlike synthetic testosterone (a.k.a. steroids), Clenbuterol will not cause women to develop male secondary sexual characteristic. And testing on animals have shown that the effects are real. Sounds too good to be true right? well, it is.

Short term side effect of clenbuterol ingestion that was recorded due to human ingestion of clenbuterol tainted meat ranges from muscle crams, hypertension, increased heart rate, dry mouth, insomnia, vomiting, tremors, sweating, etc. Long term side effect of the drug includes heart abnormalities and decrease in bone mass. Worse yet, your body developed resistance to the drug over the long run which will cause weight gain on the user. Currently this drug is only legally allowed to be used to treat horse asthma. And once the horse has been treated with it, it can no longer be slaughtered for human consumption.

Conclusion

Yes, these drugs do work as advertised. They do so either by:

  1. Increasing your metabolism that will increase your body temperature and quite possibly either fry your internal organs, or make your internal organs behave in uncertain ways such that it ended up damaging them.
  2. Lowering your appetite or making your stomach feel fuller. Of course drugs that alter your nervous system related to the digestion system also have a chance of affecting other nervous system in your body, including your brain.

Both kinds of weight loss drug does work, but it comes with its own risk, either it will risk killing you in the long run,  due to overdose, or turn you into suicidal. There’s a reason why these drugs got banned in the first place.

Stay tuned for part two on the currently legal drugs that might not be as efficient as advertised.

6 Horrible Carbs You Should Avoid

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

So moving on from the 6 ideal sources of carbs for you to enjoy is the 6 sources of carbs you should avoid if you want to get 6 pack abs.

Sugar

spoon-sugar

It is a naturally occurring substance that has been used as a preservative for centuries. So it should be good right? Except that centuries ago, sugar was not as abundant as today and most people must engage in calorie burning manual labor to earn a living. Nowadays, you just need to look at the label of your instant coffee, sneakers or coke to find sugar as the main ingredient. Combined this with our sedentary lifestyle and you got yourself a recipe for health disaster. The key is moderation and if you need to satisfy your sweet tooth, to have it before a gym session where it will be used for fuel.

Artificial Sweeteners

PepsiLight2009

Aspartame, acesulfame potassium ( or simply written as acesulfame K), sucralose, saccharin…. you see them on the ingredient list of many products labeled as “healthy” on the market, including most protein supplements. Although these products are not chemically classified as carbs, but they are widely used as sugar (carb) substitute, hence earned their spot here.  For sure they contain no calories hence on the surface it seems to help those that wants to loose weight. But multiple independent studies have linked it to anything from obesity, type 2 diabetes, to kidney damage. Hence if you really crave for sweets, stick to the natural ones and do it as part of your pre-workout.

White Wheat Flour

All-Purpose_Flour_(4107895947)

You see them everywhere. From biscuits, bread to noodles. Other than sugar, you can say that its the building block of modern society as we know it. And just like sugar, things would have been fine several centuries ago when white wheat flour was a luxury and most bread were made with whole wheat flour (i.e. contains more fiber and minerals). The modern version we consume these days are simply too refined and will lead to spike in blood sugar upon consumption. Hence this is one type of carb consumption you should reduce. Not only that, some people have varying level of intolerance towards gluten that is abundant in wheat. Hence if you feel bloated after eating cakes and noodles, it might be best to avoid this type of carb.

Beer

beer

Sad to say, my favorite beverage is not something you should be drinking if you are aiming for a 6-pack abs. Hence I only indulge myself whenever I travel. Problem no. 1 with beer is that it is very high in carbohydrates (and lets face it, “light” beers don’t taste as good as full bodied beers). Another problem is that the alcohol in the beer suppresses lipid oxidation, hence the typical beer belly you see among regular alcohol consumers.

Flavored Instant Oats

instant oat

Yes, oats are high in fiber so it should be good for you. The problem is the convenient flavored single servings you typically see in supermarket aisle is jam packed with sugar. Thick rolled oats are filled with complex carbs that are slow to digest. Instant oats however, already had those carbs cut down to make it absorb water at much faster rate, they ended up getting digested much quicker by the body too. So if you want to get all the health benefits of oats, stick with the thick rolled ones.

