JohnBarban.com

Tomorrow morning (tues) Brad Pilon and I are heading to Vancouver to attend the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP for short) annual conference.

Brad is actually going to be speaking at this conference (thats pretty cool)

We’ll be spending the 3 days learning the latest information from the world of exercise science. Anything and everything that is going on in exercise physiology will be here.

Conferences like this are a good way to stay ahead of the curve on new scientific information because much of what we’ll see here is not published yet.

You may or may not be aware of this, but it takes anywhere from 12-18 months to get a piece of scientific research published.

So if you and I conducted an experiment today. It’s highly likely that it wouldn’t be published until sometime in 2011!

BUT we could present our findings at a conference like csep this week far ahead of it becoming published.

This peek into what is coming is why conferences like this can be a goldmine of new info that nobody else really knows about!

If I find anything cool, I’ll post about it here in the coming days and weeks.

John

P.S. If you subscribe to any other fitness/nutrition blogs or newsletters, just ask yourself the last time those so called “experts’ attended a conference like this and reported back to you with anything useful…kinda makes you wonder where they are getting their info from.

As you can see from my last post I just finished a 24 hour fast.

Fasting might sound like a contradiction especially considering I am writing about “Balance” today. But it’s quite the opposite.

From all the research I’ve looked at over the years and coming back from the SENS conference on anti aging I’ve come to realize that most of us in the industrialized countries are far out of balance on the ‘too much’ side of things.

Too much food, too much drink, too much alcohol, too much leisure, too much fitness and nutrition information, too much tv etc.

At first glance a 24 hour fast sounds drastic, but when you look at it from the perspective that we all struggle with eating too much, and too often, and are exposed to food marketing and food choices far too much and too often…well then a 24 hour fast doesn’t even sound long enough!

Fasting is just as much a mental as it is physical step towards balancing your body. It provides a sense of control and accomplishment that you can control food instead of food controlling you. That is the mental benefit. The physical benefits are too numerous to list here, but suffice to say it will cause you to burn fat, allow your system a chance to clear out, reduces inflammation, and reduce water retention (to name a few).

So from the standpoint of ‘Balance’. Fasting is something that most people in modern industrialize countries could benefit from.

Even if you’re not interested in weight loss it can provide a new perspective on your relationship with food and how you respond and control your feelings of hunger/appetite and need/desire for food.

If you’ve never tried, it I suggest picking up Brad Pilon’s book Eat Stop Eat and learn how to incorporate short breaks from food into your life.

John