Debunking the “Adrenal Fatigue” Myth. Toronto Weight Loss Coach

‘Adrenal fatigue’ supporters say that your adrenal glands, in response to constant stress, lack of quality sleep and too many late nights partying, get really tired and mixed up. They become exhausted by your lifestyle, causing them to excrete less of the hormones you need to be healthy. The result? ADRENAL FATIGUE! Only thing, it’s not entirely true at all!

Adrenal glands and what they do

What are your adrenals?
Your adrenals are two little triangular endocrine (meaning, they make hormones) glands that sit on top of your kidneys. These guys secrete hormones like cortisol, aldosterone, and adrenaline to name a few.

Let’s take a look at each one of these hormones because they’re the ones that most closely relate to ‘adrenal fatigue’.

Cortisol: is released in response to low blood sugar and stress. It increases blood sugar, suppresses the immune system, and helps us metabolize carbohydrates, fat, and protein. When you drink coffee, this can increase your cortisol levels. When you’re not sleeping, or your boss yells at you, or you haven’t eaten all day, these things can increase your cortisol levels too. Cortisol has a role in our sleep, our mood, and even our memory, among plenty of other things.

Aldosterone: regulates how much you pee and how much sodium and potassium your body retains. It helps keep our blood pressure stable.

Adrenaline: is released in response to stress. Ever hear of the ‘fight or flight’ response? That’s adrenaline that causes it. Adrenaline increases blood flow to the muscles, increases blood sugar, and makes your heart pump harder. Exercise increases your body’s epinephrine secretion.

The adrenal glands are part of a pathway that responds to stress. No one said the adrenals weren’t complicated business, but our main question is that of adrenal fatigue, so I will spare you the deep dive into physiology.

Our bodies have to have a mechanism to control and respond to stress, and our adrenals are equipped to do just that, so it’s all good.

Where did ‘adrenal fatigue’ come from?

The term ‘adrenal fatigue’ was invented in 1998, so it’s relatively new. If you look at ‘adrenal fatigue’ sites, they claim that the overuse of your adrenal glands causes the following symptoms:

• Mild depression or anxiety
• Multiple food and or inhalant allergies
• Lethargy and lack of energy
• Increased effort to perform daily tasks
• Decreased ability to handle stress
• Dry and thin skin
• Low blood sugar
• Low body temperature
• Heart palpitations
• Unexplained hair loss
• Alternating diarrhea or constipation

Does adrenal fatigue REALLY exist?

The truth is, your adrenal glands don’t get tired! They don’t suffer from an inability to keep pace with your busy lifestyle and crazy stress levels. What if someone told you, ‘Your heart never stops beating, so at some point it’s gonna need a rest! You have cardiac fatigue!’?

There are definitely some real adrenal problems that exist, such as adrenal insufficiency, also known as Addison’s Disease. Addison’s Disease is very serious. Interestingly enough, the symptoms of Addison’s Disease, and many other recognized conditions, overlap with many of the symptoms of ‘adrenal fatigue’!

The problem with ‘adrenal fatigue’ testing is that it’s not accurate. Blood hormone levels fluctuate and because ‘adrenal fatigue’ is subclinical, you can’t really detect small shifts in the necessary hormones to diagnose it.

If the symptoms of ‘adrenal fatigue’ are so random and non-specific, and the tests that are done to diagnose it aren’t accurate, how do you know if you have it? And, how do you know if, after a few rounds of supplements you bought off the internet, you’re ‘cured’?

So what if you’re experiencing all or some of the ‘adrenal fatigue’ symptoms?
Organs and glands are made to work until you drop. But, if your life is stressful, it’s time to make some changes. Being stressed all the time is more of a culprit. It is safe to say that chronic high levels of stress can leave that ‘fight or flight’ impulse turned on in your body, and this may cause all sorts of issues like anxiety, lack of sleep, weight gain, digestion issues, and mood disorders among other things. This is more taxing on your heart and nervous system than anything else. And the remedy to your chronic stress may be simple: more sleep, a healthier diet, and better management of stress.

Most of us get too little sleep, we eat not the best food while running from one place to the other, and we rarely get the chance to fully disconnect and chill out. If this sounds like you, it’s probably not your adrenal glands as much as it’s your lifestyle. No supplements, books, or tests for cortisol are going to have a magical effect on this. And if you’re really not feeling well, get yourself checked out. Blaming symptoms on ‘adrenal fatigue’ when they could actually be something worse can be dangerous.

