As a fitness coach who has spent years counseling with clients struggling with weight problems and food addictions I’ve always tried to maintain a measure of empathy. We turn on the TV and see celebrity trainers yelling and screaming at their clients in attempts to change behavior in some twisted way.

Sure it makes for good TV but anyone who has spent some time in the trenches will tell you this is poor coaching. Trying to humiliate or use “tough love� tactics to change diet and lifestyle habits certainly doesn’t empower the individual in a positive way.

Being bold with conveying the consequences of a person’s actions if they don’t change is something altogether different. The role of a coach is to help uncover the issues that are keeping a person stuck in an unfit and unhealthy body. Often times these issues transcend far beyond a willful desire to overeat and avoid exercise.

At the core you’ll find emotional pain and complexities with behavior and actions. That’s a subject for another day but in this post I want to discuss the connection between food addiction and obesity.

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Attention all adults taking a statin drug to lower cholesterol levels as prescribed by your doctor. After piles of evidence and research have been compiled on the side-effects of long-term use of these drugs, the FDA is finally acknowledging the issues and will be now requiring the use of new warning labels.

Let me be the first to say if you are taking a statin drug don’t run out and stop taking your meds altogether. You will however want to educate yourself on the long-term risks of taking these drugs and begin exploring how you could possibly eliminate the need to take them.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance to doing your own research and accepting personal responsibility for your health. I see far too many people just blindly accepting the recommendations of their physician without asking any questions.

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I heard a commercial over the weekend that delivered all kind of promise for middle aged women who’ve been unsuccessful with weight loss. Of course this caught my attention because weight loss and body transformation for middle age men and women is my area of expertise. I decided to do a little research into this product called Amberen to see what’s behind the curtain.

Let me preface this discussion by making sure I’m clear that this is NOT a review of Amberen and how it relates to menopause symptoms. I’m going to be digging into the weight loss claims as that’s what the commercial was promoting.

Does Amberen help alleviate menopause symptoms? Your guess is as good as mine. During my research I found quite a few arguments on both sides. Some users report a distinct improvement in symptoms, while others cite the product did nothing for them.

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If you’ve followed my fat loss coaching for any length of time you’ve undoubtedly heard me discuss the impacts of low insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance.

I get quite a few questions regarding this subject and figured it would be a good time to expand on it. Most of the questions revolve around, “How do I know if I’m insulin resistant?” While there’s some pretty good indicators to see if you’re likely to have blood sugar and insulin imbalances, there’s also some inexpensive and simple tests you can have done.

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Think you can run on 5 hours of sleep or less at night and get through the day with coffee or other caffeine products? You may be able to get away with it for a while, but make no mistakes it’s taking a tool on your body.

I have to chuckle when people give me the tough guy lingo of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.� My response is you’re heading there sooner if that’s what you really want. The human body needs rest and recovery for regeneration and when insufficient sleep occurs over a prolonged period of time, hormonal balances get completely out of whack.

Recent research has shown that individuals who habitually sleep six or fewer hours a night are at an increased risk of developing diabetes and coronary heart disease. At the crux of this is the association of sleep deprivation and insulin resistance. This seems to be the common denominator and precursor leading to inflammation in the body.

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As someone who’s poured through research and worked with hundreds of weight loss clients over the years, I can tell you insulin resistance and poor insulin sensitivity in general is at the root of weight problems. Far too often all the attention is placed on calories and not the hormonal balances within the body that regulate fat burning and fat storage.

Granted calories do play a role, but if losing weight was as simple as eating less and exercising more, weight problems could be solved with 1000 calorie diets of donuts and daily cardio sessions. I know this sounds ridiculous but a lot of people have this faulty belief that calories are the only thing that matters.

If you’ve read any of my writings you probably know I’m big on addressing weight loss from an “inside-out” approach. Heal the body with supportive nutrition and exercise as a way to put things back in balance.

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I stumbled upon an article yesterday that I want to share with everyone. It was written by Dr. Dwight Lundell, a heart surgeon with 25 years of experience performing over 5,000 open-heart surgeries.

What he revealed is sure to generate negative feedback to say the least from the mainstream medical community.

But I’ve got to commend the man for speaking out on what he believes to be a major mistake. What mistake is that? It’s the way the medical community has embraced the position that heart disease is simply the result of elevated blood cholesterol  levels. For the past two decades the only real accepted therapy has been prescribing medication to lower cholesterol along with transitioning to a diet that is low in fats.

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I received this question from one of our corporate fitness clients last week and figured I’d answer in a blog post. The concern was whether or not hormone replacement therapies with things like estradiol and progesterone might impact food and nutrient absorption.

The direct answer is no but the subject warrants a little more in-depth discussion. For starters let’s look at the basics. Food and nutrient absorption is predicated on gastrointestinal system balances.

An individual’s ability or lack thereof to assimilate nutrients will be primarily determined by the health and function of the digestive system, including the liver.

There are several factors which will disrupt the function and balance of the digestive system. We’ll cover the most common causes of imbalances in this article for the sake of brevity.

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Although all exercise is beneficial for improving your health, is there one form of exercise that trumps all others in helping to stabilize blood sugar levels and improve insulin sensitivity?

Based on the latest research, it appears the answer may be yes. In today’s post I want to discuss what the research is showing and share with you my opinion based on personal experience.

Before we dive right in I want to be perfectly clear with a few things up front. When I find a particular methodology with fitness training, nutrition strategy, etc, to provide a positive result and promote it for doing so, it doesn’t mean everything else is worthless or that I’m implying there’s only one solution.

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You may have heard before that excess belly fat is directly related to increased cortisol levels. This is arguably one of the deadliest combinations for the human body because of the connection to increased visceral fat (the fat that surrounds your organs) and high levels of inflammation.

If you have a significant amount of belly fat your chances for developing insulin resistance and type II diabetes nearly doubles.

What you may not be aware of is the reason behind the connection of belly fat and cortisol. The objective of this post is to explain the details behind the connection and provide you with action steps to reverse it.

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