Balanced Existence

Health & Wellness Video Blogging Begins

Stephen — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:59:26 +0000

After a kettlebell workout on Wednesday I decided to film an impromptu video to briefly introduce myself. I’m excited by the challenge of expanding Balanced Existence into video blogging so as to connect more closely with you. And a challenge it is.

Recently I wrote about the ready, fire, aim principle and being someone who walks the talk I decided that I was ready to start video blogging and to create The Balanced Existence Channel. Following the ready, fire, aim principle there was no reason not to pull the trigger (fire!) right now and adjust the aim later.

So starting right now you will be witness to the ready, fire, aim principle in action. Video blogging and creating a Balanced Existence video channel represents a serious personal challenge to me. However, this is something that I know I should I do as it will take Balanced Existence to a whole new level.

No One Begins as a Black Belt
Do I suck at making videos right now? Yes, in my opinion I sure do. However, if I don’t just make a start I have no chance of ever getting better. Never taking action and giving up all carry a 100% failure rate.

No person is born a black belt. We all start out as white belts at anything new we choose to pursue. And now, having taken positive action I find myself fired up to improve and get better. Every hour or so I have an idea for another video I could do. Having made my first video the things I need to improve on are glaringly obvious. But I wouldn’t have any of this if I hadn’t just done something.

So my point is, whatever your dreams are get out there and grab hold of them with both hands! You’ve never been more ready than right now. There is no reason to wait. Just take action. It doesn’t have to perfect. In fact there is little chance it will be. But by taking action you will set something in motion that will build momentum and in doing so you will ride that momentum all the way to your greatest dreams and aspirations.

Balanced Existence Video Introduction – Health, Wellness & Kettlebells

If you’re a Balanced Existence subscriber and you can’t see the video come watch it here on my website or you can watch it at Youtube: Balanced Existence Video Introduction - Health, Wellness & Kettlebells.

Feel free to leave a comment on the video page and I encourage you to subscribe to the Balanced Existence YouTube Channel. There will be more (improved!) videos online very soon. You can also join me on Twitter.

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The Difference Between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes

Stephen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:25:28 +0000

photo credit: DPerstin

In response to Diabetes, Fructose and Natural Appetite Regulation Akemi asked me some good questions. In the process of replying I found myself essentially writing another article so I thought I’d post it up so everyone gets a chance to read it. Akemi’s comment is below and my response follows.

Thank you for the explanation. So I guess you don’t think bananas and other tropical foods are not necessarily worse than apples and berries in terms of fructose intake and effects on diabetes?

People say different things on nutrition, and I’m still a bit confused. For instance, here is an article (in fact, it’s two articles) with lots of medical citations that says high protein, high fat diet worsens diabetes or even causes diabetes. I’m sure you have something interesting to say about her view: Victoria Boutenko on Curing Diabetes Naturally

Akemi

On Tropical Fruit
I love your comments because you’re helping me fill in the gaps in my article. It can be really hard to cover everything in regards to subjects like this in one go. Almost impossible actually.

Nope, I have no problems with tropical fruits. If you feel good an hour after eating them then keep on eating them. Their glycemic load (different from glycemic index) are generally quite low because of all the fiber they contain.

The problem exists in a situation where, for example you had someone eating junk that is high in fructose and then thinking eating a bunch of fruit at the same time is going to make up for all the junk. Much worse would be thinking that drinking some “natural” juice is going to make up for the soda and other junk while also eating processed foods labeled low-fat (high in sugar) from the supermarket.

My point is that while fruit in a balanced healthy diet is great adding more sugar from fruit to an already massive amount of sugar is not likely to be a good thing. Despite the fact that fruit in the right context is very much a good thing. I hope that clears up my position?

Type 1 Diabetes is Different from Type 2 Diabetes
Now for your second question. There are a lot of different things being said on nutrition isn’t there. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m just contributing to the confusion. I try my best not to by not simply making statements. Instead I try where possible to explain the mechanism behind things.

The article you linked to appears to be in regards to type 1 diabetes, as this is the type of diabetes the son was diagnosed with. All the articles on my site that mention diabetes thus far are in regards to type 2 diabetes. The vast majority of cases of diabetes are type 2. Type 1 diabetes has a very different cause to type 2 diabetes and I’ve got to wonder whether the author of that article originally knew this or not or even full understands this fact and its implications now.

From Robb Wolf’s website (a former research biochemist specializing in lipid metabolism) - Type 1 Diabetes is a failure of the beta cells of the pancreas to produce insulin. This is generally acknowledged to be the result of an autoimmune response, usually attributed to a viral infection or some kind of trauma. What is less known is the role of grain lectins in this process.

In humans, exposure to gluten before 3 months of age increases the risk for Type 1 Diabetes (1). Multiple studies also implicate bovine milk in Type 1 Diabetes (2). A higher intake of Omega 3 fatty acids (3) and vitamin D (4) may reduce the risk for type 1 diabetes.

If you read Robb Wolf’s website you’ll see many comments by people (including a mother of a young child) who have type 1 diabetes who are following his advice to eat a Paleolithic type diet (high protein, low carb, moderate fat) and who are seeing amazing results from doing so.

Clearly the cause of type 1 diabetes is very different to type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes used to be known as adult onset diabetes and is usually the result of long-term insulin resistance.

The Importance of Understanding Physiology
Looking at the article and the research presented in the article you linked to there is no explanation of the actual physiological mechanisms at play in the type 1 diabetes condition as it relates to increasing carbohydrate and reducing fat so its difficult to comment on what was actually going on. I notice that everyone in her household were found to have high blood sugar readings. Something was either wrong from the very beginning or perhaps when she changed he son to a high carbohydrate diet the whole family changed to that diet and high blood sugar readings were the result for them.

