Nutrition Archives - Fit Informer

Discover Supplements That Benefit Your Specific Needs With Supplement Advisor

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 19:29:37 +0000

Discover supplements that benefit your specific needs with Supplement Advisor

The supplement industry sometimes seems like the wild wild west, where you’re left feeling like there are more questions than answers:

Should I take fish oil? Isn’t it good for reducing inflammation and heart health? What’s better? Pill form or liquid?

Or:

I have recently started the Ketogenic diet. Is it true I should be taking multivitamins and a folic acid supplement because I’m no longer getting folic acid from grains?

Or:

I’m a menstruating woman who doesn’t eat red meat. Should I be taking an iron supplement? And doesn’t Vitamin B12 play a role in red blood cell health, too, helping fend against becoming anemic? Should I take that, too? Do I need a B12 supplement too?

Enter Supplement Advisor’s free assessment test.

Supplement Advisor is a web-based company designed to empower health-conscious people to improve their cognitive function, as well as emotional and physical potential through simple and personalized supplement guidance designed by their advanced AI, ultimately helping you navigate through the wild wild west of the supplement industry easily and quickly.

One way they do this is through their assessment tool, a tool that lets you to either take a full assessment, or select a particular area to see if you might benefit from taking a supplement. The areas include:

Memory
Motivation
Focus
Mood
Energy
Learning
Sleep.

How it works:

Let’s say you’re curious if you might benefit from taking a magnesium supplement to help regulate your blood sugar levels and stop you from having energy crashes in the middle of the day. And if so, what products might be best for you.

Giving you these answers is exactly what Supplement Advisor’s tool is designed to do.

All you do is select energy, hit submit and answer a few questions, such as:

Do you feel fatigued throughout the day?
Do you need an extra boost to get the most mileage out of your day?
Does caffeine give you any nervousness or restlessness?

After answering the questions, the AI engine—which will continue to get smarter and smarter as more people take the assessment and the database grows—quickly analyzes your responses and offers various recommendations in terms of what products might be best for your specific needs.

Sleep

Because fifty to seventy million people in the United States suffer from some kind of sleep disorder—from having trouble falling asleep, to insomnia to sleep apnea—one of the most common reasons to take a supplement is for sleep.

On top of the natural products, nine million Americans take prescription drugs to help them sleep.Prescription drugs, however, can come with some side effects, including gastrointestinal problems, prolonged drowsiness during the day, daytime memory and cognitive performance challenges or various allergic reactions.

A better option for many is a melatonin supplement.

Why is it better?

Melatonin is a hormone the body produces naturally. It’s responsible for regulating your body’s internal clock by responding to lightness and darkness.

When it gets dark out, melatonin increases in your body and lets you know it’s bedtime by attaching to receptors in the brain that help you relax and feel tired. During the day, on the other hand, your body makes dopamine, which signals you to release less melatonin, thus helping keep you awake.

When you select sleep on Supplement Advisor’s assessment tool, it once again, puts you through a series of questions, including:

Does stress cause you mild sleepiness?
Does it take a long time for you to fall asleep?
How difficult is it for you to achieve a sufficiently restful sleep routine?
Do you have trouble falling into a deep sleep?
Do you experience restless sleep?
Lucid dreaming in the REM stage has shown to be helpful with reducing stress and dealing with trauma. Would you be interested in lucid dreaming more often?

From there, you’re given a list of options of various products that might help your particular sleep concern or deficiency.

Giving it a try

As a writer, my focus needs to be one point to handle long days staring at a computer. I tend to be really focused and motivated in the morning, but fade after 2 p.m. before I have completed all my work for the day.

I decided to give the tool a try to see if there was something I could take to improve my focus.

The tool asked me:

Do you experience attention disruption when your brain is stressed and overworked?
How easy is it to attend to one task or stimuli while ignoring distraction?
Are you able to maintain your attention on one task for a long time?
Are you able to attend to more than one task simultaneously?
Are you able to shift attention from one task to another without losing focus?
Do you feel able to focus intently enough to create goals and monitor your progress?

I answered no to the first question, as usually being stressed out and overworked lights a fire under my bum. Similarly, I find it easy to ignore distractions and can remain focused on one task for a long time, so I also answered no on the second and third questions, as well. The final question was also a no.

Where I struggle is with focusing on more than one task at a time and definitely with shifting attention from one task to another without losing focus, hence I answered yes on the fourth and fifth questions.

What the tool recommended as the top product: A probiotic-fermented Vitamin B complex for energy, brain and mood support (it also recommended various other Vitamin B complex options).

(Funny enough, my naturopath also recommended I take a B Vitamin supplement. I’ll call that a win).

I decided to take it a step further and also selected the motivation assessment, as sometimes it’s not that I lose focus so much as I lose motivation in the final couple hours of my work day. I was then asked:

Do you feel like you want to crawl in bed and watch Netflix all day?
Is your sleep and nutrition regular and adequate?
Are you a stressful person? If so, does it influence your decisions?
Is your blood sugar high?

Supplement Advisor’s recommendation: Mane Brain’s brain-boosting power, a supplement is designed to help you feel more energized, alert, focused, and less forgetful.

Take the assessment now.

Binding 13: Epic, emotional and addictive romance from the TikTok phenomenon (The Boys of Tommen)

(47518184)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Keeping 13: Epic, emotional and addictive romance from the TikTok phenomenon (The Boys of Tommen)

(47517808)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Menopause and ADHD: How to navigate hormone flux and neurodivergence (Vermilion Empowered)

HKD 157.91 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Bimbo: THE INSTANT #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, How to Ditch the Labels that Hold Women Back and Reclaim Your Confidence

(475107)

HKD 116.27 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Picking Daisies on Sundays: The hopelessly romantic romcom readers everywhere are falling head over heels for

(42513665)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

How to Raise a Gentle Man: A guide for parents and carers who want to raise kind, emotionally intelligent and respectful boys

HKD 147.45 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Saving 6: Epic, emotional and addictive romance from the TikTok phenomenon (The Boys of Tommen)

(46545264)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband’s Secret Texts to My Sister: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 5)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret My Husband Sent Another Woman: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 1)

(32516)

HKD 23.57 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love

(4658658)

HKD 43.55 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Discover Supplements That Benefit Your Specific Needs With Supplement Advisor appeared first on Fit Informer.

Food Intolerances: Should I Get Tested?

admin — Fri, 01 May 2020 22:01:43 +0000

Food has a social component that is integral to every culture and society on our planet. However, food can be foe as well as friend, food intolerances can negatively impact our quality of life and in the case of food allergies they can even be lethal. If we ask Google, from headaches to acne nearly every single ailment can be attributed to a food or diet and usually the cure is also attributed to a different food or diet.

The “free from” industry is booming, when I first moved to the city I currently live in if I wanted gluten free products I would have had to go to a pharmacy and, with luck, they would be in the corner collecting dust along with those weird herbal sweets your grandmother used to love. Fast forward two years and now entire sections of supermarkets are dedicated to gluten and lactose free products. This is obviously a great thing, especially for people with genuine diagnosed conditions such as celiac disease. The increased awareness of food related problems has led many of us to question “is this headache/lack of energy/lack of sleep caused by a food intolerance?”

There are plenty of people who will tell you the answer is yes and their advice usually comes with a large price tag. This article will explain to you why the IgG antibody food intolerance test is a waste of both time and money.

I want to make it very clear that although I will be mentioning food allergies this article is not about whether you should or shouldn’t test for a suspected food allergy. If you suspect that you may have a food allergy then go to your physician, and by that I mean a real doctor that works in a clinic or a hospital, not some charlatan on the internet with MD after their name. What I will be discussing in this article is the food intolerance blood tests that are advertised on the internet and in some pharmacies.

What Is the Test?

