Personal Trainer Singapore – Coach Jonathan Wong

As many of you guys know, I am a big fan of proper nutrition with whole foods. Good meats, veggies, fruits and nuts as well as whole eggs, cream and unrefined carbs are the basis of all good nutrition plans and diets.

Customizing how much of each, as well as what supplements and herbs each person should take, is what I do for our personal training and weight loss clients.

However the best diet is the one that you can do!

We don’t live in the Olympic training center and we don’t have the perfect life for mass building, weight loss or fat burning. 3x a day training, perfect meals, lots of sleep.

So I need to modify things according to what each client can do.

Recently one of my clients wrote me a great email with lots of questions. I won’t use his real name here, but you will be able to relate to this.

My reply and advice is given at the bottom of the post. Is it the same as my usual advice…? probably not, but its the BEST that this client can do at the moment and that is what matters.

This is not a guy who is trying to find an easy way out, it’s a client with real trouble, so I’m going to help him find a good, or at least “least bad” solution so he gets results.

Hi Coach Jon,

I am finding it difficult to stick to the diet plan.

I can’t seem to find a suitable breakfast. I get up at 6:30am and hit out to your gym by 7:00am so that I can work out before work. Cooking breakfast just is not an option for me. The only choice I have around me conveniently is to grab some breakfast on the way out at the Kopitiam, i.e. Horlicks and Half boiled egss.  I thought some instant oats or cereal would be a good choice. Or would some berries and fruit be a better choice.

As for lunch, I normally take customers out to lunch. Meaning I can grab Japanese or a Steak, which is presentable enough for customers. I avoid rice, bread and potatoes. So I guess this is ok.

As for dinner, I am not much of a dinner person on the weekdays, because I am either stuck in the office, where I have only instant drinks or muesli bars or biscuits with me. If I manage to go home on time, (rarely), I grab dinner at the nearby kopitiam, i.e. mixed rice, where I normally have half a bowl of rice, meats and veggies.

I would like to be more committed to a sustainable diet plan but I am lack of choices.

Are meal replacement drink advisable? Or any other alternative?

Thanks.
My reply:

Hi Jack (name changed), I appreciate your desire, dedication and great attitude! Nutrition is a super important part of success.

The best diet is the one that you can do!

Best option – prepare food on weekends for the entire week
Next best option – Whatever you can do…:)

Unfortunately from what you described as your food intake, its pretty far from what you need to do to get good results. So here is what I would do If I were you:)

I would get an organic protein shake called “Whey Stronger” and another one called “Primal Clear Px” along with what are known as “branch chained amino acids”, you can use these to replace meals.

For breakfast, One day I would take the whey stronger, the next day, the primal clear. I would get both so that I don’t eat the same thing everyday which can lead to allergy.

While it’s not as good as meat, a good shake + some nuts is a decent option for those meals that you skip.

I would also get an organic veggie and fruit drink called “primal greens” and “primal reds” so that your alkaline and anti-oxidant needs are met. I would drink this 2-3x/day and it tastes pretty nice (for a veggie drink!!).

Lunch seems ok. Steaks  or sashimi are great. Fries + sushi or rice filled handrolls are not:) So just beware of your food choices. Remember to eat the ginger with the sashimi because the pickled ginger helps prevent absorption of heavy metals found in the fish.

For dinner, instant drinks + museli = instantly fat so we need to work on that.

You can have another shake for dinner that would be fine.

For snacks you can have the veggie drink, a few nuts, eggs if possible, and 10-20 amino acid capsules. This snack should keep your body in fat burning and muscle building mode!

Closing in on the end. Sleep was good. 7 hours straight with a nap in the afternoon. Finally the bodyfat measurements are moving. Supra illiac as down another 1mm. Weight is down 1.7kg which is pretty good. Not much muscle lost.

The diet is same as before. But today was hard to resist. I had a family dinner with really nice food. Satay, Salmon soup and veggies with garlic. Very healthy and actually good for you food! And for the sake of the detox (and all of you readers!) I ate NONE OF IT! It was hard! But if I can do it, so can you when you detox!

Bowel movements are evening out. I think the majority of the bad stuff is out, now the bowel movements are smooth but the volume is alot less.

So far the results…

• Leaner by about 1.5% body-fat
• Maintained muscle (due to high doses – up to 70-80 caps of amino acids/day)
• Better sleep
• Better bowel movements
• More energy (due to better sleep)
• Many other people report clearer minds, but I did not notice that that much – but I’m pretty clear headed usually haha.

