Category Archives: Blog

CHRIS: Carbohydrates are a part of the food pyramid, aren’t they?

JONCE: Yes they are. The USDA’s original food pyramid from 1992 had the people eat 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta. By far more than any other food group. And the reason why was not because the nutritionist really believed that eating that many carbs was healthy for the people. No, it was because the agriculture lobbyist came to Washington with loads of money, and ‘convinced’ the politicians to support that food pyramid. Albeit not having any clue about nutrition. Now if we trace back the obesity curve, we can see exactly how since then the obesity rate has risen to ‘epidemic proportions.’ And even though since then some ‘modifications’ have been done to the food pyramid, in most people’s minds, it remains that eating tons of carbs is the way to feed yourself.

CHRIS: Oh wow!

JONCE: The harm and damage that the USDA and its politicians have done to the consumer/people is immoral, if not even criminal. When one sells a product he will do whatever it takes to sell as much as possible of that product, after all it’s his livelihood. Well, in our case its grain. The more he sells, the wealthier he gets. Never mind that it is causing quite some harm to the people. But one might say “nobody is forcing the masses to eat all those processed carbs.” True, but the ‘carb industry’ is spending millions of dollars on advertising their ‘junk,’ making their product not only more attractive for our taste buds, but also for our eyes, counting on the gullibility of the consumers.
Let us define what grain is, “the seed of a food plant such as wheat, corn, rye etc. Grain has been around for about 10.000 years and in the scope of human evolution it is a speck of time. It is a food that has been cultivated by man. Compare that with meat and fat, which for one has been provided by nature, and two, has been around for as long as humans have been roaming the earth. Our ancestors’ main food source was meat and fat. Occasionally they would find some seasonal fruit and honey along their journey, but definitely not on a daily basis. And that was probably all they had regarding carbs/sugar. So for hundreds of thousands of years the human species were eating mainly meat and fat. And then approximately 10,000 years ago man discovered grain. The question then arises, has the human gene or more exact, the digestive system adapted to this ‘modern’ food in a rather short period of timeline? Well, the answer must be a ‘yes’, since such a vast amount of people are eating grain and its sub-products by the tons. But there is another question that is by far more important, and that is, have we had time to adapt sufficiently to make it a healthy food? I would argue the answer is NO!!

When ‘modern’ humans begun to cultivate and domesticate wild plants about 10 millenniums ago, they truly believed that their lives have become easier. After all it took less effort to plant crops, wait, and reap. Rather than going out in the wild searching for fruit and nuts or chasing a wild animal that could maybe kill you. Perhaps that was the case, although anthropologists and archeologists have evidence that hunter- gatherers had more leisure time than farmers. But that is not the subject of this thesis. What was the impact on the people’s health, that’s what I’m interested in. People/Farmers commenced to eat a high-carbohydrate diet, primarily consisting of grain, potatoes and rice. Nearly 70% of their food intake was made up of just that (to this day our nutrition consists of two thirds processed carbohydrates.) In contrast the hunter-gatherers diet was wild plants, roots, berries and meat. Not only did they have a more balanced nutrition, but more important, a significant higher protein consumption. A side note, Protein is the building block of our bodies. Protein is made up of amino acids, which are essential for life and health. How can we deduce and compare the health, vitality, and lifespan of the hunter-gatherer with the agricultural lifestyle? The answer is twofold, skeleton remains and paleopathology. A paleo pathologist is able to deduct the age, sex and weight.

Further, he can examine teeth for signs of malnutrition, and recognize scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases. All these and other, for humans, detrimental data, were discovered by paleo pathologists. Among other sets of reasons why agriculture was bad for health, the one that I find of major importance for the purpose of this writing is, the hunter-gatherer enjoyed a varied diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from a few starchy crops. They (farmers) gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition, (today just three high-carbohydrate plants – – wheat, rice and corn – – provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species, yet each one of them is deficient in certain vitamins and/or amino acids essential to life.)

As Jared Diamond described it “Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life in human history. In contrast, we are still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it is unclear whether we can solve it. If we illustrate human history by a 24 – hour clock, and one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time, and if the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers nearly the whole of the day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:45 p.m. we adopted agriculture.”

We have been living for the vast majority of our human existence as hunter-gatherers. We were healthy, strong, vital and powerful, and then came agriculture. With it all those mentioned attributes have for the most part vanished. But we are genetically still to this day the hunter-gatherer. Our genome has not been changed, and upon that fact we can again live a healthy, strong, vital and powerful life style.

