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Northern Pavilion Fawkner Park, South Yarra
There's no topic more polarising in the fitness world than which matters when it comes to fat loss - calories or hormones.
Like other similarly contentious topics of discussion like politics and religion - the extreme position does more harm than good. In the case of nutrition, the zealots on both sides of the debate miss two very important things:
1️⃣ calories and hormones BOTH matter.
2️⃣ this nutritional tribal war undermines our ability to help people and in fact, actually serves to cause more confusion.
One of the issues that this tribalism poses is that we humans are cognitive misers. We take mental shortcuts in an effort to make quicker, more efficient decisions. Savvy marketers take advantage of this and use marketing buzzwords to gain market appeal and entice health conscious consumers.
Case in point, the hormone hypothesis has led to fantastical leaps of logic. Even though these claims border more on science fiction rather than actual science, foods labelled low carb / paleo / dairy free / gluten free / sugar free / organic / vegan / keto are marketed as healthier options and thus perceived by consumers as being virtuous in all respects. This "health halo" is problematic for the following reasons:
✖️ "clean" foods still contain calories
✖️ consumers assume the aforementioned buzzwords mean that these foods are low calorie when in fact just one serving of some of the snacks in this video can contain enough calories for a meal (and you can bet that people aren't just having one serve of these)
✖️ the "health halo" effect leads people to consume these foods with reckless abandon in the belief that these foods are good for them and won't cause weight gain
✖️ these foods are often low protein / low fibre which means that they don't leave you feeling full and so are extremely easy to over consume
Have you found it hard to lose weight despite "eating clean"? Forget about the buzzwords on the front of the packet and learn to read the nutritional panel on the back. Comment below or DM if this is something you would like some help with.
25/09/2020
For our prehistoric ancestors, serious physical injury, predators and starvation were the primary threats to their survival. Each of these extremely stressful events demanded an immediate physiological adaptation - what we call the stress-response.
This stress-response consisted of a physiological cascade of events that involved rapid mobilisation of energy in the form of glucose, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure and increased respiration. This cascade was necessary in order to transport nutrients and oxygen to our muscles at greater rates and thus enable them to evade imminent danger. For our prehistoric ancestors, it also made sense to halt less immediate processes such as digestion, tissue repair, immune function and reproduction. Being able to make babies hardly matters when a saber-tooth tiger is trying to make a meal out of you.
Fast forward a couple of millennia and as we have evolved as a species, the stressors that pose us harm are much different. Today for most of us, stressors are more likely to include long working hours, lack of recreation time, interpersonal relationship difficulties and financial troubles. The problem is that we are using a system designed to respond to acute stress to deal with chronic stress. What happens in time is that the very mechanisms that were designed to protect us eventually become damaging. This is how persistently high and unrelenting stress levels can contribute to the development of the conditions that most commonly plague our modern society - obesity, Type 2 diabetes, tension headaches and migraines, hypertension, chronic heartburn, IBS, anxiety and depression.
Given the extremely unprecedented and challenging times we find ourselves in, it's time for us as a society to stop paying lip service to stress management. The ugly truth is that if you don't find a way to manage your stress, it will find a way to manage you.
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16 Keith Street
Melbourne, VIC
3012
Opening Hours
| Tuesday | 6am - 11am |
| Thursday | 6am - 11am |
