HELP! I need a Detox!

As a Singapore personal trainer, my clients trust me with their health and ask me all kinds of questions. One often asked question by our fitness boot camp and personal training clients is “what about detox? – do I need it? – how should I go about it?”

There are so many people and companies offering detox products. But detox is a complex situation. Your body is actually capable of most of the detox processes. But you need to support it with the right nutrients to the right places for the right tasks.

Here is how I do it. I learned from a mentor who is a brilliant functional medicine doctor and one of the most sought after detox specialists in the world.

Firstly, everybody is different and needs different detoxes. How do you know if you need a detox? Well… we all do! The world is a toxic place, our food is not as nutritious as it should be, and our stress levels are way above what our ancestors are used to dealing with.

One indicator of a need for detox is the inability to lose bodyfat even though you do other things right! Great nutrition, hard training, correct supplements and you get stuck – the primary reason is toxicity!

So when a client like this comes for a consultation, I check their health history, and their Biosignature (a method of determining health conditions from body fat storage patterns devised by Olympic coach Charles Poliquin). I also use a questionaire to determine if there are other issues like problems with neurotrainsmitters (brain signals), liver, adrenal gland (stress) and other organ issues. I also check digestion and mineral levels.

If a detox is needed, I usually use a combination of medicinal food (guaranteed potency, purity, and effectiveness) which is non allergic, as well as an organic greens/fruit supplement, and fiber. In addition, according to the client’s needs, I would use a variety of nutrients to support the liver, gall bladder and digestive tract in detoxification.

Finally I would add supplements according to the clients “main problem” it might be stuff to take out heavy metal poisons, plastics and excess bad estrogen.

This goes on for 1 week. There might be some nausea or headaches because the liver is working hard to get rid of all the bad stuff from your body. That is why it is so important to support the liver!

After this week your fat burning, muscle building and health will be back on the fast track.

Doing this 2x/ year is recommended because Singapore is a crowded and polluted place. We need to keep our bodies clean to maximize our health, productivity and quality of life.

Go to my personal trainer contact page and ask for a detox consultation today!

One of the former athletes at the Sports school where I coached formerly is now a DJ and invited me for an interview on health tips. Here is a rough transcript of today’s interview.

Q: 1. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

I help people pursue maximum health and achieve their fitness and performance goals. So I help them get leaner, healthier, stronger and into the best shape of their lives.

Q: 2. Generic question: How much should the average person exercise per week, and how much calories should he or she eat per day in order to stay healthy?

Exercise is a fairly new thing, our ancestors didn’t need it, they had active lives. But for us we don’t usually have that kind of lifestyle. What im saying is that our bodies are made for activity. Very basic things like immune system function and joint health decrease if we do not use our bodies actively as they were created to be used.

If I had my way, the average person should be active 8 to 10 hours per week for best results! But in reality 3 hours per week of proper training plus a few sessions of activity that we enjoy like walking or playing sports would be excellent.

Q 3. For most of us working people, exercise rarely happens because of a lack of time. What are some ways we can stay active throughout the day? (office workouts?)

I could say the usual stuff like stop 1 or 2 bus stops from your home, don’t take the escalator and take the stairs etc … but in reality, these are a tiny drop in the ocean when it comes to improving your health.

And who really does these things?

Do you see your colleagues come in to work sweaty because they walked from 2 bus stops away? No you don’t, nobody does these things.

I would like to say that there is an easy way to maximize your health but there really isn’t.

The problem is with the standards we hold ourselves to, we have confused what is normal with what is average.

It is NORMAL for a human being to be lean with low body-fat, strong, and healthy with no degenerative diseases like obesity, cancer, diabetes, alzhimers or cardiovascular disease.

But unfortunately it is not the average, the average person is not in good shape and is likely to develop one of those conditions. walking from the bus stop is not really going to change this outcome much.

What will change your health is the most powerful attitude changing emotion in existance. And that emotion is love. When we choose not to exercise it is because we don’t love being healthy as much as we love watching TV or surfing the internet. When we choose to eat unnatural foods like cake or prata it is because we love the taste more than we love being lean and free from heart problems.

So actually the action is not as important as your attitude toward your own health. You need to love your body. Nobody can do that for you.

MYTHBUSTERS

1. Doing crunches or other exercises on the ab machine we see in infomercials will get rid of belly fat.

Nope, if you want lean abs, you do it with your food choices and your lifestyle.

You will need to eat foods that promote fat burning and prevent fat storage.

Foods that do this include green veggies, nuts, meat, whole eggs and healthy fats like omega 3 oils. Most ab machines actually make your posture worse and more hunched.

2. Skipping meals are a good way to lose weight

Think about it this way, when you skip drinking water, do you go toilet less or more?

You go less because your body tires to hold on to the water is has.

When you skip food, your body tries to hold on to fat that you store because it wants to make sure that there is enough in case you are in a starvation situation.

Eating healthy food that does not spike your blood sugar, in smaller meals throughout the day is proven to work for fat burning.

3. Weight-training will make me bulk up

Weight training will make a woman have nice curves a slimmer waist and good health. Eating cakes, noodles and cookies will make a woman have the wrong kind of curves and bulk up.

If you hit the gym but also eat starchy, processed food, you will get bulky and it will not be muscle, it will be fat and the food is the reason not the gym. Just think about this, many men want bigger muscles but are not able to get them easily.

And men have about 10 times the muscle building hormones that women do. So its actually even harder for a woman to get too bulky.

The problem is that many of the women you might see on TV who go to the gym are also on steroids which make them have the muscle building ability of a man, and it’s just not something that happens to women who go to the gym to get healthy.

4. Eating after 8pm causes mad weight gain.

Depends on what you eat. If you eat a pizza you could eat that any time during the day and it would make you fat. But if you a hard boiled egg and some almonds, you could eat that any time and it would not make you fat.

The main things to consider when talking about late night eating is how it affects sleep.

We do want to eat a small snack of slow digesting food like nuts, egg, cheese or a small piece of meat. This makes our body know that there is enough food and you are more likely to have a good sleep because your body will not wake you up to go and eat.

However we do not want to eat a huge meal within 2 hours of sleep because during sleep, the body recovers itself from the stresses of the day. If you eat a large meal right before sleep, your body will not be focused on recovering, it will be focused on digestion which is not what we want.

About your fitness center

1. Tell us a little bit about the Genesis Performance Centre

The Genesis performance center is the fitness and health center where my staff and I help hundreds of Singapore residents each year to maximize their health and get into the best shape of their lives. We help our clients to pursue maximum health with nutrition that is customized for their genetics, supplements and herbs that correct any hormonal or sleep problems, as well as exercise that gives them the optimal fitness for their chosen activity.

Our clients range from competitive athletes at the national level, to people who haven’t exercised for years. We customize the program to meet their goals and their current fitness level.

2. Let’s say if I were a total couch bum who decided to turn my life around and get fit, what would your fitness plan for me look like?

Assuming you love yourself enough to visit us…

First we would do a health assessment which includes your body fat, your sleep, tests for you nutrition, mineral and digestion levels. We test these because these are fundamental to health, and the best training program in the world does not give good results without a good foundation of internal health.

And also physical testing of your posture, movements and joints so that we can be sure that the exercises we ask you to do are not dangerous for you. With these results, we customize a nutrition and training program for you. For the typical client, within a week you will be measurably different. Leaner, sleeping better and you will be more energetic.

The best coaches in any field or industry know about the 80-20 rule. And as a guy who wants to provide the best personal training in Singapore, I certainly want to apply this to everything we do at the Genesis Performance Center.

I’ll just give some examples here of how this rule is used in some sample programs for my clients.

The general idea of this rule is the 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

That is very true. But I would like to look at it from the perspective of our most important asset.

Time

I often have clients who have to cut short training because of urgent work or family commitments. This is not their fault.

Here is where the 80-20 rule makes it’s presence most obvious in the training program.

Our training programs for the majority of clients include individualized Self massage, corrective training (for posture/movement dysfucntion) warmup, core training and static stretching.

Followed by strength training and then metabolic training/cardio
This usually takes 55-70mins

But what if I had 25 mins?

PRIORITIZE
I would first cut out the self massage with rollers/tennis balls – yes its important, but people have gotten good results injury free before this came onto the fitness scene. skipping a session of this is not the worst thing in the world. And most of my clients buy a foam roller for home use anyway so its not a big deal (in the grand scheme of things) self massage does not fall into the critical 20%

Then I would cut out the cardio at the end. This is used to burn extra fat calories at the end of a workout when fat stores are most easily burned. It’s good for fat loss but its not critical compared to maintaining lean muscle mass. Again, not part of the critical 20%.
Then I would cut out the corrective training, yes its important, but the benefits are felt long term and not over a single session. Again, not part of the 20%.

That leaves warmup (5 mins), strength training (15mins) and metabolic conditioning – burpee variations, bodyweight circuits, Kettlebell swings etc…(5-10 mins)

A total of 25 mins.

In fact for the strength training, I am cutting out probably everything ecept a superset that includes a compound lower body exercise like a deadlift, and a big upper body exercise like a chinup.

Will a client on such a program get fat after such a short session. No. In fact some people are over trained and such a program will actually boost results.

As long as nutrition is ok, this top 20% of critical time usage will just about ensure that even busy clients get awesome results.

Ok, lets say you have no serious medical conditions, and you have found a nice training community. Whats next when looking for a personal trainer in Singapore? The next thing is not usually budget.

It is time. I believe that most people are not as worried about spending money as they are about wasting time. That’s the most scary thing. Time is our only non-renewable resource.

Saving time means you need to have the most time effective forms of training and nutrition.

These are the fundamentals of ANY proper training program for general fitness. If they are violated, you are probably wasting both money and time.

A good coach should (baring any pre-existing medical conditions) have you doing:

Assessment – If you are not assessing, you are just guessing. There has to be continual assessment and adjustment to get you to your goals. It’s like a guided missile. You start off in the general direction but you need mid-course guidance to hit your fitness targets.

Free Weights – Machines indicate either a lack of care for you, or a lack of coaching ability

Total Body Movements (mostly done standing up) – These movements use your whole body. Stuff like squatting, picking objects off the floor, chinups (and its variations if you aren’t able to do a chinup yet, pushups. Stuff like that.

Moderate to high intensity cardiovascular exercise. Low intensity stuff (walking on a treadmill/slow bike etc) is a waste of time (results wise) and a waste of money (you shouldn’t need to pay anybody to watch you walk.

All our personal training clients from national level athletes, to regular working professionals and even senior citizens of age 7-77 do total body exercises that are properly designed for their current experience and fitness level!

To See how Singapore’s Best Personal Training Services Can Help You…click on our “Singapore Personal Training” link!

There are several things to look out for when choosing a personal trainer whether in Singapore or elsewhere. There is the good, the bad and the unspeakable but in personal trainers in Singapore range from kids who happen to look fit, to those who are knowledgeable in fields from functional medicine to massage and strength training as well as nutrition and hormones.

One of the critical things that you need to consider before deciding if a personal trainer is right for you is Your current medical status.

A personal trainer is not a medical professional. That means that if you have a clinical problem or pathology he/she (Myself included!) is not the person to look for. It is perhaps even irresponsible for me as a personal trainer to take on a client who is having a serious medical condition or joint problem. If you fall into this category you need a therapy guy (chiro, osteopath, body worker, physio etc). Get well before you decide to get fit

If your problem is not acute (sharp pain all day!) then its possible that you have an inefficiency. This is not as “bad” as a pathology. A really good trainer can help you with this. That guy usually has a strong knowledge of bio mechanics and kniesology (how the body and joints move). And has in his “toolbox” an assortment of assessment and corrective training tools to get you both a corrective training effect as well as a fitness training effect. I.E. you get fixed and fit at the same time.

There is no “clear” line between these 2 medical states. But use a bit of wisdom to figure out which side you are on. A responsible professional will do what is best for you. Either refer you out or take you on as a client.

This is one reason I work closely with medical professionals (Orthopedic Doctors, Physios, etc) because its best for our clients to have a network of integrated services (personal trainers, medical, manual therapy etc) to meet any of their needs.

More Info Coming up In Part 2

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