By Izi Curtis

JONCE: I want to talk a little bit about these books I just purchased. One is written by Deanna Minich, PhD, about the connection of food to our spiritual lives. In old times, food was often used in connection with spirituality (like the manna from Heaven, the breaking the bread, the last supper, etc.). Food was always involved in spirituality.

CHRIS: Like the blood of Christ.

JONCE: Yeah. So she is approaching weight loss from a holistic standpoint; if you want to lose weight, you have to go beyond the fads of dieting.

There are over 200 diets out there, and none of them really work. It is proven that the majority of people who go on a diet will regain their weight; not only that, but they will gain even more weight than what they lost in the first place! Diets do not work; they are a short-term fix. Sadly, that’s what we look for. If you want to feel good about yourself, you shoot some coke and heroin into you—it’s a quick fix. If you want to feel cool, you buy yourself a $60,000 car; you feel good for one or two weeks, then the first bill comes. Quick fix, right? It’s the same with food. Food seems like the quickest fix to everything—it’s everywhere, it’s cheap, but above all, it is highly addictive. Particularly sugar.

JONCE: Take any food item, turn it around, and look at the nutrition label. You’ll see its caloric percentage of a 2,000 calorie diet (for someone eating 2,000 calories a day), as well as the protein and fat percentages. But when it comes to sugar, there is no percentage. On no food item will you see the percentage of added sugar. You will see the grams, but you will never see the percentage.

Around 10 years ago, the government made (I think it was) a second attempt to force food companies to include the percentage of added sugar on food labels. The food companies brought their top lawyers and doctors into Congress, convincing the politicians (who are supposedly looking out for us) not to label the sugar percentage on any food item. Not only that, but Congress was also convinced to conceal the harmful and addictive effects of sugar additives. It’s the power of government against the power of food corporations. Did you know that many health insurances have tons of money invested in the big food companies? It’s all about making money by lying and deceiving the “brainwashed” consumer.

But we got sidetracked from our original theme. Back to Dr. Deanna Minich.

Minich writes about how, through self-evaluation and discovering self-love, our lives can change—on a long-term basis. Not just for three months, four months. How many times have we heard people say, “I’m going on vacation in four months. I have to lose weight,” or, “I have a wedding to attend. In two months, I have to lose 20 pounds because I want to fit in my dress.” Those are all quick fixes. As soon as the big event is over, they go back to their old lifestyle. We have 85 to 86 million obese people in this country; that amounts to 33 or 34 percent of us. An additional 34 to 35 percent of us are overweight. Between these two conditions, we have about 68 percent of people either obese or overweight.

Overweight people usually continue to gain weight. Why? Because they think, “The heck with it. Food makes me feel good, so I’ll keep comforting myself with it.” The sad fact is, most people eat food for pleasure instead of eating it for its intended purpose: fuel.

Another book I’m reading is about the “grain brain” and how damaging grain is to our brains. It is written by Dr. David Perlmutter. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but in regards to the hormones insulin and leptin, and the damaging effect of sugar on the body, I agree with him. Insulin (secreted from the pancreas) and leptin (made by adipose cells) are very important in regards to overeating and obesity. Both are transmitted to the hypothalamus (an almond-sized organelle in our brain), which tells us we are full.

Metabolic endocrinology is very complicated, and it is challenging to explain the whole process, but I will try to do so. The hormone insulin helps regulate the amount of sugar in our blood; when we eat carbohydrates, they are transformed into glucose for energy and stored as glycogen in the liver. To prevent excess sugar in the blood, the pancreas secretes insulin, which delivers that sugar into the right organs/cells. Insulin also signals the hypothalamus, which then signals the cells that enough sugar has been taken in to achieve homeostasis (a stable internal environment). This is the stage of a healthy person.

However, if we constantly feed ourselves processed carbohydrates/sugar (the majority of people consume 80 percent of their calories from processed carbs, in combination with processed fat), the body is continually overloaded with sugar. This causes the pancreas to secrete more and more insulin so that excess sugar is removed from the blood. Eventually, so much insulin is secreted that the muscle and liver cell receptors become desensitized, no longer receiving the signal to absorb the sugar. But there is one place more than willing to receive the sugar: adipose fat cells. And so it happens that all excess sugar is converted to fat.

Now let’s talk about the hormone leptin. Leptin’s central function is to regulate overall body weight by limiting food intake and increasing energy expenditure. Leptin is made in the WAT (white adipose tissue); a healthy person in homeostasis is producing the right amount of leptin in the WAT, which then signals the hypothalamus to inhibit food intake at the proper time. An obese person has a lot of WAT, which means that there is an overload of leptin secretion in the blood stream. This creates a leptin resistance, which inhibits the hypothalamus from signaling the feeling of satiety. The receptors and neurotransmitters between leptin and the hypothalamus have now become “disconnected.”