Fructose

fruit juice

Oh dear, so classic coke is bad for you. Diet coke and coke zero is bad for you. Better to just stick with the good ole fruit juice right? Wrong. Fruits are high in fructose, and if you enjoy it the natural way, you would be consuming plenty of fiber along the way. These fibers slows down your metabolism, making sure that there would not be a sudden spike of fructose in your blood. When you just drink the juice, you skip all the fibers, significantly increasing the fructose absorption in your body, and over time, this has been proven to cause insulin resistance. So the good old fruit juice is not innocent either.

Bottom line: The modern consumer must be extra careful with what is being consumed. The supermarket aisle is filled with promises of healthy and convenient food. But most of those products contain more lies than anything else. Hence you must educate yourself and make sure you know what you buy.

6 Best Source of Carbs for a 6-pack abs

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

Happy New Year Everyone! I’m sure some of you made a new year resolution that involves loosing some spare tires. And part of getting a 6 pack abs does lie in the kitchen. So here’s the article I hope will help you get into a better shape. One thing I must emphasize is that if you are into paleo diet, a lot of cultures started eating carbs even during the hunter gatherer phase (the one that is considered as the model life style for the paleo crowd), they just happen to eat tubers (yam, potatoes and sweet potatoes) instead of grain. Some Papua tribes technically still living in hunter gatherer phase and they consume lots of sago pith which is 99% carbs (wheat and barley contains more protein, fat and fiber).

So without futher ado, here’s my top 6:

Brown Rice

brown-rice

Asians simply eat lots of rice. Brown rice is simply rice that still has its edible hull and endosperm while white rice already had the edible hull and endosperm removed. Compared to white rice, brown rice has more than 3 times as much magnesium in it (important nutrient) and almost 5 times as much fiber. And because of the high fiber content, your digestion system will ingest it at much slower rate, preventing sudden spike in blood sugar. Of course some people cannot tolerate the texture of cooked brown rice, hence I highly recommend mixing 3 parts of brown rice with 7 parts of white rice on your first trial.

Potatoes!

potato

Anybody that has watched the martian probably knows that potatoes almost has all the nutritional content the body needs. Its almost a perfect food. Even Adam Smith (The Adam Smith that wrote “Wealth of Nation” and pretty much started the theory of economics) praise it for its nourishing qualities. You can boil it, bake it, steam it, or turn it into mashed potatoes to suit your taste buds and it will still be healthy. Just make sure you use the right type of potatoes for your type of cooking and don’t fry it because fried potatoes are simply bad for your health.

Quinoa

red_quinoa

Food of the American Indians! This pseudo-cereal (its technically not a cereal) is probably the closest thing we have to a perfect food. One cup of serving contains 5 grams of fiber, more than double the fiber content of brown rice and 8 grams of protein. its has one of the lowest glycemic index among the cereals, perfect for both people with diabetes, and those that wants to loose weight. Unlike most plant based proteins, the protein composition of quinoa has all the essential amino acids, hence comparable to animal protein. And even boiled egg only contains 6 grams of protein. Last but not least, its also very easy to cook, just throw it to the rice cooker.

Barley

barley

Another one of my favorite grain. Barley is highly nutritious and widely used as drink in multiple culture, and if you are on a diet, I would recommend adding it to your rice mix. A serving size of 200 grams will get you a whooping 31 grams of fiber and 20 grams of proteins! It is also a good source of Manganese and Selenium. The added protein and fiber will help keep you fuller for longer.

Rye

rye-bread

Yes, I know a lot of people go gluten free because its trendy although they are not really gluten intolerant. But there are also plenty of people that eat lots of noodles or bread and got bloated afterwards. Should that be the case, then rather than consuming food that has been chemically processed to separate the gluten, I would highly recommend them to replace the wheat with rye instead. Rye has been used instead of wheat in bread for centuries in Scandinavian countries and Russia. And unlike wheat, rye very low in gluten, hence more suitable for those with gluten intolerant. 1 cup of rye (128 gr) contains 29g of dietary fiber and 18g of protein, manganese, phosphorous, and magnesium.

