TK Smith, Fitness Nutritionist & Lifestyle Coach

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Is Sugar Toxic?

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This was a great  60 Minute piece that ran a couple of weeks ago.  It is very short and worth a few minutes of your time.  Every parent should watch this!

Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on new research showing that beyond weight gain, sugar can take a serious toll on your health, worsening conditions ranging from heart disease to cancer.

Here is a Overtime follow-up video with an interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.  Also worth a minute of your time.

We at Overtime couldn’t believe our ears when we heard this report. We knew sugar was bad, but a “toxin”? We give our kids that stuff!

We weren’t quite sure how to apply the new science in the 60 Minutes report to the challenges of everyday family life, so we sat down with Dr. Sanjay Gupta for some practical advice. Both a doctor and a father of three, Dr. Gupta offers his take on how a typical American family should think about the sugar in their diet.

I am so happy this information is getting out into mainstream media.  Here is a blog post called, sugar – making us sick? .  I wrote this a year ago exactly.  The funny thing is, the 60 Minute piece above has the same name as a New York Times article, which also ran exactly a year ago.  The New York Times article was written by Gary Taubes.   Here is a link to the New York Times Taube’s article – Is Sugar Toxic?

This is important stuff to be aware of, specially if you have kids!

my birthday wish

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Today is my birthday!  I am having a relaxing day with my family.  I am feeling very blessed and loved by all the support, gifts and kind words from all of my friends and family.   I do have one birthday wish that involves you.

The makers of the movie FOOD MATTERS were kind enough to offer a FREE World Wide Online Screening of the movie FOOD MATTERS starting today (my birthday) through October 8th.   My birthday wish is that you watch this movie and share this with someone you care about.

I watched this movie for the first time a couple months ago and was blown away!  I have seen a lot of documentaries on food and health, but this was probably one of the best (I know I say that all the time, but really this one is important to see).  We have become victims in our society and the result is that we are all carrying a few extra pounds (or more) and our health is declining at an alarming rate.  You may not be able to see it or feel it today, but it is happening to you and you do not even know it.

The good news is you do not have to be a victim, all it takes is a little knowledge and you can live a long healthy life and avoid all the craziness that is going on in our society today.   Here is a summary of the movie and the trailer:

FOODMATTERS® is a hard hitting, fast paced look at our current state of health. Despite the billions of dollars of funding and research into new so-called cures we continue to suffer from a raft of chronic ills and every day maladies.

This groundbreaking documentary sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide ‘Sickness Industry’ and exposes a growing body of scientific evidence proving that nutritional therapy can be more effective, more economical, less harmful and less invasive than most conventional medical treatments.

FOODMATTERS® features interviews with leading medical experts from around the world who discuss natural approaches to preventing and reversing Cancer, Obesity, Heart Disease, Depression, Mental Illness and many other chronic conditions.

Find out what works, what doesn’t and what’s killing you.

Becoming informed about the choices you have for you and your family’s health could save your life.

Take a minute and checkout the trailier:

Please watch this movie!!!  It will change your life!!!

how to avoid heart disease

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One of the biggest killers in the U.S. today is heart disease…Heart disease is preventable!

Do you know someone in your family that has had heart disease?  If you said yes, then you will want to watch this CNN special called The Last Heart Attack.  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief  Medical Correspondent for CNN has spent the last year studying this and shares his findings in this special report.  It is eye opening and should be a wake-up call for all of us.

I am a believer that heart disease (and many of the health problems we are facing today) can be solved with proper nutrition and lifestyle.  The problem is, these diseases are chronic (meaning we become sick over time) and as humans (for whatever reason) we do not like to address things until it is a serious problem.  We stick our head in the sand and say, “I will eat better tomorrow” or “I will start working out tomorrow”.  Well “tomorrow” may be too late.  If we wait until our body gives us the big signal, we will have much bigger issues to deal with than figuring out how to eat better or finding time in our busy schedule to workout.

The good news is you can make a small changes in your lifestyle today and totally avoid having to deal with these bigger problems tomorrow.  The first step is education.  Make some time and watch this special report.  It’s about 40 minutes long, but worth it.

