Move like a warrior…. at Primal Fitness!

Last time I wrote about my exercise shenanigans at Bronte beach- sprints. Very rewarding and great over summer months first thing in the morning. Now that the weather is cooling down I’ve been trying out something new over the past month..…I’ve been training a couple times a week at Primal Fitness on New South Head Road Double Bay.

I never thought of myself as a gym person but this is not your typical gym. No cardio machines or treadmills. Instead we have interval and strength training. Short intense bursts of anaerobic exercise interspersed with rests to get the heart rate back to resting (which mimics the movements of our hunter gatherer ancestors when sprinting full tilt to escape from or hunt down an animal). This activity has been shown to burn fat and build muscle…..very quickly. Since I’ve started I’ve put on 2 kg of muscle mass with 19% body fat. I love the variety of movements (boxing, burpies, star jumps, sprints, pushing, pulling, crawling, throwing, catching etc etc).  The super friendly staff make my sessions fun (even when I’m muttering expletives at the thought of pushing the snow plough the entire length of the gym for the 10^th time…. ). I have a $100 gift voucher to give away to anyone reading this blog who would like to try this gym out. First in first served. For more information check out Primal Fitness  (they are in the process of changing their name from Premium Health Studio to Primal Fitness to better reflect their ethos).

How to get kids to eat nourishing food- don't give them a choice!!

I’m constantly asked by mothers of “fussy” or “picky” eaters how to get their children to eat a broader range of foods. My advice-  offer up the food you want them to eat over and over again and they will eventually eat it, enjoy it and love it! I don't subscribe to the view "it's better to give them something else even if it’s less nourishing (eg bread, pasta, crackers, muffins, sweets etc) than see them eat nothing at all".  This is teaching them that if they don't eat what's served their parents will cave and give them something else. My second child Michaela didn’t start out with the hearty appetite of broad-spectrum wholefoods she has today. It took years (literally) of offering her eggs morning after morning before she eventually got the idea that eggs for breakfast are not negotiable and in fact they are not only nutritious but bloody delicious. Now she asks for them.  Their choice is simply eat what’s offered or don’t eat at all. Mummy’s not making different meals for different people. We all eat the same thing at each meal. And if you don’t want to eat it, that’s fine but there’s nothing else – and certainly no dessert. When faced with this choice, a bacon and egg brekky starts looking mighty fine when compared with starvation. In most cases I have found from my friends/clients that kids relish the migration to a nutrient-dense diet because their bodies are thirsty for the nutrients that a wholefoods diet offers and because the food is so mouth-wateringly palatable (….think butter, bacon, eggs, lamb chops, spare ribs, meat and veggie casseroles, rich broths, cream, coconut oil, creamy egg yolks, cavier, wild fish, well ripened fruit, sea salt etc)…this is the food that we are biologically designed to eat. Our genes literally expect the nutrients from this food so our taste buds are alive to accepting it. The problem in my house…..when to stop the kids from overeating???

Another avenue that often works is to get the kids involved in the cooking process. There is something rewarding about eating the fruits of ones labour. Make them feel proud that they have contributed to the meal.  I have a saying in my kitchen "whoever helps with the meal gets first serve".

In the press….not all studies are the same!

The shortcomings of the current food pyramid and the benefits of a (once universal) nutrient-dense ancestral diet are slowly bleeding into the mainstream. We are seeing more and more articles and books on the dangers of sugar and trans fats and more recipe books on wholefoods or paleo diets gracing the shelves of bookstores. But for every celebratory step forward there seems to be a sobering backward step. Take for example, the “study” demonizing red met conducted by Harvard University that made the press recently. The blogosphere went crazy that week.  I think Robb Wolf summed it up so eloquently when he said “This study SUCKS. It was a waste of time and money, the study design is atrocious and it elucidates NOTHING that has not been (poorly) investigated previously.” My initial reaction to the article in the SMH was “oh the outcomes of the study would be different if they used grass-fed meat as opposed to industrial feedlot meat.” But as Robb Wolf pointed out, to even make such a statement is giving the study far more credit than is due. If they did the same study and used grass-fed meat, the results would mean little as the data collection and basic study design was so fundamentally flawed.

What this shows us is that in the same way that we need to always consider the underlying source and processing of the foods we eat (not all meat is the same, not all fat is the same, etc etc), we need to consider the underlying robustness of any given study especially those that hit the mainstream media before we start parroting the results or altering our eating habits. Don’t believe everything you read or hear (or in my case, don’t even comment) until you dig a little deeper……

As a corollary to the red meat study conducted by Harvard University I refer to above (and to balance things up somewhat) I will leave you to ponder a scientifically robust study reported in January 2010 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that showed that intake of saturated fat was NOT associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease. This was a 5–23 year follow-up of 347,747 subjects. It is strangely uncanny that THIS scientifically robust study didn’t hit the mainstream papers don’t you think!?! Is it maybe because the results are a little inconvenient for the Australian dietetics association, the Australian Heart Foundation and the vegetable oil industry??

My favourote quote of the month came from a spokeswomen of the Australian Heart Foundation who, in a bid to defend sugar, said “"If we were to look only at sugars in a food, it would mean foods like breakfast cereals, yoghurts and even fresh, canned and dried fruit would appear to be poor choices as they can be higher in sugars than other foods despite providing vital nutrients for good health."

When is the penny going to drop?!? That’s the point love: boxed breakfast cereals, commercial yogurts and fruits (esp dried fruits) are exceptionally high in sugars and are in fact NOT the best foods to eat for robust health and longevity. They are not in the same ballpark as pastured meats, bone broth, organ meats, pastured eggs, lacto-fermented foods and fresh vegetables.  To read the full article click here.