Club KO Kickboxing & Fitness Blog

Part 2

January 8, 2008 on 4:34 pm | In Uncategorized |

Lesson 1: Only eat quality vegetables.At the intermediate level, I recommend that all of your vegetables be organic. Organic varieties of vegetables will decrease your exposure to dangerous pesticides. Additionally, they have two to five times more nutrients as compared to non-organic vegetables. Most people agree that they also taste much better. It is important to remember though that nearly any non-organic vegetable is better than no vegetable at all.

Lesson 2: Avoid all grains.

I believe that most people’s health is improved by avoiding all grains. This also includes durham flour and semolina from which most pasta is made. You can obtain most of your fiber from vegetables, which is a far healthier choice. Additional foods to eliminate at this level are:

• Corn: It is best to stop all corn products, including popcorn and corn chips. Corn is not a vegetable but a grain! Corn and corn products are often difficult to digest and can contain mold toxins that can be very toxic for the body. Please avoid all foods with corn listed in the first five ingredients.

• Potatoes: Potatoes will raise insulin levels beyond what would be considered ideal in most people. If you do not have problems with weight, high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol, they can be used with a protein meal. Try to never have commercially prepared French-fries. They are an extremely toxic food, as they contain 100 percent trans-fatty acids.

• Wheat: The only grain food that sometimes works is sprouted grain bread. It will not work for most people, however, unless you need to gain weight and aren’t sensitive to wheat.

Lesson 3: Start using Metabolic Typing.

The purpose of the beginner plan is to normalize your metabolic biochemistry, and that involves addressing your specific nutritional needs in a unique and comprehensive way. You’ll correct your imbalances with the small number of regulatory mechanisms that manage the vast number of biochemical reactions taking place in your body. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you read the book Metabolic Typing for a detailed explanation of the program.

Metabolic typing is a dynamic process that does far more than simply assign you to a broad, fixed category that roughly approximates your nutritional needs. It is a much more precise and flexible system of a series of simple self-tests that enable you to tailor your diet with accuracy; that is, you’ll know what foods are good for your metabolic type — you won’t have to guess and see!

Since Metabolic Typing is not a static system, the process allows you to adjust your diet if your metabolism shifts. It is important to realize that your metabolic type isn’t carved in stone.

Lesson 4: Apply the Metabolic Typing system by completely removing all sugars and grains from your diet for at least one week.

Most of us are addicted to grains, so this is best done as soon as you are ready to implement the approach. A gradual reduction just won’t work for most people as your insulin levels will continue to increase. This means that your cravings for sugars and grains will be high, and you will not reap the benefits of lowered insulin levels.

It’s important to normalize your insulin levels so you can remove the distorted signals your body has been giving you all these years. Once you are off all grains and sugars for a week, your body may tell you that you need to resume them, but most people benefit from remaining off of them for some time. You will know. Your body will make this very clear. If your energy level is dramatically improved and most of your health complaints are gone or significantly better, then this is a giant clue that you are on the right path. If you are not better, you will want to consider reintroducing small amounts of grains back into your diet.

Lesson 5: Retrain your body’s response to sweets.

If you are overweight, you have likely trained your hormone system to respond very aggressively to sweets. As soon as anything sweet hits your mouth your body will instantly release insulin. This occurs even when it does not need it, such as when you are using low calorie sweeteners. Pavlov proved this principle over 100 years ago.

He began to feed his dogs in association with the ringing of a bell. After a certain time the dogs were shown to salivate profusely in association with the ringing bell even when the actual sight or smell of food was not present. Pavlov regarded this salivation as being a conditioned reflex and designated the process by which the dogs had picked up this reflex classical conditioning.

You have also experienced this conditioning. You’ve developed a link between your taste buds and your brain that will cause your body to produce insulin the moment you eat anything sweet, even if it is not grains or sugar. This will sabotage your efforts to lose weight successfully, as you will keep on having cravings for sugar and grains.

