Vitalitas

How fructose is out to kill you!

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:54:24 +0000

How fructose is out to kill you!

What we know as ‘sugar’ in drinks and snacks may be sucrose, glucose, fructose or in some processed products, High Fructose Corn Syrup [HCFS] . Sweets and desserts tend to have fructose sugars in them.
[see here for more about HFCS].

Sucrose is the sugar you buy in a bag [chemically it’s one molecule of glucose bound to one molecule of fructose]. We can burn up glucose, but fructose is metabolised by a different route.

This different pathway means it passes from the gut directly into the liver where it is turned into fat stores [your muffin or beer belly]. One molecule of fructose is 40 times more potent than one molecule of glucose, so this is another reason to avoid it – well unless you are a Sumo wrestler or want to look like one! Cutting out fizzy drinks, fruit juices and high sugar cakes and desserts can make big contribution to fat loss.

Remember, when we want to raise our blood sugar, eg we have just earned a snack by doing significant exercise, we need slow release carbs, eg whole-wheat grains, root vegetables or modest portions of whole fruit or just more greens, protein and fat. Fat in particular is a great source of energy and interestingly, because there are bigger stores for fat digestion products in the blood, fat that is eaten rarely gets stored as body fat.

Want to learn more?

The Head_Space Academy is a 6-week intensive programme that gives you all the resources you need to be in the right Head_Space and get your body in gear for a healthy future.

Reductions for couples or bring a friend, money back guarantee. What is stopping you?

Text your name and Head_Space to 07387 158431 for information or visit

http://www.headspaceacademy.co.uk

The post How fructose is out to kill you! appeared first on Vitalitas.

Why you want to avoid sugar peaks

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:46:17 +0000

Why you want to avoid sugar peaks

The post on ‘sensible snacking’ mentioned sugar peaks as a serious problem. What’s the danger?

Put simply, sugar peaks make you fat and being fat increases inflammation, ruins your metabolism and increases the risk of cancer and all the other diseases that make you die early or like dementia, spoil your quality of life.

How so? When you absorb neat glucose into your blood stream from quick release carbs or fizzy drinks, the body either has to burn it or store it. Ifyou walk 10,000 steps a day or exercise in some other way you will possibly burn it; if you sit at a desk and drive everywhere, you won’t. What the body does is try to temporarily store it in muscle or the liver, but the stores are so limited in capacity, that most of the ‘peak’ is left over. The hormone insulin turns the excess sugar into fat. If there is a famine soon then that might save your life: if not, it might slowly kill you, as your body fat creeps up and up, your blood pressure rises and your cholesterol goes way out of balance.

When we need to raise our blood sugar, we need slow release carbs, eg whole-wheat grains, root vegetables or modest portions of whole fruit. Or just eat more greens, protein and fat. Fat in particular is a great source of energy and interestingly, because there are bigger stores for fat digestion products in the blood, fat that is eaten rarely gets stored as body fat.

Want to learn more?

The Head_Space Academy is a 6-week intensive programme that gives you all the resources you need to be in the right Head_Space and get your body in gear for a healthy future.

Summer Offers, reductions for couples or bring a friend, money back guarantee. What is stopping you?

Text your name and Head_Space to 07387 158431 for information, or visit

http://www.headspaceacademy.co.uk

The post Why you want to avoid sugar peaks appeared first on Vitalitas.

Sensible snacking

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:39:59 +0000

Sensible snacking

Your stomach is shouting ‘I’m Hungry!’… well actually,your brain is alerting you that your blood sugar is low.

In this situation, what do YOU do?

A lot of our clients go for a quick fix. They take a sugar snack onboard to solve the short-term problem. Once it was ‘Take a break, have a KitKat’, but today, supermarkets and garages are awash with high sugar, quick fix alternatives, some of them masquerading under ‘Healthy’ names or descriptions. How many spoons of sugar are in a can of ‘full-fat’ Coca Cola?* Well ‘sports’ drinks are just the same and most ‘healthy’ snacks are just vehicles for a sugar load.

Why does this bad choice matter?

First, every low sugar state that occurs is something you created, yourself, by not eating sensibly/ planning your intake better, earlier.

Second, that sugar hit is seriously damaging, and very temporary in its benefit. The sugar stimulates an insulin peak that drops the blood sugar like a stone – back to worse than when you started.

Third, you are perpetuating a rather addictive habit. [Sugar is very addictive].

A better idea?