The test is pretty straight forward—you order a testing kit online from one of the labs offering the test. Once it arrives you take a blood sample and then send that blood sample back to the lab. The lab will test your blood for IgG antibodies that are specific to a wide range of foods, usually in the range of 200 different foods. What I mean by specific is that, for example if when they test your blood against a sample of chicken protein some of the IgG antibodies bind to that protein they are “specific” to that protein or food.

Once the lab has tested all the foods they will return a report to you with the results. Different labs may do it differently but the ones I have seen use a traffic light system. Red for foods with high amounts of IgG binding which should be avoided. Yellow for foods that are “borderline” and should only be eaten in moderation. Finally, green for foods that have little or no IgG which means you can eat them to your heart’s content.

So, what’s the problem?

It all sounds so simple, do the test and then avoid the red foods. However, there are two pretty large problems with this method of food intolerance testing. The first is related to the testing procedure, and the second is with the actual function of the IgG antibody.

True Food Intolerances

We’ll start with the method and we’ll assume that the IgG antibody is involved with food intolerances (that will be tackled in the next section). When I did my allergy certificate at university we were repeatedly told that the most important part of an allergy diagnosis was the patient history. Without a detailed patient history, the blood test results are at best unhelpful. The sole presence of antibodies is not sufficient enough to give a diagnosis, there has to be a history of symptoms in order to be certain that you are indeed allergic (or in this case intolerant) to a particular food.

Blood test results without patient history become unhelpful. As I said before both symptoms and the presence of antibodies are needed for a diagnosis. Just the presence of antibodies (with the absence of symptoms) to a particular food protein is known as sensitisation.¹

When it comes to food allergies, if a person is sensitised to a food but does not have any allergic symptoms then the last thing they should do is stop eating that particular food. By ceasing to eat the food they are sensitized to could actually push the immune system away from tolerance towards allergy and the next time they encounter that food they could have a reaction.² This is why in immunotherapy it is vitally important that the patient continues to eat the food they were allergic to even if (as is often the case) they do not like it. Coming back to food intolerance, just receiving a report of hundreds of foods, some of which you now have been told you cannot eat, is likely to lead to you following an unnecessarily restrictive diet resulting in increased risk of nutrient deficiencies and even worse, less gains in the gym.

The IgG Antibody

Before we get too in depth about antibodies I think it’s important to clarify what is allergy and what is intolerance because these words are often used interchangeably and causes confusion. Both allergy and intolerances are known as hypersensitivities which means they are reactions against something that a “normal” person would not react to. An allergy is a hypersensitive reaction that is driven by the immune system whereas an intolerance does not involve the immune system.³

A good comparison would be lactose intolerance and a true milk allergy. A person who is lactose intolerant does not produce any or insufficient amounts of the enzyme lactase which helps us digest the sugar lactose, so when they consume milk they cannot break down lactose and this causes digestive issues, these issues are not caused by the immune system. They can however consume lactose free milk. In the case of a milk allergic individual, their immune system has created antibodies against milk proteins so when they consume milk their immune system attacks it and the individual has the classic allergy symptoms, itchy rash, swelling, and difficulty breathing. A milk allergic individual could not consume lactose free milk because it still contains the milk proteins, however they could consume a hydrolysed or amino acid formula with lactose.

Moving on to antibodies, these are made by the B-cells of our adaptive immune system. Our immune system is made up of two parts, the innate and the adaptive. The innate is pretty basic in that it attacks anything that is not “us.” On the plus side it is very quick to respond. The adaptive immune system is a bit slower to respond but it has a “memory” so to speak, so the next time it encounters anything nasty it usually deals with it before we even notice we’re sick.

One of the chief weapons in the arsenal of the adaptive immune system is the antibody (or immunoglobulin), the B-cells make several different types of antibody each with a different role in the immune system. The most famous antibody is probably IgE. The original role of IgE was to deal with parasitic infections but it is more widely known as the antibody behind allergic reactions.⁴

When the B-cell makes an antibody they are “specific” to a particular protein (in the case of food allergy a food protein), when the antibody next encounters that protein they attach to it and drive an immune response. In the case of IgE they sit on top of certain immune cells (mast cells), and when they encounter the specific protein or antigen they bind to it and cause these cells to release histamine. It is this histamine that causes your typical allergic reactions and also why people with allergies usually carry antihistamines with them.

Moving on to the IgG antibody, there are actually four subclasses of IgG antibody, IgG1, IgG2 etc. each with a slightly different function. All the IgG subclasses are very good at enhancing a process called phagocytosis which involves certain cells of the immune system (macrophages) engulfing bacteria and destroying them. IgG1 for example is very good at a process known as ADCC (Antibody-Dependent Cell-mediated Cytotoxicity), here the IgG1 will attach to a target cell and immune cells will recognise that attachment as a signal that that particular cell needs to be destroyed.⁴

IgG Food Interolence Science

Proponents of the IgG food intolerance tests will point to the antibody’s ability to activate several cells of the immune system as “evidence” that the antibody can and does mediate non-allergic reactions to foods. However, when we examine the role of IgG4 we see that this is not the case. In 2012 researchers from Norway examined the link between IgG, IgG4 and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). IBS is a condition related to food that has many of the symptoms of food intolerances, bloating, and change in bowel habits so there have been attempts to link the condition to IgG antibodies.⁵

In the Norwegian study they compared IgG and IgG4 food specific antibodies of IBS subjects and healthy symptom free subjects. Not only did the researchers find that the IBS group’s IgG and IgG4 antibodies did not match to their trigger foods (foods they know exacerbate their symptoms), but there were no differences in levels of IgG and IgG4 between the IBS and control group. What the researchers did find was that the higher levels of the antibodies matched foods that both groups ate regularly, in the case of the IBS group these were their “safe foods” and in the control group merely foods that they ate often.

The researchers concluded that it was unlikely that IgG and IgG4 antibodies played a role in IBS and that the presence of these antibodies merely reflected ones diet.⁶ In other words, the more you eat of something the more IgG specific to that food you have. In recent years it has become apparent that IgG, and in particular IgG4, is not just a reflection of a diet but a marker of tolerance and is protective against allergic reactions.

For non-allergic people we make IgG4 antibodies (as opposed to IgE) against proteins to mark them as “safe” and prevent any chance of an allergic reaction. This has been labeled an IgG4/IgE ratio. Non-allergic bee keepers have been shown to have an IgG4/IgE ratio 1000 times higher than individuals who are allergic to bee venom.⁷ During immunotherapy, allergic individuals gain tolerance not by reducing their numbers of IgE but by increasing their numbers of IgG1 and in particular IgG4. The IgG4 antibodies compete with the IgE antibodies and prevent them attaching to the mast cells and so prevent them from causing reactions.⁸

Proceed with Caution

When it comes to food proteins, the IgG antibody and in particular the IgG4 subclass appear to have anti-inflammatory effects that prevent allergic (and intolerance) reactions in both allergic and non-allergic individuals. To paraphrase EAACI (the European Academy of Allergy) the testing of IgG for food intolerances is “irrelevant” and should not be performed.⁹ The companies that continue to promote the IgG blood tests either do not fully understand the function of the IgG antibody or worse, they do and are continuing to sell their product anyway. I really hope it isn’t the latter.

References

Chestnut Beetroot Soup

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 20:27:32 +0000

Earthy and vibrant, this creamy soup gets its texture from pureéing the softened chestnuts and vegetables together. This technique results in a perfectly thick spoonable delight that’s teaming with a rounded assortment of nutrients perfect for athletes. In this roundup of nutrition, beets are a superstar for athletes. Compounds found in beets increase the body’s ability to use oxygen and increase the time it takes to feel exhausted. Consuming chestnuts increases energy levels as they provide carbohydrates for both short and long-term energy.

Both beets and chestnuts are available in many stores already peeled and cooked making this soup much easier and faster to make. If you can’t find them in store, you can cook them yourself in advance and then toss them into the soup.

