by Joan Kent | Dec 6, 2017 | Health and Wellness, Master Instructor Blog
By Joan Kent
One significant reason for sugar cravings is withdrawal. Withdrawal can promote cravings under various circumstances.
If someone has recently stopped drinking alcohol, cravings for sugar can be strong and frequent. This involves the brain chemicals stimulated by alcohol. The same three chemicals (dopamine, beta-endorphin, and serotonin) are also stimulated by sugar.
The similarity makes sugar a short-term substitute for alcohol when cravings occur. It also explains why people in recovery from alcohol (or drugs) may crave sugar and may eat it often or in large quantities. Or both.
The phenomenon is so common that AA meetings typically feature back-of-room treats that are laden with sugar: cookies, brownies, cakes, pastries. That approach can backfire, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
If someone is addicted to sugar, quitting sugar can lead to cravings. The effect may sometimes be similar to the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal or opiate withdrawal — and also similar to the symptoms of hypoglycemia (low blood glucose).
(As a side note, I postulated years ago that hypoglycemia — especially reactive hypoglycemia, the rapid glucose drop following sugar ingestion in susceptible people — was a specific case of sugar withdrawal. Reviewing the lists below makes it seem there’s a case to be made for that.)
Research shows that cravings are highest when withdrawal is most severe. The higher the level of intake prior to abstinence, the greater the withdrawal and subsequent craving.
Anyway, let’s look at the symptoms in the different cases.
Alcohol withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, nervousness, depression, fatigue, irritability, shakiness, mood swings, nightmares, pupil dilation, clammy skin, headaches, insomnia, nausea, vomiting, sweating, muscle tremor, confusion, rapid heart beat.
Symptoms of hypoglycemia include shakiness, nervousness, anxiety, sweating, chills, irritability, confusion, rapid heartbeat, lightheadedness, dizziness, hunger, nausea, sleepiness, blurred vision, tingling or numbness in the lips or tongue, headaches, weakness, fatigue, anger, sadness, lack of coordination, nightmares, seizures, unconsciousness, confusion, difficulty speaking, night sweats, waking up tired, irritable or confused.
Opiate withdrawal symptoms include agitation, anxiety, muscle aches, eye tearing, insomnia, runny nose, sweating, yawning, abdominal cramping, diarrhea, dilated pupils, goose bumps, nausea, vomiting, fever.
Research on lab animals that have been made addicted to sugar lists withdrawal symptoms that resemble those of opiate withdrawal.
An internet search on symptoms of sugar withdrawal offers lists that include hunger and the desire for sugary foods; headaches; low energy, fatigue; mood swings, crankiness; muscle aches and pains; nausea and other gastric upsets; chills or sweating, especially at night; runny nose; yawning; insomnia.
As you can see, there is quite a bit of overlap in these various symptom lists.
So is sugar withdrawal just like withdrawal from opiates or alcohol? Some would say yes. Some would say that’s too big a stretch. After all, the body has only so many ways of expressing itself, so a similarity in symptoms doesn’t necessarily link them.
But we do know that sugar affects, either directly or indirectly, the same brain chemicals that are affected by alcohol and opiate drugs. As mentioned above, the similarity makes sugar a short-term substitute for alcohol.
However! Eating sugar when you crave either alcohol or sugar can backfire, due to a phenomenon known as priming (i.e., a little makes us want more).
Some people insist priming doesn’t apply to food, just to alcohol or drugs. Clinical experience shows that it does apply, and that avoiding possible priming cues goes a long way toward ending cravings. My advice would be to take priming seriously if you want to end sugar cravings.
[If you have students who need help dealing with sugar cravings and sugar addiction, please let me help. My new program, Last Resort Nutrition® with Joan Kent, starts soon. I also offer individual coaching.]
by Joan Kent | Oct 16, 2017 | Health and Wellness, Master Instructor Blog
By Joan Kent
My last few posts have dealt with aspects of sugar addiction, including sugar’s effect on health. It’s important — you want to be healthy, right?
Still, I’ve avoided one topic because it’s almost guaranteed to alienate people — fructose. The sugar found in fruit. It’s nasty. We’ll get to the details on that soon enough.
Some people are surprised that fruit could be bad. After all, it’s natural. And whenever people talk about healthful eating habits, it’s one of the first things mentioned. “Eat lots of fruits and vegetables!” As if they’re equal. Fruits even come first in that recommendation.
I might agree with the recommendation in part, but would suggest limiting fruit servings to 1 or 2 per day. A serving is half a cup, or a medium-size fruit. Not much fruit, compared with vegetables. (You can go crazy with those veggies.)