I did notice that in the 1976 study the doctor gave the subject three times more fiber while increasing the carbohydrates consumed by only 32 percent. This suggests a shift to carbohydrate foods that also contained far more fiber than those previously consumed, i.e. fibrous vegetables vs. bread or pasta made from grains which irritate the type 1 diabetes condition.

I can’t imagine a case where increasing fiber while reducing irritants wouldn’t be a good thing. However, if these subjects reduced carbohydrate intake from grains (irritants of the type 1 diabetes condition) and increased carbohydrate intake from vegetables the reduction in irritation from grains and increase in fiber could explain the results much more clearly than simply increasing carbohydrate consumption.

Again I emphasize that a calorie is not a calorie because different compounds have very different effects on the body. Note also that the author’s son only really got a lot better when put on a raw food diet not simply a high carbohydrate diet. A raw food diet excludes most grains and gain products as they are typically cooked and processed.

I also noticed that the original diet used in the 1920’s and 1930’s to help diabetics was a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. Interesting that the recommendations now are the opposite as high carbohydrate and low fat. And the prevalence of diabetes? Far higher than it has ever been. Personally I eat a low (ish) carbohydrate diet (fibrous vegetables, some fruit) and high fat and I certainly do not have diabetes of any type.

Obviously there is more to what was going on inside those patients that were given a high carbohydrate and low fat diet. I personally have not investigated type 1 diabetes to the point where I can provide an in depth look at type 1 diabetes at this time. I probably will in the future and will certainly write about what I find.

I must say I agree with the final conclusions of the author in regards to the possibility of resolving diabetes through a diet and lifestyle. I go further though and suggest that such diet and lifestyle must be founded on an understanding of the underlying physiological mechanisms at play. Not just results of experiments carried out by other people that don’t explain why what happened, happened.

I do feel that personal experimentation is very important. The problem though for people with chronic illness is that personal experimentation not based on an understanding of human physiology can be dangerous. I feel sad that some of the very people she has recorded her experience to help seem to have attacked her. I give her much credit for being so proactive in helping her son overcome his heath problems and for now trying to help others.

References
1.Ziegler A-G, Schmid S, Huber D, Hummel M, Bonifacio E. Early infant feeding and risk of developing type 1 diabetes-associated autoantibodies. JAMA 2003;290:1721–8.

2. Knip M, Veijola R, Virtanen SM, Hyöty H, Vaarala O, Akerblom HK. Environmental triggers and determinants of type 1 diabetes. Diabetes. 2005 Dec;54 Suppl 2:S125-36.

3. Norris JM, Yin X, Lamb MM, Barriga K, Seifert J, Hoffman M, Orton HD, Barón AE, Clare-Salzler M, Chase HP, Szabo NJ, Erlich H, Eisenbarth GS, Rewers M. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid intake and islet autoimmunity in children at increased risk for type 1 diabetes. JAMA. 2007 Sep 26;298(12):1420-8.

4. Hyppönen E, Läärä E, Reunanen A, Järvelin MR, Virtanen SM. Intake of vitamin D and risk of type 1 diabetes: a birth-cohort study. Lancet. 2001 Nov 3;358(9292):1500-3

Diabetes, Fructose and Natural Appetite Regulation

Stephen — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:46:41 +0000

photo credit: Tim Psych

Diabetes is an insidious plague upon modern humankind. In the United States alone 23,600,000 individual humans have diabetes and 57,000,000 are pre-diabetic (1). Such numbers are almost impossible to comprehend.

So lots of people have diabetes, big deal. That’s right. Diabetes is a big deal. Adults with diabetes have heart disease death rates 2 – 4 times higher than adults who do not have diabetes. The risk of you having a stroke is also 2 – 4 times higher if you have diabetes. Diabetes is also the leading cause of new cases of blindness, kidney failure and amputations (1).

Diabetes is a big deal. If you’re doing the same thing 81 million other people in the United States are doing chances are you’ll end up with Diabetes. If you do and you don’t do something about it you’ll have blindness, kidney failure, amputations and stroke to look forward to.

Very clearly something is wrong and the advice being pushed in the mainstream by many indoctrinated professionals is not helping the situation. Frankly looking at these numbers it’s obvious that they are horrendously ineffectual. Not very long ago a case of Diabetes was rare. What happened?

Let’s Do a Little Digging
The November 2008 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition contains a very interesting editorial that considers the safety of fructose for persons with or without diabetes.

For starters studies that find fructose to be safe at a certain dose per day hide a shady underbelly. One such study by an industry-sponsored group based its findings on a highly selected list of 42 studies. 42 out of a total of over 3,300 studies (2). This study proves nothing beyond the fact that so-called scientific research can be easily manipulated to produce a predetermined outcome.

Fructose intake in industrialized countries such as England and the United States has quadrupled since approximately 1920 with most of the acceleration in consumption occurring in the last 30 years (3). A phenomenon that parallels the rise in obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and kidney disease (3, 4).

In 1870 the average Australian consumed about 1kg of fructose per year. By 2000 Australians were eating about 1kg every 10 days! Fructose gets converted to fat very rapidly by your liver and then circulates in your blood. That much fat in your arteries messes up your appetite control system. When your appetite control system gets messed up you eat too much and get fat.

While this association does not prove a causal role experimental studies in animals have shown that fructose can induce most features of metabolic syndrome including insulin resistance, elevated triglycerides, abdominal obesity, elevated blood pressure, inflammation, oxidative stress and fatty liver.

Such effects are not seen in animals fed the same amount of calories of glucose or starch suggesting metabolic syndrome is not dependant on excessive caloric intake (5). This little factoid goes against almost everything presented by the official line on weight loss and diabetes that says consuming too many calories causes people to become overweight and get diabetes.