This soup is also fun experiment with color for kids to get them involved with cooking and healthy eating. As written, the recipe is earth toned with a hint of purple. Using golden beets will result in a yellow hue, and if you really want to make this vibrantly magenta, use red beets and change the mushrooms to a white mushroom so the redness doesn’t get muted with the brown tones of the shitake. You can also use a white balsamic or white wine vinegar to allow the natural bold beet color in either red or golden to really shine through.

Chestnut Beetroot Soup

Calories 404, Protein 7g, Total Carbs 54g, Fat 19g

Prep time: 15 min

Cook time: 20 min

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 leek, white part only, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3.5 oz Shitake mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
8 oz peeled and steamed chestnuts
8 oz beets of any kind (about 2 whole beets), peeled and cooked
3 cups low sodium bone broth or vegetable broth
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation Instructions:

In a saucepot, heat the olive oil and add the leek, garlic, and mushrooms. Cook 3-4 minutes until the leek begins to soften.
Add the chestnuts, beets, broth, and thyme. Simmer 20 minutes.
Pureé the entire soup with an immersion stick blender or let cool slightly and gently pour into a blender and pureé.

The Wedding People: The hilarious and moving million-copy bestseller

(425168536)

HKD 57.92 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret My Husband Sent Another Woman: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 1)

(32516)

HKD 23.57 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Dogs, Boys and Other Things I've Cried About

HKD 162.67 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Trip She Booked: A Marriage In Crisis Romance (Choosing Herself Book 3)

(38531)

HKD 23.57 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband Betrayed Me at the Altar for My Best Friend: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 3)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: The Sunday Times Bestseller

(465270381)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

No More Nappies: With helpful tips for potty training (Campbell Big Steps, 2)

(46510002)

HKD 52.21 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband’s Secret Texts to Our Wedding Planner: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 10)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Diagnosis He Kept: Later in Life Marriage in Crisis Romance (Marriage In Crisis Series)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

(45511816)

HKD 105.59 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Chestnut Beetroot Soup appeared first on Fit Informer.

Anti-Diet Common Sense: The Banana is Not Making You Fat

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 08:16:45 +0000

Every year I watch the masses embrace their new diets and workout plans in January only to frustratingly witness their failure long before summer. If asked, I do my best to interject experience and point people to the only sustainable approach I’ve ever seen work over any significant period of time.

My attempts, more often than not, are fruitless, clouded behind the wall of modern diet myths: “You eat bananas? I thought they were an unhealthy fruit.” “I’d like to eat oatmeal, but they have too many carbs.” Or, “Yeah I don’t eat almonds or nuts because they have so many calories.”

Nutrition, in particular, is a minefield of bad advice and new diet adherents tend to be as dogmatic about their chosen path as any religious fundamentalist. But there is rarely a new nutrition program. Rather, we see fad diets rebranding the same old overly-simplified approaches.

Ketogenic diets are all the rage, but Dr. Atkins published his first book in 1972. Counting your macros and the Weight Watchers point system (which brilliantly makes money on the concept of dividing by 100 to track smaller numbers) are new versions of that oldest and most distressing diet delusion: Just count calories.

The Misadventures of Calorie Counting

The foundation of the counting calories approach is the belief that weight gain is completely dependent on your energy balance. That is, if you eat more calories than you burn, you’ll gain weight and if you eat less, you will lose weight. In its broadest, most generalized application, this approach is probably marginally true, but these oversimplifications create terrible diet programs and fuel the larger issues that keep most people in Western cultures fat, sick, and hanging by a thread.

There is a large vested interest that wants you to believe balancing calories is all that matters. Coca-Cola, Cargill, Kellogg, Frito-Lay, Nabisco, Nestle, General Mills, and our entire massive convenience and junk food industry want you to believe calories are the only issue.

Their narrative is that you should eat and drink their goodies, just move or eat them while cutting out that other stuff you don’t find quite as delicious. If you really want to optimize your calories or get to eat more, they’ve got a lineup of low-calorie products just for you.

Fat, being nine calories per gram, is removed and replaced by that tasty, cheap sugar that only rings in at four calories per gram. Better yet, sodas have zero calorie options that use artificial sweeteners and fairy tears to bring you that great taste at no caloric cost.

This entire strategy is, of course, founded upon the idea that physique is all that matters, not health. The reality is, for many reasons, counting calories is not a good approach for physique or health:

Nutrient Deficiency: First of all, despite their high-calorie load and unfortunate name, fats are not bad. In fact, it is essential to eat all three macronutrients: fats, carbohydrates, and protein. You also need all the micronutrients—those vitamins and minerals most available in and transported through real whole foods. The point is to get all these from quality sources. Your cereal may be “fortified” but it can never substitute for a good old fashioned spinach and bell pepper omelet, cooked in coconut oil and served with avocado slices, a few berries, and melon. But how many calories is that and why do I care about nutrients if I just want to look good? Patience, Grasshopper.
Poor Food Choices: Most people intent on counting calories will spend their grocery trips avoiding the less processed whole foods on the periphery of the store that they should be eating because these don’t come with packages that have handy calorie breakdowns. Thus, they opt for inferior processed products. There is often an inverse relationship between foods with nutrition labels and their nutrition.
Unsustainable: Counting calories is no way to live. We are not meant to come to each meal adding numbers, checking apps, and making bargains with ourselves about what we will eat now and skip later. Certainly, there are times early in a person’s nutritional education where they will need to be more conscious and critical about meals in order to internalize a healthier eating framework. Writing down what you eat each day for a week usually leaves people shocked by the frequency of their daily concessions. Furthermore, healthy people will often take steps to check menus or plan ahead on those days that are out of the ordinary. But counting calories every day is an insane, neurotic lifestyle that only the extremely anxious could even try to maintain for any significant period of time. You can’t white knuckle nutrition.
Metabolism Crushing: Your metabolism is this unbelievably important x-factor percolating behind the scenes of all eating. All your body’s natural functions have an energy cost. You burn a lot of calories each day just going through the arduous process of being alive. The number of calories burned each day without moving is referred to as a basal metabolic rate. Calorie-counters tend to worship this number while constantly pissing on it.

Get to Know Your Metabolism

More muscular people will have a higher basal metabolic rate because muscle is very calorie expensive to maintain. Movement, also, triggers the body to metabolize a bit more. Eating actually spurs the metabolism to go to work processing food, thus burning calories while never as many as are consumed.

When calories are restricted the metabolism slows down. The body is conserving energy. Therefore, you may be eating less, but the body has down-regulated as well. You are burning less. Restricting calories is not always a bad thing. Losing weight, after all, will necessitate a transition towards a slightly lower basal metabolic rate. But calorie restriction tends to be disastrous as it is typically applied in the calorie-counting realm.

Calorie-counters and their calorie-restricting, “I’m just hardly going to eat for a few weeks,” brethren are chronic yo-yoers. The process follows a variation of the following example:

Tony has weighed about 230 pounds for a couple of years. His basal metabolic rate is 2,500 calories per day. Based on his movement norms he averages about 3,000 calories burned per day.

In an effort to lose weight he restricts his calorie consumption to 2,000 per day and adds three days a week on the stair-stepper where he burns an extra 500 calories. That is a weekly calorie deficit of 8,500 calories. Conventional calorie counting wisdom suggests that 3,500 calories make a pound, therefore he should lose two and a half pounds per week.

Yet, in the first three weeks, he only loses five pounds, a mixture of both muscle and fat. By week four Tony is starting to skip workouts and succumb to the cookies and other baked goods always populating the office. Tired and convinced that this “healthy eating” stuff is impossible, he quits the entire diet experiment and resumes his old patterns.

Yet his basal metabolic rate has slowed to 2,000 calories per day. Within two months he’s gained the five pounds back plus another five, despite eating in the same manner as when he maintained weight for years. He is now 235 pounds and slightly less muscular.

Calorie-counting and calorie restriction are not fun. They certainly aren’t where I’d suggest people start on their nutritional journey. When operating from deprivation beginners will always eventually quit, falling back to old patterns. Play the long game. Any change should be sustainable for a lifetime.