I’ve always balked at “Five a day.” Once upon a time (pre-1991), the Basic Four Food Groups consisted of Meats, Milk Products, Grains, and FruitsandVegetables. The original 1991 Food Guide Pyramid was developed to give us a better idea of the relative proportions to eat. The second tier from the bottom was divided unevenly, into 2-4 fruit servings and 3-5 vegetable servings. Apparently, that was too nuanced, too specific. And so the slogan “Five a day” was coined, referring to the minimum number of servings of each and blending them back together, as in the Basic Four.
(I can’t even count the clients I’ve had who were more than happy to get their 5 a day from fruit and skip those pesky vegetables altogether. But I digress.)
The fructose takeover in beverages and prepared foods was designed to cash in on the lower cost of fructose, and the image it had as a “healthy sugar”. Sucrose (granulated table sugar) was seen as unhealthful. Yet fructose has negative health implications, some more serious than others. All of them contribute to a negative picture overall.
What does fructose do that’s bad for our health?
It’s cariogenic, so it causes cavities. It triggers sugar cravings in susceptible people.
It’s frequently malabsorbed, leading to abdominal complaints (bloating, flatulence, diarrhea). Many people are unable to completely absorb fructose in the amounts commonly found in high-fructose corn syrup products.
Due to rapid utilization by the liver, fructose has multiple metabolic effects. Long-term fructose use can lead to high triglycerides, an independent risk factor for heart disease.
Fructose can also decrease glucose tolerance and raise insulin levels. (If that sounds as if it could lead to insulin resistance and diabetes, you’re right.)
Whether people start with triglyceride issues or not, these changes are the expected results of increased fructose. People who respond to fructose normally show these changes at intakes of around 20% of total calories. Carbohydrate-sensitive people can show these negative responses to as little fructose as 7% of total calories.
Carbohydrate sensitivity is defined as exaggerated insulin secretion to sucrose, but fructose and other carbs can trigger the high insulin, as well.
Sucrose can cause many of these same effects. Sucrose is a disaccharide, half glucose and half fructose. ALL of these sucrose problems are attributed to the fructose in it, not the glucose. And no debate on this exists in the science journals.
So everyone agrees that fructose is what makes sucrose the junk that it is.
Fructose is ineffective as a pre- or post-workout fuel, and it actually does even more health damage than the stuff I’ve listed above. For example, both fructose and the sweetener sorbitol (converted to fructose in the liver) accumulate in the lens of the eye in diabetics, causing osmotic damage.
Let’s end instead by pointing out that even trending sugars can be junk. That includes agave, maple syrup, dates, and acai berries.
Getting away from fructose is a wise and healthful course of action. Because it may be difficult, though, cutting back on fructose could be seen as the final frontier in conquering sugar addiction.
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by Joan Kent | Oct 4, 2017 | Best Practices, Health and Wellness, Master Instructor Blog
Early cycling classes. Late nights. Approaching holidays. Fall quarter can be a busy time, and it might be difficult to get enough sleep each night. But it's important to do so because sleep deprivation affects several factors related to health and weight management.
For one thing, sleep deprivation, even short-term, can lower leptin levels. Leptin is a powerful satiety hormone that tells the brain/body it’s had enough food and doesn’t need more. (Leptin’s functions are far more complex and diverse than these, but for the purposes of a short post on sleep, health and weight, this will serve.) The name leptin means “thin”, so if it’s not working properly or is in short supply, it can create the opposite effect.
Another thing inadequate sleep can do is raise levels of ghrelin. The hormone ghrelin works in opposition to leptin and stimulates the part of the brain that promotes eating. This “monster” hormone increases appetite, decreases metabolic rate, and even promotes a preference for fats.
Because ghrelin has such a negative influence on appetite and weight, it pays to know what else triggers it. A high-fat diet (even a high-fat meal) can do that, so keep your fat intake moderate. The type of fat — saturated or unsaturated — doesn’t seem to affect ghrelin levels but, for health reasons, unsaturated fats — omega-3s and omega-9s — are recommended. One obvious exception is raw, organic coconut oil: it’s saturated but extremely healthful. Still, use it moderately.
Sleep deprivation can also reduce melatonin. When we sleep, the brain releases melatonin, an anti-inflammatory hormone that can help heal any number of things in the body. Since inflammation is the source of most (some sources say ALL) disease, getting enough sleep is a key to staying healthy.
Getting too little sleep can trigger pro-inflammatory chemicals that make us less responsive to insulin, and that's never a good thing – either for health or for weight. Insulin resistance underlies many metabolic disorders. Those disorders include diabetes, hypertension, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, heart disease, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome and polycystic kidney disease. Because these disorders tend to occur in clusters, someone with one is likely to have several.
