Diet Myth #3.8 – I Need to Starve Myself to Burn Fat

May 26, 2015 Jason Latas Leave a comment

I NEED TO STARVE MYSELF SO MY BODY WILL BURN FAT

Wrong! Your body is the master compensator. When you drastically cut calories, your body goes into survival mode and slows down your metabolism. Yes, as crazy as it sounds, that’s what it does because your body’s first priority is survival. Also, if you just cut calories but don’t focus on nutrient dense, well-balanced meals, you also end up loosing muscle. The amount of muscle on your body is one of the main factors that determines your metabolism (how many calories you burn). So, if you end up losing muscle then you lower your metabolism. This can be a disastrous combo of losing muscle and damaging your metabolism.

This is one of the main reasons that people rebound after a “diet”. They loose “scale weight” but don’t realize that a lot of it was muscle and for the reasons listed above, lowered and perhaps even damaged their metabolism. So when they resume eating normal again, their body regains the fat and sometimes even more…

It is very important to know your body composition and body fat percentage before you start any dietary change to reduce your weight. You need to focus on well-balanced and nutrient dense meals, evenly spaced throughout the day. Make sure you take measurements and use the mirror more than the scale. This is where a coach can save you a ton of time and frustration because they can get you started on a personal plan that is as unique as you are…

Uncategorized

9+1 Benifits of the Avocado Powerhouse

April 25, 2015 Jason Latas 1 Comment

Avocados are a powerhouse of nutrition both internally and externally!

Avocados are rich in vitamins A, C, and E and are full of other nutrients like potassium. They contain folate, monosaturated fats and antioxidants. Regular consumption of avocados helps us in many ways.

Here are just 10 of them:

1. The monosaturated fats in avocados not only help in reducing LDL cholesterol but are also good for the heart. Avocado also lowers the triglycerides in the blood and thus is useful for diabetic patients.

2. Avocado contains 30% more potassium than banana. The high potassium content helps in regulating blood pressure and prevents circulatory diseases.

3. Avocados are good for pregnant women since the high folate content in them helps in the development of brain and other tissues of the baby. The B6 vitamin in these fruits may help in reducing nausea that is associated with pregnancy. Rubbing avocado oil on the belly also helps prevent stretch marks!

4. Avocado contains carotenoid lutein. Lutein keeps the eyes safe from oxidative stress, macular degeneration, and cataracts.

5. Avocados have numerous phytonutrients which not only prevent prostate cancer but also repair the damaged cells.

6. Many studies have shown that avocado can inhibit the growth of cancerous cells without damaging the healthy cells. The oleic acid in this fruit is effective in preventing breast cancer.

7. It is a powerhouse of vitamin E which protects our skin from free radicals. Avocado oil is great for the skin!

8. Avocado is very effective in stopping bad breath. It also reduces the risk of oral cancer.

9. Being rich in antioxidants, avocado is helpful in preventing aging symptoms. The glutathione in avocado boosts immune systems, slows the aging process, and encourages a healthy nervous system.

10. The nutrients and enzymes in avocado soothes the condition of inflamed mucous lining in the stomach and small intestines. It also improves the body’s ability to absorb carotenoids and nutrients

I’m headed for my morning, breakfast shake right now and I add avocado at the end to thicken it up and power it up!

For more tips, please also visit:

http://www.facebook.com/SummerBodyNow

Mind/Body, Spirituality

Emotion Mapping shows mind body connection

December 31, 2014 Jason Latas Leave a comment

A new study by Finnish researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, suggests that our emotions do indeed tend to influence our bodies in consistent ways.

Across five experiments, 701 participants “were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. They were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus.”

The emotions were generated by having the subjects read short stories or watch movies. On a blank, computerized figurine, they were then asked to color in the areas of their body where sensations became stronger (the red and yellow) or weaker (blue and black) when they felt a certain way.