Being a Toronto weight loss coach, I deal with women who are extremely busy and always on the go. It’s easy to get exhausted in this city, when trying to keep up with it’s relentless pace. My clients are no exception and this is why I develop weight loss strategies that accommodate their hectic lifestyle. If you are looking to get fit, while staying energized and focused at work, contact me to set up a free consultation!

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source https://www.buildmybodybeautiful.com/adrenal-fatigue/

“What The Health” Debunked – Toronto Dietitian Nutritionist

As a Toronto’s registered dietitian with Masters in health sciences, watching What the Health made me cringe, cry and then cringe harder once more. The half-truths and misrepresentation of scientific evidence this documentary presents are mind boggling and today I am addressing just a few of them.

I’m all for watching the next big documentary on Netflix, but within the first few minutes of starting “What the Health” I could not take it and stopped it 5 minutes in.

It was only upon being requested to give a review of it that I made myself sit through it, texting my fellow colleagues out of frustration the entire time.

Do not get me wrong, I have many vegan and vegetarian clients and advocate for integrating plant-based foods in your diet.

It’s the fact that this documentary takes research WAY out of context, and skews information with misleading biases that gets me going. As an evidence-based practitioner, I am all about the facts, so let’s break this down for you.

Meat Causes Obesity?

One of the overarching take home messages is that all meat and animal products cause obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and all-cause mortality.

They shift from putting any focus on sugar (or inactivity, or any other cocktail of foods), and put the blame exclusively on meat. I can tell you that there is no high quality systematic review that has studied all of these variables at once that concluded with this claim.

None.

Nutrition research is notoriously hard to do because it’s impossible to isolate a single food from someone’s diet and see its effect, just like it’s impossible to isolate meat as the culprit of disease when there are a variety of other factors at play.

It’s also incorrect, as we now know that an excess of sugar in the diet also may contribute to a wide range of chronic diseases. But alas, absolving sugar and demonizing meat by taking bits of the research that confirm a theory is the overarching theme of this film.

Cherry picking facts that work to support your claim is NOT telling the truth.

Discussing One Thing and Showing Another

Right from the get go, there are a lot of issues with the film talking about food. The film had a lot of discrepancies where they would be discussing one thing and showing something else.

For example, the words were about the link between processed meats and cancer, but on the screen, we are shown steaks sizzling on a grill. Not all red meat is processed, but the film makes it seem like it is.

Later on in the film, when putting down chicken consumption, What the Health talks about chicken while showing KFC.

This insinuates that chicken you cook at home is the same as that that has been dredged in a million chemicals, frozen, and then deep fried. Not the same.

Scare Tactics

I went through school for seven years and have been working in the health role for many years now working with women whose goal is to eat healthy. Long enough that when a term like “dead meat bacterial toxins” comes up I can be skeptical.

A scientific term? More like fearmongering.

Not Telling The Full Story

An omission is another form of blatant lying and another way of misrepresenting the research.

Examples of significant omissions in this film:

• The fact that nitrates are a carcinogenic property of processed meats. You can now buy uncured/nitrate free processed meat.
• What the Health mentions that animal protein causing inflammatory chemicals leading to the stiffening of the arteries. Eating food is inflammatory by nature, and the body produces inflammation with everything we eat. Inflammation is the process of determining which foods are harmful and which are not. Some people, produce higher levels of inflammatory chemicals to certain foods.
• What the Health mentions that charring meat increases cancer risk and that these come from meat. Charring is in and of itself is both delicious and carcinogenic. There are steps you can take to lower the production of these and other mentioned unhealthy chemicals on all foods, not just fruits and veggies. Also, a healthy gut microbiome will metabolize these chemicals into non-harmful substances. If your gut isn’t healthy, that’s a whole separate topic we need to discuss.
• According to What the Health, dairy increases the risk of death in those that have had estrogen dependent cancer but fails to mention that in the same study low-fat dairy was not related to an increased risk, rendering the omission irresponsible.

The Vegan Diet Heals All?

Wanting to touch on the “vegan diets cure all” approach at the end. The man lost 29 pounds and got off all his medication in just a few short weeks, that’s great!

Here is the thing though, you can’t prove that the vegan diet was the magic bullet. Weight loss (if needed) in and of itself is one of the most efficient ways to improve health.

My question: what was his diet like before?

If he was treating himself to a super sized fast food meal 3-4 times a day, then ANY change would have helped. Vegan diets can be as healthy as non vegan ones, at the end of the day, it all comes down to the quality of foods that you eat, their quantities and your preference.

If you are feeling lost about which diet to follow to stay healthy, don’t worry many women feel the same way. Book a free consultation with me and I will help you put together a diet plan that works for you.