Yam

purpleyamphoto

Probably one of the most affordable food widespread in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania. Although yam is quite low on protein, it still has a low glycemic index, i.e. takes a while to digest, hence suitable for people on a diet. And since its cheap, it won’t break the bank.

In the end, I personally think diet is not something a person must do to an extreme in order to get an extreme result in short amount of time. This sort of method will only lead people crashing out in the long term. Diet should be a gradual change you can maintain over the long run. Hence if a particular diet is too emotionally taxing for you, don’t do it. If its too expensive for you to maintain in the long run, don’t do it. If it leads you feel lethargic, don’t do it. Best of all in 2017!

8 Easy Ways to Build Lean and Strong Body

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

You probably heard often enough that if you want to increase your strength or muscle mass, you must also first increase your weight, and in reverse, if you want to reduce your body fat, your strength will drop down automatically. This might be true if you are already training intensively for long period of time. However, for most people you can increase your muscle mass and reduce body fat at the same time by following these easy tips:

sleeping-girl

Adequate Sleep

This may sound odd. How come you are telling me to sleep when I want to be lean and strong? But the fact is, while you sleep, your body will be engaging in catabolism that converts body fat into energy. Sleep is also essential for your muscle to recover and become stronger. Hence, if you are on a short term business trip and you must choose between adequate sleep or training, sleep would be a wiser choice.

Good_Food_Display_-_NCI_Visuals_Online

Adequate Food

This might also sound strange. How come you are telling me to eat when I want to slim down? The key here is long term success. If you drastically reduce your body weight with extreme diet and exercise from the beginning, you run the high risk of metabolic damage like “The Biggest Looser” contestants experience. Clearly this does not give you the license to gorge on a buffet. The trick is eating reduced portion with increased frequency. You should also emphasize quality over quantity.

squat

Proper Training

When people talk about exercise and weight loss, most would think of jogging or cycling. Although heavyset people run the risk of knee and ankle injury if they jog too much. Those with thick spine also run the risk of sciatica if they cycle with bent pose for too long. Weightlifting is usually ignored even though you can increase your basalt metabolic rate by up to 48 hours after weight training. And especially for deadlift and squat, you will also increase your testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factors production, all essential for lean muscle development. Of course you might need the help of a good coach to help train you how to squat and deadlift properly so you won’t injure your back and knees.

purpleyamphoto

Eat Your Carbs

Some people are better adapted to low-fat high-carbs diet while others are more suited with low-carb high-fat diet in their quest for healthy weight management. The key here is consuming what your great grand parents would recognize as food. Unfortunately some people took carbs avoidance to the max which will cause three things:

  1. Bad mouth odor. This is due to the catabolism that also occurs while you sleep. Only with chronic deficiency in carbohydrate, it will occur the whole day, overworking your liver and causing bad breath. Catabolism is also the cause of your bad breath when you just wake up.
  2. Loss of energy. When you engage in anaerobic activity such as weightlifting, your muscle relies on glycogen in your muscle and blood as a source of energy. Glycogen itself comes from digested carbohydrate.
  3. Difficulty in burning fat while training. This is essential although it sounded weird. But the fact is, the fat burning metabolism cycle that occurs during aerobic exercise needs to be triggered with carbohydrate. That’s right, fat burns with the flame from carbohydrate.

Of course quantity must adjust to your body type and quality is essential. Steamed yam, boiled potatoes and brown rice is far superior to noodles and biscuits.

spoon-sugar

Avoid Excess Sugar

Whoa, you just told me to eat carbs, and sugar is carb right? So why avoid sugar? It is true that a moderate quantity of sugar (less than 6 gram) prior to exercise can help increase your strength while training (and consequently burns more calories). But outside this phase, sugar consumption is best avoided. This is due to the high speed of sugar absorption inside the body. This feature is useful for those running a marathon. But for normal people, sugar consumption will only lead to a spike in blood sugar followed by fat build up.

beer

Avoid Alcohol

This is essential! Other than containing high calories. alcohol consumption will also lead to fat deposit in the abdominal region. Alcohol will also lower the energy availability in your muscle and slows down your metabolism while training. That’s why, if you want to have a 6-pack abs, you should avoid alcohol.

