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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Raw Food Diet… Uh?
When I tell people I follow a raw food diet and teach raw food workshops I often get a very puzzled looked followed by silence. The silence is then preceded by the question “so you eat rabbit food?” Most times when people hear the term, raw food, they assume it means just eating carrot sticks, celery, or lettuce, straight from the produce isle nothing delicious, savory, or flavorful, but that couldn’t be furthest from the truth. While it is somewhat true the food is uncooked but you are not just eating plain carrot stick or salad when eating raw food you can eat taco’s, pasta, rice dishes, sandwiches, pizza, cake, cookies, and the list goes on and on. I bet you’re wondering how this is possible.
Lets start with a little background on the raw vegan diet. Following a raw diet is the practice of eating only uncooked, unprocessed, whole, living foods to maintain…
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Sorry for the delay….
Life has been pretty hectic around here lately, but thank goodness things are starting to calm down. That means I’ll have more time to dedicate to my blog! Get ready for some new super yummy (and healthy) recipes, training articles, and maybe a few lifestyle articles just to keep it interesting! Watch this space!
9 Inspirational Quotes To Get Your Day Started
What is Insulin and How does it Affect Blood Sugar and Fat Loss?
What is Insulin and How does it Affect Blood Sugar and Fat Loss?
It seems everyone concentrates on the role diet and exercise play in our health and wellbeing, but skip over the very important role that hormones play. In this article i’m going to be discussing the hormone insulin, what it is, how it relates to diabetes, and how it can be manipulated to help us lose fat and live longer.
What is Insulin and How Does it Relate to Diabetes?
Insulin is a hormone that helps us absorb nutrients from our food. Whenever we eat carbs (and a little bit when we eat protein) the amount of sugar in our blood increases, and the pancreas releases insulin to help take the sugar out of the bloodstream and into our organs (mostly the liver and muscle cells) where it can be used for energy.
Diabetes is a disease that occurs when that insulin response doesn’t work properly and sugar piles up in the blood with nowhere to go. This can result in problems including vision loss, hearing loss, high blood pressure, and gum disease.
There are two main kinds of diabetes: Type 1 occurs when the pancreas produces little or no insulin. Type 2 occurs when insulin is produced but the body doesn’t respond to it in the right way. Some have estimated that a third of Americans born in 2000 will develop the disease when a lot of the time, it can be prevented. How? Let’s talk insulin sensitivity.
What is Insulin Sensitivity?
Doing a lot of something can make you less sensitive to its effects, right? Drinking coffee all the time can dull the caffeine, regular drinkers find they need more beers to get drunk than they used to, and so on. In kind of the same way, eating carbs too often (especially simple ones, like sugars), can make us less sensitive to insulin (or more “insulin resistant”) When that happens, we need to produce more insulin than we should need to in order to keep blood sugar stable. That’s bad. If insulin sensitivity becomes poor, we have trouble digesting carbs and absorbing nutrients, and we gain weight. If it’s really bad for a long time, the pancreas needs to make more and more insulin because we’re so insensitive to it. Eventually, it gets exhausted and stops being able to release the hormone properly, and that’s when type 2 diabetes occurs.
6 Ways to Improve Insulin Sensitivity
If insulin sensitivity is of concern, it’s not hard to get it tested, just ask a doctor for a fasting plasma glucose test. Maximizing insulin sensitivity should be a priority for anyone interested in improving their health and minimizing their diabetes risk. Here are 6 tips to make that happen.
Personal Trainer Tip #1
Exercise Regularly: Exercising 3-4 times a week can improve nearly every health marker there is, and insulin sensitivity is no exception.
Personal Trainer Tip #2
Get Plenty of Sleep: Getting adequate sleep is crucial to keep the body functioning smoothly, and that includes hormone production
Personal Trainer Tip #3
Eat Fewer Carbohydrates, especially simple carbs: Eating lots of carbs makes us produce a lot of insulin, so it’s best to follow a diet that’s low in simple and processed carbs.
Personal Trainer Tip #4
Eat Slow-Digesting Foods: When foods digest slowly, the sugars take longer to hit the bloodstream, and insulin is released more gradually. Healthy fats, fiber, and protein are all great examples and should make up a significant portion of our diets.
Personal Trainer Tip #5
Drink Green Tea: Drinking plenty of green tea has been shown to significantly reduce blood sugar concentrations, but ditch the milk. It can undermine tea’s circulatory benefits.
Personal Trainer Tip #6
Keep Body Fat Low: However it’s achieved, simply being lean can improve insulin sensitivity. There’s never been a better reason to train for fat loss!
Written By: Shannon Benedetto ACSM-cpt
What you may not know about honey
Interesting article regarding honey
Honey has been promoted as a beneficial healing food by health seekers for years. But is honey really such a perfect toxin-free food we are so often lead to believe?
The truth is that honey just like sugar contributes to tooth decay, obesity, and other diseases. Like dairy products, honey is defended as a wholesome food. It is a wholesome food for the bees but not for man.
Bees modify the nectar of flowers with formic acid which is produced within their bodies. They regurgitate the honey after mixing. The nectar is usually vomited up several times before being mixed with the bees own preservatives. Bees use various enzymes for producing honey that are unique to meet their own special needs. These changes are not amicable to the metabolism of man.
Often the keepers of bees use poison sprays such as carbolic acid and benzaldehyde and spray it into the…
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Kidnapped! – Julia’s Story
This really makes you think. Very frightening and very sad
Julia Styles was kidnapped as a toddler. Although her basic needs were met, her life was lonely and sad. She was kept locked in a tiny room and wasn’t allowed to do the normal things kids do like make friends, play outside or go to school.
Once Julia reached puberty, her life got worse. She was raped and got pregnant. When she had her baby, she felt immeasurable love for him. For two days she cared for her baby, but then her captors took him away from her. Despite her plea’s, Julia never saw her son again.
Not long after this, Julia was raped again. She had a second child who was also taken from her. Then within months, she was raped yet again. This happened many more times causing immense physical and emotional strain on Julia.
By the time she was 28, Julia looked like an old woman. The physical trauma of her poor…
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My Journey Into Veganism
Recently, I decided to go vegan. I didn’t make this decision because of ethical or moral reasons, I made it because I know a few vegans and it honestly interested me. I’ve read up on some studies that show the benefits of a vegan diet and how it can help diminish certain types of ailments. I suffer with anxiety and depression and going into this that was my number one objective, to help curb those types of issues. Currently, i’m a little over two weeks in. I can’t say it hasn’t been difficult and I can definitely see why people give up on the vegan lifestyle so easily. There is a lot to learn, and i’m trying my best to make sure i’m eating a balanced, healthy, complete diet. I learned early on, towards the end of the first week, that I need to be supplementing my B12 since I do not get that from my animal proteins any longer. The fatigue was incredible, I can’t even describe it, but since adding in a nutritional vega one shake every morning I have been feeling much better. Have any of you out there turned to veganism? I’d love to hear your stories, and I will take any advice that you have to share. I really want this to become another lifestyle change that I can maintain to get me to where I want to be physically, mentally and emotionally. I look forward to reading all of your comments, and I will keep you posted on how my journey is going!!
Much Love
Shannon
