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You may be giving yourself a sugar stress test every single day and you don’t even know it.

Doctors use what is called an oral glucose tolerance test to diagnose patients with prediabetes and diabetes. 

For this test you consume 75 grams of glucose to see how your body body processes the sugar.  It is essentially a stress test for your pancreas and is something you should not normally do.  Yet, we seem to do this every day and many times worse than this test. 

One 24-ounce soda often contains more than 75 grams of sugar. 

Maybe you think your body can process this large load of sugar, but everything wears out at some point.  If you are constantly stressing your pancreas at some point it may say enough is enough and start to not work so well.  Outcome is diabetes and a failed healthy diet plan.

Some symptoms to look for: 

Severe hyperglycemia:  Blurred vision, extreme thirst, frequent urges to urinate

Hypoglycemia:  You feel weak with cold sweats, anxiety, blurred vision, or tiredness a couple hours after a sugar binge.  This one is more easier to spot.

If you experience any of these symptoms ask your doctor about conducting an OGTT test, which is more accurate than a fasting blood sugar test.  Make the most of your health diet plans.

Studies have shown this for years and those on high sugar diets tend to have 32% higher triglycerides when consuming processed foods. 

What happens is your body can’t metabolize all this HFCS and sugar consumed in processed foods as fast as you eat it.  So your liver puts some of the foods glucose and HFCS into your bloodstream to be used for energy.  The rest of it is stored for later use. 

The problem is if your liver’s tank is full it will store these sugars as excess triglycerides.  Your liver can store about 90-100 grams of glycogen, so it converts the excess to fat or triglycerides. 

When you maintain a healthy weight or follow healthy weight loss you can keep your triglyceride level in check.  If you are overweight or are gaining weight your triglycerides will start to accumulate and become a key predictor of heart disease or strokes. 

If you are overweight or gaining weight here is what you need to do.  Lay off the sugary and starchy foods as well as the sugared drinks.  Make sure you are exercising at a higher intensity for 5 days a week.  Your body wasn’t built to handle all that sugar and you need to make sure you are burning enough calories to use what you do eat for energy and not have excess sugars left over to be stored as fat.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the World Health Organization, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion agree – you should eat more fruits and vegetables.

Up to 10 total servings a day!

  That’s a lot of food.  

And besides having to eat all that food, maybe you don’t love the taste of fruits, vegetables or greens.  Or you don’t have time to shop 2-3 times a week to buy fresh fruits, vegetables and greens? 

 And don’t get me started about preparing the food (washing, chopping, peeling, dicing, mincing, steaming, grilling, microwaving, broiling, and baking can be a real pain in the rear!)

If You Can’t Beat Mother Nature, Join Her!
 

Click here to learn more about how you can still benefit from all the rich vitamins and minerals ==>>  Healthy Eating Tips

Peanut Butter Bars

2/3 cup flax meal
2 scoops Prograde Protein Vanilla
4 Tbsp Natural Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Water
Stevia, to taste (approx: 2tsp)

Blend ingredients together in a bowl until it becomes a blob of dough.  It will be somewhat sticky.  Place the sticky dough into a small casserole or baking pan and smooth out into a flat level surface.  Then put in the refrigerator to cool or you can freeze them if you prefer.  Once cooled or frozen you can cut them up into bars. 

Makes approximately (4) 2in x 4in bars.

Nutrition Data per bar:

Calories:  205
Protein: 18 gms
Carbs: 7 gms
Fat: 11 gms

If you would like a lower calorie bar and maybe less of a peanut butter taste you can modify the ingredients by using 2.5 scoops of Prograde Protein powder, 2 Tbsp natural peanut butter, 1/3 cup of water and 2tsp of Stevia.  This will lower the calories per bar by approximately 35 calories, 3 less grams of fat, 1 less gram of carbs and 1 extra gram of protein. 

