Beyond 40: 10 Reasons To Skip Fasting And Eat Breakfast
Unlocking peak wellness in midlife can be challenging.
Finding a simple approach to nutrition is confusing. What should you eat to lose weight, boost your energy levels and increase your health and longevity?
Where do you start?
Breakfast is often where I start with many of my health coaching clients looking to upgrade their nutrition.
The start of the day is often when you're most complaint, so it's the perfect place to start.
5 Root Causes Of Midlife Gut Issues That Your Doctor Won't Know
Your gut health is linked to your overall health. This makes sense because every cell in your body needs vital nutrients to survive and thrive. Your gut’s ability to digest and absorb this critical nutrient is essential to your health and well-being.
Constipation, diarrhoea, bloating, gas, abdominal pain, fatigue, skin irritations, vomiting, and sugar cravings are all signs that your gut isn't functioning as it should.
Unlock Peak Wellness in Midlife with 5 Key Reasons to Boost Your Protein Intake
It's scary how many people in their midlife think they should eat less protein. But the truth is we should be eating more.
When working with health coaching clients, one of the first questions I often get is, “Where should I start with my diet so I can feel better, have more energy and keep up with my kids?"
The answer to that question is protein.
As we age, protein becomes even more valuable because it plays a crucial role in our health and longevity.
Mastering Midlife Nutrition: Busting High-Protein Myths for Health and Vitality
As we age, we start to pay more attention to our health. Health, happiness and longevity seem to climb our list of values, especially when we have a family to care for.
This new outlook on our values makes us question what type of diet we should eat.
This leads to the question of how much protein I should eat.
Protein recommendations can vary based on individual factors such as age, sex, weight, activity level, health and fitness goals, and overall health.
Sometimes, we make the mistake of thinking we need to eat less as we age.
Why recreational athletes often experience leaky gut?
Back in the day, when I was training and competing in marathons and triathlons, I started to experience certain food sensitivities, poor sleep, diarrhea, and nausea. I put it down to stress, high training volumes, and working long hours as a personal trainer. Although doing a food sensitivity (IgG) test helped me remove particular foods that increased the symptoms (whey, eggs, gluten, cashews, alcohol, etc.), it wasn't enough to fix the underlying cause. I later found out I had a leaky gut, and once I fixed it, all of these symptoms went away.
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Leaky guy played havoc with my sleep, my ability to recover and, therefore, my health and happiness. Today, my gut health is significantly better, and I wish I had addressed the problem sooner.
Gut issues are not normal, stop ignoring them.
I've experienced my fair share of gut issues over the years. From leaky gut, inflammation, diarrhea and even nausea. Did I share too much? The thing is, I didn't take action until I started to realise how the gut plays a vital role in overall health and well-being. Your gut health controls everything from your weight to your mood to brain health, inflammation, exercise tolerance, recovery, and immune function.
Not only that, 90% of your serotonin, the happy, feel-good hormone, is produced in the gut. So if you’re feeling depressed, it could be an underlying gut issue. Serotonin is also a precursor to melatonin, the hormone that helps you sleep.
Why caffeine is not a consistent performance aid for all recreational athletes?
I recently did an ancestry gene test and discovered that I'm in the 50% of the population who are slow caffeine metabolisers (CYP1A2 AC and CC genotype). I was a little curious to find out what this means and what positive or negative effects caffeine can have on our health and performance?
Numerous studies have linked caffeine with positive health effects like reduced risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. However, recent research suggests that the effects of coffee on health aren’t the same for everyone, and may depend on genetics and other factors.
I love coffee—and I know I’m not alone.
The need for recreational athletes to increase and maintain fat-free-mass
The two main factors that control the size of your furnace are what you eat and how you exercise. In the previous blog post, I said "protein is the key ingredient to building the components that make up your furnace. It's important to note that your body prefers to not use carbohydrates and fats as the fuel that burns inside the furnace. The body preferentially breaks down carbohydrates first, and then fats and finally proteins only if the other two fuels are depleted. This is important as proteins are generally less efficient at generating energy. In addition, proteins perform several important functions so if they were broken down several systems could fail."
Both the quality and quantity of protein has a key role to play in building and maintain the size of your furnace.
Before we start to digest the juicy protein details I want to take moment to debunk the "calories in and calories out" equation.
Up your hydration game
There seems to be little correlation between salt intake alone and high blood pressure. In some of the culture’s studied – higher salt consumption seems to suggest longer life expectancy – “…a low-salt diet may actually lead to serious health consequences and higher overall mortality, particularly in conditions like heart disease and diabetes…, a low salt intake is associated with higher mortality from cardiovascular events… the lowest risk of death for sodium excretion [is] between 4 and 5.99 grams per day…
Do you talk to clients about their iron levels?
Iron deficiency is becoming more and more common, to a point where I often ask my clients when they last had their iron levels tested. Iron deficiency is not as common in men because they don't have a menstruation cycle each month and lose valuable iron stores. 90% of the female clients I've worked with either have an iron deficiency or have had one in the past.
Iron is an important nutrient, and it's rather scary how many people, especially women, are deficient in iron. It's also worth noting that too much iron is not healthy, and it's important to have your iron levels checked regularly.