Sliced_Matsusaka_wagyu_beef

Eat Your Protein

Plenty of nutritionist and doctors said that you only need to consume 0.8 grams of protein per kg body weight per day. So if you weigh 70 kg, you only need to eat 56 grams of protein. 3 ounce of beef contains approximately 21 grams of protein, 250 ml of milk contains 8 grams of protein and one hard boiled egg contains 6 grams of protein. But if you want to increase your muscle mass and loose body fat, you need to consume far more than that. Based on latest research, you need to consume up to 2.0 grams of protein per kg body weight per day in order to cain optimal result. Again, quality is essential. Hard boiled eggs and steamed wild caught fish is far superior to hotdogs.

fish

Fish Oil Consumption

This is something most people tend to ignore. Modern food is rich is highly processed vegetable oil. Even bread, biscuits and instant coffee often contains them. And most highly processed vegetable oil and margarine is rich in trans fat and omega-6. Trans fat itself is proven to be the leading cause of the rise in obesity and heart disease. Omega-6 will also cause a host of health issue from arthritis, heart disease, to obesity. On the other hand. omega-3 has the function to neutralize most of the harmful effects of omega-6, other than muscle and joint anti-inflammatory function that will allow you train with increasing frequency. You might be tempted to say “but I already ate my fish oil but don’t feel any of the benefits.” And the problem lies with the composition of omega-3 to omega-6 you are consuming. Don’t get it wrong, cheap fish oil usually contains far more omega-6 than omega-3 due to the low quality of raw material they use. That is why cheaper brands dare not to say how many omega-6 is actually in their supplement and they would not state it doesn’t contain omega-6 either.

Why The Biggest Looser Contestants Gained All Their Weight Back

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

Everybody loves a quick result. And the fact is, there are more overweight and obese people in this generation than preceding generations. Everybody also knows that being overweight is not healthy. Combine all these and our fascination with “reality show” and you get yourself “The Biggest looser”. On the surface, its a wonderful show where obese people can loose weight and be healthy simply by working hard and eating right. So what could go wrong?

Most of The Contestant Regained Their Weight Back

Based on recent follow up study done by the National Institute of Health on 14 past Biggest Looser participants, all but one regained most, if not all of their weight. This was covered by the Scientific American, CNN, USA Today, and New York Times. What is most depressing is that not only these contestants regained most of their weight, but their resting metabolic rate (RMR) slowed down to an average of 704 Kcal/day. FYI The average RMR for men in US is 1,662 Kcal/day and for women is 1,493 Kcal/day. I.e, even though these past contestants already ate less than what the average person eats, they still ended up being fatter in the long run.

Does this sound like anybody you know?

Why is this not a surprise

Sadly, this is a well known condition that has been scientifically proven, called  neuroendocrineimmune dysfunction or among the bodybuilding circle called metabolic damage. Yes, those meatheads spending most of their time at the gym actually knows a thing or two about science most people don’t. This is basically a dysfunction where your body goes into starvation mode and its part of natural adaptation mechanism where your body does its best to preserve energy (i.e. your body fat) before getting its next meal. And considering how the contestants had to deal with low intensity cardio at long interval and very low calorie consumption over extended period, its no wonder that this occurs.

What should be done

If you know a heavy set person trying to loose weight, and you don’t want that person to have a metabolic damage, then the best way to ensure long lasting weight loss might actually sound counter productive. He or she must not starve to death. Yes, he should eat high quality foods (for example: no refined sugar, no deep fried, no margarine, no alcohol) but at the same time, he should eat when he feels hungry. And instead of doing steady state cardio over extended period, he should be doing weight training instead. After all, weight lifting has been proven to increase his metabolic rate up to 48 hours after he finished his session. Hence its like getting a bigger engine on your car to burn all the fuel in the tank at much faster rate.

