<text>FAT is bad for you, fat is good for you. Saturated fat is the devil incarnate, saturated fat could change your life. What or who are we supposed to believe, eh? With so much conflicting information out there, it’s hard to make healthy choices sometimes. You’ll have guys like me telling you to eat butter and animal fats while at the same time ads on TV will sell you the benefits of low fat yogurt and just about anything else. Low fat double chocolate cookie anyone? In making an informed decision it’s helpful to know how the low fat trend came about. Basically, fat has the most calories per gram at nine, while protein and carbs both have four calories per gram. So the easiest way to reduce someone’s calorie intake? You got it, remove fat. Brilliant, right? Well no, not so much. Here are just some of the reasons why: 1. Removing fat removes much of the taste so, to combat this, food companies fill low fat products with sugar. Not good for the waistline. 2. A diet low in natural fats, (animal fat, fish, nuts, butter, seeds, avocado and such) has a negative effect on testosterone levels. Decreased testosterone means decreased muscle mass as well as more fat. No thanks! 3. Fat is necessary for many bodily functions from digestion through to regeneration of hair and skin cells. 4. Reducing fat increases hunger as fats are very calorie dense. 5. We need healthy fats to improve our body composition. As ever, keep it simple, get fats from animals, fish, butter, nuts, olive oil etc while avoiding processed fats like soy, vegetable and sunflower which are all found in highly processed foods. Make sure you have fat in moderation in order to keep your overall calorie intake in line. You know, have a handful of brazil nuts rather than the entire bag (yup, guilty as charged). Finally, avoid margarine at all costs and always cook in a little un-salted butter or coconut oil. Remember, marge is made in a lab and butter is a natural food. Besides that, I’d always trust a cow before I’d trust a scientist. You can get involved by tweeting your diet and fitness questions @GM_Fit, following GM FIT Personal Training Glasgow on Facebook or picking up a copy of Average Joe’s Old School Strength & Fat Loss on Amazon. Eat. Sleep. Exercise WITH Easter just around the corner there is chocolate everywhere. Dogs have a tendency to sniff out any foodstuff if it is at all within reach, and chocolate is no exception. However, what dogs don’t realise is just how poisonous it is to them. Chocolate contains theobromine which is a stimulant. It affects the central nervous system, skeletal muscle and heart muscle. At low doses it causes sickness and diarrhoea, but at higher doses it can cause excitability, a racing heart beat, muscle twitches, tremors, convulsions and kidney dysfunction. The amount of theobromine depends on the kind of chocolate — white chocolate has only small amounts, but cocoa powder, cocoa beans and dark chocolate contain high concentrations of the toxin. As a general rule — the more expensive the chocolate the more toxic it probably is. Luckily, if you catch your dog scoffing an Easter egg it is very treatable if we see you as quickly as possible. We have up to an hour to empty their stomach — this means making them sick, enough to put me off chocolate until next Easter. We can then treat with activated charcoal to stop any of the remaining theobromine from being absorbed. The prognosis for dogs who have eaten toxic amounts of chocolate is favourable, but treatment has to be fast. Speed is most definitely the key. I hope you all have a great Easter weekend — just keep the Easter eggs in the high cupboards, and don’t let the dogs out while you’re having your Easter egg hunt. </text> <text>FAT is bad for you, fat is good for you. Saturated fat is the devil incarnate, saturated fat could change your life. What or who are we supposed to believe, eh? With so much conflicting information out there, it’s hard to make healthy choices sometimes. You’ll have guys like me telling you to eat butter and animal fats while at the same time ads on TV will sell you the benefits of low fat yogurt and just about anything else. Low fat double chocolate cookie anyone? In making an informed decision it’s helpful to know how the low fat trend came about. Basically, fat has the most calories per gram at nine, while protein and carbs both have four calories per gram. So the easiest way to reduce someone’s calorie intake? You got it, remove fat. Brilliant, right? Well no, not so much. Here are just some of the reasons why: 1. Removing fat removes much of the taste so, to combat this, food companies fill low fat products with sugar. Not good for the waistline. 2. A diet low in natural fats, (animal fat, fish, nuts, butter, seeds, avocado and such) has a negative effect on testosterone levels. Decreased testosterone means decreased muscle mass as well as more fat. No thanks! 3. Fat is necessary for many bodily functions from digestion through to regeneration of hair and skin cells. 4. Reducing fat increases hunger as fats are very calorie dense. 5. We need healthy fats to improve our body composition. As ever, keep it simple, get fats from animals, fish, butter, nuts, olive oil etc while avoiding processed fats like soy, vegetable and sunflower which are all found in highly processed foods. Make sure you have fat in moderation in order to keep your overall calorie intake in line. You know, have a handful of brazil nuts rather than the entire bag (yup, guilty as charged). Finally, avoid margarine at all costs and always cook in a little un-salted butter or coconut oil. Remember, marge is made in a lab and butter is a natural food. Besides that, I’d always trust a cow before I’d trust a scientist. You can get involved by tweeting your diet and fitness questions @GM_Fit, following GM FIT Personal Training Glasgow on Facebook or picking up a copy of Average Joe’s Old School Strength & Fat Loss on Amazon. Eat. Sleep. Exercise WITH Easter just around the corner there is chocolate everywhere. Dogs have a tendency to sniff out any foodstuff if it is at all within reach, and chocolate is no exception. However, what dogs don’t realise is just how poisonous it is to them. Chocolate contains theobromine which is a stimulant. It affects the central nervous system, skeletal muscle and heart muscle. At low doses it causes sickness and diarrhoea, but at higher doses it can cause excitability, a racing heart beat, muscle twitches, tremors, convulsions and kidney dysfunction. The amount of theobromine depends on the kind of chocolate — white chocolate has only small amounts, but cocoa powder, cocoa beans and dark chocolate contain high concentrations of the toxin. As a general rule — the more expensive the chocolate the more toxic it probably is. Luckily, if you catch your dog scoffing an Easter egg it is very treatable if we see you as quickly as possible. We have up to an hour to empty their stomach — this means making them sick, enough to put me off chocolate until next Easter. We can then treat with activated charcoal to stop any of the remaining theobromine from being absorbed. The prognosis for dogs who have eaten toxic amounts of chocolate is favourable, but treatment has to be fast. Speed is most definitely the key. I hope you all have a great Easter weekend — just keep the Easter eggs in the high cupboards, and don’t let the dogs out while you’re having your Easter egg hunt. </text>