I’m currently reading Dr. Walter Willet’s, Eat, Drink and Be Healthy classic and am amazed at all the nuggets he shares. I’m a performance guy, who loves to train hard and lives an active lifestyle, but reading this book has awakened me to many things, specifically eating to prevent disease. (ha, what a novel, yet simple concept)

I train my clients from the inside out, from the core so to speak, and I eat and talk about eating healthful foods. My usual point of view on nutrition is geared towards performance or cosmetic reasons, but this book takes it to another level. Disease prevention.

I’m from huge families and we’ve experienced our share of death and disease over the years while living an American lifestyle. To know how my family eats and lives and then to be a health professional and read this book is, uh…life changing. Most everyone knows that eating certain foods in excess are going to make you fat (or maybe they really don’t know), but imagine knowing that eating certain foods was going to kill you (as in ashes to ashes, dust to dust), require you to stick your body with needles everyday, require you to take pills so you could go #2 more easily and regularly, give you the opportunity to rave about your triple bypass surgery instead of your triple double in basketball or let you shave your head bald so you can drink nauseating chemical cocktails while feeling green without envy. Sounds exciting, right? Where do you sign up? NOT.

So, I just read about fiber and thought I’d share 4 great things fiber can do for you.

1. Fiber regulates blood sugar by slowing digestion (helps control hunger & weight gain).
2. High Fiber foods help prevent diabetes (no needle sticking).
3. Fiber reduces your risk of heart disease by about 30% (no Armani Pace Makers or Louis Vitton Stents).
4. Fiber prevents constipation and diverticular disease. (Screw the laxatives).

So basically, eat a bowl of rolled or steel cut oatmeal each day to lose weight, have high energy without the lulls, which stablizes your blood sugar so you don’t go into food coma, so you don’t get hungry again, overeat and become fat which leads to more problems, so you don’t become insulin sensitive, which would lead to a fun life of sticking yourself with needles because you have type 2 diabetes (not), so you reduce your cholesterol level which keeps your heart pumping strong for fun active living (think sports, adventures and “adult” activities) and maybe best of all because you take this for granted the most, you’ll have quick, painless and regular bathroom trips instead of taking pills or going to the hospital because you “gotta go” and you can’t.

Yours living the active life,

Your health & fitness expert,

Your ace,

Your coach,

Mike Alves

Newton Personal Trainer

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