Do you know what this actually means? It means that we are NOT fat because we eat too much; we eat too much because we are fat. The constant overfeeding on grain/processed carbohydrates leads to insulin resistance (IR), which leads to excessive fat storage, which leads to leptin resistance (LR), which leads to a distorted sense of satiety, which leads to obesity.

CHRIS: Unbelievable.

To be continued…

This post is a conversation between owner Jonce and a new member. The new member’s wife works out in a CrossFit gym and he was curious about the differences between the two.

JONCE: CrossFit claims to appeal or apply to all kinds of people—overweight people, obese people, people who have never worked out, people who want to work out at higher levels, and athletes who actually compete in CrossFit games and competitions.

I don’t think this is the case. I don’t think that CrossFit can really train all levels of people. I think that they (and most gyms) are missing the most important aspect of training: the psychological aspect. That’s what most people, most personal trainers, and most facilities that call themselves CrossFit or gyms are missing.

Think about it. How can a gym with thousands of members take care of the mental or psychological state of a new member? There is no way. Plus, the personal trainers at these gyms are not very experienced. Most of them are young people. Maybe I am being presumptuous, but I don’t think so. I’ve been in a lot of gyms; I’ve been around for many, many years. The new generation of personal trainers is a very young generation. They are usually between 18 and 26 years old. Most of them eventually realize that they can’t support a family as a trainer, so they end up getting a different degree or trying something that makes more money.

You cannot build a family with the income of a LA Fitness or Lifetime Fitness personal trainer. Those facilities and chains are exploiting personal trainers. So you have this range of 18 to 26 year-old trainers (those are young pups) who just don’t have the experience to tap into the psychological aspect of a member. That’s just how it is.

It’s like comparing your psychiatrist to a psychiatry student who just graduated. Let’s say you are schizophrenic, or you have some really deep mental issues that have accumulated over the past 20 or 30 years. You won’t go to a pup who just graduated in psychology or psychiatry. I would be scared to go to a person like that for help. I’m not saying I wouldn’t give them a chance to treat me, but if my problems were very severe, it wouldn’t be likely. I would prefer someone who has been practicing for 20 or 30 years, who has much more life experience. You can’t compare that with someone who just started.

Fitness professionals are the same. I might go to a rookie fitness professional if I had a base knowledge about working out—maybe I would go for motivation or accountability—but if I have never been in a gym, or I’m obese or overweight, or if I have diabetes or arthritis, or if I have any kind of physical issues, I would rather go to someone who has been training people for an extensive number of years.

That’s one problem with CrossFit gyms. The young trainers are convinced that, since their particular philosophy works for them, it will work for everyone. They are young and don’t have the experience to know that different methods work for different people.

I divide the journey of wellness into three segments. It starts with health; if you are obese, if you have arthritis, if you have diabetes, or if you have high blood pressure, wellness starts with taking care of your health. You’ve got to work on health first, with your fitness professional. Once you’re taking care of your health by losing weight, changing your lifestyle, and eating right, you come to the second stage. I call this the “fitness” stage, and this is where most people are.

I would say probably 60 percent of people in the gyms are at this level. They have a normal weight, they work out 2-3 times a week, they feel good about themselves, and they eat okay.

Then you have the third level. This is what I call the “performance” level. Most CrossFit gyms are actually starting their members at this level. They’re skipping the health level, they’re skipping the fitness level, and they’re starting at the performance level. Well, I’m sorry; if you’re 100 pounds overweight, if you have problems with joint inflammation, if you have diabetes, if you’ve never lifted a weight in your life—and they start making you do assisted pull-ups, running up and down the gym on that artificial turf and pulling something behind you, or even crawling around the gym (a “primal” workout, they call it, because it mimics animal movements)…

INTERVIEWER: I haven’t seen that. Really?

JONCE: It’s a great workout, but not for beginners. You can’t just skip the two levels of health and fitness and move to the performance level. I’m not saying these trainers don’t want the best for their clients; they just lack experience. They feel great about what they’re doing and they want to convey this to their members.

That’s where it’s going to fail. Regardless of the fancy exercises you have and the great strategist you are, if you don’t “feel” your client, you’re going to fail. You have to feel your client. That’s what fitness professionals are missing, and that’s one of the biggest differences between IMS and CrossFit.

