Happy holidays, if you’re celebrating them. You’re probably going to a lot of social gatherings and eating foods that are high in sugar and fat and some boozy drinks alongside with that. I’m not here to give you a lecture on what you should and shouldn’t do over the holidays but I do want you to realize the holiday season for a lot of us began in November with Thanksgiving, continues through December and January
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I’m just going to say it: if you’re not targeting to sleep at least 7 hours every night, then you don’t know how to prioritize your health. Although, our main focus at Olive Branch is fitness, nutrition, and psychology; the over-arching theme has always been wellness performance; and you simply cannot talk about wellness if you don’t get enough sleep. If you have been following my blog, then you know the importance of exercise, nutrition,
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As the year comes to a close, it’s inevitable that many people will be setting their new year resolutions (and why I don’t…) It’s a hectic time of the year. There will be people frantically closing out their final tasks before they take off for vacation. There will be people already on holidays visiting friends and family and dealing with uncomfortable questions about the relationship status or career. There will be people searching for that
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If you’ve been following the last few blogs here on sugar, then you now have a pretty good understanding on the negative effects (ie. insulin resistance) as well as how sugar gets stored in your body as fat. In the last blog, we talked about how HIT exercise can help mitigate the negative forces of eating sugar. If we use the analogy that your bathtub filled with water is your body’s fat stores, then
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If you’re trying to lose some fat, and you know you ought to be eating less, but you just can’t help scarfing down your food as soon as the plate touches down on the table, then this blog post is for you! When you’re about to have a meal it also doesn’t help that you’ve been thinking about eating for the last 15 minutes and because of that your mouth has already started to salivate
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We are not all that different - you and I. Pushing yourself to go to the gym and exercise is a miserable experience and I don’t even mean the activity of exercising! Just trying to convince yourself to go is an experience so unpleasant, it’s enough to derail any focused and disciplined individual - yes, even me. I am also not always at my peak performance. I almost always drop in strength and gain fat
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Are you’re feeling just a bit slow and sluggish these days? Do you find that you crave sugar and refined carbohydrates a lot more than before? Has your workout schedule fallen by the wayside? Perhaps, even your waistline has increased a bit. Inevitably, you feel a bit guilty for letting yourself go - maybe even a bit self-loathing at the extreme. While it’s not ideal that you gained fat and lost a bit of muscle,
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It’s everyone’s favourite time of the year when people finally have an excuse to role-play their superheroes and dress as revealing as their heart’s content! Halloween has always been a season of festivities and parties as autumn comes to an end and we have much bounty to celebrate for from the late harvests. Now, I’m not here to tell you not to go out and enjoy yourselves on this most debauchery time of the year,
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We all know how traveling can wreak havoc on your health routine, but the havoc it wreaks on your back is probably the worst; especially, the long-haul flights where you’re confined to a cabin seat that is poorly designed for lumbar support and for long durations at a time. Even for me, someone who has a fairly active daytime job, one long-haul return-trip is enough to make my back seize up; enough to make me
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In a previous blog, I wrote about how to motivate yourself to train during the winter months. This time, I’d like to share a few points why I actually prefer to train in the winter! 1. There are less distractions during the winter! Because it’s so cold outside, there are less events held outdoors - less barbecues, less, outdoor concerts, less beach volleyball days! People organize less social outings so that gives you more
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