Source: Gregg Braden Official
Gregg Braden shares 4 things you can do to thrive and extend your lifespan in this fast-changing world: nutrition, exercise, supplements, and heart-brain coherence.
Source: Rewire Your Mind
In this video, Andrew Huberman discusses two secrets to transforming your body and accelerating fat loss: fat mobilization and fat oxidation. The first step in fat loss is to mobilize the fat by breaking the backbone between glycerol and fatty acids. Once the fatty acids are released into the bloodstream, they can be used for energy. The second step is oxidation, where the fatty acids enter cells and are transported to the mitochondria to be converted into ATP.
The first secret to accelerating fat loss is the realization that the nervous system, not just calorie deficit, plays a crucial role in fat mobilization and oxidation. Adrenaline, released from neurons connecting to fat cells, stimulates fat oxidation. The specific patterns of movements and environments can trigger these neurons to release more adrenaline, which promotes fat loss.
The second secret is that subtle movements, such as shivering or fidgeting, can greatly increase fat metabolism and fat loss. Studies from 2015 and 2017 have shown that people who fidget or engage in subtle movements throughout the day can burn anywhere from 20 to 30 percent more calories than those who do not. This strategy works best for people who are already slightly overweight and may not enjoy exercising.
The bottom line: activating the nervous system to promote fat mobilization and oxidation, along with incorporating subtle movements like fidgeting, can significantly increase fat loss and help transform the body. While exercise is still important for overall health, these two secrets can provide an additional, accessible way to burn calories and promote weight loss.
Watch more great videos on the Rewire Your Mind YouTube Channel.
Source: Thomas DeLauer
Thomas DeLauer reveals a new fasting study about what fasting window is the best and how it positively affects your body.
Bryn Carden
Let’s face it; no one actually wants to substitute celery for a cupcake. The thought of having to restrain from the urge to indulge in delicious, unhealthy foods makes dieting not only miserable but tough to stick to in the long run. There are countless dieting books with hundreds of different methods for a reason: because dieting is not a sustainable option to get healthy and stay healthy.
Previously awarded Miss Kemah Teen USA, Bryn Carden makes promoting health, wellness, and body positivity one of her missions in life. She agrees that the concept of dieting and its initial restricting mindset is step one in the wrong direction. That is why Carden says that the best diet is an anti-diet or an approach to health and dieting that revolves around choosing more nutrient-dense foods. Here are five reasons why the best diet ironically is an anti-diet.
Though the term anti-diet seems to equate to anti-health, it is far from such a comparison. An anti-diet promotes pursuing well-being without revolving around the idea of weight loss. It helps those who want to get healthy to do so in the direction opposing the dangers and harms of dieting. Dieting restrictions lead people to experience more discomfort, which spirals into more eating, ultimately falling into a destructive cycle of going on a diet and failing. The ideals backing up an anti-diet are evidence-based, diet-culture-free interventions such as the paradigm called Health At Every Size.
According to Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CDN, author of Anti-Diet, there is something called “diet-culture” that promotes unhealthy Western ideals that essentially put thinness on a pedestal and regards such a figure as identical to the best shape of health. She points out that no person ever starts on a diet thinking that they are beautiful and perfect. In fact, the mindset surrounding beginning a diet is entirely negative and does not promote body positivity outlooks, which is another factor in the many reasons dieting is not sustainable.
As most marketing involves manipulation, it is no different with diet trends and fads. Companies looking to make money from people suffering under diet-culture stigmatization promote dieting products as simple ways to finally reach the desired Western-loved thin look to achieve a healthy state. At the end of trying one diet, when people fail at that program or meal plan they just invested into, they look to the next solution another company might offer, spending money once again just to end up in the same place.
Why does dieting increase hunger and cravings so drastically? Dieting is a type of starvation, which means people go through a calorie deficit. The human body responds to calorie deprivation by decreasing the satiety hormone leptin and increasing the hormone that sparks hunger called ghrelin. The body reacts in this way because it is programmed to survive, and when a body senses it is not getting the proper amount of fuel through food, metabolic rates will decrease, making weight loss harder.