Then, start taking action.  The sooner you start, the easier it will be.  I believe the best (and least painful) way of making change is baby steps.  If you start now, you can change your lifestyle over time, in a easy manageable way.  If you wait until tomorrow, well…it just may not be as much fun.

Please share this message with people you care about and love :o)

 

happy ending ;o)

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Believe it or not this has nothing to do with food!  Well why am I writing this then?  That is a great question!   Helping people live a healthier lifestyle through food is my passion.  Since I have changed the way I eat, my whole life has changed.  Everything has gotten better.  I am for sure happier!  So did food make me happier?

I truly believe what you focus on is what you get.  That is why I never watch the news, it is depressing.  The news mostly showcases the bad things that are happening, accidents, robberies, murders, sickness, wars,….and so on.  The news rarely focuses on the good things that are happening.  If all the news stories were focusing on the positive things that happened that day, don’t you think that would stimulate even more positive things to happen in the world?

One of the things I try to  help my clients understand, is that the human body is a very powerful deliberate machine with the simple goal of healing itself.  Give your body what it needs to do that and it will.  Proper nutrition is obviously critical, but sometimes we underestimate our thoughts.  Believe it or not, your thoughts can have a significant effect on the long term success of your fitness goals.  I have had a few clients that never thought they could have the body they wanted.  If you think you can’t, then you probably never will.  Once we worked on their belief, they magically transformed their bodies in ways they never thought possible.  All it took was thinking in a different way.

Here is a great TED video by Shawn Achor called “The Happiness Advantage”.

“Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard.

His research and lectures on happiness and human potential have received attention in The New York Times, Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, as well as on NPR and CNN Radio, and he travels around the United States and Europe giving talks on positive psychology to Fortune 500 corporations, schools, and non-profit organizations.” – TEDxTalks

The message in the video is simple, yet very powerful.   If you wait until you reach a goal to be happy, then you will never be happy.  Retrain your brain to be happy now and your brain will work with your body to fulfill your goal.

Take a minute to watch this video and start retraining your brain, so that you can start creating your Happy Ending!

 

Food Matters Screening [Sept 7th @ 6pm]

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I watched this movie for the first time a couple months ago and was blown away!  I have seen a lot of documentaries on food and health, but this was probably one of the best (I know I say that all the time, but really this one is important to see).  We have become victims in our society and the result is that we are all carrying a few extra pounds (or more) and our health is declining at an alarming rate.  You may not be able to see it or feel it today, but it is happening to you and you do not even know it.

The good news is you do not have to be a victim, all it takes is a little knowledge and you can live a long healthy life and avoid all the craziness that is going on in our society today.   Here is a summary of the movie and the trailer:

FOODMATTERS® is a hard hitting, fast paced look at our current state of health. Despite the billions of dollars of funding and research into new so-called cures we continue to suffer from a raft of chronic ills and every day maladies.

This groundbreaking documentary sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide ‘Sickness Industry’ and exposes a growing body of scientific evidence proving that nutritional therapy can be more effective, more economical, less harmful and less invasive than most conventional medical treatments.

FOODMATTERS® features interviews with leading medical experts from around the world who discuss natural approaches to preventing and reversing Cancer, Obesity, Heart Disease, Depression, Mental Illness and many other chronic conditions.

Find out what works, what doesn’t and what’s killing you.

Becoming informed about the choices you have for you and your family’s health could save your life.

Take a minute and checkout the trailier:

There is a free screening right here in San Diego at re:form FITNESS Studio on September 7th at 6pm.  Seats are limited and available on a first come first serve basis, so reserve your spot by emailing: info@reformfitness.com

If you do not live in the San Diego area, you can  find a screening near you, or you can purchase the DVD online.  Either way, please see this movie!!!  It will change your life!!!

 

save the date – Food Inc on PBS – Aug 9th

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If you have not already seen the movie Food Inc., then mark your calendars to watch PBS on Aug 9th (check your local listing for date and time)!  This is a great movie and will really help you think about what is happening to our food.  To quote myself from Jan 5th 2011:

To me food was just something that I picked up at my local grocery store on the weekend.   I was very surprised to learn how much I did not know about the business of food.   After further research on my own, it is obvious that food companies are not necessarily interested in my health but rather the bottom line of the company, which is fine, but this is critical information to realize when we are making our food buying decisions.

