Got a Fatty Liver?

As we all know, many people today suffer from obesity. For many obese people, one of the common ailments that comes along for the ride is a fatty liver.

An overly fatty liver (greater than 10%) can be problematic. Your liver performs many important tasks and thus needs to be in tip-top shape in order to clear the blood of toxins, produce glucose, bile acids and a bunch of other very important functions. So eating and drinking in a manner that fattens of the liver is unwise to say the least.

Most people know that you can make your liver fatty by drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. This may be in part due to a lack of choline in the diet and/or from poor absorption of nutrients caused by tipping the bottle too much and too often. Many alcoholics eat poorly and experience poor digestion since alcohol can damage the gut and stomach lining as well as upset the balance of good bacteria in the gut biome. But a fatty liver may also be caused by excess fructose consumption and excessive refined carbohydrate intake – a condition known as non-alcoholic, fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

A study done in 2011, Short-term weight loss and hepatic triglyceride reduction: evidence of a metabolic advantage with dietary carbohydrate restriction concluded the following:

2 wk of dietary intervention resulting in a reduction in body weight of ≈4.3% reduced the hepatic triglyceride content by ≈42% in subjects with a clinical diagnosis of NAFLD. However, dietary carbohydrate restriction was significantly more effective at reducing liver triglycerides than was calorie restriction.

Though losing body weight was part of the cure for a fatty liver, the diet involved seemed to be even more important.

Chris Masterjohn thinks otherwise. Chris knows his stuff and I agree with him that this particular study isn’t as strong as it could be. Yet, if you had to opt for one or the other approach, which would you choose?

To combat fatty liver:

Limit or abstain from alcohol
Eat choline rich foods like eggs and other animal products
Stay lean

Ever wonder why olde time taverns used to have eggs and pickles at the bar? Well, now you know!

Happy New Strength!

Well, we’re off! 2014 is here and so are you!

It’s time, don’t you think, to create that body you’ve always wanted? I’m here to help.

I’m not talking about getting thin or skinny or getting a 6 pack. In my opinion, these are just cosmetic considerations that have nothing to do with your main desire which is to improve your health. This requires you to create and adopt a process.

We don’t work to make money. Businesses are not in business to earn profits. What we desire is to work at something that provides contentment and happiness. If you spend your time moving in the direction of your own personal joy, money will come. It just will.

If you eat and exercise in a manner that improves your health and doesn’t harm, your body will gradually transform for the better. This requires you to make and create changes to your current eating and exercise processes. As you begin, consider these two points:

1. DO NO HARM
2. THINK RATIONALLY

When it comes to making improvements to your health, do not engage in exercises practices that will probably injure you. You want to build yourself up, not beat yourself up. Strength training is the single most productive form of exercise you can engage in.

No other form of exercise provides so many benefits in one felled swoop. You get everything you’ll need – strength, endurance, cardio, flexibility, balance, blood markers, etc. How much do you need? Two weekly sessions that last literally 15 minutes each. What’s that you said the other day about not having enough time to exercise?

When it comes to diet, eat in a manner that offers the most nutrition per bite of food, namely an ancestral diet. Meat, fish, seasonal vegetables and fruits.

Today’s action: Get in your kitchen and toss out everything you know you shouldn’t eat. Donate it all to a church or if it’s really crappy “food” (cheese doodles, etc.) just toss it out. It’s wrong to harm the indigent.

And I know what you’re thinking. What specifically should you eat? Well, My FREE gift to you for the New Year is a menu of what you can and should eat. If it’s on my list, you can eat it. If not, don’t. Email me at [email protected] and I’ll send it to you. (I will NEVER misuse your email address.)

CAVEAT: If you have allergies, health problems that require medical intervention or if you are on medications, you may not be able to eat what is on the list. That is something to discuss with your doctor – hopefully a doctor that is up on his nutritional reading like Dr. Andreas Eendfeldt or Dr. Michael Eades or a doctor from this list.