It’s just a matter of re-educating your taste buds. It will be essential to have no sweets for few weeks; once you clean your palate of grains, foods will taste better than ever. You can use this as an opportunity to explore the use of spices and organic foods, as they typically taste much better once you eliminate your body’s response to sugar.

Since you’ve made many of the essential changes for fat consumption in the beginner phase, the intermediate phase instructions are quite simple:

• As I’ve said in the carbohydrate section for this level, never have commercially prepared French-fries. They are one of the most toxic foods you could eat. Most have 100 percent trans fatty acids.

• Eliminate margarines, as they are another source of trans fatty acids.

• You should regularly be consuming fish oil/cod liver oil by now, as it is one of the few and best sources of omega-3 fatty acids that most people are sorely lacking in their diet but are essential to optimal health.

• Olive oil is not only acceptable but highly recommended as it has a fat in it called squalene. This is a potent antioxidant and will protect the fish oil from going rancid (becoming oxidized) once it is in your body.

• Avocados, walnuts, egg yolks, coconut oil and butter are acceptable sources of fats.

Please Note: If you are a “Carbohydrate Metabolic Type,” you will need about 15% of your diet as fat. If you are a “Protein Metabolic Type,” you may need up to 50% of your diet as fat. This is why it will be important to understand what metabolic type you are.

If you have not been metabolically typed via a medical practitioner, I highly recommend you read the book The Metabolic Typing Diet: Customize Your Diet to Your Own Unique Body Chemistry to help you understand your type.

Here is a very general guideline to follow in the meantime, though: the more you enjoy steak and feel good with it, the greater the percentage of fat you will need in your diet. If you feel wonderful as a vegetarian and comfortable with very little meat, then you will likely need much closer to only 15% of fat in your diet.

Lesson 1: Get active bacteria into your diet.

Live active cultures of lactobacillus, acidophilus and bifidus are important. These are the good inhabitants of the gut that help to control the yeast and bad bacteria that are also in your gut. Active cultures are living and therefore are best kept refrigerated. There are literally dozens of different types on the market and many of them simply do not work. I recommend Flora Source in my own office since it is a very effective, highly potent, multi-strain products.

It’s best to take these products ONCE per day after drinking 1 glass of BOTTLED OR FILTERED water, or with some food. This reduces the acidity of the stomach and allows the powder to be more effective.

Lesson 2: You can use supplements to help relieve irregular bowel movements.

Bowel movements aren’t necessarily the most pleasant things to think about, but it’s healthy to have two to three bowel movements a day. Ideally, they should be effortless, odorless and not sink to the bottom of the toilet bowl.

• Flaxseeds: My first choice would be to use freshly ground organic flaxseeds. You can use one to six tablespoons per day. Flax has water-soluble fibers that are similar to psyllium (Metamucil), which are very effective at relieving constipation. Additionally, it is a food and a source of beneficial omega-3 fats.

• Magnesium: This can be helpful to temporarily restore a healthy frequency of bowel movements. Start your dose at one 500 mg tablet or capsule twice a day. Malate is the preferred form, but glycinate and citrate also work quite nicely. You can increase this to four tablets twice a day (two grams) if necessary. You can go up to eight per day in divided doses for severe cases. Diarrhea is the only side effect of magnesium, and you can easily reduce the dose if this occurs.

It’s important not to use magnesium on a long-term basis, as it will cause imbalances in the calcium/magnesium ratio in your body. If the magnesium does not work, you can use Aloe Vera capsules.

Lesson 3: Use vitamin E to maximize the benefits of fish oil and vitamin C to help with stress or the effects of heavy exercise.

You may want to consider taking vitamin E (400 units a day) as this will help protect the omega-3 oils from being oxidized once you consume them. You might want to also consider vitamin C, especially around times of heavy exercise or stress.

If you are consuming one pound of vegetables for every 50 pounds of body weight, you will receive a large variety of antioxidants from the vegetables so it’s not as important to take a vitamin E supplement.