If you do nothing else please watch this movie!!!

This is more important now than ever.  August 9th is a Friday night, grab some popcorn, family, friends and make it a date.  Spread the word, this movie is important!

Check out the trailer and watch the movie on PBS!

chow down (2010) – if you eat “food” you need to watch this movie!

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OK, watched this movie last night and it was awesome (I actually watched it twice)!  The 2010 movie called Chow Down was produced by Julia Grayer and Gage Johnston.  I read, write and live this kinda stuff every single day, that’s just what I do.  This movie brought out even some new things for me to think about.  The filmmakers do a super job of summarizing many of the issues and really bringing them home.

If you eat “food” you need to watch this movie!  It will really help you understand that we are living in a time where what we are eating is making us sick and is at the root of most of the major health issues we are dealing with.  In addition, you will learn that our “food” is not designed to be healthy for us, but rather for profitability.

To quote myself from last week’s posting called eat & drink whatever you want ~ we will fix it!

There is a lot of profit in selling “foods” that make us sick.  There is also a lot of profit in fixing us when we become sick from the “foods” we ate.  From a business perspective, this is an awesome business model, a self propelling money generating machine! 

You will see from the movie that the government is not going to fix this. They are right in the middle of the whole mess.

The good news is you do not have to participate in this and Chow Down will show you how.

You may not be diabetic, have high cholesterol/blood pressure,  heart disease or cancer,  but these things are all driven by what you put into your body and your environment.  By understanding what stimulates these diseases, you can make the right lifestyle choices for you, so that you do not have to deal with these problems in the future.

Here is the movie trailer

 

 

You can watch Chow Down for free on Hulu.  Enjoy and share this with someone you care about!

 

eat & drink whatever you want ~ we’ll fix it

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Here is a fun little video that makes you think about how crazy things have gotten.   This is just one piece to a much larger puzzle.  There is a lot of profit in selling “foods” that make us sick.  There is also a lot of profit in fixing us when we become sick from the “foods” we ate.  From a business perspective, this is an awesome business model, a self propelling money generating machine!

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of how far we have come with our technology.  I just prefer not to get sick in the first place!  There is very little profit in promoting a whole foods diet that keeps you healthy, so who wants to market that?   No one!   So take control and don’t be a victim of this economic machine!

UPDATE:  Just posted this blog and about 20 minutes later this one from Dr. McDougall came across my radar thought it was a nice follow-up – enjoy!

 

a must see movie – forks over knives!

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Last month, I blogged about saving the date for Forks Over Knives!  This past Saturday night, we went to the theater and watched it and….WOW!  It was awesome!  This movie was put together very nicely with lots of good solid information, background and evidence about how our food directly effects our health. I would recommend this movie to everyone as a must see!

I am planning on buying multiple copies of the DVD and giving them to my friends and family.  If you have a history of diabetes, heart disease or cancer in your family,  you owe it to yourself to watch this movie and share it with the people that you care about in your life.

This movie will make you think.  It made me think (even more about what I eat and some changes I will be making with my own eating habits). It will make you think about your health, your life and the people you care about.  It will motivate you to take action.  After the movie, I happened to be walking behind 2 ladies discussing what they had learned from the movie and about the challenges they were going to have to overcome to make the change in their eating habits (specifically how were they going to get their kids to embrace this change).

I was so pleased to see that this movie was so quickly getting people to think differently.   Change is never easy, no matter what it is!  But the key is to get started.  It does not have to be overnight.  You can ease into it a little at time.  In fact, that is exactly how we changed the eating habits of our family and I feel that is probably the best approach.  Start out slowly and over time transform your eating habits.  (Once you get going, it happens even faster than you think!)

This movie will make you think, laugh and (if you think enough) cry.  So, go check out the movie and if you are serious about making a change in your eating habits and don’t know where to start, let me know. I would be glad to share how we made the change in our family.

Here are the movie show times. Go see it (and take someone you care about)!!!

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