We often experience emotions directly in the body. When strolling through the park to meet with our sweetheart we walk lightly with our hearts pounding with excitement, whereas anxiety might tighten our muscles and make our hands sweat and tremble before an important job interview. Numerous studies have established that emotion systems prepare us to meet challenges encountered in the environment by adjusting the activation of the cardiovascular, skeletomuscular, neuroendocrine, and autonomic nervous system. This link between emotions and bodily states is also reflected in the way we speak of emotions: a young bride getting married next week may suddenly have “cold feet,” severely disappointed lovers may be “heartbroken,” and our favorite song may send “a shiver down our spine.”

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Both classic and more recent models of emotional processing assume that subjective emotional feelings are triggered by the perception of emotion-related bodily states that reflect changes in the skeletomuscular, neuroendocrine, and autonomic nervous systems. These conscious feelings help the individuals to voluntarily fine tune their behavior to better match the challenges of the environment. Although emotions are associated with a broad range of physiological change, it is still hotly debated whether the bodily changes associated with different emotions are specific enough to serve as the basis for discrete emotional feelings, such as anger, fear, or happiness and the topographical distribution of the emotion-related bodily sensations has remained unknown.

In the study, different emotions were associated with statistically clearly separable bodily sensation maps that were consistent across West European (Finnish and Swedish) and East Asian (Taiwanese) samples, all speaking their respective languages. Statistical classifiers discriminated emotion-specific activation maps accurately, confirming independence of bodily topographies across emotions.

How interesting to see the different cultures responding similarly with their bodies, through their emotions. Love really does make us warm all over 🙂

http://www.nasonline.org/publications/pnas/

Mind/Body

Self Talk and Manifesting your Future

December 21, 2014 Jason Latas Leave a comment

Does your mindset support you or hinder you? Does the self-talk in your head move you positively toward your goals or away from them? Self-talk or intrapersonal communication is the constant feedback that you give yourself throughout the day.

This is a very important question that I ask my clients. It’s truly amazing how many people are unaware of the amount of self-talk that goes on in their head at every moment of every day. Even when you sleep, you are “making movies” about your life! Are you the hero or the villain? Have you ever taken the time to really listen to the “voice inside your head”? I often ask, “If you were to write down all of the feedback that goes on in your head and read it back to yourself out loud; how would it make you feel?” Most people don’t think of it this way, but your subconscious does! Your subconscious mind is sitting in the background, listening to every word and the scary part is that after it hears it enough times, it starts to believe it! So ask yourself again. “Is my self talk supporting me of hindering me?

If you listen closely you may be very surprised at the amount of times you harshly judge yourself and put yourself down. Now if listen even closer, you may find that it’s not even you talking…it’s a replay of what others have said to you and you believed. A lot of the standards that we judge ourselves by are actually opinions from other people in our past that we listened to and then chose to agree with. Notice that I used the word chose. It is always your choice whether to believe or not believe someone’s opinion of you. As soon as you agree with them you have made the choice to take on that belief system and make it yours. This is not uncommon when you make a choice to change your life for the better and someone else is jealous of you… It is very important to remember: “Those that have abandoned their dreams will tend to discourage yours.”

Even advertising has a tremendous effect on our choices. The first goal of advertising is to make you feel a sense of lack or fear and a need to have that product or service. Remember that you have the choice to either accept and agree or disagree and move on and this choice will profoundly affect your inner happiness.

Often, if we listen close enough we will hear things that our parents, siblings or friends said many years ago when we were a child and as a child we chose to believe it. It doesn’t matter that they may have been mad and didn’t even mean what they said; we chose at that time to believe it and agree with it and it became a truth to our subconscious mind. It is amazing how many things we “say” to ourselves every day in our self talk and don’t even stop to realize that it is old, out of date and not even true. The challenge is that we have been doing this so long that it is just habit and we don’t even know we are doing it!

The most important thing to remember is that you can start changing all of this today! You can make the choice to erase the old “recordings” and begin to reprogram your subconscious mind to a new and better soundtrack! It takes time, but if you truly concentrate and want to change, you can do it. At first you will need to identify all of the times that your thoughts do not support you and consciously make the effort to rephrase the thought in your mind. It will take time and practice and you must not get discouraged because in due time you will become your own best cheerleader! Supportive and encouraging self-talk will become so natural to you to that it will actually start to feel unnatural to say anything negative about yourself. You will be amazed at how, instead of putting yourself down for a “mistake”, you will actually start to learn from the “life lessons”!

