I was in Sweden over the last week on a private internship with coach Poliquin for personal trainers and fat loss specialists. We learned alot about the customization of nutrition and training for rapid fat burning. One of the main things that I learned that has already helped me customize my own supplementation methods, is the use of supplements to improve neuro-transmitter balance. Different people have different dominant brain functions and when we realize this, we use different nutrients to help each person perform better.

Better brain function, better sleep, better motivation, better growth hormone output, better training focus, better results.

Results is what all our training programs aim to deliver!

Take this test called the “braverman” test. Print it out and do it honestly – after all, its for your own improvement. And tell me what your scores are in the comments below:)

Quite a number of the personal training and fitness bootcamp clients at the Genesis Performance Center are Muslims. And in August, they begin their fasting month. Most of them would still like to exercise to maintain their strength and weight loss / fat loss results. Last year I wrote about what to eat and how to schedule training during the fasting month of Ramadan.

Here are some additional tips and supplements that can help you or your Muslim friends during Ramadan.

The general idea is to make sure that everything you eat is nutritious! Because you will eat more infrequently, and there is only a certain amount of food that you can stomach at one time, every ounce should be full of nutrients. So, the same “caveman” rules apply. No refined food, and if a caveman didn’t have it, you shouldn’t either. This ensures that you are eating whole, non-refined foods.

Eat red meat, with fat. This is slower to digest than white meat or purely lean meat. That is good for keeping you full, and reducing the impact of the infrequent meals. Lamb, mutton beef! Yum.

Eat healthy fats in larger amounts. These include fat from meat, fish oils, and nuts. Fats slow digestion so that keeps nutrients coming in nice and slow over time. You feel more full, you don’t get elevated blood sugar, and you will store less body fat.

Supplements that can help you are things that will maximize digestive health (to get as many nutrients as you can from limited/infrequent meals) and stuff that will reduce the impact of stress hormones on your body because semi-starvation increases overall stress on the body.

Stuff like….

HCL to aid digestion

Omnizyme – a broad based digestive enzyme formula

Probiotics - to keep the good/bad bacteria ratios healthy in your digestive tract

Glycine with evening meals – to relax the nervous system and fight stress

Some form of herbal stress buster like serenity 2.0 or yin-hance

Something to get you up and going early in the morning, like Acetyl-L-Carnitine found in Yang R-ALA.

There we go! It’s tough to make maximal gains during Ramadan, but with these suggestions you should be able to train and maintain the gains that you have gotten from your past year of training.

There have been more “scary stories” in the past week in the media in Singapore about the “dangers” of being in the sun. How skin cancer is a huge threat and how we are not designed to be in the sun all the time.

The mainstream media is out to sensationalize things and scary stores are a great way to get readership. But they are wrong. (and it wouldn’t be the first time, and probably not the last). Here is what I believe to be the balanced and smarter way of doing things…

Here are some truths about how the sun affects us. And how we should deal with the risks, while getting the most benefit from sunlight!

