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!

At my gym, I recommend only the best supplements to my personal training and fitness boot camp clients. That is because there is so much that is “hidden” in the supplement making process, so we want to use a brand that is trustworthy. Recently there have been several well known companies who make omega-3 fish oils who are being sued for excessive levels of contaminants. The list of companies is below

• CVS Pharmacy, Inc.
• General Nutrition Corporation (GNC)
• NOW Health Group, Inc.
• Omega Protein, Inc.
• Pharmavite LLC
• Rite Aid Corporation
• Solgar, Inc.
• Twinlab Corporation

I recommend only medical grade brands with proven track records. At our gym we use mostly Poliquin brand supplements. An article written about the latest fish oil contamination situation is at Poliquin’s website here.

The world is a toxic place for sure. That is why I am fond of detoxing and asking my personal training clients to do the same perhaps 2 weeks per year. But toxicity not only applies to humans, but also to animals. The animals that we get our wonderful omega-3 oils from are also contaminated. So we need to get out supplements from the best possible sources. Even some repuatble brands that many internet stores sell, are implicated in the above report.

While the report is not outright against these brands, my tolerance for contamination in supplements is… ZERO! I mean… how much poison would you like to eat? Just a little? Of course not… NONE at all! (Or at least as little as is humanly possible). Because the supplement industry is so unregulated, I choose carefully which products and which brands to sell. And my clients never have to worry about reports like the one in this link to ABC news.

After all, the bulk of the cost of producing fish oils is not the extraction of the oil. It is the PURIFICATION of the oil. So that is where the sub par companies (all except a few in the world) will cut costs.

Supplements are not something you want to save a few dollars on. The great supplements cost just a bit more, but have alot less nonsense in them, and have alot better potency!

Just a quick tip… save your money on creatine when you are working on high volume programs (10-12 rep range etc). Creatine has the most benefits when used for low rep work under 10 sec time under tension e.g. sets of 2 or 3 reps.

For higher volume work, try creatine with beta alanine:) To use beta alanine (contact me to get some:)) test the dosage by starting at 2-3g pre and during workout. Then up the dosage gram by gram each workout till you find a itchy/tingling sensation on your skin. That is the limit for you and your tolerance.

Finally its over! Day 7 DONE!

Results:

• Body fat (everybody wants to know this!): 1-2% drop. 2mm on the 1 site supra illiac. 2mm on the abs. I did not biosig myself (because I can’t self measure 12 sites!) but there is a clear difference.
• Waist drop 3cm each down to 78cm (smallest point) and 81cm (around belly button)
• Weight down 2kg total.
• I did the same food today, and I feel quite drained (did not take an off day the last 7 days to keep the lymph fluid flowing) so I just did some lower weight prowler pushes. Anaerobic capacity was not bad I still managed 8 laps of my gym’s 35m track with only a slight desire to throw up haha.
• Bowel movements were good, I am also getting great sleep. At least 7 hours straight at night and a nap in the day. Once again, the topical magnesium + capsule magnesium combination seems to do very well. I highly recommend this combination especially if you KNOW that your digestive system has issues. The topical application (on skin) is wonderful for absorption.

I would probably do shorter cleanses of 1-3 days every month for health. In the future I will rotate the “extra supplements” to detox new things. I have a package for detoxing heavy metals, one for plastics and one for estrogen. All the detoxes will start when my far-infra red sauna comes in.

I’m very sure many of my personal training and fitness boot camp clients will benefit from a detox.

I am a healthy and quite a “clean” guy and I benefitted. Imagine somebody who has not taken care of themselves in the past or has worked/lived in a more toxic area or has genetic tendencies to store/be affected by toxins. They will benefit even more!

I lost a bit of fat although this is NOT I repeat NOT a fat burning plan. There are ways to burn fat faster. It is just that those ways get “stuck” by poor health or toxicity. That is that this plan is for. Detox removes obstacles to future progress. And that is part of reaching your goals!

Athletes benefit because toxicity can affect tendon and muscle strength. As well as aerobic and anaerobic endurance as it prevents cells from producing energy effectively. So guys and girls wanting to be strong should be on a detox at least twice a year as well.

THE END of detox!

I will slowly reintroduce food to my life! I think I need to put some fat back into my diet ASAP. I miss it even more than protein.

A question came in about carbohydrate levels, yes they are quite high during the detox because the protein used is rice based and will have some carbs. But its only 100+g which is not going to help you strip fat, but its not high enough to make you a tubby either. Also the carbs are always with protein and often with fiber so its not so bad:)

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!

Nutrition was same as previous days, unfortunately the organic + non allergenic nature of the supplements mean they are rice protein based rather than diary, the taste takes some getting used to!

Some things to take note if you want to try such a detox program

• You need to be taste tolerant – this is not for gourmet taste buds
• You need to be good at swallowing capsules – there are lots of these and it would be best if you can swallow at least 4 at one time easily
• You need to be able to handle social situations and get out of messing up the detox. I had a lunch today with an old friend from school. I managed to eat a small house salad and some broccoli while he ate a large yummy rib-eye ARGH.

Bowels were great as usual, weight loss is not too much considering the limited amount of food I’m eating. So far about 1-1.5kg in 4 days.

Some water/glycogen loss. It can be felt in workouts, the first few sets are ok, but feel drained after that.

Gasp on my 5th set of chin-ups I could only do 6 good ones- barely! Normally  I can do 6 with 30kg weight added! But its only temporary. I also think heavy lifting is slightly affected because there is ZERO fat in this detox.

Fat is important in building the nervous system. You can maintain muscle (like I do with the big bunch of amino acids) but strength is hard to keep without saturated fats – yes that’s right nutritionists – go have a spasm!… saturated fats!

Sleep was not as good last night. I actually stayed up late reading. Also I forgot to move my work phone away from my bed. No mistakes tonight!:) Sleep is important!

Day 2 went well. Sleep is better. Usually I can sleep 6+ hours then I wake up automatically, even the herbs that work for many of my personal training clients and nutritional consultation clients did not work for me. But last night I did close to 8 hours straight. Very Good.

The amount of bowel movement continues to amaze me. The volume is so much. Sorry again for the graphic description, but it is true. There must be a lot of toxins to clear out!

Food is same. But I change the timings of the shakes around according to which time of the day I am going to train. I take more shakes and amino acids around that time.

I used a slightly different form of fiber this morning to avoid any chance of allergies.

Another piece of good news is that the supplements last a little longer than I expected counting the servings on the bottles. This may reduce the overall cost in the end which is also good news.

Urine smells funny and different, could be the curcumin in the supplements but it also feels like its clearing out bad stuff.

Breath does not smell bad (I think!) and sweat is normal not more or less.

Today I will do a bit of olympic lift practice (just to work on technique, I just a bit too much back and not up…) and I will do high rep upper body work with chinups and presses to get the lymph flowing.

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).