Consider an Example
Lets use me as an example. My body burns an approximate baseline of 2,600 calories per day. If I was to eat 4,000 calories a day from grass fed steak, eggs, free-range chicken, fish, broccoli, spinach, celery, onion, carrot, walnuts, almonds, apples and berries and drank only water could you honestly say that you would expect me to end up with diabetes?

Theoretically I would probably get bigger but I bet you it would be almost all lean body mass (muscle) as I lift a lot of heavy weights. I say theoretically because in practice it may simply not be physically possible to consume that many calories long-term from that sort of food. It would literally become a test of willpower to eat that much.

Not only are protein and fiber both very satiating but also the body possesses natural mechanisms for controlling appetite. I know from personal accounts by professional powerlifters that they simply could not get bigger and stay big beyond a point unless they ate large amounts of junk food.

Your Appetite - What’s Going on Inside?
The hormone leptin, released by your fat cells tells your brain to reduce food consumption because you have enough body fat. In someone who is obese the body’s appetite control mechanisms are clearly not functioning the way they should. Something is breaking the natural feedback mechanisms that would normally in nature make eating yourself to death impossible.

Interestingly, fructose does not appear to trigger the endocrine signals involved in the long-term control of energy balance (6). In one study, subjects fed fructose reported a greater appetite the following day than did glucose-fed controls (7). In another study, rats fed fructose for 4 months developed leptin resistance (meaning the brain could not know that enough has been eaten) and, when switched to high-fat high-energy diets, showed greater energy intake and weight gain than did starch-fed controls (8).

Fructose uniquely up-regulates its own transporter and metabolism meaning the more fructose you eat, the more sensitive you become to its effects (9). So clearly anyone with even a little understanding can see that a calorie is not simply just a calorie. Different compounds in food and drink do have different effects on your body. Some like OMEGA-3 fatty acids are nourishing and conducive to good health. Some, like fructose are damaging to health.

Live Naturally
These are the messy little details that the fitness and weight loss industries gloss over in the mass media blast of catchy sound bites. Sure you can reduce your calorie intake for a while and thereby reduce your overall body weight. But eating less crap is still eating crap and you will not get away with it for long. The rebound is just around the corner.

Without learning good nutritional habits based on real understanding it is highly unlikely that you will be able to resist the physiological imperative to consume more as a result of eating compounds like fructose that mess with the natural order of your body’s self-regulating systems.

The nature of these things is the more you eat of them the more you want to eat them. And as we have seen with fructose the more you eat of it the more it affects you. There is no natural off switch in your body for things like fructose. Calories from fructose aren’t even detected by your brain. So your brain thinks you haven’t eaten. So you get hungry again quick and you eat more. That’s a good business model if you’re the Devil.

In nature there just wouldn’t be that much fructose available to matter. In nature there is no refrigerated airplane to fly bananas from one side of the world to another where it’s the middle of winter. I remember reading in Guns, Germs and Steel that most fruits today do not resemble the fruit that existed in the past. Just about all the fruits that existed before humans messed with them were much smaller than they are now. Varieties of fruit have also been manipulated to be sweeter. You couldn’t even buy orange juice in Australia until the 1950’s.

However, if you eat the things you’re supposed to eat in balance and harmony with the natural order of things your body with all its natural intelligence will regulate itself for your health and wellbeing. Your natural appetite control system will take care of itself and you wont get diabetes or get fat.

I recall from the lecture embedded in The Battle of the Diets about a study that involved subjects who ate a so-called Paleolithic diet of animal protein and fat, fibrous vegetables, nuts and seeds who ended up eating rather low calorie diets all on their own. After reading this article such information should not surprise you at all. Switching on your natural appetite regulation system is a simple way to lose weight and improve your health without feeling like you’re staving.

If you’ve read this far I highly recommend you read the transcript of an interview with Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. It clearly articulates many of the ideas I’ve tried to express here in this article and in other articles recently on Balanced Existence. It’s worth your time.

If you haven’t already done so you might like to subscribe using the form below.

References
1. Diabetes Statistics from the American Diabetes Association website

2. How safe is fructose for persons with or without diabetes?
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2008, Vol. 88, No. 5, 1189-1190,

3. Johnson RJ, Segal MS, Sautin Y, et al. Potential role of sugar (fructose) in the epidemic of hypertension, obesity and the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr 2007;86(4):899–906.

4. Segal MS, Gollub E, Johnson RJ. Is the fructose index more relevant with regards to cardiovascular disease than the glycemic index? Eur J Nutr 2007;46(7):406–17

5. Nakagawa T, Hu H, Zharikov S, et al. A causal role for uric acid in fructose-induced metabolic syndrome. Am J Physiol 2006;290(3):F625–31

6. Havel PJ. Dietary fructose: implications for dysregulation of energy homeostasis and lipid/carbohydrate metabolism. Nutr Rev 2005;63(5):133–57

7. Teff KL, Elliott SS, Tschop M, et al. Dietary fructose reduces circulating insulin and leptin, attenuates postprandial suppression of ghrelin, and increases triglycerides in women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2004;89(6):2963–72.

8. Shapiro A, Mu W, Roncal C, Cheng KY, Johnson RJ, Scarpace PJ. Fructose-induced leptin resistance exacerbates weight gain in response to subsequent high fat feeding. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 2008

9. Ouyang X, Cirillo P, Sautin Y, et al. Fructose consumption as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. J Hepatol 2008;48(6):993–9

The Battle of the Diets

Stephen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:06:32 +0000

photo credit: hans s

The weekend is almost here so I thought I’d give you something interesting to sit back and watch over the weekend. Today we have a lecture given by Christopher Gardner, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center.