Hormones: Not Just a Teenager Thing

There is an obvious truth sabotaging the entire calorie-counting paradigm: you have no idea how many calories you actually need to burn. There are a billion websites that will calculate the basal metabolic rate for you using your height, weight, and age, but these are all shoddy, variable guesses. There is just too much going on in your body, much of which fluctuates over time. I’ll illustrate this with a few more examples:

Sandy (girl) and Sonny (boy) are 15-year-old twins. They eat the same foods and both get most of their activity playing soccer for their respective high-school teams. Both have begun eating more in the past year, not because they were told to eat more calories, but because they feel hungrier. Both are gaining weight. Most of Sandy’s weight is fat and it is going to very specific areas. Most of Sonny’s weight gain is muscle. Same foods. Same activities. Different results. Odd?

No, this is characteristic of puberty. Sandy and Sonny’s bodies are working with very different hormones intent to create very different physiological developments. Take another example:

Mike and John are 24-year-old twin roommates and best friends. They eat together almost every meal and spend the majority of their free time together. Mike begins lifting weights three days per week. John uses this time to walk his dog. They both burn about 250 calories in this hour period.

After a year of these patterns, Mike has gained ten pounds and John has gained seven, but Mike’s is all muscle where John’s is all fat. John decides to start coming to the gym with Mike. However, convinced he needs to cut fat, he goes to the treadmill while Mike continues to lift weights.

Mike is maxing and John is jogging. After six months Mike has not gained any more weight, but he’s maintained the muscle he built. John has only lost two pounds—one of muscle and one of fat. They both quit going to the gym. Six months later, Mike has lost five pounds (mostly muscle) and John has gained four. Odd?

No, this is characteristic of the hormonal response to activity. Despite eating the same foods and burning the same amount of calories, Mike gained muscle because heavy resistance training triggered a very different hormonal response.

His body, therefore, used food differently. When John began training, his physique changed little because he ate the same and running at low intensity elicits little hormonal response. Six months after they had both quit, Mike loses weight because half the muscle he gained withers and, yet having gained ten pounds of muscle, his body metabolizes more in a day.

John simply stopped burning calories. After this two-year process, Mike is five pounds heavier, but it is mostly lean muscle. John is up nine pounds, mostly fat. Take home point: Training changes your hormones. It changes how you use the food you eat.

Tyler and Tyson are thirty-year-old best friends. They’re both six feet tall and 200 pounds. For the new year, they decide to clean up their eating by counting calories. They both begin getting 2,000 calories a day.

All of Tyler’s food is packaged, processed, and easily added. Tyson eats only fruits, vegetables, meat, beans, and whole grains. He’s done a lot of measuring early on.

After six months Tyler has lost 10 pounds. He is tired, moody, and frequently sick. Tyson has lost 18 pounds. He feels better than he ever has. He sits less, walks taller and more vigorously, and is even planning on joining a morning running group.

Clearly many factors may account for the difference. Tyson may have better genetics. He may have a better work environment, get more sunshine, and have a shorter commute home. Yet, anecdotally, this gulf in experience typifies the differences between everyone I know who chooses to restrict calories with package foods (Tylers) versus those who eat natural whole foods (Tyson). People who are not nutrient deficient utilize food more efficiently and feel better. They naturally move more and engage in more constructive activities.

Hormones decide what is done with foods. Some foods are much better utilized by the body and promote more fluid hormonal reactions and more physical vitality. Additionally, activity, sleep, stress, environment, genetics, and probably more than I’m forgetting will affect your hormones and how the body uses food.

The delusion that you can somehow know how many calories you burned in a day would require you to know your exact resting metabolism (which is always in flux), to know exactly how many calories were expended (did I have more energy and walk more enthusiastically throughout the day?), and a host of other factors that tend to distract from the behaviors that drive long-term health and improved physique.

Google, What Is the Answer?

I shouldn’t count calories. Got it. So, all those keto people have it right?

Not exactly.

While ketosis may be very attractive for an ultra-endurance athlete and there is intriguing evidence surrounding long fasts and the purging of cancer cells, I’d confidently recommend most people avoid the ketogenic diet. People flock to the idea that by eliminating carbs the body will start using fat for energy.

This will happen, however, since people are eating mostly fat, the energy still mostly comes from food, not the fat stores of the body. Any weight loss is probably the effect of fewer processed foods. Packaged foods are inordinately full of empty carbs like refined sugars, but there are also many great carb-heavy foods (fruits, vegetables, oats) that the keto crowd misses out on. Most importantly, keto is probably unsustainable.

We all have to live in this carb-filled world. A ketogenic diet requires a strong ability to be very counter-cultural with your social and eating behaviors. This is not a common attribute in people adopting diets. The yo-yo issues arise when people fail and, unless they are locked in elite performers or extremely disciplined people who have consistently eaten healthy for years, they do.

So, the Whole 30 diet must be the answer? No. Not necessarily. The Whole 30 diet might be a good framework to teach you how to cook nutritious meals and look at foods differently, but it is usually followed by a swift return to the old bad patterns.

The ketogenic diet and the Whole 30 are full of needless restrictions that serve only to funnel you to buy more of their niche products while pulling you away from good options that you might love. Beans, for example, are a staple of some of the world’s longest living populations like the Okinawans of Japan, the Nicoya of Costa Rica, and the Ikaria of Greece who also eat such taboo items as potatoes and whole grains.

We need to stop looking for quick fixes and start looking at food differently. The keto diet, Weight Watchers, and general calorie-counting all distract from common sense and practicality. Have some pinto beans. Have some oatmeal. Stop counting the almonds. I don’t care that seven make up 1 point. Just eat them. Have a sweet potato and an apple and some peanuts. Sauté and eat up as much broccoli and carrots as your belly can hold. THESE THINGS AREN’T MAKING YOU FAT!

It doesn’t even matter where you fall on the energy balance vs. hormone debate. If you eat only/mostly real foods available in nature, your body will regulate itself. You’ll hardly have the ability to get out of energy balance. There is this innate human mechanism, whereby your body alerts you with a feeling of fullness when it is prudent to stop eating.

Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, oats, barley, brown rice, chicken, and fish are not the problem. If you are looking to make a change in how you eat, you’d be better off eating healthy things when you are hungry, while occasionally allowing treats and a night free from boundaries.

At the root of most eating woes is a lack of understanding, lack of self-mastery, and little understanding about environment design. If understanding is your issue, I recommend my Foundations of a Healthy Lifestyle Course.

If self-mastery and environmental design are the issues, check out my free e-book, The Essential Guide to Self-Mastery.These understandings more than anything else are the route to freedom and flow in life. Avoid the typical diet traps and instead, embrace self-education and self-mastery.

My Husband’s Secret Texts to Our Wedding Planner: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 10)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Dogs, Boys and Other Things I've Cried About

HKD 162.67 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret Texts My Husband Sent My Sister: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 8)

HKD 23.25 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Ring She Removed: Later in Life Marriage in Crisis Romance (Marriage In Crisis Series)

(3853)

HKD 23.78 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Things I Told My Notes App: The Funny And Candid Guide To Living Your Best Life From A Self-Proclaimed Oversharer

HKD 170.60 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret Texts My Husband Sent Another Woman: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 9)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband’s Secret Texts to My Sister: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 5)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Spare Room: Later in Life Marriage in Crisis Romance (Marriage In Crisis Series)

(41524)

HKD 23.68 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Picking Daisies on Sundays: The hopelessly romantic romcom readers everywhere are falling head over heels for

(42513665)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Wife He Let Go: A Marriage Betrayal Romance of Divorce, Healing and Letting Go

(40571)

HKD 25.26 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Anti-Diet Common Sense: The Banana is Not Making You Fat appeared first on Fit Informer.

