Are trainers expensive baby-sitters or cheap therapists?  Or neither?

The two (sadly) predominant stereotypes of trainers are The Baby-Sitter (AKA The Rep Counter) and The Therapist.  Go into any New York Sports Club (or, *insert name of your gym here*) and I’ll bet dimes to donuts you’ll find several examples of both.

The Rep Counter does just that - count reps.  No feedback, no coaching, no educating.

The Therapist may make you feel better, but they distract you from your immediate goal - optimal workout performance.

Of course, I’m not saying a trainer can’t provide clerical or emotional support for their client.  But the ultimate goal always has to be kept at the forefront: Guide the client towards their (fitness) goal(s).

Certainly, it’s important that you like and click with your trainer.  But is your trainer up to task?

Trainers, it’s also easy to fall into the opposite trap and overcompensate.  It’s ok if your client isn’t doing 100 different exercises in their routine.  It doesn’t make you a bad trainer if your client doesn’t perform kettlebell snatches, moves weights at a 10/10 rep tempo, or can’t flex and isolate their tensor fascia latae muscle.  It’s just as easy to talk a client to death (to over-instruct) as it is to offer too little (or no) guidance.

I think trainers should be helpful and conscientious, and I think it be done without acting (and looking) like a complete tool (nothing personal, guys and gals).

A client of mine asked me about his blood sugar yesterday and it occurred to me that writing an overview of blood sugar is in order (since I rant so about keeping insulin levels low, avoiding concentrated sources of carbohydrates, etc.).

First, what’s normal blood sugar?

The normal range for a fasted state is between 80 to 120 mL/dl. After eating, blood sugar generally jumps a little higher but not much, although if you load yourself up with sugar it can and will skyrocket (as much as 200 mL/dl). If you’re normal (i.e., non-insulin resistant), your blood sugar level is probably less than 100 mL/dl and will not rise past 140 mL/dl after a meal.

100 mL/dl is the “standard” that most general practitioners use, but diabetes specialists will ring alarms if your fasting blood sugar values exceed 83 mL/dl.

Why does blood sugar matter?

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know the answer to this question. Having high fasting blood sugar levels shows insulin resistance, and insulin resistance is the first step down a road you definitely don’t want to take.

A recap:

All (not just the bad ones, but all) of the carbohydrate you consume gets broken down into glucose - the building block of carbs. When all goes well, glucose is absorbed from your bloodstream into your cells to be burned as energy. Insulin is the hormone that makes this absorption possible - it literally “opens the door” to your cells, allowing glucose in.

When all is not well (i.e., when you overconsume carbohydrates, particularly refined carbs), you end up with large amounts of glucose in your bloodstream. Normally, the body deals with glucose by secreting (more than) enough insulin to pull all of that sugar out of your bloodstream and into your cells to be used as energy or to be stored as glycogen. When you run out of glycogen storage space, your body simply repackages that glucose as triglycerides and socks it away in your fat cells.

Fat gain may be inconvenient, but it’s not the main issue here. The problem is insulin resistance - when cells grow immune to insulin’s effects and insulin can no longer ferry glucose into the cells. Chronic hyperinsulimia - high levels of insulin in the blood - is the root cause.

In short:

High blood sugar -> High Insulin -> Insulin Resistance -> Diabetes (and other diseases of civilization)

Sounds terrible. What can I do to prevent these insulin spikes?

The simplest way is to curb your dietary intake of carbohydrates. In other words, minimize consumption of grains, sugars, and starches.

If you do choose to consume carbohydrates, eat the “best” kinds: High in fiber and least refined (e.g., whole wheat pasta, brown rice, etc.).  As always, “real foods” are best.

Get the majority of your calories from meats, non-starchy (aka leafy) vegetables, low-sugar fruit, nuts, and seeds. Beans and legumes are ok; they’re high in fiber and relatively high in nutrients, but they also contain phytic acid, which can block absorption of nutrients.