Professor Gardner is a twenty-five year vegetarian and has recently completed the largest and longest-ever comparison of four popular diets using real-world conditions. The diets in his study are the Ornish diet, the Zone diet, the LEARN diet (this is the diet recommended by academics and therefore the standard diet recommended by the American government i.e. the food pyramid) and the Atkins diet.

The lecture is very interesting because Professor Gardner’s study found that one of those four diets clearly came out on top as the best of the lot. I’ll get to that in just a second.

We Interrupt this Program for a Special Announcement
As a special thank you to you, the loyal Balanced Existence reader, the Balanced Existence Store is now offering 10% off all products. To take advantage of this special offer, simply enter the coupon code: Stephen1009 when you go through the checkout process.

What the Stanford Study Discovered
As a twenty-five year vegetarian Professor Gardner had a somewhat bitter pill to swallow in presenting the results of his study. This is because his study clearly shows that not only did the Atkins diet group have the highest retention rate after one year of all the diets in the study but the Atkins group lost by far the most weight and returned hands down the best health indicators of all the diets tested.

The other three diets (Ornish, Zone and LEARN) produced similar results to each other in terms of weight loss. Looking at the health indicators despite the popular perception that on Atkins your cholesterol will somehow go through the roof the study found Atkins produced far more favorable metabolic changes when compared to all other diets in the study. For the Atkins group both systolic and diastolic blood pressure was better, as were triglycerides, HDL-Cholesterol and LDL-Cholesterol, insulin and glucose when compared to all other diets in the study.

This Can’t Be Right!?
I found it both amusing and telling that in response to this information a woman in the crowd at 24:30 in the video asks Professor Gardner whether the information on the presentation slide meant that the Ornish diet did better than Atkins in terms of HDL-Cholesterol. Maybe she simply didn’t understand what he had said but my initial reaction was that her brain had taken the Professor’s very clear statements that Atkins did better than all the other diets and thanks to her preconceptions completely flipped the information around so that it came back out comfortably aligned with what she “knew” to be true, i.e. that the Ornish diet is good for your health. It was like the information was so surprising to her that it just didn’t compute.

This may not have been the actual case but my point is do not let this be you. Don’t let personal prejudices or preconceived notions in regards to what you feel is right and wrong blind you to new information or blind you to what a new experience is telling you. Very shortly I’ll have an interesting article for you on cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias that will go deeper into this issue. Make sure you stay tuned for that one by subscribing.

Important Conclusions
Professor Gardner comes to similar conclusions regarding the need to move from grains to fibrous vegetables as I have recently been writing about here on Balanced Existence:

The best way to quickly demonstrate the failed logic with grains is as follows.

Having cancer all through your body is very bad. Having cancer in one spot is less bad. Therefore: having cancer in one spot is good for you.

Clearly you can see the failure of logic in that sequence of thought. Now stick with me as we apply this to grains.

White flour is bad for your health. Whole grains are less bad for your health. Therefore: plenty of whole grains are good for your health.

See the flawed logic?

I would also like to note that Professor Gardner’s discussion of the removal of grains from diet when talking about the Paleolithic diet is somewhat idiotic and seems more for getting a laugh out of the crowd than anything else. When you watch this part of the lecture remember that the difference in calorie intake (people who eat a Paleolithic diet tend to consume much less calories) when people are on Paleolithic type diets is explained by the highly satiating nature of protein and the higher intake of fiber from fibrous vegetables which is also very filling. Starchy grains are very calorie dense foods while fibrous vegetables are not. I guess as a twenty-five year vegetarian he really couldn’t help himself on this one.

Other Points of Interest
The study also found that a large proportion of people do not actually have a clue about these diets. A number of the study’s participants had actually previously tried the diet they were on for the study and completely failed to lose weight the first time around. After the study they realized that they hadn’t read the book properly and they had not actually understood the diet. There really is no accounting for reading comprehension.

In his talk Professor Gardner refers to another study where the same amount of weight was lost by all participants using different diets to ensure it wasn’t just the higher weight loss that caused the Atkins group to have the best health indicators. This study still found that the risk profile improved the most for the Atkins/low carbohydrate group. Professor Gardner also refers to a series of studies in which high protein was compared to high carbohydrates (holding fat constant) and high protein was compared to high fat (holding carbohydrates constant). In each case protein was better in that appetite was more satiated, more weight was lost, insulin got better and triglycerides got better.

He does raise some concerns regarding the effect of high protein diets on kidney function and bone density; however this is clearly his opinion in response to an audience question and not backed by studies based on healthy members of the population. In fact the whole high protein causing bone loss and kidney problems myth is steadily being debunked. Bones are largely made of protein and other factors such as the amount of load bearing exercise you do (kettlebells and weight lifting) are much more of a determinant of the health of your bones than diet factors such as protein intake (1, 2).

Further Reading
Here is a study done way back in which a small group of men ate only meat and animal fat for a whole year. In all cases the expected negative health effects such as damage to kidney function from eating lots of protein did not occur. Now I recommend you eat plenty of fibrous vegetables with your meat and animal fat. However, very obviously the standard recommendation to eat 8 – 11 servings of grains each and every day is insanity.

I don’t eat any grains and I do just fine. In fact when I eat grains I get sick. You may do ok on grains but I suggest that you’ll get far more nutrition from fibrous vegetables with far less calories and a lower insulin response than you will ever get eating starchy grains. That means you’ll lose weight and feel better while doing it.

This study indicates that most people who suffer a heart attack actually have low cholesterol.

And this study shows that low cholesterol increases the chance of stroke.

Professor Gardner’s Lecture – The Battle of the Diets

If you’re a subscriber to Balanced Existence and you can’t see the video you can watch it here.