Like I said, I’m here to help. Email me. Come train with me. But whatever you choose to do, DO.

Go get ’em!!

FredTalks – Strength Worth Spreading

I just realized that it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I place the blame on FaceBook for this. It’s all too easy to just toss a rant up on your wall and watch the sparks fly. It’s fun and it is easy. Too easy in fact.

FaceBook posts are certainly not nearly as classy or as informative as well written, well researched blog posts so, I’ll be back at quality blogging soon. Please accept my humblest apologies for my laziness.

The graphic above represents and idea I’ve had for some time now to give short talks on strength and health. Many of my clients have begged me to video myself explaining the different health/fitness issues I talk about with them at the studio. I’ve resisted this because 1. I’m better at it on the fly and 2. I don’t fancy my person on video. But since these videos will help my clients remember the nonsense I spout on a daily basis and hopefully help others as well, I’m going to set aside my lame excuses and give them a go.

So, I and my team of outstanding instructors are going to launch a series of videos on several different subject over the next few weeks. Most will be open to the general public but some will be proprietary for teaching people how to become a personal trainer, a better personal trainer and how to perform and teach a myriad of different exercises in a high intensity, Slow Burn fashion (with a ton of goodies thrown in).

I ask you, kind reader, to toss out some suggestions for what you might be interested in learning about. You name it, I’ll have at it. Each video will be about a minute or two in length. Some may be longer depending on the subject matter, but my wish is to keep things short and sweet or, rather, short as strong!

I’ll place all questions in a hat – or perhaps some other receptacle and pick out questions at random and answer them on the fly. So, fire away!

My Low Carb Diet is Killing My Thyroid. I Need Me Some Starch!

Here’s my 2 cents worth of thought on the issue: No it’s not and no you don’t. What may be “killing” your thyroid is a poorly formulated low carb diet – just like any poorly formulated diet might. But it ain’t the lack of starch, as starch is non essential to human life. The lack of what you don’t require can’t make you deathly ill.

Whenever I respond in this way to internet folks who vehemently proclaim that their low carb diet is turning them into a shivering, balding, lustless, thyroid wilting pile of goo, their answer is always “Oh – so it’s my fault is it? I eat a pound of bacon three times a day without even looking at a vegetable just like the experts told me to and you say it’s all MY fault!?”

Well, yeah – that’s right. It is your fault. It’s your fault for misinterpreting the experts since not a single low carb expert has ever suggested not to eat any vegetables. It’s your fault that you did not check to see if the diet you undertook contained all the nutrients you require. So yes, it’s all your fault. Who else’s is it?

Now, let’s explore this a bit deeper. Come with me on a journey of poorly formulated ideas and misconstrued malignings about low carb diets. I want to try and clarify these misunderstandings so you can hold your bacon high and gobble that ground beef without worrying that your thyroid will shrivel and die. Here we go…

So, what would cause a person’s thyroid to go haywire? Could reducing the amount of sugar one eats cause harm? How could the thyroid be harmed by not flooding the bloodstream with gobs of glucose? Here’s what one person said on an online forum when I asked her what she was eating when she adopted a low carb diet:

Well, I’m not eating a low carb diet now because I realized how dumb it was, for me at least. But what I used to eat was: 3 eggs fried in butter sometimes with bulletproof coffee. A pound of ground beef with cheese. a pound of bacon or chicken and pork rinds. Steak (12 to 16 oz) with butter and more cheese (1 to 2 ounces). 3 days a week I also had berries with a 1/4 cup of heavy cream. I also frequently had bacon with breakfast too, just not always.

Others like her said the LC diet made them ravenous – so much so they had to eat as much as ~4500 cals a day at a height of to reach satiety. They often complain their hair was falling out, no sex drive, being cold all the time and told by thier doctors that their thyroid is whacked.

So could this low sugar/carb way of eating cause the thyroid such harm? Does the thyroid need sugar? Does it need carbohydrate? Or, does it need certain micronutrients? Could a diet devoid of certain micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) that are important for the healthy functioning of the thyroid be to blame? What are the nutrients that make the thyroid a happy camper?

