There are a handful of “things” that people need more of in their daily lives.
People need more:
1. Healthy fats; particularly fish oil (more on this below).
2. Time away from the television. My girlfriend and I actually have “unplugged night” once per week where we turn off the tv and just hang out together. She has yet to beat me in Stratego.
3. Vegetables. And no, that one piece of lettuce you have on your sandwich everyday at 1PM doesn’t count. On any given day I eat an entire bag of frozen vegetables and an entire bag of spinach. Listen to your mother, eat your veggies.
4. Exercise. If you have time to watch every season premiere on television, you have time to squeeze in 3-5 hours per week to train.
5. Cowbell. Who doesn’t need more cowbell?
It’s no secret that fish oil should be a staple in EVERYONE’s diet (read: this means YOU). Normally I am not a big fan of advocating supplements to the public, but there are a handful of “supplements” that I don’t necessarily consider supplements. (Did that make sense?). Rather, I consider them to be crucial components of a healthy diet: multi-vitamin, protein powder, and fish oil. I also consider Lindsay Lohan to be a talentless waste of space with the brain capacity of a three year old. Seriously, if aliens were to ever come down to Earth and abduct her to perform human experiments, they would probably find a teddy bear where her brain should be. But that’s beside the point.
Back to fish oil…..
If you’re not taking your fish oil for the health benefits alone (and believe me there are literally hundreds), please kindly click the power button on your computer right now and buy some for crying out loud. However be careful of which brand you buy. As my friend nutritionist Mike Roussell has pointed out, when purchasing fish oil it’s important that you buy a PURE and POTENT product.
I agree with him 100% and often recommend that people don’t buy a fish oil supplement that isn’t at least 50% pure. To determine the purity of your fish oil simply divide the amount of combined EPA and DHA (the omega 3’s) by the total amount of fat in the product. Most fish oil products you will find in your local grocery store contain 0.18 g of EPA and 0.12 g of DHA per 1 gram capsule.
0.18+0.12=0.3 grams (or 300 mg) of total omega-3’s (EPA/DHA combined)
0.3/1g (of fat per capsule)=.3 or 30%
Essentially most fish oil supplements found in local drug stores or grocery stores are 30% pure. They’re cheap, but they are potentially loaded with mercury, toxins, and other contaminants. You will have to pay a little more for 50% pure fish oil products, but it’s soooo worth it. As an added bonus, the purer the product is, the less likely you are to experience any fishy after taste or burps.
As an aside, you want to try to get at least 3-6 grams of OMEGA-3’s in your diet per day (not just 3-6 grams of fish oil). Since most fish oil products are at 30% potency, that equates to roughly ten capsules per day. Another advantage of buying a more potent product is that you won’t have to ingest nearly as many capsules to get your daily requirement.