References
1. Bess Dawson-Hughes, Susan S. Harris, Helen Rasmussen, Lingyi Song and Gerard E. Dallal, ‘Effect of Dietary Protein Supplements on Calcium Excretion in Healthy Older Men and Women’, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 89, No. 3 1169-1173

Abstract

2. Lowery LM, Devia L. Dietary protein safety and resistance exercise: what do we really know? J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2009 Jan 12;6:3.

Abstract

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Ready, Fire, Aim!

Stephen — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:47:42 +0000

photo credit: eyeliam

The very beginning of Balanced Existence was an experiment in the “Ready, Fire, Aim!” concept. At the time I had become inspired to start my own blog and to begin sharing with you things that I found interesting and helpful. I had some ideas about the direction I wanted to take the website should I build it. At the same time I had been reading about the “Ready, Fire, Aim!” concept.

Balanced Existence seemed like a perfect case to serve as a personal experiment into the usefulness of the “Ready, Fire, Aim!” concept. At the time I didn’t even know what I should call my website. Over the course of about two or three days I wrote some ideas down, did some domain name searching, found and registered BalancedExistence.com, paid for a web hosting service, installed Wordpress and found and set up a Wordpress theme and numerous widgets.

My first articles came from essays I had already written while studying Buddhism at university. Essentially much of what you see today was up and online in a matter of a few short hours. Instead of planning every minute detail I just got stuck in and built something. While the original launch was far from perfect by having to deal with real problems through real experience I learnt new things very quickly and constantly refined the website and my approach.

I’ve known a number of people in my life who possess vast talent, knowledge and skill but who have largely failed to do anything with these positive qualities because they were paralysed by endless analysis. They never seem to get out of the planning phase. They have fantastic innovative ideas but never take the necessary step of taking action to actually converting these ideas into a reality.

A Ready, Fire, Aim Case Study
The ready, fire, aim principle can be applied to any endeavour you could wish to undertake. If you want to get into exercise then all you need do is pick a general direction, set a specific goal based on the direction you want to go and simply make a start and stick with it for a while to see what happens.

After you make a start you’ll actually get a real clue through real experience regarding what you want to achieve and you will then be able to make adjustments as you go along. Otherwise it’s all just theoretical. Whatever you do to start with it probably won’t be perfect but doing something, anything really, is a whole lot more than doing nothing at all. Doing nothing gets you nowhere. Doing something will get you somewhere.

For example, say the direction you wanted to go with exercise was to get stronger. At this point you may be a complete beginner. Given this you decide that deadlifting twice your body weight and pressing the kettlebell closest to half your body weight overhead with one hand are respectable strength goals.

The truth is the specific goal doesn’t matter all that much. It’s far more important that you actually have goals rather than what those goals actually are. To get from where you are now to where your goals are you’ve got to start somewhere.

So you keep it simple with a program that calls for 5 sets of 5 reps of each of the two exercises on 3 separate occasions per week. One week you deadlift Monday, press Wednesday and deadlift again on Friday. The next week you switch it around so you press twice and deadlift once, the next week you switch it back and so forth.

You follow this dead simple program and increase the weight on the bar every week. Do this for three to six months and you’ll barely recognize yourself. Your days of physical weakness will be behind you forever.

Even better you’ll have learned a lot about your body and how it responds to specific types of stimulation. You’ll have learned that drinking alcohol, eating the wrong foods (that is, the wrong foods for you!) and not getting enough sleep make you weak and fat. You’ll have learned that lifting heavy (for you) weights is the best form of anti-depressant ever invented. You will have gained a stronger more sensitive connection with your physical existence. You may find this has had surprising repercussions for your spiritual practice. Finally, you’ll have learned self-discipline by sticking with something even when at times you may not have wanted to.

Wrapping it Up
You know what you would have achieved had you spent days reading internet forums looking for the perfect workout program don’t you? That’s right. Nothing. The next thing you know your work will get real busy and you’ll be too tired and stressed to even think about working out. Or something else will come along and grab your attention. In life there is always going to be something. This is why you’ve got to grab the bull by the horns and take action.

To get somewhere you must first do something. It really doesn’t matter too much what that something is. Once the first shot is fired the game always changes. So, whatever your dreams may be, whatever idea you might have, just go do something about it. You’re already ready! It’s time to fire and worry about the aim later.

If you have found this article useful please consider donating. Your generosity will help me keep Balanced Existence constantly updated with new articles and information. Thank you!

The Balanced Existence Store is Open!

Stephen — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:20:11 +0000

I’m very excited to announce The Balanced Existence Store is now open for business! While it is a work in progress there already are a number of fantastic products available.

As a special thank you to you, the loyal Balanced Existence reader, the Balanced Existence Store is now offering 10% off all products. To take advantage of this special offer, simply enter the coupon code: Stephen1009 when you go through the checkout process. So be sure not to miss out on this special offer as it ends November 15, 2009 and feel free to check out the other fantastic experts and their stores in the growing OpenSky mall.

The Balanced Existence store is being developed under the “Ready, Fire, Aim!” principle. For the products currently available I will very soon be adding my own descriptions of the benefits of each product based on my own personal experience from using them.

Next, I will begin working on a series of videos through which you will be able to better connect with me as I talk about and demonstrate how to use particular products. My hope is to use these videos as the foundation for a Balanced Existence YouTube channel and as the beginning of video blogging here at BalancedExistence.com. You can also expect more great products to be added to The Balanced Existence Store over time.

If you have any comments you would like to share in regards to the direction Balanced Existence is taking I would love to hear from you. I value your opinion and welcome your feedback. Please take the time to leave a comment at the end of this article.

Store Highlight – Organic Cold Pressed Coconut Oil

Available right now at The Balanced Existence Store, organic cold pressed coconut oil has got to be one of the healthiest and most versatile products available:

I use organic cold pressed coconut oil every single day as a moisturizer that will benefit your body instead of stress your body the way the chemicals in “normal” moisturizers do.