You might walk into an IMS gym and see the same equipment you see at a CrossFit gym, but let me tell you something: I was using this kind of equipment many, many years ago—just a much older version. I was even making (and you can ask people who have trained with me 10 years) my clients mimic animal movements! We would go to the forest and they would carry a log on their shoulder, running up and down hills.

INTERVIEWER: That’s cool!

JONCE: I would take a rope, put it around a branch, tie a rock on it, and make them pull that rock around…up and down and up and down. I’ve been doing these kind of exercises way before there was “CrossFit” or “calisthenics” or “primal workouts.” I just didn’t know what to call them; I didn’t have the name for them. I’ve been doing that for many, many years. I’ve been in the fitness business for 23 years, and have trained myself for nearly 30 years.

If you walk into an IMS gym and see the equipment, you’ll see a much newer version of what I used to do. I’ve stayed true to my philosophy of training, with the same exercises and the same tools. I just have more modern equipment now.

INTERVIEWER: I’m picturing a gym in the woods. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a gym called something like “Primal Gym,” with an actual indoor facility like yours, but also with some woods where there was this stuff you’re talking about?

JONCE: There is.

INTERVIEWER: Is there?! Really?!

JONCE: There is. Another fitness professional who I admire, Erwan Le Corre (I think he’s in his early 40’s), has that kind of “gym.” I think he calls it “NatMove” (Natural Movement).

INTERVIEWER: That would sell. I’m telling you, I would sign up for that.

JONCE: Well, let me tell you this: My goal is to take my clients (whenever weather permits or whenever their fitness level permits) to the park and to the forest and make them climb trees, carry logs, and run up and down those muddy hills!

INTERVIEWER: That’s so cool.

JONCE: Let me tell you a story. A very long time ago, when I first came to America, I trained my first client. She passed the health and fitness level, so she was ready for the performance level. Up to that point, she couldn’t find a personal trainer or fitness professional who could train her at that level. So we went to a stony creek, and I made her climb up and down all sorts of branches and trees. I was using the trees as a rig.

INTERVIEWER: That’s really cool. It feels so much more natural…like you have a goal. When you’re in the gym, you have these bars. It feels so much like a machine; it’s so structured. But when you’re in nature, you feel like you’re actually trying to climb and get…

JONCE: Being one with nature. Being one with nature. You try to be one with nature, you know?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

JONCE: And again, that’s intrinsic in us. Those are intrinsic motions. That’s what our ancestors used to do.

INTERVIEWER: You should call it Jurassic Gym.

JONCE: Something like that, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: And have giant wooden gates that open up to go in, and torches that light at night. Ha ha!

JONCE: Right, right.

INTERVIEWER: That would be so cool!

JONCE: You can ask my clients. I used to do that.

INTERVIEWER: That is awesome!

JONCE: So opening my IMS with a similar concept to CrossFit is not a coincidence. If I can be a little arrogant, I’ve done these exercises way before the name CrossFit was established.

INTERVIEWER: But without the kipping.

JONCE: Without injuring people. Yeah, without injuring people.

INTERVIEWER: Because that just looks dangerous. It looks horrible for your joints!

JONCE: Yeah, it is dangerous.

INTERVIEWER: How can that be good for you?

JONCE: It can’t. It’s not.

INTERVIEWER: It’s no coincidence there’s a chiropractor in every one of those CrossFit gyms.

JONCE: Really?! I didn’t even know that. Are you serious?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. They’re members and somehow they’re part of the foundation. The owner of the CrossFit gym my wife goes to is a chiropractor, and the last CrossFit gym she went to also had an owner who was a chiropractor.

JONCE: I wouldn’t call that a coincidence anymore. I would call that a strategy, haha!

INTERVIEWER: A strategy-strategy-strategy-strategy.

JONCE: I wanted to talk more about nutrition today, but we’ll continue that next time. The only resemblance between CrossFit and IMS is the actual equipment; everything else—the concept, the strategy, and the philosophy, is diametrically opposite.

INTERVIEWER: Awesome.

JONCE: That’s it for today.

INTERVIEWER: Yay! I don’t mean, “Yay, that’s it,” I mean, “Yay, good information!”

Let’s face it, there are so many miserable people out there.  Whether because of weight, job, marriage or social status.

There are only two types of emotions: love and fear.  Fear generates hate, envy, anger etc.  All of those negative attributes that people are displaying are generating from fear.  Period.

And all the good attributes that people displaying for others and themselves are from Love, e.g. empathy, compassion, passion, joy and happiness and most important self-love.

