So, a while ago I did a quick video post on balancing your blood sugar levels being the key to weight loss, which it is, however balancing your pH goes hand in hand with balancing your blood sugar & if you get it right not only will you stop storing extra fat but you will NEVER get another illness or suffer from any disease as long as you live! Sound Interesting? Read on.

So What Is pH?

Basically its the measure of Acidity to Alkalinity on a scale from 0-14. The closer to 0 the more acidic, the closer to 14 the more alkaline. Your stomach needs to be very acidic around 4 on the pH scale and the rest of your body should be slightly alkaline at around 7.35

Why Should I care About My pH?

Having a slightly alkaline pH in fundamental for good health. Remember that a truly healthy body wont store fat!!!.

If your body other than your stomach is not slightly alkaline you can suffer from a whole host of conditions. Metabolism will be negatively impacted, enzymes are not as effective, your immune system is hindered and your body becomes incapable of repairing itself.

But heres the biggie

In 1931 A doctor by the name of Otto Warburg won a Nobel Prize for his discovery that ”cancer cells thrive in an oxygen deficient, acidic blood environment”. He also concluded by saying that ”Cancer cannot survive in an alkaline, oxygenated blood environment ”.

So for the last 80 years the medical profession have known that cancer & every other disease (arthritis, joint pain, heart disease, diabetes, obesity etc) can only thrive in an acidic environment yet nothing has ever been done to make this common knowledge or even treat it effectively. My thoughts are that they will never do this as disease is very profitable and theres no money to be made by showing people how to alkalise their body effectively. Just my thoughts.

So If you want to live a long healthy life & drop your body fat you should read on because im going to show you how to do just that.

How Does Being Acidic Make Me Store Fat?

Being healthy is all well & good but I know most of you are here to learn how to drop body fat (I prefer doing both together!!) so let me explain. When you become acidic its a massive danger sign to the body as this acid is very toxic.

The human body is very capable of dealing with toxins and removing them, however when you are bombarded with as many toxins & harmful substances as we are today the human body becomes overwhelmed.

It does everything to survive & stay healthy by keeping as many toxins away from vital organs where they can do damage. It does this by storing the toxins in your fat cells keeping them as far away from your important organs as possible. If you dont have enough fat cells the body will simply create more to deal with the excess toxins.

This is why most people are overweight. It’s got nothing to do with eating too much & consuming to many calories or not doing enough exercise. Its because were all too acidic!!

Are You Always Tired & Sluggish Too?

Well hopefully you wont be suprised by now when I tell you that this too is bacause your too acidic. I hear people complaining all the time that theyre tired & cant be bothered to exercise but should we really be this tired? I know we all live busy & stressfull lifestyles but we should not be as tired and  lifeless as so many are.

Check out the pictures below of blood under a microscope, the one on the left shows an acidic oxygen deprived environment & the one on right shows an oxygenated alkaline environment.

Acidic Blood Environment                                   Alkaline Blood Environment

As you can see the acidic blood sample on the left is very clumped when compared to the alkaline blood sample on the left.

The job of your blood is to deliver oxygen to all the tissues around the body along with delivering important vitamins, minerals & amino acids along the way.  It also picks up carbon dioxide to dispose of when you breathe. Each blood cell has a negative magnetic charge so they repel & bounce off one another delivering all their goodness at high speed.

BUT

When you are too acidic the blood loses its negative charge and starts clumping together & sludge through your body at a much slower speed struggling to absorb water, nutrients & oxygen & cant expel unhealthy toxins so again store them in fat cells.

This is when you start to feel a loss of energy & become an ideal host to yeast, bacteria, disease & sickness. This takes us back to the work of Dr Otto Warburg in 1931.

So How Did I Get So Acidic ?

Quite simply through your diet by eating more acid forming foods. The problem is that the western world diet is far too acidic by consuming high amounts of sugar &  processed foods such as cereals, pasta, bread, potatoes, dairy, fizzy drinks, coffee, sweets, chocolate, crisps & drinking too much alcahol. suprisingly too many fruits are very acidic when eaten. It takes around 33 glasses of water to neutralise 1 glass of cola so you can see the problem.

Whats The Soloution?