Coconut oil is great for cooking as it is one of the very few oils (unlike vegetable and olive oil) that are stable at high temperatures.

Coconut oil is very beneficial if you have health problems associated with fungal, bacterial or viral infections. Be careful not to take too much too quickly as coconut oil will kill the bad guys in your body and their die-off can have short-term negative effects if the process is too rapid. This is known as the Herxheimer effect.

Up to a tablespoon of Coconut oil is a great healthy source of quickly available energy after a workout as the body sends it directly to the liver where it is converted very quickly to freely available energy for your body to use.

To find out more about the health benefits of this exceptional product you might like to read - Health Benefits of Organic Coconut Oil.

Why Eating Less and Exercising More is Not the Answer for Fat Loss

Stephen — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:00:19 +0000

photo credit: - PicsmaKer -

On an Internet forum I read an older woman recently started a thread about her current weight loss problem. According to her post she has been doing 40 – 50 minutes of exercise 6 times a week and eating a “healthy balanced diet of about 1,400 calories a day”. This involved no sugar, very little carbohydrates and good fats. She has lost 30lbs so far but now the weight loss has stopped dead.

By following this sort of program this woman has found herself in a position where she can’t eat much less than she already does (she’s already starving her body but I’ll get to this in a moment) and she also says she can’t exercise more than she already does. Her exercise program included a little kettlebell work, 15 – 30 minute walks on a treadmill and some other exercise. Despite losing 30lbs her scale is telling that she has 39 percent body fat.

What You Can Learn from this Example
I’ve relayed this woman’s case to you today because it is a useful example of how misguided the whole idea of weight loss has become. Sure, if you restrict your calories to really low levels your body’s mass will reduce and the scale will tell you that you’ve lost weight. However, you will only find yourself to be a smaller “skinny fat” version of yourself.

This sort of approach to weight loss does nothing for your body composition. Using this approach a person may start out at 90kg (198lbs) with a body fat percentage of 25%. They restrict their calories to 1,000 a day and lose 10kg (22lbs) in a few short weeks. They now weigh 80kg (176lbs). The problem is their body fat percentage is still 25%.

The reality is they are just a smaller, still fat, version of their previous bigger fat self. Their overall mass may have changed but their body composition still sucks and they still look and feel terrible despite torturing themselves mentally and physically with caloric deprivation.

Worse Still
Not only is this approach always going to lead to the same dead end but also its unhealthy and that will always have negative repercussions. To quote someone I respect you get healthy so you can lose weight. You don’t lose weight to get healthy.

Staving your body of the vital nutrients it needs through insanely low calorie diets is a recipe for disaster. Your body simply will not give up its reserves (body fat) in times of stress. Your body certainly will not give up its reserves during a famine. Your body is extremely intelligent and very good at adapting to a given environmental stimulus with the primary goal being survival.

During lean times your body naturally holds onto every little bit of fat so that it can survive through to when food is plentiful again. When you eat a really low calorie diet or skip meals you’re telling your body that times are lean when really food is everywhere. It reacts to this environmental stimulus by down-regulating metabolism and stubbornly holding onto all the fat it can.

Why Stressed People Tend to be Fat
There are many sources of stress in our modern human environment. In past times stress was a purely episodic phenomenon. Today most people walk around bathed in stress hormones. Cortisol is one such stress hormone produced by the adrenal glands. Cortisol happens to be a blood sugar mobilizer.

My recent articles may have you studiously avoiding sugar but if you’re stressed all the time it doesn’t matter. Cortisol will up your blood sugar for you from within so that you can physically deal with the stressful event. What happens when you’re stressed all the time and thus have high cortisol and thus high blood sugar? You get insulin resistant and thanks to insulin resistance you get fat. As an added bonus you also get adrenal fatigue.

Sources of Stress
In your body stress is much more than simply mental stress about bills or relationships. Stress that you can learn to deal with constructively. A lack of sleep will stress your body as will too much exposure to light and too much of the wrong type of exercise. Chemicals and toxic metals in your drinking water and in your shower water stress your body every single day.

Chlorine, a toxic chemical added to water to kill biological organisms (just like you), gets absorbed through your skin and is evaporated in the steam. You inhale chlorine in the steam of your shower or bath every single day. It goes into your lungs and thence into your bloodstream. This is why I recommend everyone use showerhead water filters. They are inexpensive, easy to install and will soon be available through my Balanced Existence store.

Think about the chemicals you put on your skin every day in the form of moisturizers, makeup, deodorant, perfume, cologne, aftershave, foaming cleansers and so forth. Turn the packaging of any one of these over and you’ll see an ingredients list of chemicals that you probably can’t pronounce. These things are a daily source of stress to your body.

The rule is don’t put anything on your skin you wouldn’t eat. I use organic cold pressed coconut oil as a moisturizer and happily eat it to. Coconut oil happens to be anti-fungal and antibacterial as well.

Think about the pesticides sprayed on your non-organic food. These things can’t be washed off, as they are oil soluble so they don’t wash off in the rain. Think about the growth hormones in chicken, the antibiotics in feedlot beef, the stress hormones in inhumanely raised and slaughtered animals.

Wrapping it Up
There are many reasons why a complex system of systems like the human body comes to be out of balance and thus unhealthy and overweight. If you would like to reduce the amount of fat you’re carrying around the only healthy way to do it is to make changes to your lifestyle that are conducive to the improvement of your health. If a change you’ve made makes you feel better it was a good change.

