Looking for a great source of information on health and wellness?! Instead of relying on the media or the food industry to tell you what to eat, consider Liberation Wellness---a REAL food approach to optimal health. We blog here weekly, so check out our posts and also the posts of everyone else on the Liberation Wellness Team!

What is Liberation Wellness and what do we believe?
Liberation Wellness is a movement, led my health professionals and real food activists, that is determined to spread the truth about how to take the confusion out of eating and staying well.

Over time, true nutrition ideology got lost in translation. We intellectually talked ourselves out of the game, believing we can eat ANYTHING we THINK is good for us.

We’re made to believe that…
…. vitamins in a bowl of cereal are just as nutritious as eating organic fruits.
… cooking with vegetable oils is better than grass-fed butter and organic virgin coconut oil.
… it’s safe to consume aspartame, high fructose corn syrup and other alternative sweeteners and our bodies can naturally process these “just as real” ingredients.
… commercially raised beef (full of hormones, fed an unnatural diet) is perfectly acceptable to eat.

Food matters. It’s nature’s answer to prescription medicine. Ingredients matter. Food is not a quick fix. Effects of a bad health don’t show up overnight, and likewise, your body needs time to reset itself to feeling healthy and whole.

The constant reinforcement of today’s health model is making us sick, fat and confused.
Sick because we’re managing our health with pills, not clean, pesticide and hormone free food.
Fat because we rely on drive-thru nutrition and taught to believe it’s OK to eat sterilized, over processed, refined and fortified foods. We think saturated fats make us fat, and thank technology for the ability to strip away so-called fats from naturally healthy foods!
Confused because we’re aiming at the wrong target….and don’t even know it. How many people does it take to educate a nation on nutrition? How can so many experts differ in their opinion as to what’s healthy? The system is broke!

The truth is, the truth shall set you free. Liberation Wellness is about setting the record straight about what you think you know, with proven studies that have worked for our ancestors. Liberation Wellness is about educating you about proper nutrition and exposing partial truths and lies. It’s made up of a team of people who want real change in real communities.
~from LiberationWellness.com
Visit www.LiberationWellnessBlog.com for daily blog posts!

Detox and Cleanse diets have become a nationwide phenomenon over the past few years and the trend doesn’t seem to be subsiding. Health conscious Americans are looking for the next “IT” weight loss plan that rids their bodies of toxins and returns them to a balanced state. Diet plans range from three day juice fasting to grueling diets that require the participant to only drink cayenne, maple syrup, and lemon juice concoctions for ten days. While liquid-only diets may help to shed pounds quickly, they can harm us in the long run. These diets do not provide the nutrients our body needs to function properly. With the array of options available, it can be hard to decide what’s safest for your body and what will give you the most benefit.

Sportfuel offers a healthy alternative to a starvation type Cleanse or Detox diet. The Nutritional Cleanse Program is a 14-day diet and gentle cleanse and detoxification program to promote overall wellness, vitality and performance enhancement. We believe that we are bombarded with an abundant amount of chemicals and toxins each day that negatively affect our health, energy levels and metabolism. While our bodies have excellent systems in place to naturally rid our bodies of these chemicals, they can become overwhelmed and not function properly. A cleanse program aids our body’s filtration systems and can be beneficial for almost anyone. Sportfuel’s Nutritional Cleanse Program may be the perfect fit for you if you suffer from any of the following:
• Recurrent cold and flu
• Disruption in sleep patterns
• Unexplained rashes
• Frequent headaches
• Fatigue
• Inability to balance your weight despite a good nutrition and exercise program
• Hormonal imbalance (especially thyroid)
• Autoimmune disorders

The Cleanse involves consuming nutrients essential for supporting healthy detoxification and limits exposure to high allergen foods and chemicals that are in or sprayed on our foods. Sportfuel assures that its Cleanse program will minimize toxic exposures encountered every day, optimize detoxification function of the digestive and elimination organs and provide nutritional support to help cells repair and regenerate. Sportfuel clients will see weight loss up to ten pounds, reduced stress and fatigue, improved skin integrity and more restful sleep. In addition to the health benefits, the program will help clients to identify foods that are best for them and teach them new ways to prepare meals. We make it even easier to follow the cleanse program by offering cleanse friendly meals through Eat Like The Pros. ETLP is our organic meal delivery company that provides clients with nutritious meals that are delivered to their doorsteps. For additional information on Sportfuel’s Nutritional Cleanse Program and Eat Like The Pros meal delivery service visit www.sportfuel.com/nutritional-cleanse and www.eatlikethepros.com.