Distortion: How Poor Early Nutritional Experiences Set us up for Failure

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 20:14:43 +0000

Ace holds up the cupcake ceremoniously. He takes his first bite which, in his little two-year-old mouth, is mostly just blue frosting. His eyes light up and he starts dancing from side-to-side. The table of adoring family erupts in laughter. He continues to rapidly devour the treat, dancing and laughing all the while. With all eyes on the two-year-old birthday boy, no one even notices grandpa holding Ace’s six-month-old baby sister. He’s swiping frosting off a cupcake and feeding it to her.

As my eyes finally scan over to see blue baby lips, I come out of my seat to stop the madness. My little baby girl’s immaculate palate just got its first introduction to non-formula food and this was what was chosen for her. The helpless little girl, incapable of controlling any ounce of her environment, was subjected to died blue sugar cream. As the table turns to scold grandpa, he protests, “But she likes it!” “Yes and she’d really love cocaine,” I retort.

Clearly, I could have reacted better. Having adopted her and her brother, she was unable to breastfeed and now I feared her palate was being distorted by what could be seen as a controlled substance.

I’ll readily admit I catastrophized and overly dramatized the harm of this situation. But the comparison isn’t completely without merit. After exhaustive studies its been shown that over 94% of rats who were already hooked on cocaine and morphine chose saccharin, an artificial sweetener.

Even after upping the cocaine and morphine doses, rats still preferred intense sweetness. Of course she liked the frosting! Our choices should be held to a higher standard than the effects on immediate sensory pleasure. People might like a heroin high, but I’m still convinced it would ruin their lives. The results of added, refined sugars certainly aren’t as immediate or drastic as hard narcotics, but both drastically distort future perceptions, expectations, and experiences.

Still, I felt bad for my outburst. It was the cumulative frustration of raising kids in a world I deem insane—where parenting my children according to my vision of strength, supported progressive self-sufficiency, and harmony with their bio-evolutionary needs is constantly met with resistance.

The “but she likes it,” set me off more than anything. It is the standard response from anyone who disagrees with my parenting approach. It is why kids are allowed to watch TV all day, eat only junk, and why as teens they are addicted to their smartphones. Our inability to recognize an environment full of temptations engineered for optimal human addiction and then to set boundaries is leading millions to lives of mental and physical poor health.

“We may be approaching a time when sugar is responsible for more early deaths in America than cigarette smoking.”

Dr. Lewis Cantley

When looking at the modern landscape, the national obesity epidemic teetering near 50%, the rampant heart disease, the projections that 57% of today’s youth will be obese by age 35, and even the skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety, so much is a product of the norms and expectations created in people’s earliest years.

The majority of Americans repeatedly battle with their relationship to food, yo-yoing through cycles of obsessive diets, binges, and frequent feelings of regret and personal disappointment. All of this is based upon a bizarre, normal eating model that, until exhaustively corrected, distorts all future eating experience.

Insidious Distortion

Distortion is the act of altering or twisting something from its true, natural, or original state. It is a process of misleading, confusing, and warping systems out of balance. The sweets and sugar-infused snacks that dominate childhood are not only addictive, but they create distortions in reality that shape future choices, expectations, perceptions, and sensory experiences.

Distortion of Perceptions:
In the Western experience, youth are saturated in types of foods better labeled as chemistry experiments. Pop Tarts, Cheetos, sodas, fish sticks, mac and cheese, and the abundant fast food options are considered normal eating. Eating predominantly unprocessed whole foods that made up all the foods available for over 99.9% of the human experience is considered a bizarre and extreme lifestyle. As a social species, these norms have as much power as the chemical addiction that accompanies them.?
Distortion of Sensory Experience:
Our biology never could have been ready for the variety and abundance of refined, added sugars, or the efficiency of their transmission in the body. Inundated with this barrage of extremes the palate shifts drastically, growing to expect intense sweetness, while finding everything else unpalatably bitter by comparison. Fruits grow bland and vegetables repulsive. Strong evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners also distort the palate to create more craving for sweetness?
Distortion of Expectations:
Even if the palate had not shifted, we see that once kids are exposed to processed junk food, they’ll prefer it to their vegetables and most other options. The choices and expectations of meals will change, considerably. These are young children incapable of self-imposed discipline or long-term planning. From their worldview, it is perfectly reasonable to throw a tantrum or sit there stubbornly until they get what they want. If they don’t have parents insisting they eat balanced meals, they’ll never set healthy nutrition habits. Their future choices will be radically warped by the experience of their childhood. This, of course, only serves to create more difficulty in any attempts down the road to eat healthier and create positive changes.

Needless to say, I don’t want my kids to take on the full brunt of these distortions in their lives.

An Insanely Extreme (While Rational) Approach

As a thought experiment, imagine if you never gave your children anything but whole, minimally processed foods. They ate fruits, vegetables, chicken, fish, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, avocados, nuts, seeds, and even whole milk and truly natural peanut butter, but never anything out of a wrapper. This deprived existence would still be far more flavorful, broad, and decadent than the diets available to 99.9% of human history. Every meal would still be the best thing most humans would have ever tasted.

Kids who only experienced these foods would love most of these foods. They are the foods humanity evolved to eat, after all. Preferences would still arise. Squash, zucchini, and roasted carrots would probably be favored to broccoli and cauliflower. Grapes, and bananas with peanut butter would be more favorable, still. Yet, overall, children would be just as happy, if not happier than they are immersed in our modern diabetic conveyor belt.

Vegetables would be far more enjoyable—perceived as far less extreme in their bitterness, and most of these foods would be eaten with the same enthusiasm children bring to their mac and cheese and Pop Tarts, today. They’d relish that bowl of oatmeal each morning and look at a sweet potato like it was the magical taste sensation that it is.

When they saw Oreos, Gogurt, or cupcakes they’d hardly register them. Someone could be having a cookie right next to them and they’d be totally content working on a Ziploc full of cashews. That is the beauty of young children. Absent of an experience with these sugary extremes, they are completely unremarkable. Just as you never crave the heroin you’ve triumphantly avoided in your life, Junior will not crave the donut.

It wouldn’t be until the child was almost four that he started to really notice this other world of food that other people were subsisting on. At that point, he’d have a very well-adjusted foundation. You’d get the joy of taking them out for their first ice cream at an age where they’d appreciate and remember the experience.

It would be an event. “Alright buddy, today we’re going to try something that is really gonna rock your world.” They’d slowly accumulate broader modern eating experiences, but with boundaries and after an age where there was enough maturity that these didn’t change their day-to-day expectations.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy good food as much as anyone. I love the occasional pizza, tacos, ice cream, wine, or a gin and tonic in the summer. I fully appreciate the enhancement these treats can bring to life when they are controlled. Still, if I had it my way, my-two-year-old and certainly his 6-month-old sister would never eat anything but whole food. This is clearly easier dreamt than done, but a concept at least worth exploring.

People often feel it is mean to even suggest such an approach to childhood eating. As if I’m just trying to deny them awesome, pleasurable experiences. Yet, what is mean is setting a child up for a life of poor health.

The idea isn’t to shield kids from the real world. I want them to be autonomous, free, and encouraged to explore. Yet there should be a calculated understanding of our environment and the extremely addictive and perception-changing experiences that are normal for most. The modern world is an impulse mine-field. Anyone not intentionally setting boundaries for themselves will be dragged along the impulse super-highway to a destination they aren’t happy with. Young children, having no ability to do so yet, require us adults to set boundaries for them.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Nutrition-related diseases proliferate along with mass lethargy, and yet compulsive smoking is held at a level of public contempt far surpassing the more common compulsive eating of junk food. Perhaps it is rational to behave in a way society deems extreme.

This Week’s Mission

Go through the house and find one item to throw out and stop buying at the grocery store. If you love ice cream that’s cool. I do, too. Maybe it is a treat that deserves a trip each time.

Pick a healthier substitute. If your kids love chips, perhaps you could get more fruit and mixed nuts options. We tend to default to what is easy and available so a great first step is to own the home environment.

The Last Marriage of Dot Brightmore: The long-awaited sequel to THE LAST LIST OF MABEL BEAUMONT - find out what happens next!