Insulin resistance can contribute to weight gain, as well. If you have students who struggle with their weight, this is worth passing along to them. We typically hear that insulin resistance is the result of obesity/overweight. That’s true, but insulin resistance can actually cause overweight, too. I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but here’s a brief summary. Body tissues differ in their sensitivity to insulin. The primary site of insulin resistance is skeletal muscle. Insulin resistant muscle doesn’t respond to insulin, so glucose isn’t transported to muscle tissue and is instead transported to fat deposits. In short, anything that decreases insulin sensitivity is bad news for health and for weight. (Diet can be a significant cause of insulin resistance, but we’ll limit this article to the effects of sleep deprivation.)
So the bottom line is pretty straightforward. Be sure to make sleep a priority, even when — or especially when — you're busy.
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by Joan Kent | Jul 19, 2017 | Big Box Instructor, Instructor Training, KEEPING IT FUN, Master Instructor Blog, Strength Training
If you’ve done stomps in your cycling workouts, you may think I’m crazy when I say this, but I’ve always liked them. They’re extremely tough but appeal to that twisted part of me that enjoys hard training. (I know: you’ve got that part, too.)
If you haven’t done stomps, they’re designed to increase power in the saddle. I believe Chris Carmichael is generally given credit for the training, but his guidelines differ from the ones I know. The Carmichael method involves 15- to 20-second stomp intervals. Here's Chris' description at www.active.com
In Performance Max, the program created by Jim Karanas, we used 60-second intervals with a 60-second rest, and followed the format below.
A solid warm-up is essential, since stomps are difficult and can stress the knees and the lower back. Roll the legs for several minutes. Begin an alternating pattern of 2:00 of seated high cadence (110-120 rpm); 1:00 of 80-rpm standing runs; 1:00 seated with resistance at 80 rpm; 1:00 of recovery at 90 rpm. Go through the pattern several times, as your group requires. Change the order, if desired.
A stomp interval is 60 seconds; the recovery interval is 60 seconds. Allow 22 minutes for 10 stomps: a set of 5, a short break, another set. The break I used was 3 minutes total: one minute of the usual recovery after stomp #5, then 2 more minutes (sit out one stomp cycle). It’s enough, but you could go longer. Resistance during stomps is high to very high and drops during recovery. Recovery cadence is individual, but I suggest 90 to 100 rpm.
– Stomp at 80 rpm. Fatigue will tend to slow the legs, so it helps A LOT to have an 80-rpm song to beat-match. We almost always came back to Hallogallo by Neu! because it’s a pretty precise 80 rpm. The fact that it’s 10 minutes long helps sustain the energy of the training. Play it twice or change music for the second set.
– Keep the body centerline on the bike. During the stomp, don’t move side to side, as you would in climbing. Keep hands in position 1.
– Rules for a beautiful, circular pedal stroke don’t apply during stomps. Exaggerate the down-stroke and smash against the resistance, without moving the body side to side. I cue it as “punching the pedals.”
– Heart rate isn’t the point. However, there are no HR limits on this exercise, and HR can spike quite high if the rider is seriously stomping without modifying the resistance. (Intervals under 60 seconds may yield lower heart rates.)
Avoid longer stomps. One instructor used 90-second stomps, but that means easier stomping, so what’s the point? A full-out, 60-second stomp will start to bring on failure at the 50-second mark, so 90 seconds requires reduced intensity. That makes it … something, just not a stomp.
Avoid “mushy” cueing. The instructor of the 90-second stomps would cue the stomp with, “Okay, you guys, do another stomp now.” There’s NO WAY that will elicit a stomp from your riders. It will get you something, but absolutely not a stomp.
One time, the above instructor’s cue was so mushy, I actually missed the start of the interval. That simply never happened when Jim Karanas cued stomps.
So I recommend Jim’s cueing. It starts about 5-6 seconds before the stomp interval. In a firm voice, say, “And load the bike … AND … STOMP!” The slight pauses and the delivery are intended to let the word “stomp” hit the first second of the interval. Cue time during the interval — say, at 30 seconds and again with 10 to go.
If there’s a way to use some feature on the resistance knob to mark the resistance used on the last stomp, it makes things much easier than trying to re-determine resistance for each interval. Cue that reminder for your riders.
Resistance can be ferocious during stomps. Every time I do them — about 8 trainings per year in the PMax calendar — I notice that, despite growing leg fatigue as the intervals proceed, I can still raise the resistance for each stomp. Don’t ask me to explain that, but it’s too consistent to be a fluke. It even happens when I do stomp training on my own. As a result, I started cueing the riders to keep increasing the resistance so they’d get the added strength benefit.
If you use high-intensity intervals in your classes, this training could fit right in with your approach. Because the emphasis is on strength and resistance, stomps may offer variety, say, a change from speed intervals. If you try stomps, please let me know how they work for your classes.