But am getting tired of the taste and thats part of what made sitting at the dinner so hard!

Training was alright, power snatch weight for 3 reps stayed alright at 75kg. Can’t wait to train hard again and eat lots of good quality food!

Me looking sad and not eating the yummy stuff

See my plate with medicinal food, while there was much nicer stuff all around!

Day 1 went well. I ate the items as required. I also did the micro-current liver cleanse. I don’t think any particular item is magical, but they all do work together to clean up the entire system.

Sleep was excellent! In fact I had to force myself to wake up for morning clients. I will nap on day 2. I did feel a little light headed earlier during day 1 because the liver was getting warmed up to clear out bad stuff.

Today, food was the same, I will do 2 training sessions, lighter ones. Legs and posterior chain. I will do hamstring curls, cable split squats, back extensions, trap bar deadlifts and squats in the 8-15 rep range depending on the exercise (lower reps for hamstring curls).

There must be something going on, because even though I only ate quite small amounts of total food (just the shakes and organic veggie powder), bowel movements (without too much details) were alot! must be some stuff getting flushed out. But that does feel really good.

Just a note on Alpha-Lipoic-Acid. I think it is one of the keys to the detox and that is why I am taking so much of it. (Yang and Yin R-Ala supplements) Here are some of its characteristics:

• It is an anti oxidant that works on both fat and water soluble tissues. Most other anti-oxidants work on either. For e.g. Vitamin E works on fats, and vitamin C works on water based tissues.
• It recycles other anti oxidants like glutathion, alpha tocopherol, ascorbic acid and coq10, so they can be used again
• It improves insulin sensitivity
• It chelates (binds) heavy metals like cadmium and mercury
• It reduces inflamation and risk of disease (cancer, HIV, atherosclerosis, diabetes) – this is through a genetic pathway

And all this is in medical journals! There is no reason not to be taking R form ALA no matter if you’re detoxing, or just a person interested in health.

Why I’m doing this? – I attended a seminar by one of the best functional medicine doctors in the world last month. He was talking about how important it is to get rid of all the bad stuff in our body once in a while. Probably about 2x/year. I am following Coach Poliquin’s model on his blog. But I will be trying to detoxify estrogen as a priority. There is other bad stuff in the world like plastics and heavy metals. When our infra red sauna comes in, I can try to get rid of those other things.

While I consider myself a healthy guy, I’m not as lean as I should be considering how good my usual habits are. If a person has good habits for nutrition, and still is not able to get maximum results, toxicity is often the cause. I’m trying to eliminate the problem of toxicity. During my young days I lived in quite a few polluted countries and Singapore is quite polluted also (as are all major cities) so I’m toxic for sure!

• I will be eating medicinal, non allergic, totally organic food with lots of nutrients for both phase 1 (stir up the bad stuff) and phase 2 (kick the bad stuff out) detoxification in the liver. These are Primal Clear Px and Inflam Px
• I will try to make my body as alkaline as possible with Primal Clear, Phyto Px (an organic veggie/fruit drink), and limes in water
• I will also use frequency specific micro-current (FSM) liver detox protocol once/day to help the liver handle the toxins that will be kicked up.
• I will eat lots of fiber because toxins are cleared partially through bowels (and sweat and breath and urine)
• I will drink filtered water as much as possible.
• I will train every day, even if its not a record setting attempt, it will help lymph – which is very important for immune system health – to flow around the body because it flows due to muscle contractions.
• I will eat organic green veggies if possible
• I will train without air-conditioning when possible to get more sweat going – sweating is good for detox and this is the best I can do before our detox infra-red sauna comes in.
• I will record how I feel and how I progress throughout the week. I may feel bad/tired/brain fog at times as the toxins are being handled by the liver. I may need to nap a bit more. I don’t know, lets find out!
• I will eat amino acids to help preserve muscle mass because this is quite a low calorie week. These will be a mixture of branch chain amino acids, and regular essential amino acids
• I will eat close to zero fats (this is NOT what I usually do, I eat lots of omega-3s and healthy fats on a normal week) this is to rest the fat digesting and metabolism pathways of the body.
• I will eat glutamine and add some pro-biotics along with Inflam Px – these supplements take care of digestive tract health and rest the digestive system because I eat quite alot of food normally.
• If you look at Coach Poliquin’s detox, I probably eat a bit less because he has more muscle mass than I do.
• If you are smaller than I (I’m 81-84kg most days) you can scale the nutrients accordingly but just eat as much as you like, this is not about restricting calories to go for a bodybuilding contest, its about eating perfect food so that your body gets a chance to recover from the stress of living in a city like Singapore. Remember – health first, appearance and strength come along next

