
It stands to reason that ‘healthy is as healthy does’, but as we all know: sometimes the doing is the hardest part.
Look at the lucrative industry of fitness that abounds, all backed by good intentions and guilt motivated impulse buying. How many of you have equipment in your home taking up valuable square footage, or gym memberships that somehow end up unused after 2-3 months? Yeah, that’s right; I am talking about burn-out.
What if told you that you could workout a fraction of the time you do now, but to an improved physiological (and psychological) response? Would you read on?
Well, it seems that re-thinking the fitness grind paradigm now has evidence backing it up.
A group of scientists published in January 2009 Bio Med Central; BMC Endocrine Disorders found that short, High-intensity Interval Training [HIT] showed significant improvements in glycemic control in its test subjects. HIT can also be used as a training strategy to reduce metabolic risk factors in young and middle aged populations who, like in the opening paragraph, have a hard time finding the time staying consistent with exercise regimes.
Let’s look more closely at the physiological benefits first. What exactly is glycemic response and why is it important?
The glycemic index, GI is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates that break down quickly during digestion, releasing glucose rapidly into the bloodstream, have a high GI; carbohydrates that break down more slowly, releasing glucose more gradually into the bloodstream, have a low GI. For most people, foods with a low GI have significant health benefits. The concept was developed to find out which foods were best for people with diabetes.
Several lines of recent scientific evidence have shown that individuals who followed a low GI diet over many years were at a significantly lower risk for developing both type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease than others. High blood glucose levels or repeated glycemic “spikes” following a meal may promote these diseases by increasing oxidative stress to the vasculature and also by the direct increase in insulin levels. In the past, post –meal glycemic spikes has been considered a risk factor associated mainly with diabetes. However, more recent evidence shows that it also presents an increased risk for atherosclerosis in the non-diabetic population. So all those potatoes and bread you had for lunch place you firmly within the realm of glycemic spike. That sounds like a description that fits 90% of lunchtime America.
Currently it is thought that in order to improve glycemic response involves moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic and resistance exercise for several hours per week.
Sound familiar?
Worse than that, hours spent working out is hard to maintain in the real world of work, family and catching the latest episode of TrueBlood. I make this last point only because ‘down time’ is also needed for a balanced approached to overall health.
If you are stressing over the unused Super Glide 9000 that is now where you hang the dry cleaning, or the bank draft the gym pulls out of your account every month, you may want to consider re-thinking your approach to fitness. Because stressing over not exercising AND stressing over not using the things that are supposed to aid in that attempt is insult to injury.
Yaboga is an approach to health that considers the balance we all need.
Rather selling you on this idea that a piece of equipment or a gym membership is the only way to put in all the hard work required to get ideal looking body, Yaboga looks at what is needed to achieve improved health, not improved fitness industry sales.
You get healthy and your body will look great, guaranteed.