Originally posted 2014-09-23 08:17:39.
by Jay Duplessie | Sep 16, 2015 | Jay Duplessie, Motivation
Something amazing happened to me after class this week. Somebody came up and said “thank you for the motivational story you told during class. I came in here down in the dumps, but I'm leaving in a much better mood and feeling grateful for what I have instead of what I don't. Thank you.” I have no doubt that every instructor reading this right now has experienced this at least once, but probably hundreds of times. And when I think back on the 20 years I've been doing this, I can say that it happened more than a couple and I've always appreciated. But there was something about it this time that made a bigger impact on me. It actually stuck with me all day. Let me see if I can better understand why myself by writing to you. Sometimes that's the best way for me to figure out things is to write it down =)
I have said this before, but I feel so lucky to teach in what I believe is one of the best clubs in the country. Having traveled to every state in the US when I worked for Corporate America (yuck), I can say that I've seen hundreds of gyms without any exaggeration. Where I teach now, we have a slogan………although slogan is probably the wrong word. The point is, our “slogan” is (Insert Club name) “the best part of your day.” (As I don't know the rules of the site, I won't say the name) Call it a slogan, call it a motto, call it a cliche, or call it a tag line, it doesn't really matter because the question is, do we mean it ? And I don't mean in the sense of “we have a very cool slogan” but I mean are we really trying to make an impact on these peoples lives each and every day. Because when I look back on my last 20 years, I can honestly say there have been people who have made me feel like the simple act of telling them a story in the middle of our workout has affected them deeply. I have had people tell me they “cried” in my class and although I acknowledged it then, now as i sit here I am floored that I didn't give this person a huge hug and REALLY thank them for taking the time to tell me that. There have been people who have taken my class, moved away, and returned for a weekend and made sure to come take my class. Everyone of us has had this happen I'm sure, but for some reason in my life right now, it seems so much more significant. I would be interested to know how many of you have stopped to think about what a gift this is that we have, being able to impact somebodies health, mindset, vitality, mood, and so on and so on and so on. Because right now I can't think of a better reward for giving one hour of my day.
But back to digging deeper into “why now,” I ask myself why the type of comment that I've heard several times over 20 years, seems to mean so much more to me now than in the past ? Is it that I just turned 45 and getting soft ? Is it that it just took longer to sink in ? Is it that being newly divorced I am grasping for any recognition that I have done something right ? I venture to say all the above. For me the best part about being married was that I had a purpose every single day and that was to do my best to make her life better. Granted, I was not perfect, but I will put my stats up against 90% of the husbands out there and stand tall that I did a pretty damn good job. And as a father, my role is the same. Putting their needs in front of my own every day. I enjoy having that responsibility and probably do it to the extreme with my kids. A parent would understand what I mean. When you have a child, there doesn't ever have to be any thought or consideration on whether you would step in front of a train to save them, it's instinctual!! And as an instructor (sorry for the dramatic metaphor about the train LOL) although I am working out when I teach, it has NEVER been about my workout, it's always about theirs. And I think after 20 years I am finally learning that I love knowing I am able to impact someone's day. That something I do or say CAN make a difference.
When I started writing for the site I said that I'm not the guy to come to for the technical aspects of cycling. It's not now, nor has it ever been my strength or focus. I'm a story teller who enjoys using stories and metaphors to motivate my class. And this week I think it finally hit me that I may actually be hitting the mark with a few people. We all need a mission or strength as an instructor so that the people who resonate with US will gravitate to our class. It's not about one instructor being better than another, it's about realizing our strength and being consistent to that strength until the numbers find us. And if my foo foo style is too spiritual or earthy for the more traditional cyclist spin instructor than I am okwith that. BUT don't ever forget that even the members in your class, even though they may not say it, ARE being effected in a positive way by you in more ways than you/we think. You can't always gauge how you changed someone'sday/week/year or life by how much weight they lost or how now they can maintain a lower heart rate on a sprint. Sometimes it's deeper than that. Sometimes you made the type of difference that spreads like wild fire through their entire circle. And if that isn't a gift than I don't know what is. I don't miss my ex wife at all, but I miss TERRIBLY being a husband. I miss the responsibilities that came with being the person who could make her day better. And maybe this is why now hearing that I played a part in a members day is hitting so close to home for me. It doesn't really matter why, and you certainly don't need the same reasons I have, but let me just say this and let it sit. You are often “the best part of their day” and that my friends is worth more than any paycheck you make or whatever brand bike you're riding. So if you're taking those compliments for granted than stop, acknowledge it, hear it, and give yourself a big hug because you earned it.
I hope I am resonating with some of you and that my style is uncovering aspects of your teaching that you may not have been using enough of. Enjoy your gifts !!
Jay
