health – Beary Strong

Nutrition For A Healthy Immune System

A science based guideline.

“Boost your immune system with this weird trick!” This and similar nonsense can be found everywhere. But is it even possible to boost your immune system? And if so, is it even desirable? What supplements do you need to take? Is there even any value in doing so? Does body composition alter immunity? A lot of questions and I tried my best to answer them all. Spoiler: working on diet quality is always king.

The Carb Guide

Intake, health, appropriate carb sources, all explained.

Opinions on carbs differ widely in mainstream fitness media. You’ll find everything from “essential for health” to “addictive as cocaine and equally dangerous”. And for all of these opinions you will find some guru propagating them in the form of some weird diet to make money. Forget all of the non-sense, I have compiled a science based guideline on carbs to answer all the questions. Enjoy!

What You Should Know About Collagen

Sticking to the facts.

There is a new trend in the supplement and fitness industry: collagen. The name has a greek rooth: kólla means “glue” and the suffix -gen denotes “producing” as it was used in the past to produce glue out of skin and tendons of slaughtered animals. Now, it is either sold as a powder, hydrolyzed or undenatured, or as one of the components of bone broth and it should help against joint pain, autoimmunity, skin aging, gut issues and more. Even if a big part of the claims are exagerated as usual, there is a bit of truth behind. Let’s have a closer look at it.

Intermittent Fasting

The new magic pill for health and performance?

The 2016 Nobel Prize on autophagy has increased the attention on intermittent fasting with regards to health, fat loss and muscle growth. If you have been in the fitness game for quite a long time, this is nothing new. Many people have succesfully lost weight with this strategy, but is intermittent fasting the ultimate panacea for health, fat loss and/or muscle growth?

The Power Of Habits

Practical insights for a powerful tool.

The idea of researching about the power of habits was inspired by our friend and first-time client Alexa: she asked us if we can write a guideline about developing good habits and how to get rid of bad habits. Two days later I spotted on Instagram a perfect matching book: Atomic Habis, An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. It does not surprise me that the fitness community seems to love the book: habits are a powerful self development tool and most strength trainees strive for improvement not only in the gym. While motivation comes and goes, habits are built to stay, which, in case of good habits, is desirable but may make reaching certain goals more difficult in case of bad habits.

The Non-Weightloss Approach

The traditional dieting approach freaks some people out. They want to do something about their health, but counting calories, weighing food, having a training plan and taking progress pictures is just too much for them. As much as I think this approach leads to optimal results, there should be a way to help everybody. An approach that doesn’t focus on weight on the scale, but on improving healthy habits is appropriate for those clients. How could this look like? Well, let’s take a look!

Protein: Myths and Reality

Everything you need to know about protein.

Whenever I get a new client and they are a few days “in”, eating a healthy diet and experiencing what it feels like having a significant dose of protein with every meal, sooner or later I will get this question: “But isn’t eating so much protein bad?” I’m not sure where this fear stems from, but I blame the crappy fitness and health industry. No, it isn’t bad for you, quite the opposite is the case, it is healthy! Let me explain why.

Fermented Carrots with Star Anise

Easy, fizzy, healthy goodness.

Fermented food and microbiome are nowadays a hot topic not only in the science community: it has become quite popular in the media too. While some supplement selling companies are making money with it, promising to get you shredded by eating the proper microbiota they sell, scientist are aware that the picture is far more complex. The microbiome definitely plays a role in a lot of physiologic and pathologic processes and you have positive effects from eating probiotica and prebiotica like resistent starches but we still do not know exactly all of the players responsible for the effects. Nevertheless, eating fermented food seems beneficial to almost everbody, so here is an easy recipe to get you started!

A Quick Guide To Supplements

Four science-based supplements to help almost everone.

Supplements are a hotly debated field: on one hand you have the supplement industry trying to sell as many of their products to unwary customers all over the world as they can. On the other hand you have people rejecting any form of supplementation, almost considering it “unnatural”, believing you just have to eat healthy to get everything you need. As with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Because of this, I want you to show which supplements I consider (almost) mandatory.

Alcohol And Dieting

Let’s be honest, in December the alcohol consumption can increase exponentially, especially here in Austria. Every office has its own Christmas party, where free alcohol flows generously. After work you go for a stroll to the “Christkindlmarkt” (Christmas market) and meet some friends for a punsch or a mulled wine. On Christmas you will have two or more generous glasses of wine because you are so fatiqued of talking with the whole family. And there is no New Year’s Eve without bubbles. Well, alcohol throws an additional challenge on the hard dieting folks which should first have a look on Stefan’s great article on how to manage holydays. But is alcohol really impairing your fat loss? Let’s have a closer look to it.