• The sun helps us produce vitamin D, and it its best possible form. I recommend vitamin D to many of my personal training, fitness bootcamp and nutrition coaching clients because it is a wonderful nutrient that has great benefits from immune system health, less allergies and autoimmune diseases, fat burning and muscle building as well. An interesting point is that EVERY kind of tissue in our body has vitamin D receptors that means that correct vitamin D levels boost ALL areas of health. That means that However, even the best quality supplemental vitamin D is possible not as good as the vitamin D produced in our own bodies when we are exposed to sunlight. In fact Dr. Michael Holick, an expert on vitamin D has researched and found out that vitamin D produced from skin exposure to sunlight lasts longer (2x or more) in our blood as when it is taken as a supplement.
• The risk to benefit ratio of having sunlight vs not having it is excellent. The most common damaging problem of EXCESSIVE sun exposure is what is known as basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer. Certainly it is not a good idea to get skin cancer. However basal cell carcinoma is relatively non-malignant, and almost never results in death. However the cancers who have a REDUCED risk with higher sun exposure (we know this because they are more common in less sunny areas of the world) are very deadly. Colon, breast, prostate and others are very dangerous cancers and they are all positively influenced by sunlight! Yay!
• We need to condition ourselves to sunlight. And our bodies will adapt. Sunlight has 2 types of ultra violet rays (UV). Type A, and Type B. UVB burns us but also stimulates vitamin D production. UVA tans us but is also damaging to the skin. Most sunscreen blocks only UVB. So we don’t get vitamin D production. Yet it allows us to feel “unburnt” so we stay longer in the sun, and absorb alot of UVA which eventually causes skin problems.
• In short, if we are not accustomed to sun, we will get burnt, that is the sign that we have had enough, and should go inside. However sunscreen “turns off” the burning and helps us stay outside longer than out current level to tan and tolerance allows.
• It is a bit like training an athlete. If he is gradually conditioned (getting a tan over time) he can withstand great physical training and stress. However, taking a suntan lotion is like training while on painkillers, you feel no pain so you don’t know when to stop and you get a serious injury because your body cannot actually handle the training loads.

What have we learned?

• The sun is good for us
• Too much is bad for us
• Don’t use suntan lotion
• Get a tan gradually if you want one
• When you are tanned, you can tolerate more sunlight

One of the more common ailments that my Singapore personal training, nutrition coaching and fitness boot camp clients have when they first start their fitness programs at Genesis, is gout.

Here are the tips that have really helped many of my clients (and my own dad) get rid of gout once and for all.

Water is important for everything and speeds up elimination of toxins. I prefer filtered, alkaline water. I finally found a good contact for water filtration systems in Singapore. So if you are interested in getting one, please contact me with the subject “water filter” I can get you in touch with a trust-worthy seller.

So getting high quality water aside… here is what you need to do to fix gout.

Stop eating processed meats. Its not meat that gives you gout, its CRAP meat. Please note that…chicken nuggets are NOT meat, bak-kua is NOT meat, sausages are NOT meat. Eat meat, just not the nonsense kind, it has to look like it was recently part of an animal!

The world’s highest rates of gout is in Germany i.e. land of sausage (crap meat)

Also you need a proper multi-vitamin that boosts liver detoxification. For clients with gout at my center, I use Multi-Intense. Why? It has the best content quality that I have found, and the tablets dissolve well so you don’t wast ingredients that are not dissolved for digestion. In fact when you touch the tablet with even a moist finger, they start to break down. This is wonderful because it means that the nutrients will easily break down in the acidic environment of your stomach. For men and post menopausal women, choose the iron free version. For ladies, the version with iron works best.

My own dad had gout for many years especially while working in the middle east (crap meat) but once hes back home he eats alot better and no gout attacks for 2 years following the steps above.

Ingredients:

• For about 9-12 mini muffin size pieces
• 2 Scoops chocolate whey powder
• 2 teaspoons nut butter (This time I used organic brazil nut butter, but peanut or caschew butter seems to work fine too)
• 3 tablespoons melted butter (about 1/4 of a cm slice of a regular size block).
• 4 squares of organic dark chocolate
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 pint Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Ice cream (sorry kidding!)

Directions:

• Cut the chocolate into small pieces.
• Melt the butter (or don’t melt it, just mix it thoroughly)
• Mix it all together
• Heat oven to 170deg C and cook for about 2-3 mins (not kidding its fast) till you see a bit of “bubbles” on the surface of the muffins.

Take a look at the picture, once you see those bubbles form, get it out of the oven.

This should give you a slightly crisp outside with a nice moist inside. Like warm chocolate cake. Just with a much smaller effect on your buttocks and abs.

No need to grease the tray, the high saturated fat (yes nutritionists, clutch you hearts and go into shock) content is self lubricating!

You will notice the tray is not full… thats because those have been eaten!

Take note: This is not better than meat, veggies and other food that suits your body type and genetics. However it is a billion times better than the nonsense most people eat when they are pressed for time and convenience.