This recipe is also rich not only in natural monounstaturated fats that can help lower total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol, plus raise HDL (good) cholesterol, but rich in Omega 3 fats because of the flax meal and Omega 3 fats that flax meal provides.  You will consume about 2.5 gms of Omega 3 fats per bar. 

For another delicious protein ice cream recipe click this link =>> Peanut Butter Ice Cream

The Centre For Consumer Freedom has called out the Sugar Association regarding the press release requesting that the words "sugar laden beverages" or "sugar sweetened drinks" type of wording not be used.  The sugar associations claim is that sugar is not used in most sweetened drinks and High Fructose Corn Syrup is the sweetener used.

This is their attempt to confuse the consumer into thinking that sugar is better for you than HFCS.  Particularly since HFCS has been in the media in regards to researchers saying that it has contributed or caused the obesity problem. 

The USDA data shows that Americans consumed five million tons of HFCS  in drinks in 2008, which is almost 15 times the amount of sugar consumed through drinks in the same year.

The main reason why most food manufactuers use HFCS is because it is a cheaper ingredient, which means the manufacturer makes a higher profit. 

Here is a quote from the American Diabetic Association saying “high fructose corn syrup…is nutritionally equivalent to sucrose [table sugar]. Once absorbed into the blood stream, the two sweeteners are indistinguishable.”

So guess what? 

They are both equally as bad.

If sugar was used in place of the HFCS all these years we would still end up with the same problem we have now.  The food would have just cost us more.

The solution is to eat more natural whole foods and limit your consumption of processed foods and drinks.

That way you won’t consume unnecessary sugars or HFCS. 

Problem solved!

Diets with higher protein of at least 1.5 grams per kilogram of bodyweight and reduced carbohydrates of 120-200 grams per day appear to enhance and improve weight loss due to a higher loss of body fat and reduced loss of lean body mass. 

Short-term studies report beneficial effects that include:

1.  Satiety (fullness)

2.  Increased thermogenesis (faster metabolism)

3.  Sparing of muscle protein loss

4.  Improved glycemic control (your body uses the sugars more for energy instead of storing them as fat)

These results are likely occurring from lower carbohydrates which result in lower blood glucose and higher protein providing increased BCAA leucine levels. 

Increased protein intake also triggers the hormone glucagon which is the counteracting hormone to insulin and helps to keep your insulin from spiking.  This minimizes your chances of storing blood sugars as fat.

A key element in this diet appears to be the higher levels of BCAA leucine and its regulatory actions on muscle protein synthesis, controlling your insulin signal and the ability to use glucose for energy rather than fat storage. 

If you are like many weight loss seekers you do not eat enough protein in your healthy eating plans or healthy diet plans and especially not enough protein that contains the key BCAA leucine. 

Prograde Protein contains over 5 grams of BCAA’s and 2.5 grams of the essential amino acid Leucine. 

Grab a bottle today and start fast forwarding your weight loss with the help of the BCAA Leucine and a lower carbohydrate diet. 

Click Here To Grab Your Bottle Today =>>  Prograde Protein 

Is it ok for me to say the health care debate is making me SICK?

I know it’s a VERY touchy subject. I know people have VERY strong opinions about it.

But what nobody really wants to talk about is the fact we could simplify the heck out of this by doing one thing:

Take better care of ourselves.

We have this incredible love affair with making things so complicated. It’s absurd really.

Small, simple changes to the way we live our lives and the entire country would be SOOO much healthier.

Let me give an extreme example:

Years ago I had a personal training client whose co-worker ate TWO Big Macs every day for lunch. Yes, two of them. And yes, EVERY day. At least that is what I was told.

Now, this person started at around 300 pounds when they made one simple change to their life that caused them to drop 50 of those pounds very quickly.

Can you guess what it is?

This person started eating ONE Big Mac for lunch every day instead of two.

Is that ideal? Of course not.

Is it a start? Sure is.