Your ‘hypo’ [low sugar attack] need never happen. If you eat regular meals with enough protein and fat, you have slow release energy that keeps you feeling full and never causes peaks and troughs in your blood sugar.

And … eg if you had a handful of nuts and a glass of water you would resolve the low with no bad effects at all. In the Diet & Fat Lossmodule of the Head_Space Academy we offer a list of good alternatives for healthy snacking. If you would like it now email nick@vitalitas.co.uk.

If you are sitting all day 3 meals should be enough: if you are active, you might need a couple of small sensible snacks as well.

Our Head_Space Academy is a 6-week intensive programme that gives you all the resources you need to be in the right Head_Space and get your body in gear for a healthy future.

Reductions for couples or bring a friend, money back guarantee. What is stopping you? text your full name and ‘Coaching’ to 07714 336099 for more information, or visit

www.headspaceacademy.co.uk

The post Sensible snacking appeared first on Vitalitas.

Eight Days a week?

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:34:49 +0000

Eight Days a week?

Despite the Beatles’ assertion, weeks still have 7 days. Strangely, lots of people believe a week is 4.5 days of self-care followed by 2.5 days of ‘freedom’ starting at 5 o’clock on a Friday.

You would like to reduce your body fat? We suggested in another post that there are 3 things that you should concentrate on. However, eating less than you burn does help but you need to do alittle maths.

Calculate: if 1500 calories daily leads to fat loss for a person whose maintenance level is 2000 calories [500 calories less/day] then in a week that is 10500 [7 x 1500] in total intake. So far so good.

BUT, if you keep your food intake at a fat-reducing level for 4 days then your weekend includes a pizza, a curry, several pints of beer or a wallet’s worth of cocktails – plus some crisps and dips and so on, with of coursea roast dinner and dessert on Sunday, then all your good work is undone.

Calculate again: if you are letting your hair down Friday to Sunday and your intake rises to 3500 a day, then your week’s total is 16500 [4 x 1500 plus 3 x 3500] which divided by 7 averages 2357 a day. All of a sudden you are actually above your 2000 calories a day maintenance level and despite your ‘careful’ eating in the week are likely to gain weight not lose it!
[A 12-inch cheesy pizza will be 1900 cals. and 2 pints of beer 400; you can look up the rest!]

Our Head_Space Academy is a 6-week intensive programme that gives you all the resources you need to be in the right Head_Space and get your body in gear for a healthy future.

Reductions for couples or bring a friend, money back guarantee. What is stopping you?
Text your full name and ‘Coaching’ to 07714 336099 for more information, or visit

http://www.headspaceacademy.co.uk

The post Eight Days a week? appeared first on Vitalitas.

Why ‘normal’ diets don’t work and what does.

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:25:20 +0000

Why ‘normal’ diets don’t work and what does.

He’s not trying at all but…

MOST PEOPLE think it works like this: we eat calories, we burn up some of the calories with exercise, and what we don’t burn, we store as fat for a lean winter. If you are overweight, then you areeating more than you are burning up.

Sothey conclude that all they have to do to lose weight is to eat less calories or burn more.

But you tried that, and even if you lost some weight you probably put it back fairly soon. You need a bit more science to succeed long-term.

To explain: if you eat a lotlessie you are anorexic or cast away on a desert island, then you will lose a lot of weight, but that is not the way to go. First, to lose that amount of weight you need to eat less than 800 calories/ day, ie to starve yourself, for several weeks. Second, the weight you lose will include a lot of good muscle alongside the fat; its definitely bad for you in the long term too.
[This approach may be a way to kickstart fat loss for the really obese, under medical supervision].

Moreover– your body is designed to maintain a steady weight. If you reduce intake ‘a little ‘– say by 300 calories a day, then your body thinks ‘food’s a bit short; better do something to maintain our fat stores’ [there is a famine coming]. Your body switches down metabolism and burns less. Result – no change in weight!

Endless hours on a treadmilldon’t work either. You’ve probably seen the maths on how much exercise you have to do to burn off fat – its near-impossible. And the same ‘plateauing effect’ operates in the exercise department too – keep doing the same routine and the benefit drops.

What does work?The triad for success is:

Change the protein/ fat/ carb proportions into a fat-burning combination that you can stick to.
Eat more good stuff ie protein and especially fibre than most dieters do, to keep the metabolism active instead of ‘fat-maintaining’.
UP your activity consistently and build up your muscles – they burn up energy!