Have you ever seen an angry happy person? That’s not possible.

Have you ever seen a fearful happy person? I think not.

So, that’s what I’m trying to implement into my clients through my philosophy with IMS , not just physically training people with IMS, but also emotionally and mentally so that the people are also happier and have higher self esteem.  Happiness is a choice. But it will be easier to choose happiness when your body allows you to do whatever you want.  When you’re not embarrassed to take your shirt off, when you can run around with your children and have fun, when you don’t have to run three four times a week to the doctor for dialysis, for medications, or checkups.

Quite frankly, obese people seem to be on the “exterior” always in a good mood, smiling and easy going hence happy. But talking to and training many of them in my 23 years as a fitness professional, I have seen firsthand the sadness, insecurity and low self-esteem going on in their “interior.” And that’s the mental aspect of obesity.

Let’s talk about the physical aspect of obesity. Besides being at very high risk of obtaining various detrimental diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, CHD etc. Think about what people are going through on a daily basis who are 50, 100, 150 or 200 pounds above their allowed weight. Our skeleton system was and is not designed to carry such a heavy load 24/7/365, Period. Eventually the joints, ligaments and cartilage will deteriorate and that causes a lot of pain.

But yet we live in a society where close to 85 – 90 million people are obese.

So, is it getting better or worse?

According to experts of the world health organization (WHO) it’s getting worse.  In the past ten years the increase in memberships in gyms has doubled.  The increase in obesity has also doubled in that same amount of time. It’s a paradox.   So obviously, people going into the gyms is a failing concept to helping people with obesity

So what is wrong with that?

If you think about it, we should have a decrease in obesity and overweight. Since the increase has doubled in memberships, places of nutritional experts and weight loss institutions, but yet we are failing to have a positive impact on peoples body composition; to the contrary it’s getting worse.  And it’s getting even worse among the young people and among the teenagers.

Is it a lack of education on what you need to do when you get to the gym?

The lack of education on how to perform certain exercises in the gym and how to train your body when you come to the gym is a part of the problem.  But it’s the least of the problem. It’s probably the smallest part.   What’s the bigger part? Read on…

The biggest part is the NUTRITION.

The fact of the matter is that the food industry is spending billions of dollars annually trying to brainwash us what to eat, when to eat and how much of their poisoned food to eat. The sad part is,____they are succeeding. I call it “plastic food”.  Actually the origin of this food is plastic.  If you trace it back to how this food is made, those patty burgers, those chicken wings and protein bars, they are truly all processed with chemicals you can’t even pronounce.

1 in 3 American’s are obese.

Add to the obese the people who are overweight its 67%. 2 in 3 Americans are either obese or overweight.

Being overweight is the pre-step to obesity.

It’s said by the year 2050, at the rate we are going, that’s in 35 more years, 2 in 3 Americans will be obese.  The cost to the 1/3 of the people who are not obese will be horrendous.  To support those people medically and emotionally will be immense.  And the extra amount of food we would need to produce for these people would be immense.

What is the culprit?  90% food.

As I said before food companies are spending, not millions, but BILLIONS in advertising targeting children and adults to eat their junk food.  You just have to connect the dots to see what the problem is.

Are they really any different than the smoking companies? Look what happened to the tobacco companies from the mid seventies to the eighties.  People finally got together and forced the tobacco companies to admit that nicotine would cause cancer and death.

Before that they where lying through their teeth. Whether it was before congress or experts, assuring us that it wouldn’t or does not cause any harm.

Ironically, years later, it is happening with the food.  They’re lying through their teeth!  Food companies are invited to come in to Congress to talk about their products and they are lying through their teeth about it not causing harm. They are saying that there is “no proven correlation between sugar and processed food that is causing harm to the body.”  Really??? 80 million obese people is not prove enough??

So unless people are starting to get together as they did with the tobacco companies and say this is enough!  Our children are getting fatter and fatter! Our adults are getting fatter and fatter! It’s going to get worse and worse and worse.

How can it get better when food companies are spending billions of dollars to lobbyists that go to the government who say that there is no problem!  They will say, “It’s not the food, but lack of movement.”

That is total baloney!

It doesn’t matter if you go to a gym or to any kind of fitness institution, even to my IMS!  Anyone can train seven days with me, two hours a day, three hours. If you go home and don’t change your eating habits or lifestyle, nothing changes.  You have to start eating real food, like the earlier generations, where everything was home cooked.

If you don’t start changing  your nutrition and keep eating your junk food that the media is lying to us about, nothing will change in your body composition and more important in your mental well-being.