Have you ever wondered if there’s a connection between eating sweets and breast cancer?

This topic comes up in the media every now and again, so here’s some information for you.

Limiting carbs and sweets IS one way to decrease your breast cancer risk.

Eating carbohydrates and simple sugars causes a spike in blood sugar. The constant elevation of blood sugar can result in insulin resistance. When that happens your body loses the ability to utilize the calories from the carbohydrates you eat.

It becomes a vicious cycle and takes its toll on you.

You eat carbs, your insulin levels rise but you become less efficient at getting glucose into your cells to be used for fuel.

Your body begins to store excess fat from not utilizing the carbs.

This combination of elevated blood sugar, insulin, and increased fat tissue causes inflammation, which damages other tissues in your body.

Insulin resistance leads to diabetes, heart disease, and strokes. Insulin resistance and diabetes are also linked to cancer.

A 2005 Italian study on the subject, published in the British Medical Journal, looked at roughly 5,000 women. After adjusting for their health history and lifestyle factors and comparing those women with and without diagnosed breast cancer, the researchers found that the women who consumed the most high-carb/high-sugar foods (like biscuits, pastries, and ice cream, as well as chocolate and simple sugars, including honey, jams, and jellies) had a significantly increased risk for breast cancer.

Other studies, including one just published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, suggest that insulin may be the link to the increased risk for breast cancer.

So take this information and remember that eating too many sweets and having elevated insulin levels raises the risk for breast cancer.

It is a risk factor that we can control.

Focus, instead, on eating a high-fiber diet rich in non-starchy vegetables, fruits, organic animal proteins, fish, beans, nuts/seeds, and other healthy fats. Monitor your sugar intake and gauge your intake of healthier carbs, like rice for instance, by your blood sugar and insulin levels and your weight.

shelli

Whether it’s from my yoga students, personal training clients or runners I’m coaching, a common question is about what to eat before they work out.

So let’s take a closer look at pre-workout fuel ideas.

It’s an important question because many of you exercise early in the morning.

You want to eat something that will digest well and is not too much food, yet you don’t want to feel lightheaded during your workout.

Eating before exercise can boost your performance, improve your endurance and help prevent low blood sugar, thereby preventing lightheadedness.

It also fuels your muscle and liver carbohydrate usage, providing you with energy throughout your workout.

The type of pre-workout fuel you’ll need depends on a few things.

One is your metabolism and digestive system.

The other is the type of exercise.

Your digestive system and metabolism are unique, so as I always suggest you must listen to your body to find out what works best. If finding a good pre-workout meal or snack has been a challenge for you, keep a journal of what you eat, the workouts, and how you feel.

Use these general guidelines when making your choices:

1. Blood flows to your belly during digestion. This means less blood flow for fueling your muscles. If you feel bloated when you exercise, this might be the reason. Have a meal or snack 45-90 minutes before your workout. You also need to allow for more digestion time before intense exercise as opposed to lower-intensity exercise.

2. Having difficulty with digestion? Then a liquid snack might be a better idea than a solid meal. Liquids take less time to digest (30 minutes or so).

3. Sugar will give you a quick boost. However, you’ll experience a drop in energy when your blood sugar levels stabilize. So if you’ve been feeling like your energy is on a roller coaster when you work out, stay away from sugar based snacks beforehand.

4. Eating carb-heavy foods before a workout can interfere with performance and cause stomach discomfort. If this happens to you, it’s because your body is still digesting. Make note of this and adjust the amount or type of carbs until you find yourself feeling fueled and energetic during your workout.

5. A study published in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Nutrition found that women who ate low-glycemic carbs before a workout burned 50 percent more fat during the workout. If that’s one of your goals, then opt for slow-burning low-glycemic carbs.

Finding optimal pre-workout fuel comes down to following these general guidelines and then tweaking them to your individual needs.

Hope this answers some of your questions about pre-workout fueling!

shelli

If I asked you, “Why do we eat protein?” I’m wondering what you would answer.

One of the most common answers is, “For energy.”

How about this protein question, “Does it matter which sources of protein we eat to get maximum protein nutritional value?”

Most people would answer that gram for gram all protein sources are the same.