HKD 31.60 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Guilty Couple: The must-read Richard & Judy Book Club pick for 2023 from the Sunday Times million-copy crime thriller bestseller

(41515892)

HKD 10.46 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret Texts My Husband Sent My Sister: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 8)

HKD 23.25 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret My Husband Sent My Sister: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 6)

HKD 23.57 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband Betrayed Me at the Altar for My Twin Sister: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 7)

(5052)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

How to Age: Supercharge Your Health and Feel Better Than Ever

HKD 181.69 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Why Does Everybody Hate Me?: Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

(48555)

HKD 141.42 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

No More Nappies: With helpful tips for potty training (Campbell Big Steps, 2)

(46510002)

HKD 52.21 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband. My Best Friend: A Scandalous Marriage Betrayal Romance of Infidelity, Secrets, and Her Rise to Power

HKD 31.71 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Power of Hormones: Break free from fear and misinformation about hormones and harness them for a healthier, happier life

HKD 232.54 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Distortion: How Poor Early Nutritional Experiences Set us up for Failure appeared first on Fit Informer.

Useful Shame: Countering Junk Food and Smartphone Addiction

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 20:05:40 +0000

In a wave of evangelical fervor, the 18th amendment outlawed alcohol in the United States, thus initiating a disastrous 14-year experiment known as prohibition. Organized crime grew rampant, laws were blurred by inconsistent enforcement, and, despite an initial drop, alcohol use and abuse increased sharply, particularly amongst women and children.

The intent was good. Following industrialization and the settling of the west, American society saw a stark rise in alcohol abuse. As drinking became more entrenched into popular culture, the ills of alcohol-related recklessness, violence, addiction, and general belligerence were put on full display.

As the spiritual awakening grew steam, more people became convinced that the best course of action was simply to eliminate alcohol. The simplistic logic held that making alcohol illegal would, then, remove the issues associated with these beverages. Yet, as is often the case, trying to legislate away every societal ill exacerbated the problem while creating a disastrous web of unintended consequences.

Prohibition was inarguably a massive failure. Over-demonizing a product under the guise that its negative effects outweigh its positives never works. I’ve consistently pushed a message that clearly indicates humanity would be far happier and better off without smartphones and sweets. I truly believe this, however, there is no going back.

We have to learn how to operate best in this world. Faced with that reality, I enjoy the hell out of pecan pie a la mode and can not imagine my life without the joys of podcasts and audible books. Furthermore, I love a good bourbon on a nice evening, or a margarita to celebrate the end of the work week. The problem is not the pleasure that comes from these luxuries, but that most cannot control themselves and quickly slip into overuse.

There will always be abuse and self-destructive behavior. We shouldn’t ignore the potential for harm, but, likewise, we can’t expect positive outcomes from legislating people’s every choice. As former Breaking Muscle editor, Pete Hitzeman is fond of saying, “Humanity is not perfectable.” Thus, we should treat collective humanity as it is, not as we dream it should be. Improvement will only follow education, personal responsibility, and culture.

Alcohol still has laws, many nonsensical and counterproductive, but for the most part, those whose lives are enhanced, or at least not hurt by alcohol use, have followed a culturally ingrained model of acceptable use.

These people have social circles that don’t condone drinking and driving, problem drinking, daily drunkenness, or any pattern of drunken belligerence. Inappropriate conduct linked to drinking is certain to bring ridicule and ostracize the offender. If repeated, or drastic enough, it warrants confrontation.

Furthermore, there are norms that, while occasionally broken, guide typical behavior:

“Don’t drink alone.”; “Don’t drink before 5.”; “Buzzed driving is drunk driving.”; “He’s had enough. Cut him off.”

We got rid of prohibition, but that didn’t prompt anarchy. In fact, just the opposite. Society policed the environment in a more adaptable, natural way. Culture. Social Norms. Manners.

Today we are witnessing an explosion of obesity, depression, anxiety, and suicide. Psychology and physiology are completely interdependent and our environment discards the needs of both in favor of satisfying every impulse. There are many culprits, but none so obvious as our diets and our smartphones. Like with alcohol, the solution is not law, but culture.

Given their massively destructive effects, we should begin to look at sweets and smartphones as controlled substances. This is not to compare them to hard narcotics or invite government regulation, but, rather, just a useful orientation for helping culture accept and work against their pervasive negatives. Education must drive a better understanding of the drastic harms wrought by unhinged eating and smartphone use and clearly define the most conducive norms and manners.

The way most Americans eat, starting with their children is beyond crazy. It is a constant conveyor of chemically engineered, sugar-infused, unpronounceable-ingredient-added junk, and it is killing our bodies while setting our emotions haywire. Kids wake to Pop Tarts, Cookie Crisp, or donuts.

“Health conscious” parents opt for Frosted-Mini Wheats or whole grain pancakes covered in syrup. Fast food institutions are far more central to most families lives than the dinner table as fruit roll-ups, chips, and Kraft mac and cheese characterize the bulk of foods available at home.

People can scarcely conceive of eating meals that consist only of whole foods that could naturally occur in nature. These are, of course, the only actual foods. We should enjoy the perks of modern technology while maintaining a lucid understanding that these new foods are sub-optimal and warrant limiting.

There is plenty of nutritional manipulation and misinformation, but for the most part, we all know this stuff. We get that we should eat more fruits and vegetables, drink more water, quit soda, and generally opt for less processed, whole foods. The major issue isn’t knowledge, it is culture.

Shame: Society’s Great Behavior Modifier

Pull out a cigarette and every judgmental fiber of society bores into you. This may be uncomfortable for the smoker, but it is a good thing for society as a whole who are now less likely to smoke than 50 years ago.

This highlights an extremely natural, often socially constructive means that culture has always had for regulating behavior: shame.

Shame gets a really bad rap because it is often associated with closed-mindedness and puritanical rigidity. Yet, as is common in this complex world, the bad comes with significant good. Shame stirs soldiers to heroism and societies to communal cleanliness.

There is no law against picking your nose, but I rarely see anyone publicly digging for gold. As Tamler Sommers explains in his book, Why Honor Matters, honor-shame cultures are concerned with pulling people up towards an ideal, whereas our modern dignity culture breeds complacency, obsessing on how special everyone is by merit of breathing. Rather than classify all shame as bad we should adopt a nuanced approach that can weigh when it is useful. We need contained honor/shame culture.

As individuals, we should try hard not to judge people, but, implicit to living a good life is the requirement that we judge actions. We have to discern between behaviors that are better or worse and all those grey areas in between. The process of culture dialoguing about what behaviors are more and less favorable is essential to any society who’d like to improve or even be capable of feeling united.

This dialogue and its ever-evolving conclusions establish norms and elicit socially constructive shame, whether it is intended or not. That shame pulls the group behavior upwards towards norms that are better for both the individual and group. It is a nuanced approach and I can feel the social justice warriors blood boiling as they are forgoing the rest of this article to craft woke social media retorts.

For an example of constructive shame, consider Japan, where there is almost no litter, despite having hardly any public waste cans. The cultural expectation is for people to take their own garbage home to dispose of it.

Other norms contribute, as well. In Japan, it is considered rude to eat on the run, thus reducing walker and driver waste, and communities routinely join together to clean up what little litter there is—typically small items hidden near the back of bushes and shrubs.

On this very populated island, culture and manners are able to police the environment far more effectively than the anti-litter laws common in the U.S. Anyone who’d litter in Japan is certain to meet considerable disgust and ridicule. How appropriate.

Culture can promote destructive behavior just as fluidly as it prevents it. Broken windows theory contends that visible signs of crime, disorder, and bad behavior encourage more misconduct. We are a social creature. When we see graffiti, litter, or evidence that crime is common, we’re more likely to engage in these destructive behaviors.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, explains how this understanding helped New York City radically reduce crime. The city made it a practice to paint over graffiti every night and police the subways far more diligently. They publicly shamed anyone they caught jumping subway turnstiles by arresting them and leaving them handcuffed and on display until officers returned to the police station for booking at the end of their shift.