One of my fellow coaches from Texas, Luke Leaman pointed me to this article at consumerreports.org. While I don’t agree full with all the protein recommendations (I see better results with slightly higher protein content in food and less starches for most personal training fat loss or fitness bootcamp clients), this is a non-profit, unbiased lab test of some common protein brands.

Shocking levels of heavy metal toxicity and other toxins.

That is why I started a new website to sell only the best supplements in Singapore. I call it www.singaporesupplementstore.com. Check it out. As an extra service, my staff and I give customer support and QnA help to those who buy from this site through my distributor links.

Saving money is good. But not at the expense of your health. And with supplements, like many other things, cheaper is NOT better!

As people who are interested in maximizing our health and life, we have to beware of what I call the “online attitude”. That attitude is that we can get whatever we want for free. Download free music, movies and books. Take whatever you like, it is easy to get whatever  you want.

Besides the legal side of things…

The “easy way out” attitude carries over into our training and our buying decisions. Cereal for breakfast instead of high quality protein – after all, the ads say it’s good for you. But in reality, the cereal box is more nutritious that the cereal

Just do a bit of “easy” brisk walking and that should get you the awesome physique you desire, when in reality you will look exactly the same and likely fatter 3, 6, 12, 24 months from now if that is all you do.

Just choose the cheapest possible supplement instead of looking for the best quality after all, supplement companies never try to skimp on ingredients or fool customers with deceptive advertising. In reality the supplement industry is one of the most unregulated and scammish in the world.

Recently on an online forum, I was “accused” of making a profit of unsuspecting buyers of supplements. “How can you charge the prices that you do, you are making a cheap profit” was the claim. This is where, unfortunately the freedom of speech of the internet makes talking without proper consideration the norm. This poor soul forgets to take into account shipping, taxes, holding stock and currency conversion rates.

In fact, unless a client orders a big quantity, buying from me is actually cheaper than getting supplements of this quality directly from the supplier! And he forgets the service and support that is provided to help clients choose and buy the correct nutrients and supplements in the correct amounts… the internet certainly has its ups and downs!

But in general the “easiest and cheapest” mentality rules. But don’t let it rule you. Choose the nutrition, supplements, personal training, fitness services, exercise routine that gets you results, not wasted time and effort!

Alot of personal training or fitness boot camp clients who want to gain muscle mass or burn body fat are concerned about whether carbohydrates are good for them post workout. There are also questions about “new” forms of “better” post workout carbs like waxy maize and so on. In general I don’t like buying carbs as supplements. They simply are not worth it because you can get them naturally, with more nutrients, for less cost. However if you do want to take carbohydrates (carbs) post workout, there are some things to consider.

The key for post workout carbs is critical – how fat you are. If you cant see abs, use a greens drink like primal greens or phyto Px + glycine + glutamine + whey (preferably organic whey it causes much less bowel irritation).

This pretty much works for everybody who is more than 10% (men) or 16% (women)… so far I haven’t found anything that works better. The green drink alkalizes your body ASAP (training stress is acidic) so you start recovery faster. The glycine calms down the nervous system, the glutamine fills glycogen without carbs (for fatties, no carbs is better).

Remember, when your central nervous system (CNS) is all fired up you cant relax, so you can’t recover as well.
Also, remember that this is POST WORKOUT if you do glycine pre-workout you will feel like sleeping, glycine is in fact a sleep aid.

But for lean boys, the variety of carbs post workout works well.

If you are not fat and want to get the most benefits out of carbs, there is no “super duper magic carb” the thing you look for is a VARIETY of carb sources so that they give a different time release of the carbs at different speeds. this leads to greater glycogen refilling than any 1 type of carb.

If one super “fast” carb is used, the muscles can’t take it all in that fast, if a super slow one is used, the muscles hunger for replenishment is not satisfied fast enough. That is why a variety of speeds is good. I personally like to use a mix of maltodextrin, dextrose, and fructose. This is found is a product called “Quadricarb” by Poliquin. It also has D-ribrose which is a great source of cell energy as well.

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.