Of course, if that person is already having certain level of metabolic damage, then that person would need different training phase on different period for a few cycle. Higher level of damage will need to be combined with supplement and hormone therapy as it would entail disrupted endocrine cycle.

Its not a simple issue of eating less and workout more. Its about eating and training smarter to get the best result

The Cholesterol Myth and The Great Global Diet Fraud (4 out of 10)

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

In case you are wondering about the image choice, cod fish is also high in saturated fat.

So you finished reading the third installment and decided to stick around. Congratulations, you deserve a reward for your healthy skeptic mind. A friend asked “if what I’m saying is true, then why would these people even do it?” Well, very prominent people have received Nobel prizes (and that is a lot of money and prestige) for their “doctored” results, for sure they have some incentives to make sure the story sticks. Not to mention that not many of those doctors educated in the diet-heart myth would be filling to accept that they had spent all their money and effort learning fraudulent knowledge.

And we could also mention big Food and Beverage companies that is taking the fat out of natural products and replace it with sugar and claim its healthy. For example, lets talk about yogurt. They are naturally high in fat, taste good, and because fat oxidizes over time, we call it goes “rancid”, has limited shelf life. Once you take the fat out, it would last longer. Of course without the fat in the yogurt, it would not taste as good, so they dumped some sugar in it and cover the taste. Sugar also acts as a “natural” preservative by the way. Last but not least, you slap it with a “healthy” moniker and charge higher price. So not only would you end up with a product that has unnaturally long shelf life, you could charge a premium on it. This was the scheme 30 years ago. Now everybody is doing it making it virtually impossible to buy natural yogurt anymore or you need to go to a premium supermarket to buy them at premium price.

Last but not least, we have the pharmaceutical companies that are definitely getting richly rewarded for their “life saving” cholesterol lowering drugs.

Now that I have given you a glimpse of the diet-heart conspiracy motivations, allow me to bring you to the next myth:

“Myth 4: Cholesterol Blocks Arteries”

So let me show you the chart progression so far on how this myth relates to the big scheme of the diet-heart myths Dr. Uffe Ravnskov already proven to be false, which are animal fat consumption causes heart disease, high cholesterol causes heart disease, and saturated fat causes cholesterol.

chart2

This myth arose in the 1953, again popularized by Dr. Ancel Keys, the same person that created Myth 3. He simply stated that a major characteristic of sclerotic artery (i.e. the hardening of arterial wall) is the presence of abnormal amounts of cholesterol in the artery. And this cholesterol is derived from the blood.”

Interesting considering that he didn’t give any research or proof to back up this claim. He said so and that’s the end of it. In physics we call this postulate, not law and yet the medical community considers this as a law.

Its even interesting considering that in 1936, Pathologist  Kurt Landé and the biochemist Warren Sperry of the Department of Forensic Medicine at New York University already did a study on relation between blood cholesterol and atheroschlerosis (the medical term for sclerotic artery) with 390 sample sizes and the result was no relation. Further study in Canada by Dr. Paterson and Dr. Derrick in 1957 to proof Dr. Key’s postulate also came up with no correlation. As with even further study in India by Dr. Mathur in 1961 with 200 sample sizes. Sorry folks, this episode’s myth buster is incredibly short. You can read on Advances of Pharmacology volume 2 that as I quote from page 213, “…no strict correlation is found in individual cases when blood lipids are measured post-mortem with atherosclerotic involvement..”.

Yes, you can also argue that perhaps blood cholesterol immediately dropped the moment you died, in which Dr. Mathur already proven is not the case. The blood cholesterol stayed relatively stable for the first 16 hours.

If you want to read further proofs that this myth is not grounded in reality, you should read more from Dr. Ravnskov’s book where he thoroughly debunked the famed Farmingham study Dr. Keys uses to build his conspiracy.