Now, I’m afraid I do not know what happened to this person. I hope they used this as a starting point and went on to make similar changes and shed a whole lot more weight.

But the moral of the story is simple: We’re making things a whole lot harder than they need to be.

Small changes add up to BIG results. They always have and they always will.

Does it solve all our problems? No.

But does it solve a lot? Yeah, it really does.

So what do you do now? I suggest you read this awesome special report on Six of the Most Powerful Antioxidants to help you better undertand the role nutrition plays in the anti-aging process.

Yours in health,

Jim Labadie

Co-founder, Prograde Nutrition

PS - Just click here to discover some simple, but powerful, nutrients that may have confused you in the past.

Americans are swallowing 22 teaspoons of sugar each day according to the American Heart Association.

Most women should be getting no more than 6 teaspoons a day of added sugar which is the sweeteners and syrups that are added to processed foods and foods made at home that call for extra sugar.

The recommended limit for men is 9 teaspoons. 

The guidelines do not apply to naturally occurring sugars like those found in fruit, vegetables or dairy products. 

Most of the added sugars actually come from candies, soft drinks and processed foods.

Males age 14-18 are consuming around 34 teaspoons of sugar each and every day. 

Rachel Johnson a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont in Burlington says:  "Take a good, hard look at your diet".  "Figure out where the sources of added sugars are and think about how to cut back on that."

Now don’t get me wrong sugar does play a role in enhancing the taste of food and in some cases is necessary.  What you need to watch for though is excessive sugar or products that are primarily sugar with very little fiber or protein.

We all know added sugar leads to weight gain and by just cutting out 1 12oz soft drink or about 140 calories a day can save you over 50,000 calories in a one year time frame. 

So instead of gaining the average 10 pounds a year you could be losing 4-5 pounds in a year. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has an online database for the added sugars in some foods.

USDA Database for the Added Sugars Content of Selected Foods

Yours in good health,

Jayson Hunter RD, CSCS

A high protein diet as part of your healthy eating guidelines enhances fat loss according to researchers at Skidmore College. 

They found that when subjects followed a high-protein diet 40% or more of total daily calories from protein for eight weeks they lost significantly more bodyfat than those following a low-fat/high carb diet. 

Particularly they lose more in their abdominal fat region.

One reason for this was eating more protein boosts levels of peptide YY, a hormone that is produced by gut cells that travel to the brain to decrease hunger and increase satiety. 

Make sure you if you want to accelerate your weight loss efforts to include high quality protein meals into your healthy eating guidelines.

Yours in good health,

Jayson Hunter RD, CSCS
 

Another benefit to consuming Omega 3 fatty acids and high quality fish oil such as krill oil.

A new study presented in Clinical Cancer Research, shows diets high in omega 3 EPA and DHA may decrease the risk of prostate cancer.  This link appears to be most apparent in those individuals with a genetic link to developing the prostate disease.

In the study researchers looked at 466 men with aggressive prostate cancer and 478 healthy men and they assessed their eating habits using a food frequency  questionnaire.   The men were also screened for a variant of a gene known as COX-2, which helps your body regulate and control inflammation in the body.  

There is a certain variant of this gene is known to increase the risk of developing prostate cancer.

The study shows that those men who ate dark fatty fish one to three times per month had a 36 percent lower risk of prostate cancer as compared to those who had zero dark fish consumption.  

Those that ate dark fish at least once a week had a 57 percent decrease in risk.  

On the contrary those who consumed little to no omega-3 EPA/DHA and who also carried the specific COX-2 variant were five times more likely to develop advanced prostate cancer.  

However, this association was essentially reversed with increasing consumption of omega-3 EPA/DHA.  

Your take home point:  Consume dark fish such as salmon ideally 1x a week and supplement with a high quality krill oil supplement to ensure you do everything you can to decrease your risk of prostate cancer.

Yours in good health,

Jayson Hunter RD, CSCS