This past weekend we had a birthday party for our daughter Olivia. And as with many parties like this there was food, cake and drinks. [caption id="attachment_4341" align="aligncenter" width="300"] What healthy people drink, right? Because we're all trying to do the best we can with our health we have diet pop as an offering. And I'm sure many of you are the same. If you drink pop you probably opt for the diet version, right? Not many health conscious people are buying regular Coke or Pepsi when they do the grocery shopping. So why do we choose diet pop? Well I guess it has to do with the fact that we don't want empty calories. I mean if I'm going to eat or drink something I better be getting some kind of nutritional benefit from it such as protein, healthy fat, vitamins, minerals, hydration etc. Regular pop offers virtually none of these but does have a dose of sugar, carbonation and is acidic. But besides avoiding the extra calories by drinking diet pop the other reason to avoid it was for the fact it wouldn't alter our blood sugar levels. In other words we didn't have to be concerned with the connection to type II diabetes and other metabolic disorders. Until now. A new study in the journal Nature found that consuming an artificial sweetener may impair glucose metabolism similar to that seen in type II diabetics. In the study researchers fed mice and humans one of three treatments, glucose, saccharin (the artificial sweetener) or glucose. You may be familiar with saccharin as the sweetener in Sweet N Low. Anyways, only the group fed saccharin showed altered glucose metabolism. So what is taking place that is accounting for this altered glucose metabolism? Well it appears that the mice and people fed saccharin...

We live in a world where we can access professional advice for all areas of our life.We can consult with an investment advisor on the best ways to save for retirement. We can meet with an accountant about tax strategies that would benefit our business. And we can work with a strength & conditioning coach as to the best ways to achieve the results in the least amount of time.But what would you think if your advisor didn't follow the same advice they gave you? What if there was a case of 'do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do'?Recently there was an example of such an instance. At our facility. With one of our own coaches!After berating this poor coach for the better part of the day I said they would use this as an opportunity to explain why what they were doing was not good and what a better option would be.And this has lead to the birth of a new blog series called 'A Hint of Hypocrisy'. Every now and again your coaches and trainers will share with you some of the decisions they make which are contrary to the advice they try and drill into you on a daily basis.So sit back, relax and enjoy this inaugural installment of a Hint of Hypocrisy by Matt Baumeister.Hi everybody,Do you have a secret indulgence? I sure do, and I’m here to tell you all about it. But first, let me tell you about how it came about and why I love my treat so much. Can I get a drum roll please….everybody: my secret indulgence is Arizona Ice Tea. Why you ask? I love it simply because it reminds me of sitting on a beach with my good friends while basking in the hot Okanagan sun.While it’s true that we all have our little vices, I...

The body is a pretty amazing machine.It adapts to new environments. For example, in equatorial regions we develop more pigment to prevent burning. And in arctic regions we retain more bodyfat for insulation against cold weather.It responds quickly and measurably to stimuli. For example, step on a tack and you will reflexively flex the knee and or hip to pull away from the source of the pain. Or if you cause damage to the soft tissues of the body, which help to maintain strutural integrity, we will get an inflammatory response to provide more stability to the injured body part.For everything we subject our bodies to there is a reaction. Sometimes the reaction is obvious and external which allows us to take notice and make the connection. Falling asleep in the hot sun on vacation may result in a sunburn which is easy for us to recognize and connect the dots as to why we got burned.Other reactions in our body are harder to perceive.They may not be as immediate.Drinking 2 cans of soda a day as a young person may eventually lay the foundation for future diabetes issues. But at the time it is difficult to recognize the damage we are doing.I guess it's kind of like being a baby.We are not able to communicate our needs except through crying. And unless something is painful, such as a dirty diaper or hunger pangs, we may not cry at all, giving the impression that everything is alright.But absence of pain doesn't mean everything is alright.We can be putting stress and doing damage to our tissues and organs without even realizing it.How can this happen?Well as long as we can 'get away' with a lifestyle or habit there is no reason to change it, is there?However when we discover there is a problem we always...

I remember growing up and my parents were following one of the low fat diets of the day. One of the ones that comes to mind was the Scarsdale Diet. Anyways this diet, and a number of others, recommended that for the best health we needed to reduce our intake of fat. Particularly saturated fat. And so we stopped eating egg yolks. And we cut back on our consumption of animal fat. Or we eliminated animal products altogether and became vegan or vegetarian. By we I mean society in general and not me personally. What have the results been? Obesity has more than doubled in the USA over the last 20 yers. But about our internal health? Have we become sicker as well? Take a look at the graph below which shows the changes in diabetes over the years. And below we can see the increase in sugar consumption over the past 80 plus years. So fat may not be the culprit we thought it was. Sure it has more than double the energy of carbohydrates and protein. But I've tried to drive home the point that a calorie is not a calorie many times before. Any five year will tell you eating 1 lbs of broccoli is not the same as eating 1 lbs of cotton candy. However many still cling to the belief that a caloric deficit is all that is needed to drop unwanted bodyfat fat. But is sugar really that bad? Consider the following research just coming out. Dr. Cantley, a cell biologist and biochemist, has recently shown that cancer cells have insulin receptors just as muscle, fat and liver cells do. So when we eat sugar these receptors are able to receive the sugar flowing through our blood and supply the energy to grow the tumour. And it appears the...