Personal Trainer Singapore – Coach Jonathan Wong

I was very troubled to read this news report about the trend among young people in Singapore. They love to be thin, not just “not fat” but really really thin. There are problems with this.

To get that thin you need to starve yourself. And the “method” of slimming these guys/gals use is not safe. They eat about 1-2 meals per day and they eat food that is not nutritious.In addition they usually eat highly refined foods like instant noodles and bread.

That is a problem because it is not possible to get enough nutrients for health with that amount of food in your diet. You will lack protein, vitamins and minerals.

Because of this lack of nutrients, your liver will be weak, and you will not be able to detoxify the problems in our rather toxic environment – even that smell from the new leather chair in your home is a poison. You need amino acids and other nutrients to help your liver.

You will also have suppressed immune system function. The more lean muscle mass you have the better your immune system will be. You often see underweight people getting sick, but this is not common among people with correct amounts of muscle mass.

There is a problem in society as well because of the use of BMI as a gague of health. These “skinny” fans are actually “healthy” when we use BMI. But are they really? This fact is made worse now that there is an “asian” BMI which encourages even lower bodyweights!

What’s the solution?

If I were the Singapore minister of health here is what I would do…

• No more BMI. Use body fat as a gauge of health. Men should aim for 10% and women for 16%.
• Encourage nutritious food. No calorie counting. Can your body count calories? Your body can only recognize nutrients. Give it enough nutritious food and it will say “I’m full, thanks!”. Give it large amounts of no-ntrition food and it says “I need more!” Even though you just ate 3000 calories of potato chips.
• No calorie counting
• Tell people who teach nutrition teachers to take off their shirts. Nutritionists are very influential, but there are way too many out of shape nutritionists. No we don’t expect them to look like an Olympic gymnast, but they shouldn’t be obese or sickly thin right?

To people who teach nutrition: No need to be Olympic level, but at least keep that tummy flat

Let me give a simple example of how calorie counting is not a good way of deciding how much to eat.

An average person needs (according to the calorie counting gang) about 2000 calories per day to maintain weight. lets multiply that by 365 to get the number of calories needed per year. Thats 730000.

Lets say I want to stay within 1kg of my current weight because I’m happy with my health and how I look. The calorie counting gang also believe that eating 3500 calories excess would lead to 1lb fat gain. so to gain 1kg I would need about 8000 calories.

That means that to stay within 1kg of my current weight I would, over the course of the 1 year, need to be accurate in my “calorie counting” to the accuracy of 8000/730000 that is an accuracy of… 1.1%.

That means each day I have to be accurate with my calorie counting to within about 22 calories. That is about 2grams of fat or 5 grams of carbohydrates/protein.

That is a ridiculous accuracy to expect to adhere to. And it gets even more rediculous as we extend the 1 year period to 3 or even 10 years. What if I kept my weight constant for 10 years! I would have to be accurate to 2 calories per day!

No. Calorie counting is not important for general health. Because there are so man ymore things going on.

I always tell my clients that our body can adapt to more or less food. But it cannot adapt to crappy, refined foods.

If I were the Minister of Health in Singapore, I would put systems in place to help and ensure that medical practitioners communicate intensely among themselves.

While I am no expert on the inner workings of a hospital (not a good place to spend too much time), I do know that doctors need to communicate more among each other.

The more specialized they get the more they need to communicate.

Why?

Most diseases that cause illness or death in a developed country like Singapore are not infectious disease. Cholera, TB, influenza are not the big problems we face as a country.

The diseases that kill are degenerative diseases like diabetes, heart disease, obesity, stroke, high blood pressure etc.

And degenerative disease is MULTI-FACTORIAL so medical staff of all specialties must communicate to form a holistic approach to health.

Let's Talk About It

For example, if you have diabetes, you might see an internal medicine specialist, but you probably have bad heart and cardiovascular health too, so you need to see a cardiologist, and you are probably fat, so you need a nutrition coach also, not to mention a personal trainer to get you exercising, and a kidney specialist because kidney failure is next up… oops so is alzhimers (people with diabetes also have far higher risk of alzhimers)… so you need a neurologist!

If these health professionals don’t talk in depth about you…you are in trouble.

The problem now is that in many cases, you are not messed up enough in some areas to warrant proper attention.

• Your blood pressure might be high, but not quite high enough to see a cardiologist…
• You may be overweight but not obese so no need to see a nutritionist or a personal trainer…
• You may have high blood fats and high indicators for blood vessel damage, but not enough to reach “critical”…
• You may be this and that but not bad enough to get your health professional’s attention… uhoh.

This is like taking the O level exam and never once getting a F9 fail grade… but getting LOTS AND LOTS of E8…

Did you “fail” …no… but are you in trouble.. YES YES and most certainly YES.

If doctors all communicated, you would know about this trouble and would be on the path to recovery far quicker!

I was listening to a radio show on the BBC news about health care in different countries. They compare the situation in :

• USA – where you need to pay insurance to get good health care
• UK – where you need to pay high taxes to get good health care
• China – where you need to be both rich and living in cities to get good health care

I was particularly interested in the China situation because they noted that the chief problem was actually rural health care. There used to be a system of “barefoot doctors” to give primary health care to villages. Minimal training, minimal equipment but able to provide basic services.

This is called primary health care. But this system has been taken over by a more privatized model leaving many rural folk with poorer health care. I believe that my staff, my company and I are in the health care industry as well, and I was thinking where we fit in.

Of course we don’t have much of a rural health problem here in Singapore, but if primary health care takes care of basic medical problems, where does PREVENTION come in?