Well ideally you would cut out as many of the acid forming foods as possible and really minimise them in your diet. Then replace them with more alkaline forming foods such as vegetables, spinach, watercress, brocoli,  avacado, All  leafy greens, nuts, seeds etc

For some great recipes I suggest you check out this website.

What Else Can I do?

One little trick I reccommend every one gets in the habit of doing is mixing half a tea spoon of sodium bicarbonate with a glass of water 2-3 times per day. This is an extremely alkaline mineral & will help to alkalise the body. I usually ensure I do it first think when I wake up & again on an evening

Another thing I do routinely is add liquid chlorophyll to my water and drink it throughout the day. its a minty flavoured green drink that again helps keep you alkaline. You should definately give it a go.

Summary

When your body is slightly alkaline (around 7.35) you will be bursting with energy, you will have a bullet proof immune system where viruses, bacteria & disease cannot grow. You will rapidly let go of body fat and your skin bones & cells will regenerate keeping you young. If you want to ensure you remain in the alkaline pH then you must consume more alkaline foods and follow my suggested protocol of sodium bicarbonate 2-3 times a day alongside liquid chlorophyll throughout the day.

I hope your not too upset that it appears the summer is officially over.

I’m guessing that most of you have probably been away this summer and piled on a few pounds so to help you get back into great shape I have a workout challenge for you to try today.

This workout will target the whole body & will cause you to burn massive amounts of fat so be warned!!

You should record your time & let me know how you get on

Check the video out for more details & for a demonstration

 

PS: If the press up & tuck is a little advanced then either do a kneeling press up by itself or just perform the tuck without the press up!

I did the exact workout above in 19minutes & 25 seconds so that’s the one to beat at the moment!

I really had to bring this to your attention & get this off my chest because every time I walk into my gym & look to my left where all the treadmills, bikes, cross trainers & rowers are is packed with people desperate to get in great shape TOTALLY WASTING THEIR TIME & ENERGY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is by far and away my biggest pet hate with people working out at the gym, especially with you women!!

I know its not your fault, you just don’t know any better and haven’t been shown the way but don’t worry I’m here to help.

Don’t get me wrong there are benefits to cardio / aerobic exercise but if your goal is fat loss then Steady state cardio & those aerobic classes you go to are a total waste of your time.

To prove my point I want to bring to your attention a recent systematic review & meta analysis that was done where researchers looked at 14 different studies which included 1847 participants. This is a pretty huge number of people. Check it out for yourself here

The average weight loss after 6 months was 1.6kg (3.5lbs) and after 1 whole year was 1.7kg (3.74lbs)

The researchers then concluded that  ”our results show that isolated aerobic exercise is not an effective weight loss therapy”

Hallelujah

Less than 4lbs in an entire year!! You should expect those results in the first two weeks at most if you follow our proven fat loss system & iv even had some clients losing more than double this in the first two weeks. Proof if you needed it that not only is cardio exercise extremely boring (my opinion) but it delivers poor results in terms of fat loss (fact).

So has this persuaded you to ditch the long boring cardio? I really hope so! After all if 14 studies with 1847 participants could show no meaningful results isn’t it time we realised its not a real fat loss tool?

So What Do I recommend ?

In terms of exercise nothing is better for fat loss than resistance training and as detailed in my previous blog post performing resistance exercises in a circuit format really delivers the best results for fat loss. Interval training would come second but both of these come way behind a healthy diet & nutrition plan. No matter what you do in the gym you cant out train a terrible diet!!

There are 9 different systems of the body that I routinely test for using the lifestyle analysis. If any of these are overly stressed then it can severely impact your body’s natural ability to drop body fat. I would argue that no system is more important than the digestive system if you want to be healthy, full of energy & get in good shape, who wouldn’t want that?

There is a common saying about the digestive system that says death begins in the gut which is very true but I like to consider myself an optimist and prefer looking at it from the opposite side of the fence and say that life begins in the gut because if you look after your digestive system your digestive system will look after you.

Good digestion is central to good health so PLEEEEEEEASE make it your priority to improve your digestion, I cant stress this enough & your body will love you for it!!!! Think about this for a second, you could eat the healthiest diet possible but if your digestive system isn’t working properly then your not going to be getting the benefit from all the nutrients your eating because your not digesting them!! Makes sense!!