Wake Up: Primal Fiber + Water – 1 big scoop (about 15g) + Limes

Meal 1: 3 Scoop Primal Clear Px + 20g Glutamine + 5 Yang R-ALA + 10 amino acid capsules

Training - Shoulders and Arms 20 sets with Medium/High Reps And Practice Power Cleans 8 sets – Singles Up to 122.5kg

Meal 2: 3 Scoop Primal Clear Px + 20g Glutamine + 10g Glycine + 2x Multi Intense + 5 Yang R-ALA + 20 Amino Acid Capsules

Meal 3: 30g Phyto Px + 20g Glutamine + 20 Amino Acid Capsules + DIM + Estro Defence

Meal 4: Same as 3

Meal 5: 3 Scoops Primal Clear Px + 20g Glutamine + 2x Multi Intense + 5 Yin R-ALA + 10 amino acid capsules + 2x Hepato Force (liver assistance) + 4 uber mag capsules + DIM + EstroDefense

Meal 6: 30g Phyto Px + 20g Glutamine + 2x Hepato Force + 5 Yin R-ALA + 4 uber mag

Before Bed: Primal Fiber and more Phyto Px if necessary (if I’m hungry).

Ensuring Fatness, Diabetes And Cancer

I just finished a phone consult with one of the finest natural medicine and detox specialists in the world. Dr Bob Rakowski. I wanted to know more about natural solutions to cancer because recently I have several family members/friends who have it. All kinds – breast, colon, liver, pancreas etc. From our 30min consultation, I learned a few things…

Cancer LOVES sugar – in fact it loves it 15x more than any other nutrient. And what were my friends/relatives on? “Ensure” Whats that – it’s 60% SUGAR!! It’s mad that this food is recommended to help give the cancer patient energy when all it does is feed cancer cells the nutrient it loves most!

Digestive tract health is so important, and the nutrient that helps digestive tract health (Glutamine) also helps fix cancer via 7 pathways – one of the most important is that, being an amino acid, it maintains muscle mass which is good for immunity.

Pancreatic enzymes are GOOD! They break down the protein coating of cancer cells and KILL THEM! Yay!

Dr Bob also gave specific supplement protocols for my “cancer clients” and I look forward to helping them get well ASAP. No more chemo, no more radiation, no more illogical food choices.

But better still, PREVENT cancer by PERUSING health! That’s what we do with our weight loss, personal training and fitness boot camp programs where we cover health, nutrition, supplementation for your genetics and body type, as well as exercise:)

Once You See This - It's Probably Not Good For You

Almost everybody knows that sugar is bad for you. And my personal training and fitness boot camp clients certainly know this because we try our best to inform our clients about the negative effects of sugar consumption for their health. But the processed food manufacturers know that customers are becoming aware of this too! Customers are more informed and are getting better at reading food labels.

Here is one trick that you should be aware of…

Manufacturers sometimes “split up” the sugars among the ingredients. It is quite well known that the ingredient with the highest amount has to be listed first, so a food with sugar listed first may be very unpopular. But if a manufacturer seperates sugar into fructose, dextrose, maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup, different sugar alcohols (malitol, xylitol etc) it becomes easier to hide and none of these individual ingredients ends up high on the list. But add them up and you have  sugar-fest that will make you tubby real quick so read labels carefully.

Even more so… don’t even buy many foods that have labels to be read! I mean a vegetable or piece of meat or a fruit has NO LABEL! These tend to be the best foods for you.

Nutrition and lifestyle for fat loss and maximum performance are what our fitness training clients come to us for and we customize nutrition habits and plans for each personal training client. But there are alot of minefields out there so I will be explaining some of the problem areas and scary marketing tactics we may face in this era of advertising and information overload.

What do you think of when you hear that something is made of “whole grain” – That it has a good fiber content right? … Think again… whole grain is something that means nothing when it is placed on food packaging. Most items that claim to be “whole grain” have about 1g of fiber per serving. That is… unacceptable. A good source of fiber has at least 2-3g/serving AND does not take lots of useless, blood sugar spiking carbs along for the ride. (Many vegetables are good choices) So be careful when you see a cereal of other food labeled as whole grain.