To get fat off and keep it off health must be your primary focus. No truly healthy body carries excess fat. It is possible to be lean without being healthy, but what’s the point? In fact being super lean and ripped is not necessarily a sign of a healthy body. Being too lean can serve as just another source of stress. And you know where that goes. Make health your top priority and everything, given time and consistency, will fall into place. Throw out your scale and focus on your body composition. Learn how to deadlift, use kettlebells and work up to using weight that is heavy for you.

If you haven’t already subscribed to Balanced Existence you might like to do so now. I’ve got a growing list of articles planned for the coming weeks that I’m very excited about and I think you’ll find them both interesting and informative. Also if you’ve been enjoying Balanced Existence for a while I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave a comment!

If you have found this article useful please consider donating. Your generosity will help me keep Balanced Existence constantly updated with new articles and information. Thank you!

Balanced Existence Joins Forces with the OpenSky Project

Stephen — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:39:07 +0000

Balanced Existence (BE) is and always will be about helping those who both need and want help. Through Balanced Existence I’ve been able to turn the worse times of my life into the greatest of blessings. If you happen to be in a negative situation right now in your life, always remember that in time yin always changes into yang.

From the very inception of Balanced Existence I’ve recommended a select handful of products that I’ve personally benefited from using. Products like Kettlebells, Coconut oil, probiotics and olive leaf extract.

These products proved vital in the course of my journey from debilitating illness to holistic health and wellness. I passionately recommend such products because I know from experience and the experience of those who have followed my advice that they work.

Some of my recommendations are very specific. For example I only recommend Coconut oil that is certified organic and cold pressed. And for good reason. However, many times I’ve received emails from readers telling me that they are unable to locate these sorts of products where they live.

Enter the OpenSky Project
Some time ago I was contacted by a new company called The OpenSky Project. These people had a brilliant and innovative idea that will forever change the online shopping experience and wanted to know whether I wanted to be a part of it.

The OpenSky Project is a platform that empowers people such as myself to really live their passion. I’m absolutely thrilled to be a part of The OpenSky Project and its community of experts because my passion, quite simply, is helping you. My passion is providing you with the tools whereby you can enrich the quality of your life.

So far the tools I’ve been able to provide have been limited to knowledge and information. Today I’m very excited to announce that in partnership with The OpenSky Project you will soon be able to purchase the products I personally use and recommend here on Balanced Existence directly through the Balanced Existence store.

The Balanced Existence Store
Currently a work in progress and located on The OpenSky Project website, The Balanced Existence Store will contain a very select group of quality products that I’ve personally used and found to be highly beneficial to my own health and wellness. The Balanced Existence Store will act as a logical extension of this website’s mission. If you’ve been reading Balanced Existence for a while many of the products will be familiar to you.

It is my ardent wish that the information here on Balanced Existence and the products soon to be made available act as a potent combination that positively enriches the quality of your life. May you be well.

How to Make Cauliflower Mash

Stephen — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:55:38 +0000

As promised in Cauliflower vs. Bread here is a recipe that is pure genius for getting a whole lot more fibrous non-starchy vegetables into your daily diet in a way that tastes great! In this particular case that vegetable is Cauliflower. If you don’t happen to like cauliflower I ask you to please hold your prejudice until you’ve actually tried this cauliflower mash. Remember, you don’t actually know until you try – an important life lesson.

The fibrous vegetable category includes amongst many others: celery, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, onion, cucumber, asparagus, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, bock choy, eggplant, leek, and zucchini. If you turn your nose up at that list know that it’s time you got over your childhood tantrums and learn how to cook or prepare these wonders of nature in a way that tastes fantastic. It is possible.

You need to make friends with the plants that will gift you with a high quality of life by consuming them. I see this very clearly as a cycle of love. I love plants and when I eat them, they love me back. As a side note I have the same relationship with the meat I eat. I’m thankful for their energy and their health so that I too may be healthy. We can’t be healthy if we eat sick plants and animals.

Ingredients
1 whole Cauliflower head
Butter (or a substitute if you feel you must but they aren’t doing you any good)
Real salt (not sodium chloride, also known as table salt, which does not appear in nature)
Pepper

Optional Ingredients
1 head of Garlic
Cottage cheese or grated cheddar
Chili
Anything else you might like to experiment with!

The Process

Get your whole head of cauliflower and slice into smaller chunks. Wash said smaller chunks.

Get your steamer on the stove top and get the water boiling. While that is happening cut your cauliflower up into smaller pieces and then put them in the steamer.

Cut up the garlic if you’re going to use it and put the garlic slices on top in the steamer. Put the lid on the steamer and let it steam away for about 15 minutes.

When it’s done, let it cool slightly and then spoon the cauliflower (and garlic) into a food processor. Puree the cauliflower for a few moments and then add some butter, salt and pepper to taste. Puree some more until the mixture is the consistency of nice smooth mashed potatoes.

If desired the cauliflower mash can be quickly reheated.

I’ve found that it stores quite well in a sealed container in the fridge so you can make a big batch and eat it over a couple of nights. It goes well with lots of things including the leftover beef stroganoff I had for breakfast. Eat your cauliflower mash with some steak and celery. Eat it with poached eggs and butter fried onions. Experiment!

Wrapping it Up
What I’ve been trying to do here on Balanced Existence starting with The Myth that Sugar Causes Type 2 Diabetes is a Myth is to show you that you do not need to eat starchy filler as a staple of your diet. Bread, pasta and potatoes are all comparatively high starch and low fiber foods. This means they are high and quick energy foods. You only need so much energy to move through your day. Consume too much energy and your body will store it for later. That means you will get fat and eventually you will get sick.

What your body really needs to be well is nutrition. There is a world of difference between nutrition and energy in the form of carbohydrates. In our modern world of excess plenty we rarely want for energy. I’ve fasted on nothing but water for up to 14 days a number of times in the past. I did not run out of energy and no one would have called me fat at the time.

