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Do Physicians Recommend a Plant-Based Diet

If you’re Concerned about how your diet impacts your health…

You might be wondering, Do Physicians Recommend a Plant-Based Diet?

 

According to Kaiser Permanente, a well-known company that publishes medical journals to physicians, has encouraged medical doctors over the past year to reconsider the types of diets they recommend to their patients.  Specifically, this article discusses proper diet MD should recommend for diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.  They say “Healthy eating may be best achieved with a plant-based diet, which we define as a regimen that encourages whole, plant-based foods and discourages meat, dairy products, and eggs as well as all refined and processed foods.”  The article discusses the positive effects of eating a plant-based diet to reduce cholesterol, BMI, high blood pressure, and glycated haemoglobin (a protein with red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body.) The vegan diets used in this study included nutrient dense plant-based foods, encouraging lots of vegetables, fruits, nuts, lentils, peas, seeds, and soybeans, among other beans. It was amazing to read through the results found in a 16-week study, showing that plant-based diets improved ALL of these medical issues better than a combination of medication and exercise. So, do physicians recommend a plant-based diet or are they neglecting to stay up to date on current nutritional research?  Turns out, there are quite a few MDs recommending a plant-based diet including the President of the American College of Cardiology!  Here is a list of other plant-based doctors.

In this article by The Permanente Journal, I concur with their conclusion that those on a vegan diet need to focus on planning, reading labels, and discipline.  As a Vegan Personal Trainer & Nutrition Coach in Phoenix area, I am sometimes overwhelmed (in a good way) with the abundance of new vegan options at restaurants and health food stores.  But then, I become stumped at the majority of restaurants and grocery chains who still offer 98% animal-based products.  I just took my first trip to Winco Foods in Gilbert AZ today, hoping to find yummy vegan grub, but I left with none other than avocados, green tea, oil-free frozen hash browns, gluten-free cupcake mix for Halloween, and Gardein vegan chicken for my husband to try. I read every ingredient on the labels and leave behind anything containing animal products (this definitely takes discipline.) No worries though, we are fortunate to live in Chandler where there are loads of great vegan options at health food stores, and nearby vegan restaurants in Tempe & Phoenix.  As always, we have the world wide web to find a plethora of homemade plant-based recipes to try.

Written by Kelly Gibson, October 12 2014

 

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    Source: http://www.thepermanentejournal.org/issues/2013/spring/5117-nutrition.html, photo from www.natural-health-cafe.org

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    What Exercise Machines are Lacking

    What Exercise Machines are Lacking

    Ever walk into a gym and feel overwhelmed by all of the exercise machines? It’s tough to know which ones to use and how to use them without proper demonstration. Clients who are new to exercise can benefit from using machines because they are safer, easy to use, and can give you a full workout with the variety of machines you find in a gym today. Plus, it takes out the guesswork in figuring out what exercises you can do for the day.  You can easily show up, go from machine to machine for an hour and call it a day, right? Well, there’s something you need to know!

    exercise-machines-cables
    Exercise Machines

    The secret is: Personal Trainers are taught to teach clients exercises that do not require machines! Why?  Because machines are not the best use of your time if you want to see real long-term results. Although they are effective for beginners, machines offer artificial support and typically work in one plane of motion.  My role as a Personal Trainer is to get clients using free weights or body weight for their exercises.  The reason is that free weights allow individuals to perform exercises in ALL planes of motion, and increase the demands on a person’s stability.  Free weights can allow for more complex exercises and even synergistic moves that a machine could not do.  The added bonus: Complex exercises with free weightsburn more calories than a seated machine exercise.  

    Next time you work out, try using barbells or dumbbells to perform the same exercises that you would with a machine.

    For example, Barbell Deadlifts using a barbell instead of a machine.

    Keep in mind that cable machines are still important.  They help individuals to develop stability, power, and strength.  If you work out from home, you may use resistance bands as an inexpensive alternative to cable machines. 

    Need help learning free weight exercises? Try Kelly’s Personal Training!

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