In both examples, the community good is put over the desire to be excessively fair to each individual. Rather than account for each individual’s feelings, all their prior experience, whether they knew better, and what other factors might have made them act the way they acted, behavior is simply deemed destructive when it is.

Both litterers in Japan and turnstile jumpers in New York had their rights respected, but were not deemed to have a right to avoid shame or embarrassment. Consequently, societies saw less litter and less crime, while individuals faced constructive feedback far more likely to kick-start arduous, while necessary reform.

Speaking Frankly and Creating Healthy Norms

In the modern world, few influences have been as broadly destructive as unchecked smartphone culture and our out of control eating habits. I’ve made these arguments ad nauseam:

Individual interventions are far less likely to stick against the tide of culture. We are all pulled to cultural norms and our shameless culture pulls the masses down rather than up towards a marker worth striving for. For society to improve so that millions more individuals can thrive, we must be willing to speak frankly and identify better modes of behavior.

I am not saying that we should look to embarrass people or call them names. Hard truths are only worth saying if they are constructive and geared towards necessary change. However, as I contended in my article, It Isn’t Fat Shaming: How Protecting Feelings Hurts Health, we must be able to speak honestly about what is positive and negative.

Our eating norms create a likelihood of living overweight and battling chronic lifestyle-related impediments. Our smartphones are stoking an explosion of anxiety, depression, and purposelessness. We need to dialogue towards a set of manners and social norms that pull people towards fulfilling, socially constructive behavior and away from the opposite.

In my next piece 10 Transformational Habits That Really Force A Change, I look at what manners and socially constructive norms we should adopt in relation to eating and smartphone use. Like alcohol, these forces are not going away, yet, likewise, we can’t just go with the flow in an environment drunk and addicted.

Culture must mitigate these destructive trends. By creating clarity in manners and identifying destructive behaviors, these pleasures can become wonderful, controlled additions to each of our lives.

Irritated: The Allergy Epidemic and What We Can Do About It

HKD 220.91 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Quiet Wife: A totally addictive, unputdownable stunning crime mystery suspense thriller perfect for 2026!

(4053452)

HKD 50.63 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Picking Daisies on Sundays: The hopelessly romantic romcom readers everywhere are falling head over heels for

(42513665)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret Texts My Husband Sent Another Woman: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 9)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Hungry: A biography of my body

HKD 165.95 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Diagnosis He Kept: Later in Life Marriage in Crisis Romance (Marriage In Crisis Series)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

No More Nappies: With helpful tips for potty training (Campbell Big Steps, 2)

(46510002)

HKD 52.21 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Ghost Stories: A Memoir - 'What a kind, honest book. What a gift of love' David Mitchell

HKD 225.88 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband Betrayed Me at the Altar for My Best Friend: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 3)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Love Wells Kept: The must read spicy, heartwarming and heartbreaking cowboy romance that will have you LASSOED! (Wells Ranch Book 5)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Useful Shame: Countering Junk Food and Smartphone Addiction appeared first on Fit Informer.

Ginger Scallion Pork Burgers

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 20:05:31 +0000

Summer sun leads to relaxing summer grill-outs with friends and family. Change up your barbequed burger routine with a little something unexpected. Using meats that are not just beef for your patties brings both flavor and variety to your table. Ginger scallion pork burgers combine ground pork with the zestiness of garlic, ginger, and scallions along with the delicious sweet salty tang of soy sauce for a unique Asian flavor.

Cut the carbs and lighten up these burgers by using vegetables instead of the bun. This burger is fantastic wrapped with a few large pieces of butter lettuce. Using a couple of pieces of the lettuce allows you to wrap it burrito style to hold the multiple topping options. If you enjoy sliders, sauté a few rounds of sweet potato to use in place of the bun.

The light sweetness of the sweet potato compliments the ginger soy combo of these burgers quite nicely. Other non-bun alternatives you could use include lightly grilled slices of zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, or tomato ends. Whether you prefer to use a bun or a vegetable alternative, these burgers are a perfect palate pleaser!

Ginger Scallion Pork Burgers

Calories 375, Protein 24g, Total Carbs 24g, Fat 23g

Prep time: 20 min

Cook time: 15 min

Serves: 4 as burgers (or 8 sliders)

Ingredients:

1 pound ground pork
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce
2 teaspoons ginger, minced
2 scallions, sliced
1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes

Burger Toppings:

4 slices pineapple, grilled slightly
1 sliced avocado
1/2 red onion, sliced
1 sweet potato, sliced 1/4” thick
Lettuce leaves
Prepared jalapeño coleslaw, if desired

Preparation Instructions:

Preheat a grill or grill pan to medium-high heat.
Combine the ground pork, garlic, tamari, ginger, scallions, and chili flakes until well mixed.
Form into 4 patties or 8 sliders depending on if you’re serving as lettuce wraps or the size of your sweet potato “bun.”
Grill burgers and pineapple slices about 4-5 minutes per side until desired doneness.
While burgers are cooking, heat a sauté pan with a small amount of oil. Cook the sweet potato slices a few minutes on each side just until they are lightly browned but not soft.
Assemble burgers on a plate with toppings.

Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm, New from Charlie Mackesy

(4851318)

HKD 116.06 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Menopause and ADHD: How to navigate hormone flux and neurodivergence (Vermilion Empowered)

HKD 157.91 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Shattered Hearts: A Husband’s Betrayal and Redemption (Dirty Little Secrets Book 1)

HKD 31.18 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret Texts My Husband Sent Another Woman: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 9)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Wife He Let Go: A Marriage Betrayal Romance of Divorce, Healing and Letting Go

(40571)

HKD 25.26 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

How to Raise a Gentle Man: A guide for parents and carers who want to raise kind, emotionally intelligent and respectful boys

HKD 147.45 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Secrets of the Starlit Sea: The spellbinding and stunningly romantic new novel from the number one bestselling author! (Timeslider)

(4452444)

HKD 52.74 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband Betrayed Me at the Altar for My Best Friend: A Marriage of Betrayal, Infidelity and Revenge Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 3)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Three Days in June: A funny, touching, hopeful story of love, marriage and second chances

(42522104)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Enough: Your Health, Your Weight, and What It's Like To Be Free

(455591)

HKD 116.16 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Ginger Scallion Pork Burgers appeared first on Fit Informer.

Caprese Chickpea Burgers

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 20:05:24 +0000

Lighten up your summer eating with this chickpea based vegetarian burger. Mixed up with a compliment of Italian seasonings, these chickpea patties bring a bit of pizzaz to your table while providing protein and fiber. One of the problems I’ve come across when making vegetarian burgers is that they tend to be more of a challenge to hold together because the legume base is a lower fat content than using meat. In order to allow this burger to be pressed together and remain moist, ground flaxseed and olive oil are added. Flax is a great emulsifier and helps to bind the chickpeas together. The olive oil also helps to keep these from feeling too crumbly and gives the burgers a pleasant texture.

Harness the flavor of a Caprese salad by topping the chickpea burger with a slice of fresh mozzarella and pesto. Sandwich this between two ends of a tomato for a unique presentation and a healthy low carb alternative to a bun. Other non-bun alternatives you could use include lightly grilled slices of zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, sweet potato, or lettuce wraps. Any way you wrap it, this easy vegetarian burger leaves you feeling light on your feet and ready to tackle that next workout.

Caprese Chickpea Burgers

Calories 288, Protein 15g, Total Carbs 22g, Fat 17g

Prep time: 20 min

Cook time: 15 min

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

1 can chickpeas, rinsed and mashed
1/4 red onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons flaxseed meal (ground flax)
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt
Pinch of oregano
1-2 tablespoons olive oil

Burger Toppings:

Mozzarella cheese, sliced
Prepared pesto sauce
4 tomatoes, sliced and cored to use both ends as a “bun.” Use extra slices for garnish.