Iodine, selenium, zinc, magnesium and vitamin A are all important nutrients the body uses to manufacture thyroid hormones says the NIH. Interestingly enough, bacon packs a pretty good nutritional wallop. Let’s look at what just 6 slices of bacon gives us (remember she said she’d eat a pound!):

Selenium: 34 mcg or 48% DV

Zinc: 2 mg or 6% DV

Magnesium: 17 mg or 4%

Vitamin A: 21 IUs

Not too shabby. Vitamin A is on the low side but this could be easily rectified by eating a mere ounce of liver a few times a week. Vitamin A (found primarily in animal fats) helps the body absorb iodine. Ground beef’s not so bad either for all these nutrients but like bacon is low in vitamin A – only 6.4 mcg.

Speaking of iodine, according to this nutrition counter, bacon has 3.0 micrograms (mcg). This may be because bacon is usually cured with salt. That said, 100 grams of unsalted ground beef has 4.2 mcg so maybe not. The NIH says adults require about 150 mcg daily. A 175 gram or 6 oz burger would only zap you with 10 mcg.

Remember that one person said she ate 450 grams (a pound) of beef for breakfast. That’s roughly 18mcg of iodine alone. She also ate cheese. Much to my surprise, cheese is rife with iodine. A mere 100gms or 3.5 ounces has a whopping 95mcg. Now, that’s a lot of cheese mind you. A thick slice of burger cheese is about one ounce.

But she was pounding down the calories so I think it’s fair to assume the was eating the equivalent of three slices. So if you add up her total iodine intake over three meals a day totaling ~4500 calories, she is getting close to or all the iodine she needs. But I must say this – I highly doubt that she was eating this much food.

I am not calling her a liar mind you. I think she just needs a new abacus.

My wife makes a very good point in saying that most people who want to lose fat are not eating as much food (or even close) as Sara on a LC diet. And they are not eating much if any processed foods. This might result in a micronutrient deficiency unless you’re eating adequate vegetables on a low carb, paleo diet.

So for those of you who are on a VLCD and might be experiencing health problems, make sure you incorporate veggies into your meals like a nice mixed salad and a variety of other non-starchy veggies to make up for the possible shortfall in nutrients from eating muscle meat alone. It’s probably a good idea to include a variety of sea veggies too. It isn’t the low carb diet per se that’s hurting you (lack of starch and sugar) – it’s possible a shortfall of essential micronutrients.

And there are several experts like Dr. William Davis and Dr. Eric Westman who explain that sometimes when you alter your diet for the better, hormones need a bit of time to re-regulate themselves. So even though you might see changes that appear negative after adopting a low sugar, higher fat diet, they are short lived. And all of the RCT studies show that LCD are the go to diets for improving health and metabolic syndrome.

Food for thought at least.

How To Solve The American Health Care System

How you ask?

I’ll tell you how – we need to stop making people need it.

And how do we do this?

Simple. Each individual must:

1. Eat only fatty animal matter (including organs) with a salad and seasonal fruit 2 or 3X a day.

2. Lift weights slowly to fatigue, 2X a week, with 2-3 days rest in between.

3. Be happy. Happiness IS a choice.

If everyone made these three choices, it would virtually wipe out obesity, type 2 diabetes and probably many cancers. It would heal digestive disorders and a host of autoimmune diseases.

It would make seniors much stronger, lessening dimentia, falls and greatly improve the quality of their lives.

For mothers and mothers to be, it would improve fertility, the quality of breast milk and decrease infant mortality.

For children it would improve focus and concentration, lessen A.D.D, wipe out obesity and adolescent T2 diabetes.

And for men, it just might make your hair grow back 😉

Choosing to engage in these three behaviors would save our nation a cool few trillion and we’d all be a lot more productive and I dare say, peaceful.

And it would take less than a year to see the benefits.

My bill is in the mail. Make the check out to Fredrick Hahn. Thanks.