Every once in a while someone will write in and demand that I defend the trace amounts of sweeteners that are used in a few of my products. Here is my response.
]]>I'm pretty anti-refined sugar in my content and I've been beating the drum for years about how addictive sugar is for people.
In some of my products I use monk fruit or stevia.
These are used in small amounts to take the bitter edge off the product's taste.
I have no problem with monk fruit or stevia in small amounts, or any natural sweetener, for that matter. Small amounts are not a concern if one's metabolic health is in order.
Do I use either in large amounts in my diet? Absolutely not. I don't use ANY sweetener in large amounts because I'm not addicted to the taste of sweet.
The tiny amounts used in a small scoop of my Relax Tonic, for instance, is not a concern to me.
We had to use something to sweeten up a few of the products and these were what I chose. I'm fine with them being in there.
If you would like to dive deeper into my thoughts on sweeteners, I talk about it in more detail inside my Metabolic Revamp Toolkit.
The bottom line is this: Nearly 100% of US adults are metabolically busted because modern humans are quite addicted to sweet things.
I suggest people learn to get that under control instead of heaping on piles of monk fruit sweetener or stevia. I don't love ANY sweetener in large amounts. This is not about replacing sugar, this about learning to live on less of it. Learn to drink your coffee black, for instance.
Better yet, build a slab of muscle on your body and get your metabolic health dialed in so that your cells can properly metabolize a little honey or even table sugar in a day. Get your cravings and addiction under control.
I'm not concerned about trace amounts in a few of my products. If you are, please be sure to read the ingredients made available on every product before purchasing.
]]>Worry & stress is seemingly everywhere these days. Our minds have not evolved as fast as modern times and our brain will see a stressful email the same way our ancestors saw a threatening lion! So we are living in a constant state of sympathetic overdrive and stress. Add to that the concept of what uncertainty does to our nervous system and we can see how the past few years has really done a number on us.
Anxiety disorders affect 40 million US adults every year. If that number wasn’t staggering enough, the pandemic led to more. Due to Covid 53% of adult Americans claimed that their mental health had been negatively affected in 2020.
These emotions are hard to pinpoint is because they are multifactorial. We could be anxious from circumstances in our lives, from poor mindsets, from trauma, lack of sleep or exercise, bad diet, lack of sunlight, poor gut health, hormonal imbalances and/or nutrient deficiencies.
With all of these possibilities it is important that we prioritize our mental health and our stress management daily.
Get your metabolic health in order. We know that having a healthy metabolic system is correlated to positive mental health outcomes.
Get the junk out of your diet, say goodbye to sugar and gluten, and start moving your body every day! Get sunshine and sleep! I cover it all in more detail inside the Toolkit.
It's a whole lot easier to kick the booze habit when you're metabolically sound, active, burning up excess energy and sleeping well.
What if there was a product that both calmed the nerves and helped your metabolism, giving you more resilience over time? What if there was one product that supported healthy body weight, mood, hormones, lipids and glucose metabolism all at once? Well, there is!
It contains ingredients that are going to relax and calm you within 15 minutes that also work double duty to help your blood sugar metabolism and insulin response.
Inositol is vitamin B8. It has many benefits! It works acutely, and will have you feeling relaxed and happy within about 20 minutes. It interacts with the nervous system and our neurotransmitter pathway. It has been found to be effective in small human trials for depression, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder and anxiety.
Inositol also helps you handle the sugar and the carbs in your diet and how you break down glucose. This will impact your metabolism in a positive way.
In one study, middle aged menopausal women saw improvements in their blood pressure, triglycerides, and LDL levels after taking inositol.
L-theanine is a free form amino-acid. It is what gives green tea its characteristic taste.
L-theanine is special because it can cross the blood brain barrier and affect the brain directly. It will increase brain serotonin and dopamine levels which improve your mood, memory and learning. It also stimulates alpha brain wave activity which can help make you mentally relaxed, focused and improved concentration (vs that jittery feeling you get with caffeine. Calm and focused). When taken at night before bed it can help you get into deep REM sleep.
These are my two favorite ingredients in the product but it also contains the amazing benefits of highly absorbable Magnesium malate, GABA, and Taurine. ALL of these ingredients help with relaxation, mood and metabolism.
This is what I swap out my evening glass of wine with, or whenever I want to drink alcohol. I get to have a fancy drink, feel wonderfully relaxed, sleep better and I HELP my metabolism instead of hurting it.
If you've followed me for any amount of time, you know that I'm not a fan of seed oils and generally try to avoid them.
If you've gone through my Metabolic Revamp Toolkit, you know that I mention sunflower oil on the "avoid" list.
So then, why is there small amounts of sunflower oil in my Post-Lift Whey and Daily Collagen products?
Here's the deal:
First off, cooking in teaspoons or tablespoons of a seed oil like sunflower oil, or drizzling copious amounts over your salad, is NOT the same as the trace amounts used in MANY proteins powders. Sunflower oil is used in tiny amounts in many nutritional powders as a flow agent. It keeps the powder from clumping together. We use such high quality ingredients in both my Post-Lift Whey and my Daily Collagen that it would be heart breaking if it clumped and didn't mix well into your liquids. There's not much of a way around this, so if you choose to use nutritional powders, you can almost guarantee that you're going to find small amounts of some oil that you may not approve of.
Second, I'm not as concerned about sunflower oil as I am about many of the other seed oils. So that's the one I settled on as we needed a flow/anti-clumping agent. We also aren't heating it to high temperatures, which is where a lot of seed oils become even more problematic. I do eat sunflower seeds AND sunflower butter as a snack sometimes, gasp!
Third, I've always said "avoid" seed oils. We do the best we can. I don't bring them into the house, as an example, and I rarely eat out. I practice "harm reduction", which means I avoid what I can and don't beat myself up if I happen upon ingesting some. We can't avoid all the things all the time, and that leads to feeling crazy if we try. Considering I don't ingest much in the way of seed oils at all throughout most of my days, a small amount of sunflower oil in an occassional scoop of collagen or protein powder is not a huge concern of mine. If it is for you, I understand and please don't buy it.
I chose the best ingredients that I could get my hands on when it came to my supplement line. I also chose to share out my Metabolic Revamp Toolkit as a general guide, not a set-in-stone list of rules that I expect everyone to abide by perfectly. It's an overview to get you moving in the right direction, not a novel. Rational people understand this. Obsessive people like to email and freak out on us because things don't alway match up 100%. Trust me, I'm trying to give you the best guideposts I can while still understanding that we live in reality, and reality isn't always perfect.
Lastly, I FULLY expect everyone to look over the list of ingredients found on all of my product pages, along with the Product Info Guides available for most, and to KNOW what they are purchasing, BEFORE purchasing. Always read the ingredient list before you purchase anything . We expect that you'll vet out any product before putting your money into it or putting it into your mouth.
If you don't like that there's trace amounts of sunflower oil in my protein powder and collagen products, then please don't purchase them.
If you don't mind and you realize the incredible value of the extremely high quality ingredients that ARE in those products, then go ahead and buy as much as you like while supplies last. Because the Post-Lift Whey is limited stock and when it's gone, it's gone. I'm cutting several products out of my line in 2023 so as to simplify my life and that product is on the list.
The Daily Collagen I plan keeping in stock, but we shall see. I personally take it daily and I love it, as do my joints and skin. My diet is so clean and void of seed oils otherwise that a tiny amount of sunflower oil a day is not a concern for me.
I hope this helps clarify for those asking.
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