Preparation Instructions:

Preheat a sauté pan to medium high heat with a small amount of olive oil.
Combine the chickpeas with flax, onion, spices, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil until well mixed. You may need to use your hands to finish mashing the chickpeas completely. Check if the mixture will hold together when squeezed by hand. You may need to add 1 additional tablespoon of oil for patties to hold together properly.
Form into 4 patties.
Cook about 5-8 minutes per side until lightly browned on both sides.
While burgers are cooking prepare toppings.
Assemble burger with pesto, mozzarella, and place between the tomato “bun” to serve.

Taming 7: Epic, emotional and addictive romance from the TikTok phenomenon (The Boys of Tommen)

(46536403)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep – love

(4658658)

HKD 43.55 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

(45511816)

HKD 105.59 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

How to Raise a Gentle Man: A guide for parents and carers who want to raise kind, emotionally intelligent and respectful boys

HKD 147.45 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Secure: Rewire Your Attachment Style and Transform Your Relationships, Health and Happiness, from the bestselling co-author of Attached

(4459)

HKD 127.58 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband Betrayed Me at the Altar For My Sister: A Marriage of Betrayal, Revenge and Second Chance Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 2)

(4157)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Releasing 10 (The Boys of Tommen)

(47518751)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Binding 13: Epic, emotional and addictive romance from the TikTok phenomenon (The Boys of Tommen)

(47518184)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm, New from Charlie Mackesy

(4851318)

HKD 116.06 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Trip She Booked: A Marriage In Crisis Romance (Choosing Herself Book 3)

(38531)

HKD 23.57 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Caprese Chickpea Burgers appeared first on Fit Informer.

Greek Pimiento Burgers

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 20:05:06 +0000

Take a summer food vacation to Greece by combining all of the signature flavors in a tasty, grilled burger! These burgers can easily be made with beef, bison, or even lamb for a truly authentic experience. Ground meat is combined with the salty tang of feta cheese and pimientos, which are simply small pieces of red cherry pepper cured in brine. If you can’t find pimientos, you can use roasted red peppers either made fresh or from a jar that are diced into small bits.

Tzatziki sauce is a condiment used often in Greek cuisine. I’ve used many of the same components in the traditional sauce to make a complimentary cucumber yogurt sauce for these burgers that provides a burst of extra creamy deliciousness to highlight the cultural tasting experience.

Zucchini slices are lightly brushed with olive oil and grilled for a healthy low carb alternative to a bun. Other non-bun alternatives you could use include lightly grilled slices of summer squash, eggplant, sweet potato, tomato ends, or lettuce wraps. Finish topping these burgers with the cucumber yogurt sauce, spinach, tomato, and Kalamata olives for a uniquely Greek inspired grill burger.

Greek Pimiento Burgers

Calories 191, Protein 18g, Total Carbs 5g, Fat 11g

Prep time: 20 min

Cook time: 15 min

Serves: 6 as burgers, 12 as sliders

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons pimiento, chopped
1/4 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Cucumber Yogurt Sauce:

1/2 cup plain unsweetened Greek yogurt
1/4 cup shredded cucumber
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon garlic, minced
Pinch of salt

Burger Toppings:

Kalamata olives, chopped
Baby spinach
Tomato slices
Zucchini, sliced 1/4 inch thick and grilled lightly to use as a “bun”

Preparation Instructions:

Preheat a grill or grill pan to medium-high heat.
Combine the ground beef, feta, pimiento, salt, pepper, and coriander until well mixed.
Form into 6 patties or 12 sliders depending on the size of your “buns.”
Grill about 4-5 minutes per side until desired doneness.
While burgers are cooking, stir together the yogurt sauce ingredients and prepare additional toppings.
Grill zucchini about 2-3 minutes per side so they are still firm.
Assemble burger with toppings and cucumber yogurt sauce to serve.

Hungry: A biography of my body

HKD 165.95 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Spare Room: Later in Life Marriage in Crisis Romance (Marriage In Crisis Series)

(41524)

HKD 23.68 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Broken Vows: Abandoned at the Altar, Pregnant, and Trapped by a Possessive Billionaire

(5051)

HKD 42.17 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Secret My Husband Sent Another Woman: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 1)

(32516)

HKD 23.57 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Wife He Accused: A Billionaire Marriage-in-Crisis, Second Chance Romance

(5051)

HKD 31.60 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

(45511816)

HKD 105.59 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Picking Daisies on Sundays: The hopelessly romantic romcom readers everywhere are falling head over heels for

(42513665)

HKD 63.31 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

No More Nappies: With helpful tips for potty training (Campbell Big Steps, 2)

(46510002)

HKD 52.21 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm, New from Charlie Mackesy

(4851318)

HKD 116.06 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Wedding People: The hilarious and moving million-copy bestseller

(425168536)

HKD 57.92 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Greek Pimiento Burgers appeared first on Fit Informer.

Turkey Piri Piri Burgers

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 20:04:48 +0000

Some like it hot! As your summer heats up, spice up your burger game with these turkey piri piri burgers. Ground turkey is a fairly neutral tasting lean meat that easily takes on the savory profile of the spices you add to it so it’s the perfect base for a spiced burger that brings the heat to your table.

This burger uses the heat of piri piri peppers in combination with cumin, coriander, and garlic to round out the taste profile. Piri piri peppers are a medium hot spiced pepper falling above a jalapeño on the heat scale and just below habanero. If you can’t find piri piri pepper or piri piri hot sauce, use Tabasco or a habanero based hot sauce for heat.

For a healthy and delicious low carb alternative to a bun, grill up some red bell pepper halves until lightly charred but still somewhat firm so they remain hand holdable. Grilling the peppers brings out a sweet smoky flavor that is the perfect complement to the piri piri pepper and spices in the burger. Other non-bun alternatives you could use include lightly grilled slices of summer squash, zucchini, eggplant, sweet potato, tomato ends, or lettuce wraps. Top these off with spicy mayo, cilantro, and red onion for a tasty turkey burger!

Turkey Piri Piri Burgers

Calories 403, Protein 23g, Total Carbs 8g, Fat 31g

Prep time: 15 min

Cook time: 15 min

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients:

1 pound ground turkey (or chicken)
1 teaspoon minced piri piri peppers, piri piri hot sauce, or hot chili powder
1 teaspoon garlic, minced (about 2 cloves)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Burger Toppings:

Spicy mayo (combine 1/2 cup mayonnaise with 1 teaspoon hot piri piri pepper sauce or habanero hot sauce)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 red onion, sliced into rings
4-5 red bell peppers cored and cut into large burger size chunks (about half a pepper per each side of the bun) and grilled lightly

Preparation Instructions:

Preheat a grill or grill pan to medium high heat.
Combine the ground turkey with the spices until well mixed.
Form into 4-5 burgers and grill about 5 minutes per side until cooked through.
While burgers are cooking, prepare the toppings and set aside.
Grill the red pepper pieces until lightly charred on each side but still firm, about 2-3 minutes per side.
Assemble burger with toppings between the grilled pepper pieces.

The Best Thing That Ever Happened: A BRAND NEW uplifting, summery romance from bestseller Sarah Bennett for 2026 (Halfmoon Quay Book 3)

(475245)

HKD 31.60 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Ghost Stories: A Memoir - 'What a kind, honest book. What a gift of love' David Mitchell

HKD 225.88 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Last Marriage of Dot Brightmore: The long-awaited sequel to THE LAST LIST OF MABEL BEAUMONT - find out what happens next!

HKD 31.60 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

My Husband’s Secret Texts to My Sister: A Marriage in Crisis Romance (Her Marriage in Crisis Book 5)

HKD 23.36 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

The Names: 'The best debut novel in years' Sunday Times

(44539182)

HKD 52.74 (as of April 20, 2026 06:29 GMT +00:00 - )

Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha. Blocked by captcha.

The post Turkey Piri Piri Burgers appeared first on Fit Informer.