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Changing eating habits without fear of weight gain

Are you tired of living with a rigid and restrictive style of eating? Do your food-related habits affect your relationships? Do you want to stop feeling so anxious, stressed, overwhelmed and conflicted around food-related events and decisions?  Are you wanting to make food choices that help fuel your active lifestyle, help you feel good physically and satisfy you mentally?  Are you ready to break free from food rules and build a healthy relationship with food and your body?  If you said yes to any or all of the following, you may find that there is one thing that is holding you back from feeling controlled by food.....you are worried about gaining weight/body composition changes.  Unfortunately, we live in a world saturated with diet culture. We are conditioned to group food into "good" and "bad" categories and it's almost universally acceptable to fat shame. Even worse, nutrition experts often encourage disordered eating strategies as a way to improve health, l...

Reasons why you are having a "bad body" day.

  In our weight and image-obsessed society, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with food and the body when you are having an "uncomfortable body" day. Our culture is really tough on bodies - we are taught that our current size/shape/weight is a problem and it requires immediate fixing. The human body is amazing. It’s constantly working for you. As you go through life, it’s only natural and normal that your body will change along with you. The body is complex and dynamic. Every day your body is adjusting to its environment and the stress placed on it. Let's look at some of the incredible ways that the body works for  you and why you shouldn't overhaul your diet or exercise regime if you feel or see your body making a small shift in size, shape or weight throughout the day.

Body image and athletics - something needs to change!

Unhealthy weight control/loss practices are a serious and ongoing problem in sport, especially in aesthetic and weight-bearing sports, like running and triathlon. Too often, athletes are pressured by media, coaches and competitors to change body composition in order to boost performance. There's the mentality that you have to be thin to wind. But if losing weight was a guarantee to performance improvements, why don't more athletes excel at sport after they experience some type of weight loss? Many athletes are told (or assume) that they would be more successful in a sport if they lost weight or changed body composition. Regardless of the performance outcome, athletes who are asked or told to lose weight.change body composition are more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as fasted workouts, skipping meals, replacing higher calorie foods for calorie-free/diet foods, fasting/cleansing/detoxing, using weight loss supplements, diuretics or laxatives and/or overexe...

DEXA Body Composition Testing - Review (and results)

Several weeks ago I was contacted via email by someone from a company who asked if I was interested in receiving a complimentary  DEXA Scan  (along with Karel) in return of a review. As you may know, I am not a fan of the scale and I never weigh myself. Considering all that makes up your body, your body weight can’t accurately be told by a number on the bathroom or BMI scale. But this doesn't stop far too many athletes from daily or weekly scale weighing - often feeling like the scale runs or ruins the day. A DEXA Scan is a reliable, gold-standard way to precisely measure body composition (I discussed this in my book Essential Sports Nutrition ). DEXA stands for dual energy x-ray absorptiometry.  More than just a weight, a DEXA Scan tells you what you are made up of - muscle, fat and bone. You can see muscle asymmetry, visceral fat and bone density. For the athlete with excessive body fat, weight loss may improve health and sport performance. However to pressure f...