Affect on Body Fat

As I just said, your aim should always be to get your digestive system as healthy as possible and as a consequence it will help you drop body fat and feel amazing.

The digestive system breaks down food, extracting nutrients for use throughout the body, BUT it will only do this IF the system is healthy. If not the body will commonly experience indigestion, bloating, heartburn, insufficient enzymes, acid reflux, stomach ulcers, stomach cramps and increased body fat.

So simply put, even if you begin to eat the healthiest diet possible your body wouldn’t be able to get all the nutrients it needed to help you improve your health & lose weight if your digestive system is under performing! Think i’m repeating my self a little but hopefully you get the point.

Poor & Improper digestion is commonly the cause of weight gain in a lot of my clients. Clients with poor digestion therefore find it very difficult to lose body fat regardless of the exercise they do and foods they eat! So if you have a poor digestive system it is important to address it early doors before you become disheartened due to a lack of results from your weight loss plan!

How Do You Know If You Have A Poor Digestive System?

Well the easiest way to test for sure is to take the lifestyle analysis which will indicate the strength of each and every system. This works really well and can be really effective if done properly! Typical symptoms of digestive dysfunction however are:

• Gas
• Bloating
• Headaches
• Burping
• Acid reflux
• Neck, Shoulder Middle & Lower Back pain
• Fatigue after eating
• Abdominal distension
• Constant hunger
• Bowel irregularity
• Muscle & Joint aches

So How Do You Look After & Fix

Your Digestive System?

Well firstly, digestion begins in the mouth so chew your food until its liquefied, this is an important habit to try & get into so take your time.  I would also suggest you start drinking more clean water as this will also helpyou improve your digestion.

Aside from this I always recommend you start out with a 10 day cleanse to remove any unwanted toxins from your body! after the 10 days are up you should continue with the bifidophilus that comes with the cleanse program to help replenish the body’s good bacteria.

Alongside this I would strongly recommend a 3 month minimum course of Proactazyme which is a formula made up of plant enzymes to aid in digestion. This combination contains 6 natural enzymes, protease, amylase, glucoamylase, lipase, pectinase and cellulose. These replace the enzymes destroyed by cooking & a refined diet. This will ensure that you absorb more of the nutrients from your diet and consequently benefit the whole body!!

Summary & Action Steps

1. So firstly you should be aware that a healthy and optimal functioning digestive system should be your starting point for improving your health & losing weight in the long term. This is even more important than exercise & a healthy diet because it doesn’t matter how healthy you eat if your not digesting most of it.
2. Undergo a 10 day cleanse
3. Take a lifestyle analysis to see how well your body systems are working. If your digestive system scores highly then begin by undertaking 3 month course of proactazyme to begin rebuilding your digestive system
4. Make sure you are chewing your food until its liquefied in your mouth before you swallow it
5. Consider daily supporting supplements of super supplemental, Omega 3 EPA & Food Enzymes. (I recommend everybody does this to ensure your body has everything it needs to be functioning at its very best)
6. Drink plenty water to help with digestion.
7. Follow a paleo type diet focusing on food from meat, fish, fruit vegetables, seeds & nuts

After 8 weeks here were the findings:

Researchers found that both groups had exactly the same improvements when testing for strength, peak power, shuttle run performance & lean mass (muscle gain)

However

The circuit group lost significant levels of body fat & the traditional training group did not.

The Take Home Message

What you should hopefully of taken from this is that circuit training with heavy resistance can provide the same benefits as a traditional strength training program with the extra addition of fat loss, all in a shorter time frame. Who wouldn’t want that!!

My Thoughts

I would be very interested to see the results if we had both groups training for the same length of time such as 1 hour. I think in this case the differences would be even more dramatic.

A circuit training routine can perform the same volume of exercise in less time than a traditional group, so in the real world where I would see clients for the same amount of time, it only makes sense to recognize that a circuit or superset style of training which I always use with my clients could allow me to do MORE work than a traditional routine.

I think that whatever your goal, be it fat loss, general fitness, strength or power it is most likely best accomplished by using  non-competing super-sets such as lower body exercise with an upper body exercise or in a circuit format to maximize work density. Which this study supports. So go ahead & give it a try