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How to Integrate Nutrition Science into Your Coaching Programs

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Integrating Nutrition Science into Your Coaching Designs

by Mark Teahan Spencer Institute Director of Education

Trainers and coaches are often tasked with working toward one main client goal:  improving health metrics. But we all know that once a goal is revealed, it reaches out into other areas of your client’s life. One area where this is especially true is nutrition. We all can agree that our food choices directly affect our health. We want to choose foods that are healthy for us. But that is only part of the story. To make everything more interesting, we are all different. We all know that each of us responds differently to the same foods. If you were to look at the topic of food from a higher vantage point or lens, you would see that we now have the ability to choose the foods that are right for us physically, by measuring our own personal responses to food and substances we eat and drink.

The overarching goals of your coaching plans are tethered to a belief of a certain reality, that the techniques we have been trying with clients have shown varying degrees of success. Some programs are referred to as “diets”. Others are simply given a name (Keto, Paleo) and there is enough common public knowledge of the topic that people still feel they understand on their own – essentially, we are talking about a shift in food intake. [Read more…]

Benefits of Integrating Metabolic Testing Into Your Coaching Practice

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Why is Metabolic Health Important?

The integration of health interventions requires coaches to be well-informed about metabolic health. But the term metabolic health seems to be getting more interest and attention over time and we have wonder why. We’ve become conditioned to so many reality constructs in life, we tend to seek out order in health only when there is a crisis – or, an event. This is another way of saying that health, fitness and wellness is typically prescriptive in most developed countries. This means that it becomes too late to prevent a problem. In this case; medication or invention(s) may be necessary. As coaches, we are on the front lines of helping people sort out changes or problems. In an ideal scene, we would be proactive and help our client manage good, sound, holistic health and wellness. This simply is not our reality, though. We can also work with clients who need more of a prescriptive intervention, but only if and when we are properly trained for such work 

Metabolic Testing: What You Get 

Metabolic testing has evolved greatly in the past 20 years. Now, consumers can easily get a report on their metabolic function in a fairly quick and easy way. There are a few different ways that metabolism is currently tested. We have the CO2 method, whereby expelled respiratory gases are analyzed to determine how energy is being made and used; we also use the VO2 method but it can often be true that this measure is aimed at assessing athletic performance or responses to physical activity.  Coaches can turn this information into a successful eating strategy and trainers can use the data to fuel their client’s metabolism for workouts or times of recovery. [Read more…]

How Can You Improve Your Metabolic Health?

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best way to boost your metabolism naturally

Habits for a Healthier Metabolism

Clinically speaking, metabolic health is defined by optimal levels of five markers: blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference—without using medication. We can improve most of these markers by consistently making choices that keep glucose levels in a stable and healthy range.

Eat a Diet of Raw and Plant-Based Food and Minimize Emotional Eating

The most nutritious diets have more organic fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans, whole grains, and low-fat dairy and less salt, sugary drinks, white flour, and red meat.

Emotional hunger is also sometimes referred to as psychological hunger or emotional eating – we feel driven to consume something (mostly comfort foods) because of an emotional upset or concern. Stress eating is also a form of emotional hunger. Emotional eating affects both men and women. It may be caused by a number of factors, including stress, hormonal changes, or mixed hunger cues. Find ways that are unrelated to food to deal with your feelings, such as taking a walk, meditating, journaling, or calling a friend. Become aware of the times when a feeling that you might call hunger is really based on emotion. [Read more…]

How to Change the Expression of Our Genes

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How to Change the Expression of Our Genes

The concept of changing the expression of genes sounds unreal, but when we look at how technology is evolving, and the world is growing, even genes modification seems possible. Gene modification is quite an interesting field because of its practical applications. And the process of gene modification entirely depends upon the expression of our genes which is altered by genetics and epigenetics. 

Genetics is not changeable, but epigenetics depends upon our behaviors and environment. The expression of the genes is dependent upon epigenetics, which encodes information into the genes to make the protein. 

Here is how genetics and epigenetics are interlinked to change the behavioral pattern of an individual.  [Read more…]

Why the Gut Microbiome Is Crucial for Our Health?

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gut-microbiome-health-tips

Why the Gut Microbiome Is Crucial for Our Health?

The human body is full of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. They are collectively known as the microbiome, and their totals are impressive, numbering in the trillions.

While some bacteria are associated with disease, others are extremely important for your immune system, heart, weight, and many other aspects of health.

What is the Gut Microbiome?

Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microscopic living things are referred to as microorganisms, or microbes, for short.

Trillions of these microbes exist mainly inside your intestines, with some also known to be on the skin. It is here that most of the microbes in the intestines are found, in a “pouch” at the junction of the small and large intestine called the cecum. The microbes found in the cecum are generally referred to as the gut microbiome. For various reasons, bacteria are widely studied even though many different types of microbes exist inside us. [Read more…]

Coaching 2021: A Summary

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Coaching 2021: A Summary

Time is such a powerful force, it even trickles into the coaching world. There was a time when a coach could skate by through working with clients, without any formal education! If you are already certified as a coach currently, you know how crazy this is. But this was how things were 20 or more years ago.

But advances in coach training do not come at us as quickly as advances in other areas, say, for example, science. Changes in the coaching profession come from either different techniques and training and how coaching services are delivered, or they are changed by events like our current pandemic.  This results in a shift, whereby millions of people are forced to – literally – look inward at their own health.  But the pandemic has also slowed down the already trickle speed of coach training. We didn’t really get to learn too much in 2020 apart from COVID19, we were focused on survival. But now that 2021 is nearly over, we’ve learned a few things in hindsight. [Read more…]

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