I take my job so seriously because I believe what my staff and I do is preventive medicine and…

Prevention is Pre-Primary health care

Not “more important” than medical professionals but equally important as part of any nations desire to have the healthiest, fittest and most productive citizens. That’s one of the reasons I write the “If I Was The Singapore Minister Of Health” series on this blog.

Remember to persue HEALTH insted of fighting disease.

This picture (or one similar) of the food pyramid is found in the canteens of all schools and many other “health conscious” organizations in Singapore.

If you have taken note of the current state of health of our population and the kind of decline we are in, we can see that it’s NOT WORKING.

IT'S BROKEN AND HAS GOT TO GO

Why?

First we need to take a look at the origins of the food pyramid. It is designed and “researched” by the US Department of Agriculture. Hmm… that means corn producing farmers, hmmm of course they want us to eat 6-11 servings of starch per day.

From my experience with about 200 clients per year at the Genesis Performance Center, I believe that only about 20-30% of us can handle that amount of starch safely, and only 5% of us can handle that amount of starch beneficially. For the rest of us, 6-11!! servings of starch would make us FAT. Unless we were national athletes who train 6 hours per day.

The food pyramid is also Fat Phobic. Don’t be afraid to eat fat. As long as its not evil trans fat, its fine for you.

The only good thing is that the Food Pyramid suggests we eat quite a few veggies and fruits.

Ok, I’m not one to make complaints without giving suggestions. So…

If I were the Singapore Minister Of Health, my dietary guidelines would be…

• Eat protein at every meal as much as you like
• Eat veggies at every meal as much as you like
• Fat from natural sources (meat, nuts, fish oils)
• Eat fruits 2-3 servings per day
• Eat starch (rice, noodles, bread – anything that’s not green or meat) only if you have just had a bout of vigorous physical activity.

That’s it. No calorie counting, no counting carbs/protein or fat, simple and doable. Watch Singapore’s health care costs DROP as we get leaner, stronger and healthier.

Very Nutritious But Only If You ABSORB It

And when people eat the plain veggies they feel really healthy. This is certainly true, it salads are alot better than some of the true nonsense that Singaporeans eat (Flour fried in plastic – Yu Char Queh anybody?)

However even the most nutritious salad needs something to make it truly special.

FAT!

Yup, the scary “F” word.

Many of the good things in veggies such as…caretonoics, flavonoids, vitamins and other phytonutrients are FAT SOLUBLE. That means that you absorb more of them when you eat some fat with your salad.

Olive Oil, Avacados, Nuts and even bacon strips are good additions to your salad to get some fat in there for nutrient absorbtion.

If I were the Singapore minister of health I would not let supplements be sold through Multi Level Marketing channels. I am not against network marketing. All of us “network” market by recommending products and services that we like, to our family and friends. There is of course nothing wrong with this.

But when it comes to supplements in Singapore being sold through Multi Level Marketing, this is a problem. That is because it’s not possible to make a high quality supplement at a low price.

However, a low price is necessary for a MLM product to be successful because there are SO many levels of people to pay! This makes any MLM supplement a LOW value to the consumer.

Some examples of MLM products that I, as a successful personal trainer and health professional was asked to endorse…

Low quality multi vitamins – 2x the price, minimal value, low qualtiy ingredients that are chemically incapable of performing as advertised.

The Gac Fruit Is Good For You But It's NOT A Complete Antioxidant Solution

“Special antioxidant juices” made from “Exotic”  fruits that nobody has heard of – woooo magical… – These juices cost as much as a vintage wine (120 SGD per bottle for fruit juice!) and you “only” need a tiny shotglass per day to meet your antioxidant needs.

NONSENSE.

This is NOT the way antioxidants work. They need to be taken in a wide spectrum for maximum effect and there are different ones for different free radicals.

Fish Oil blends that stink shortly after opening. If its a capsule, it should be able to last a long time as long as the bottle is kept closed. This is because the best capsule designs include anti-oxidants in the design so the oil does not go bad. Also, these fish oils come from who knows where and would probably contain either heavy metals (poison) or hexanes (cancer).

Low quality protein powders – Low grade soy proteins with lots of fillers. Soy is not a good main protein source and no truly healthy people make it their main source of protein.

I won’t endores products like these for GOOD REASONS. And if I were the Singapore Minister Of Health, I’d get rid of them before they hurt somebody. Either in their wallet or worse still, in their health.

Ohhh Ohhh, that sounds a little harsh! Uh huh, but it’s only because I care. I would still allow advertisements from restaurants who pass my food health standards. But ads for foods that come in boxes or fancy packages would be shut down!

Nope, None Of These!

Nothing good comes in a box like this. Not cereals, not fruit juice, not energy drinks (even the ones that supposed “champions” use…). None of these supposedly healthy choices are any good for you.

Fruit juice and energy drinks are repackaged sugar water.

Cereals are ground corn with its nutrients stripped out.

Why is this? It comes down to the usual culprit. MONEY. There is a lot of money to be made in producing a VERY low quality product like cereal which is mostly simple, refined carbohydrates with some synthetic vitamins i.e. forms of vitamins that don’t really work.

There is a huge profit margin for “healthy” repackaged corn flour i.e. cereal sold at 20 times it original cost.

Unfortunately, there isn't anything fancy to say about these

How about TRULY HEALTHY foods like… a piece of grass fed beef? Or an egg? Or an apple?

Do we have big ads for those? Do you see them on TV? On the side of the buses?

NO…

Why? There simply isn’t as much profit in selling these even though they are a billion times better for you than anything in a fancy box.

Don’t be fooled by big advertising budgets spent on low quality products. I’d ban them anyway.

The minister has spoken!