There have been recent attacks on butter saying it makes you fat and increases bad fats in the body. Of course, butter has been highly recommended as an excellent choice for fat in the carbohydrate-controlled diet, provided it is from an organically grown, pasture-fed cow. So, how can this timeless tradition of a staple in mankind raise such an accusation? It appears to be focused on the body’s insulin response.

The hormone insulin is normally released in the body after consuming food, particularly after a carbohydrate-rich meal. It helps to lower the blood sugar and store the carbohydrates, fats, and protein in the body. If the body produces too much insulin, it will increase fat storage and lower fat breakdown, causing concern for weight gain, and increase production of triacylglycerols (TAG), which is a risk factor for heart disease if too high.

The first two accusations against butter point to studies that found the body released more insulin after eating high-protein foods than with high carbohydrate foods (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/66/5/1264), and another with a high fat diet producing more than a high-carbohydrate diet (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/73/5/878). In the first study, many of the results were quite variable, showing that each person will have different responses to food, especially since their regular diets were not all the same and were most likely proficient at eating the typical high-carbohydrate diets. In addition, fat and protein as a percentage of total intake were negatively correlated with the insulin score, saying that as fat and protein increased, the insulin score decreased. As for the second study, they only used 7 volunteers to make their claims on a diet lasting only 3 weeks with the carbohydrate still being high (40%). This does not give the body enough time to adjust to higher fat and is still not very low in carbohydrate. Finally, to top it all off, the first study did not even use butter, and the second used mostly unsaturated fat (oils) with only 13% more saturated than the high-carbohydrate group.

Another accusation was made directly at butter in relation to it causing a greater insulin response leading to the struggle with weight-gain in some low-carb dieters. The main study used in this claim ( http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/88/3/638 ) again had a low amount of participants of 14 but also gave a meal that was only 6% protein while adding the fat to pasta, bread, and skim yogurt. This makes it difficult to say what would happen in a typical carbohydrate controlled meal.

These claims cannot fully conclude that high fat diets including butter are going to raise insulin levels and, consequently, increase TAG and store fat. A study by Sharmen et al found quite the opposite and was, ironically, used to help try to support claims against butter (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12097663). They found that diets high in fat (61% with 25% saturated) and low in carbohydrate (8%) actually reduced TAG and blood fats after eating a high fat meal along with reduced insulin levels both after eating the meal and after several hours without food. They conclude that “the responses in serum lipids, insulin and lipid subclasses to the ketogenic diet were favorable in terms of overall cardiovascular disease risk profile.” It is very hard to make conclusions about any study and generalize it to everyone. If your body is not used to a high fat diet, then it is going to react to it differently than someone who is. Bottom line, give your body a chance to adjust and let the natural gift of butter be a part of it.

We LOVE Nourished Kitchen's blog...it seriously rocks! Jenny, the creator of the blog, has a simple goal for readers: Learn the basics of maximizing nutrients through traditional, time-honored foods. Amazing.

Jenny just wrote up a great blog on the workings of Weston A Price--whose teachings are the foundation of Nourished Kitchen. Price's work fascinates us here at SportFuel. Real food..what a concept! And for athletes, the effects of switching from sports bars to snacks like properly prepared nuts, seeds, and grass-fed beef jerkies are tremendous. Read up on what this Cleveland dentist found out when he traveled across the world searching for straight teeth The findings are quite tasty!

Weston A Price: Work and Findings on Traditional Foods