While it is somewhat true that protein provides energy, it is not the main reason why our bodies require protein.

And, all protein sources are not the same when it comes to their nutritional and usable benefits.

Let’s look more closely at protein so you understand the correct answers to these protein questions.

Your body is built of protein.

Protein makes up your organs, bones, tendons, ligaments and blood.

It also makes up many of your hormones (insulin, growth hormone), immune system, neurotransmitters and all of the enzymes of metabolism, digestion and detoxification.

In other words, it plays a huge role.

Because of the acts of daily living, proteins break down. They need to be repaired or replaced so that all the structures they comprise stay healthy and functional.

That’s why getting enough daily high quality dietary protein is essential. So, protein is a key nutrient for both recovery and longevity.

If you’re working on increasing your fitness, your needs for quality protein increases so that you’ll be able to support your structure as you increase your workload. If you don’t do this, you’ll likely feel less energetic, experience irritability and poor sleep, and perhaps injure yourself or feel ill.

Protein is a complex structure made up of smaller units called amino acids.

There are 22 different ones in nature that are used in your body to make protein. Only eight of them must be in your diet on a daily basis. So when it comes to making proteins, you can’t make them without the 8 essential amino acids.

They are called “essential” because your body cannot make them and must get them from food.

Eat enough of these eight essential amino acids and your body can make all of the other proteins it needs. Therefore, a protein’s quality is attributed to the amount and proportion of these eight essential amino acids. For instance, animal proteins have all of the essential amino acids and vegetable proteins are often missing one or more of them.

In order to make sure you are getting enough protein to maintain your body in an optimum state, make sure you don’t fall into one of these two groups.

1. People who are not eating enough quality protein. This can be due to a lack of accurate information about which foods have high quality protein. If you are a vegan and don’t eat animal protein, make sure to learn what your best sources of high quality protein are. Also, many dieters who cut calories are likely not eating enough high quality protein.

2. People who cannot digest protein fully, so it does not enter their bodies. Protein digestion begins in the stomach with an enzyme called pepsin. Pepsin only works if the pH (acidity) of the stomach is very low, between 1-2. If the pH of your stomach is too high (from taking antacids or other medications for instance), your protein digestion will be compromised. So, you may be eating enough protein but not digesting or absorbing it.

Now let’s say that you ARE eating enough protein and you ARE absorbing it. What happens next?

One of two things will happen. Either the amino acids are used by your body to make protein, OR your body uses the amino acids for energy.

What determines whether the amino acids from your diet go down the “make protein” or “make energy” pathway?

The answer to this question was only recently discovered.

The route that a dietary protein takes is determined by the ratio and amounts of the eight essential amino acids in that protein. If the makeup of a protein has a ratio of essential amino acids that is correct to what your body needs, that will be a “quality protein.” If it is missing certain of the essential amino acids, or if they are in an improper ratio, it is considered a lesser quality protein.

Nutritionists measure the quality of a protein using an index called NNU or Net Nitrogen Utilization. Of the three major food groups, proteins, fats and carbohydrates, only proteins have nitrogen.

Scientists can measure how many grams of nitrogen go in the body when a certain amount of protein is eaten and then they collect the urine and stool to measure how much nitrogen came out. What didn’t come out is what the body used to make its own proteins. That’s the NNU of that food.

Here are some examples of the NNU in foods you commonly eat:

Beef, poultry, fish and eggs have an average NNU of 32%. This means that if you ate a can of tuna with 28 grams of protein, the actual amount of that protein that your body could use would be 32% of that or about 9-10 grams.

For dairy products and soy products the NNU is much lower at 17%. Remember when looking at the NNU you are measuring the quality factor of the protein.

Vegetables and nuts have much lower NNUs (under 10%). This is why it is more challenging to get adequate protein if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, since the NNU quality of those proteins is lower.

As active women you must get enough high quality protein in your diet.

You need enough quality protein to keep up with your body needs, and then some if you’re looking to improve performance and not break down.

Use this information to keep enhancing the quality of your protein intake so that you can improve performance and optimize your health.

If you feel you are eating enough quality protein and yet feel you are not digesting or absorbing it properly, seek the advice of a qualified health professional.

Keep the protein coming, and keep it of the highest quality possible!

shelli