3g fiber per cup GOOD. 22g useless, blood sugar boosting, fatness causing carbs BAD

Remember, if it comes in a nice box, and/or has an advertising campaign, the food must be low enough quality and cheap enough to produce so that there is a profit margin for the fancy packaging and ad campaign. Buyer beware.

Christmas is the for remembering Christ. “Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled” and “Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!” are part of the Christmas carol “Hark the herald angels sing” and remind us of the mission of Jesus who came to bring peace between God and mankind and between each of us.

When I think about peace, I also remember how few of my fitness training clients come to me initially with peaceful sleep. If they wake up in the night to go to the toilet, if they cant sleep, if they are not rested in the morning or any other sleep problem, I consider that “un-peaceful” sleep / insomnia etc.

So, lets talk about peaceful sleep this Christmas. We use a combination of habits, nutrients and herbs to help sleep by fixing the underlying causes of sleep problems. These require a specific plan for you depending on your individual sleep problem.

However there are some things which I call “sleep hygiene” that can help you get to bed better and stay asleep better.

1. Get rid of electromagnetic interference (EM). Our body has an EM field, so interference will mess us up. Get your Wi-fi, computer, handphone, TV etc OUT and OFF and as far away as you can.

“oh my handphone is my alarm” – get a $5 battery clock… and not the blinking red light kind either, that messes you up too!

2. Get an eye mask and ear plugs – in Singapore, we have lots of lights and sounds. These are not supposed to be part of a normal human rest periods. Plug them out! In the picture below is the eye mask I use. It has contours of the face especially the eyes, this is important because I don’t want pressuse on my eyes which can mess up the eye movement that happens during sleep.

Good quality Ear Plugs and Eye Mask - Increased Health For 5 bux

3. Eat the basic sleep aid – magnesium. It helps the body relax and prevents muscle cramps. You can get the best magnesium supplement from my center. It has different kinds of magnesium inside so that it goes to different parts of the body simultaneously. That makes absorption much better! Go to our personal training contact page and just drop us a mail if you want some.

Have a peaceful Christmas! And God bless you and your families!

-Coach Jon

Eat as you please... they are great for you

Many of my personal training and fitness bootcamp clients ask “how many eggs can I eat each day?” This is a good question because eggs are affordable, versatile as a food, and very importantly… YUMMY!

Myth 1: They are high in cholesterol – true… However cholesterol in iteslf is not bad. Without cholesterol you would … die. It is the building block of vitamins, hormones and cells. Your body is so dependent on cholesterol that each of your cells can produce some of its own. Eating more or less of it doesn’t affect you much. Short version: Eating cholesterol has nothing to do with your blood cholesterol. (more on cholesterol in a future post).

Myth 2: They are high in fat – ALSO true! But eating fat and less refined starches makes our body fat adapted and that means we burn fat for fuel. And that means you will burn your own body fat sooner! – Just because your body is better at using fat as fuel (a safe and efficient source I might add…)

Eggs are created as an excellent food source. Eat them whole. The yolk has many nutrients and in fact, the fat content of the yolk slows digestion of the entire egg to make it less blood sugar spiking. That means less likely to store as fat! People who eat egg whites alone are more likely to get fat. (nobody comes to my personal training center or joins our bootcamp fitness class to get fat!)

Finally, the ONLY reason you would not eat eggs is if you have an allergy or sensitivity to them. If you eat eggs then feel bloated, or have lower energy about an hour later, then eggs are not good for you and should be avoided.

If you are not allergic, eggs are great and eat them as you please!

Yes some days after a hard training session, or a long game of tennis or golf, I know people who take a pill or rub a cream to reduce the swelling, inflammation and pain that comes from activity that your body is not used to.

The problem is that these drugs cause problems like all drugs do. All drugs cause your liver to work harder because they are foreign substances and are not used (metabolized) well in your body.

Anti inflammatory drugs – NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) tend to also cause real problems with your digestive (GI) tract. Which is really bad because the GI trackt protects you from disease, creates brain chemicals, and oh yeah… digests your food so you get proper nutrition!

So what would I do to reduce inflammation naturally?

The stuff I would use is proven scientifically – Here is one of the many research papers…

I would use high dose fish oil omega-3, as well as curcumin which is a strongly anti-inflamartory ingredient found in tumeric. If you want the best fish oil and curcumin products, jsut contact us and I will set you up.