The post “What The Health” Debunked – Toronto Dietitian Nutritionist appeared first on Toronto Boot Camp, Personal Training, Bikini Competition Prep.

source https://www.buildmybodybeautiful.com/what-the-health/

Top 7 Most Effective Exercises That Help You Lose Belly Fat

Not only these exercises will help you lose belly fat, they will help you lose weight all over. AAAND on top of it, doing these weekly will make you stronger, boost your metabolism and will build some nice lean muscle. As a personal trainer, I always get my clients do variations of these exercises to help them achieve the best results possible!

A Toronto personal trainer is always works with clients who want results NOW! I call it Pronto Toronto mindset. No wonder – our schedules are slammed and we don’t have the time to wait around to lose belly fat.

Recently, I read a book by Richard Koch called “The 80 20 Principle – The Secret of Achieving More with Less“. I was fascinated by the fact that 80% of your results come from 20% of the work you do. The trick is to figure out the most effective part of your work that produces those 80% of the results.

It got me thinking about the most effective exercises I always incorporate into my clients’ workouts that provide the best results. As a judging criteria, I picked exercises based on two factors:

1. The amount of muscles they activate at the same time to lose belly fat more effectively
2. The simplicity of execution so that you can start doing them now (perhaps, an Olympic clean and jerk burns more energy than a simple shoulder press, but it is also much more complex and requires a lot of time mastering it).

After a process of elimination I have finally picked the winners and today I will share them with you. Here we go!

Plank

If you’ve only got time for one abdominal exercise, forget the sit up, which only works the top portion of your core. Instead, the plank and its many variations targets the muscles at the top, bottom and sides of your midsection, not to mention other stabilizing muscles in your hips, back and shoulders.

Once you’ve mastered the front and side plank, try some variations like walking side-to-side with your hands, alternating leg lifts or walking your hands two steps forward and two steps back. There are endless ways to challenge yourself.

Deadlift

Want to feel mega strong? With practice you can add some serious weight to this compound movement. The ability to stack on the heavy plates means you can get major heart-pumping action with just one exercise! You’ll work your glutes, hamstrings and back, while improving your grip. And since you work so many muscles all at the same time, it makes it so much easier to lose belly fat and getting leaner in general.

Squat

This fundamental exercise is a gym-rat favourite for good a reason: It’s a full-body move that torches body fat while increasing balance and stability.

Loading up a bar in the squat rack may seem intimidating for newbies, but fear not: there are effective ways to work up to the full expression of the exercise. Try body weight squats with a bench behind you, dumbbell sumo squats or by leaning your back against a swiss ball. Graduating to a heavier weight can cause trouble for weak knees and backs, so be sure to have a personal trainer or a knowledgeable friend check your form.

Overhead press

Because sexy shoulders are always in style! Working your delts creates the illusion of a slimmer waist and sets a beautiful frame for your upper body. The shoulder press can be done seated, standing, with dumbbells or a small barbell. Get the most out of this exercise by keeping your core tight and maintaining proper posture.

Pushup

You might think of pushups as a chest exercise, and you’d be correct, however it’s also an effective way to train your shoulders, triceps and core. The best part is this exercise can be done anywhere with no equipment, so on days when you can’t get to the gym, there’s no excuse not to drop and do 20!

Absolute beginners can work up to the pushup by starting with their hands against a wall, graduating to a bench, then on the floor on their knees. Positioning your hands widely will target more of the chest muscle (aka pecs), or you can bring them close together for a challenging tricep workout.

HIIT

When gym time is scarce, high intensity interval training (HIIT) should be your go-to. Keeping your cardio sessions short and intense is every bit as effective as long bouts on the treadmill. Use an interval timer on your smartphone, or a Gymboss, to create prompts to change exercises or rest.

A simple version of HIIT is treadmill sprints: run as fast as you can for one minute, then do a light jog for one minute and repeat. Or try a conditioning workout such as:

• 20 seconds on kettlebell swings
• 20 seconds of mountain climbers
• 20 seconds holding a plank

Change up your HIIT sessions each week to keep gym-boredom at bay.

The one you’re not doing

Finally, in addition to the tried-and-true effective exercises that make you lose belly fat, we need to keep our bodies and minds constantly challenged to see changes in our fitness. It’s all too easy to fall into a routine rut where we think we’re working hard but really just going through the motions.

Check our mobile app for new ideas or contact me to set up a free consultation to get you started on a customized fitness plan!

The post Top 7 Most Effective Exercises That Help You Lose Belly Fat appeared first on Toronto Boot Camp, Personal Training, Bikini Competition Prep.

source https://www.buildmybodybeautiful.com/lose-belly-fat/