As with anything good in life, it takes practice but anyone can do it! So don’t be afraid to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, pat yourself on the back and say “Great Effort”!

Here’s to your success!!!

Exercise, Nutrition

To Whey or not… Not all Whey is the Same.

November 28, 2014 Jason Latas 4 Comments

Most Whey Today: Not so great

I’ve been in the fitness industry for over 25 years and I see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes in the supplement industry. Don’t think for a second that they are looking out for your best interest. Most of these companies are a “for profit organization” and must please the share holders before you.. If you do a little research, you can make sure that you’re hard earned money is working for you and is well spent on quality. Remember to, “buy for quality, not the picture or phrase on the bottle”!

Whey has been used in traditional cuisine for centuries, and was known by Greek doctors as “healing water” for it’s strength-building properties.

Today however, whey is considered a waste product of the cheese and yogurt industries. The wildly popular greek yogurt industry has been under scrutiny from environmental agencies recently for the gallons upon gallons of “whey waste” that they must get rid of after processing their strained yogurt products. For every four pounds of milk, only one pound of yogurt is made, and the rest is a mixture of whey, chemicals and other acidic byproducts. Industries drowning in whey have been scrambling to figure out just what to do with all of this tangy liquid and many have found an outlet in the sports nutrition industry where leftover whey is being powdered, flavored and marketed as a muscle-building, energy-boosting supplement. Sounds like a very solid plan, except for the fact that the whey from big industry is truly waste- high heat pasteurized and subject to several acid baths. Any potentially beneficial nutrients are obliterated and mingled with nasty toxins during production. Supplement companies have tried desperately to “purify” their products by isolating different parts of the protein portion of the whey, which is why you get so many different formulations on the market such as isolates, hydrosylates, concentrates, etc. This fractioning subjects the already destroyed whey to even more sketchy chemical processes and eliminates co-factors, rendering any possible remaining nutrients completely un-bioavailable. So despite the luring claims on those big black tubs of peanut-butter chocolate whey protein, most of these commercial powders are certainly not superior and spend more on marketing and magazine ads than they do on what’s inside the bottle! In fact, most of the “added” amino acids that they tout as a bonus, on the label, are only added to bring the amino profile back to “complete”, since many essential amino acids were killed in the high heat or acid based denaturing process! Many whey protein supplements on the shelves are the same quality of whey that is found in your puppy chow. Mmmm, makes me want seconds. Seriously though, if you’re using cheap, low grade whey, much of it is wasted and not even assimilated in your system…

When made properly in small batches from cultured dairy, whey has incredibly unique healing properties. Rich with biologically active proteins and protein fractions, it has a high concentration of essential amino acids that are readily used to support vital biological functions in the body. Among these beneficial factors is:

Lactoferrin, a multifunctional protein with iron-binding properties that acts as a powerful antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory

Bovine serum albumin (BSA), a substance high in amino acids that has been shown to support infection-fighting white blood cells, increase antioxidant activity and maintain healthy cholesterol levels in the body

Immunoglobulins to support disease control by bolstering immunity

Probiotic organisms to promote optimal digestion and full nutrient absorption by balancing the gut flora

Essential amino acids in a highly bioavailable form to act as building blocks for proteins

Glutathione precursors, to boost production of the body’s most powerful antioxidant

Minerals such as potassium, iron and zinc in balanced amounts
Vitamins notably vitamin B2 or riboflavin which helps the body to convert carbohydrates into fuel

If you are looking for a whey protein that is whole, complete, that will boost your immune system and either pack on the muscle or hold it while dieting down, you need organic, New Zealand, un-denatured whey. The whey of the God’s!

It’s all I use and I’ll never go back!

Want to get your hands on some? Contact me here: