Personal Trainer Singapore – Coach Jonathan Wong

Ok, many of my Singapore personal training and fitness boot camp clients as me if fruit juice is ok for them to drink… I mean, fruits are healthy right? so why not just juice them and get all their goodness… and as an added benefit you can have so many fruits in one glass… my answer (after a short chuckle)…NO, No, NOOOO…unless you want to get fat, diabetic and brain damaged!

Clients come to me to lose weight, burn fat, get healthy and improve their performance and strength… so of course NO is the answer.

Pretty Nice Ads, Pretty Ugly Results

Why?

Firstly fruit juice is high in sugar and low in fiber (even the most organic, healthy ones) – that means that it’s just as bad as any other processed and overly sweetened cola or syrup based drink. Almost nobody can get a healthy and lean physique drinking those… and nobody can get a great physique drinking fruit juice either.

It combines all the “bad parts” of fruit – the high sugar, concentrates it and gives you many servings of this in 1 glass – it takes several apples (4-5) to make 1 glass of apple juice. When was the last time you ate 5 apples in one sitting? Thats the amount of sugar you are taking in!

It takes away the good stuff – the skins and fiber in fruits is gone! These actually slow digestion if you eat the whole fruit. That makes the impact of the sugar less on your body when it is digested slowly and released slowly into the body.

Most fruit juices in coffee shops and hawker centers are “enhanced” with sugar syrup – oops thats not in real fruit!

Finally fruit juice commercial production is EVIL. Fruits are very heavily sprayed with poisons to protect them from bugs (its actually because the soil they are grown in is so bad that artificial fertilizers are used which do not provide the plant the nutrients to be healthy and have its OWN defense against bugs – thus pesticides are needed)…

Do you think fruits are lovingly plucked and gently squeezed one by one to make juice? Of course not. They are crushed by the thousands, skin and rind and all and the juices drained out. Oops some pesticide is left on the skin… oops… its in your juice.

Most pesticides are nervous system and brain toxic. That is BAD.

I prefer to have full nerve function and brain function. I prefer to be lean and healthy. I don’t drink fruit juice!  And any Singapore personal trainer who knows his/her nutrition facts won’t tell you to either.

I know that we need about 8-12 servings of fruits and veggies to stay healthy, alkalanize our body, and get a  wide spectrum of anti-oxidants. That is why I use a organic veggie and fruit extract that keeps the nutrients but does not give us the high sugar content. I also use a variety of organic fibers to keep the digestive tract healthy. We used to be able to get great nutrition from fruits… but fruit today is not what it used to be – its low in nutrients, genetically modified to be sweet, and covered in pesticides… we should all use a greens/fruit supplement and a fiber to stay healthy. Contact us to see if we have any in stock so you can get the nutrition your body needs to maximize its potential.

You would be amazed how few personal training programs in Singapore have NO SYSTEM for helping clients learn about nutrition. That is simply madness. There is no way to “out-train” bad eating unless you are a full time athlete training 4-5 hours per day.

Teaching is as important as knowing. So I came up with this to teach my clients a simple way to think about which carbohydrates are good, and which are bad especially with regards to fat loss, but also with regards to nutrition value and possibility of intolerance, allergy and health benefits. With the top being the best…

1.    Green veggies

2.    Non-Green Veggies

3.    Lower fructose fruits – Apricots, avocado (1/3 medium; yes, it’s a fruit) blackberries (1/2 cup), figs, grapefruit (1/2 medium) papaya, peach, plum, raspberries (1/2 cup) strawberries (1/2 cup) tomato (yes, also a fruit)

4.    Higher Fructose Fruits – apple, banana, cherries (1 Cup) grapes (1 Cup) mango, melon (2 wedges), orange, pear pineapple, (2 rings), watermelon (1 large slice)

5.    High Nutrient Natural Starches – yam, sweet potato, tapioca

6.    Grains – bread, pasta etc (rice falls under here too, but its not as problematic)

7.    Nonsense crappy starch foods – the rest!

We Both Know That Is A "7"

If you are naturally tolerant to starches and are already lean, stay at number 1-5 with an occasional 6 if you have no grain related allergies. If you are a natural fat boy (opps that includes me…) stay within number 1-3 for best fat loss results. If you are very overly fat – more than 20% for women and 15-18% for men then stay within 1-2… If you don’t care about losing fat, or getting leaner, or being healthy and living long, eat number 7 all day:)

If you are one of our personal training or athletic performance clients, the biosignature analysis will help you find what types of starches and carbohydrates you can handle well.

My first experience of what good nutrition is was many years ago (about the year 2000) when I realized that it was not good enough just to be large and strong. I was carrying excess fat.

I did not look obese but I know that I could have been quicker and leaner.
I decided to go on the first “diet” of my life! Well actually it was just cleaning up my nutrition habits.

• Eating often keeps metabolism high
• Eating no starchy stuff unless after training (replenish glycogen stores, after training starches don’t make us fat).
• Eating more fruits and vegetables (I’m starting to really like some veges, broccoli, spinach:) hehe never thought I’d see the day!).
• Drinking only water and green tea.
• Eating more protein with each meal.
• Eating healthy fats from nuts and fish.
• Eating un-processed foods. (best foods are from their natural packaging, things in pretty packages with shiny wrappers are usually 99% of the time BAD for us)
• 3 months later I was down 10kg and looking a lot better!
• I did NOT count calories, weight food or starve myself. I simply trained hard and made good food choice.

Below are my pics first the after at 82kg and the before at 92kg!