Exercise helps by making your cells more insulin sensitive - in other words, exercise improves the ability of insulin to pull glucose into the cells.  So do it.

The $1000000 question: So if I eat mostly carbohydrates, I’ll get fat and die prematurely?

Ah, I knew you were going to ask me that eventually.  The answer is, it depends.  If you’re like my friend Andrius and the carbohydrates you eat are leafy greens, fruit, legumes, and low-GI starches and grains (e.g., sweet potato, quinoa, etc.), then probably not.  But if you’re like the average American or Australian and the carbs you prefer are soda, white bread, fried potatoes, or anything that comes in a box, then the answer is “likely.”

If you like short and easy to remember admonitions, here’s what this post boils down to:

Avoid refined starches, grains, and sugars.

Above: Could he really medal in any event in the Olympics? Dr. Paul Zehr would say so.

Ronen sent me this neat-o article on the physiological basis of Batman. Don’t take it too seriously; it’s just some light-hearted conjecture (real science, of course) on Batman’s physical abilities by an associate professor of kinesiology and neuroscience. Enjoy.

I’ve taken a nod from Scott and installed a Skribit widget on my sidebar.  It’s the nifty little box that says, “What topics would you like me to write about?”

I’ve no shortage of topics to blog on (the time to write; that’s another story…), but most of my blog topics come from the day-to-day conversations, Q and As, and discussions I have with clients, friends, and colleagues.  I thought it might be interesting to see what topics you folks out there in cyberspace are interested in.

It’s a cinch - just click on “What topics would you like me to write about?”  A box pops up prompting you to enter your suggestion.  Type it in, click submit, and voila!  Alternatively, you can vote up other suggestions if someone else beat you to the punch and asked your question already - just click the little vote icon after the question.

So, if you’ve got a question or something you’d like me to rant about blog on, go right ahead.

Hey all, a little backlogged with projects and posts right now. Your pardons as I sort everything out in one big vomitus:

Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine released a study comparing low-fat, Mediterranean, and low-carb diets. The big winner? The low-carb diet (much to everyone’s chagrin - false sarcasm). There are two extensive write-ups on this study over at Dr. Eades‘ and Scott’s blogs, but allow me to present the highlights:

First (and certainly to the delight of Rich and Andrius), the low-carb diet was a vegetarian low-carb diet. From the study text: “…the participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein…” So it appears that the benefits of following the low-carb regimen are not exclusive to gun-totin’, America-lovin’ carnivores - just those who choose to reduce intake of grains, sugars, and starches.

While the Mediterranean diet resulted in more favorable LDL levels than the low-carb diet (”a collective ‘So what?’ washed over the crowd…”), the low-carb diet killed in just about everything else: higher HDL, lower TG, and better TC:HDL ratio. Additionally, both the Mediterranean and low-carb approaches resulted in a drop in C-reactive protein, indicating lower levels of inflammation.

Sadly (for the AHA, at least), the low-fat group fared worst overall: Least fat loss, highest LDL (isn’t a low-fat diet supposed to decrease this? Hmmm…), highest TG, least change in C-reactive protein, and an increase in blood glucose for diabetics. Yet this is the type of diet recommended by the AHA for diabetics. Yikes.

Of course, the punchline: While the Mediterranean diet was pretty close to specs, at two years (the end of the study) the low-carb diet had degenerated to 40% of calories from carbs (definitely not low-carb) and the low-fat diet had degenerated to 30% of calories from fat (definitely not low-fat). So that explains the lackluster amounts of fat loss. And yet, while proponents of low-fat will argue that their diet didn’t perform as planned because it wasn’t correctly represented, the low-carb diet seemed to defy this limitation (what’s scary is it would’ve done even better were it actually followed to the letter).

The bottom line: Even a little reduction in carbohydrate consumption (or a short period eating in a strict low-carb fashion) can provide some real health and fat loss benefits.  And that low-carb doesn’t have to mean eggs and bacon for breakfast, steak and salad for lunch, and salmon and tomato for dinner (although that sounds mighty tasty to me).