Our Head_Space Academy is a 6-week intensive programme that gives you all the resources you need to be in the right Head_Space and get your body in gear for a healthy future.

Reductions for couples or bring a friend, money back guarantee. What is stopping you?
Text your full name and ‘Coaching’ to 07714 336099 for more information, or visit

www.headspaceacademy.co.uk

The post Why ‘normal’ diets don’t work and what does. appeared first on Vitalitas.

What does work

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:18:47 +0000

What does work

The message is simple: eat less calories and you will lose weight.

BUT the change in intake needs to be at least a 25% reduction to overcome the body’s tendency to maintain a steady weight by reducing metabolic rate.

What sort of diet?

The one you will stick to and something pretty different from what you are doing now [what you are doing now is making you fat].

A recent US study [The Pounds Lost Study] is the most comprehensive comparison of different diets to date. They measured body fat precisely using DEXA scans and followed up for 2 years.

There was no difference between diets of different types.

The one thing that made a really important difference was that those who ate more fibre lost more weight. However as time progressed, people slackened off – they didn’t maintain eg the high protein load they had chosen

The post What does work appeared first on Vitalitas.

What is wellbeing?

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 09:51:17 +0000

What is wellbeing?

This much used word may seem a bit vague.

But you know what matters to you: feeling calm and full of energy; able to cope with the stresses of life; being creative; having good relationships, both at work and at home.

Wellbeing is principally a State of Mind, so working on that makes a big difference – but physical stuff matters too.

Are you in good shape or carrying too much central body fat?
Do you get 7-8 hours sleep, consistently?
Is your diet full of nutrients or all about ready meals and added sugar?
Do you exercise in some way, regularly [and do you really do enough]?
Do you understand the steps you need to take to stay healthy?

Want some help?

Our Head_Space Programme covers all the basics in 6 weeks with videos, live sessions, and ongoing coaching tailored to each individual. See https://headspaceacademy.co.uk/

The post What is wellbeing? appeared first on Vitalitas.

State of Mind

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 09:40:40 +0000

State of Mind

Why State of Mind?

A key part of our Health & Wellbeing programmes is helping you achieve a great State of Mind [SoM]. This the foundation on which to build a successful change.

You already get that SoM is important – you know the impact of mind-based approaches eg Mindfulness, or Mindset training and how all elite athletes have psychology coaches. It’s obvious, too that illness is best treated holistically ie considering, mind, body and spirit – not just fixing the body alone.

Understanding how the mind actually works [rather than how we imagine it does] can be life changing: there is no requirement to devote time each day to meditation, you just tap into your natural self-balancing mechanisms. A few hours on one of our courses and you will have the understanding that sets you up long-term.

Whether you have simple life and work stress, a chronic illness, a cancer diagnosis [or a partner who does], are struggling with a personal relationship, are a woman coping with the menopause or a couple trying to conceive; or just want to know how to live your best life or survive life over 50, we have programmes to help.

Each programme first improves your SoM, and then gives you the essential scientific information you need to choose your best course of action and plan the lifestyle changes that will make things work better.

For more information www.vitalitas.co.uk or text your full name to Nick on 07714336099.

The post State of Mind appeared first on Vitalitas.

Health Coaching: why help … actually helps.

Lynette Marshall — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 09:33:57 +0000

Health Coaching: why help … actually helps.

Optimising your Health & Wellbeing

For football fans – look what Ferguson did for Ronaldo – for the rest of you read on…

The 3 ‘Ys’ – Why should you…?

You know things aren’t right– ‘but where do I start…?’
You want to be healthy, and happyas well.
You know that changes can be difficult to maintain.

Plus, when you look for information, there is too much of it and the answers are conflicting or confusing.

Can we agree?

If you want a different result, you have to do something different.
Coaching will help with ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘sticking at it’.

‘How’ to do something different; Information, explanation, and coaching support.

3 things you gain from working with us:

We give you clear, simple steps to follow based on scientific evidence, not urban myth.
We explainwhat to stop, what to continue, what to start afresh and why.
We give you coaching support– If you fall over, we pick you up and dust you off.

Would you like some professional help?

Our Head_Space Academy is a 6-week intensive programme that gives you all the resources you need to be in the right Head_Space and get your body in gear for a healthy future.

Reductions for couples or bring a friend, money back guarantee. What is stopping you?
Text your full name and ‘Coaching’ to 07714 336099 for more information, or visit

www.headspaceacademy.co.uk

The post Health Coaching: why help … actually helps. appeared first on Vitalitas.