While writing this article I’ve consumed a lunch that included a small piece of grass fed steak from last night, two sticks of celery, an avocado, a tomato, a handful of walnuts, a handful of olives and a slice of organic cheese. It was a feast and I feel better after eating than I did before! That tells me I ate the right thing. What need for bread? Sandwiches are not easier. Sandwiches are not quicker. Sandwiches are simply what you have always done.

What your body longs for is nutrition. Learn how to give it what it needs and may you be well.

If you have found this article useful please consider donating. Your generosity will help me keep Balanced Existence constantly updated with new articles and information. Thank you!

Cauliflower vs. Bread

Stephen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:56:31 +0000

photo credit: Amy Loves Yah

I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from my last two articles on the topic of sugar, insulin and diabetes. However, while a deeper understanding the issue is very useful today I would like to offer some very practical information. As I promised at the end of Sugar, Fat, Insulin & Diabetes: The Saga Continues here is the first of a two part article on Cauliflower.

In the second part of this article I will provide you with a genius way to consume more fibrous non-starchy vegetables such as Cauliflower that really does taste great while being amazingly good for your health and wellbeing. Before getting into how to make the cauliflower dish I’d like to demonstrate a comparison between a serving of Cauliflower (1 cup) and a serving of high quality light rye bread (2 slices).

Cauliflower vs. Bread
The first thing I noticed when I read the ingredients list on this top of the range bread is that it contains Soy. It also contains Canola Oil. Not a good start. Next I checked out how many calories the serving of bread contains. Two slices of this bread equals 190 calories. For an average person that equates to roughly 45 minutes of walking or close to 3 hours of watching TV to burn the energy contained in just two slices of bread.

In comparison a cup of cauliflower contains just 28 calories. That is almost 7 times less. See how energy dense starchy grain products like bread are? See how that can and does easily cause you to put on weight?

Up next I looked at how many grams of carbohydrates where in that one serving of 2 slices of bread. Turns out there are 32g of carbohydrates. In comparison one cup of cauliflower has just 5 grams of carbohydrates, over 6 times less.

Lastly, I checked the all important fiber. Whole grain bread and grain products are high in fiber right? Well two slices of this bread contains 3.3g of fiber. A cup of cauliflower contains 3.35g. That’s pretty much even right?

The answer is no, the amount of fiber is not even. In fact this is far from the case. Let’s put things into perspective. In order to do so let’s look at the ratio of carbohydrate to fiber in the serving of bread and compare it to the serving of cauliflower. The one serving of bread amounting to two slices contains 32 grams of carbohydrates and 3.3g of fiber. That is one gram of fiber for every 9.7 grams of carbohydrate. In cauliflower there is 1.5 grams of carbohydrates to every one gram of fiber. The ratio of carbohydrates to fiber in bread is 6.5 times that of cauliflower.

What does this mean? This means that you’ve been lied to. Bread is clearly not high in fiber when compared to other foods. While at the same time bread clearly is a very energy dense food. Remember just two slices of bread equals 190 calories (the equivalent in energy of 45 minutes of walking) compared to a cup of cauliflower which has just 28 calories.

If you’ve read my previous two articles on sugar, insulin and diabetes you probably got tired of me repeating the importance of fiber. Fiber slows the release of sugar into your bloodstream from the carbohydrates you ate and thus reduces the severity of the subsequent insulin response.

Cauliflower with it’s carbohydrate to fiber ratio of 1.5 is going to elicit a very small and gradual insulin response. The one serve of bread (just two slices) is going to jack up your blood sugar and illicit a much higher insulin response. Remember, insulin is a growth hormone and increases appetite which is why insulin management and insulin sensitivity is critical to losing weight. Munch down on your two slices of bread and chances are not much later you will be hungry again.

Health Benefits of Eating Cauliflower
The benefits of cauliflower versus say a food like bread goes far beyond the above analysis. Just one cup of cauliflower contains 91.5% of the daily value of vitamin C. Forget oranges. That perception is nothing more than the product of marketing. Further, one cup of cauliflower contains 10% of the daily value of B6, 13% for folate, 13% for vitamin K, and surprisingly 8.75% of the daily value for the all important omega-3 fatty acids, amongst others.

Cauliflower and other cruciferous vegetables contain compounds that may help prevent cancer. These compounds appear to stop enzymes from activating cancer-causing agents in the body, and they increase the activity of enzymes that disable and eliminate carcinogens. Consumption of cruciferous vegetables, such as cauliflower, is known to reduce the risk of a number of cancers, especially lung, colon, breast, ovarian and bladder cancer.

A study of 29,361 men found that men who ate more than a serving of either broccoli or cauliflower each week almost halved their risk of developing advanced-stage prostate cancer compared with their peers who ate these vegetables less than once a month. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men with half a million new cases appearing each year.

In regards to studies into rheumatoid arthritis subjects who consumed the lowest amounts of vitamin C-rich foods were found to be more than three times more likely to develop arthritis than those who consumed the highest amounts. Clearly Cauliflower is high in vitamin C.

Wrapping it Up
I’ve tried to make the nutritional and macronutrient comparison between a great fibrous non-starchy vegetable like cauliflower and a processed starchy food like bread as clear as possible. The comparison would probably been even more stark if I had of compared cauliflower to pasta. If you would like to read more about grains like wheat check out Make One Easy Change & Lose Weight. If you enjoyed this article and haven’t already subscribed to Balanced Existence you might like to do so now. It’s free and that way you’ll be sure not to miss my next article describing step-by-step how to make a delicious and healthy cauliflower dish.

If you have found this article useful please consider donating. Your generosity will help me keep Balanced Existence constantly updated with new articles and information. Thank you!

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