Diets, in general, are not beneficial for mental health. The repercussions the mind goes through when restricting what foods to choose that fit with a diet’s demands can cause anxiety in social settings and or depression behind closed doors.
Bryn Carden is a versatile young entrepreneur with a deep sense of compassion and the desire to help make the world a better place. Carden leads other women by example with a kind, compassionate and authentic approach, promoting health and wellness, strong ambition, and generosity. She is a proud Miss Kemah Teen USA, inspiring others with her beauty, positive attitude, and love for people. When she has free time, Bryn can be found modeling, traveling, skiing, paddle boarding, exercising, and spending time with her friends and family.
Maintaining your health takes more than eating right, getting sleep, and exercising. To live a healthy life requires a process of those three fundamental principles along with regular health screenings.
Having regular health screenings will help determine and diagnose any potential underlying health issues and provide better guidance to improve your health and wellness.
To live well requires that you focus on the four central pillars of health, diet, exercise, sleep, and wellness exams. So let’s examine each of those four pillars and provide some tips to help you live the best life.
The sayings, “junk in, junk out” and “you are what you eat” are more than something to help you remember to eat better. There’s truth in these adages that what we consume provides us with the necessary macronutrients to fuel our bodies.
Macronutrients are the primary sources of energy and nutrition, so it only makes sense to provide our bodies with the best macronutrients we can provide. Avoiding processed foods that may be high in sugar, salt, and additives is a great start.
Focusing on a diet that is low in calories but rich in protein and high in fiber will provide your muscles with the energy needed to perform critical functions, aid in the digestive process, and provide long-sustaining energy.
These are all essential functions of weight management and appetite control.
There are numerous health benefits to moving to a more plant-based diet, and there are a wide variety of menu options available to you.
For example, you can decrease the amount of meat you consume and substitute it with beans and legumes.
Additionally, you can move to a breakfast routine that includes daily smoothies. Smoothies provide essential vitamins and minerals, protein and fiber, and are delicious ways to create flexible, filling meals.
A second pillar to wellbeing is getting regular exercise. The World Health Organization recommends 75 minutes of vigorous activity every week for a fully grown adult or up to 120 minutes of low-impact movements for optimal health.
The apparent benefits of exercise include strengthening the skeletal-muscular system, enhancing the immune system, slowing the aging process, helping the digestive process, and weight control.
One of the more significant benefits of exercise, we enhance the body’s immune system empowering it to fight off illness and other diseases such as cancers.
Exercise causes the body to strengthen its respiratory system and cardiovascular function and helps the body to perform more efficiently.
That said, one often overlooked benefit from regular exercise is that it works in boosting moods.
When the body is stressed, the brain releases powerful neurochemicals that can inhibit or strengthen moods.
For example, too much negative stress, such as when we experience depression and grief, can lower the body’s spirits.
On the other hand, when we stress the body in a good way, such as strengthening it through exercise, the brain releases dopamine that boosts moods and energy.
Sleep is the primary function of the body and mind to relax, regenerate, and rebuild itself. Yet, it is often the first thing we sacrifice when we’re stressed or overstimulated but should be considered necessary for our overall health as the other two cornerstones to good health.
The WHO recommends that fully grown adults get at least 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night, and some studies show that even with the proper amount of sleep, occasional naps are encouraged.
At different stages of our life, we are prone to more or fewer health concerns. For example, at 45 years of age or older, getting regular colon exams is the recommendation, and those examinations may occur earlier in cases of family history of colon cancers.
However, if colon cancers are a concern for you, you can always get an at-home test before scheduling a professional examination. An at-home test, known as a fit test, will help you have peace of mind before your regular exam.
The primary benefit of regular health examinations is to screen for potentially more serious diseases or other underlying health concerns.
Taking a balanced approach of eating right, getting regular exercise, sleeping well, and getting annual health screenings will help you live a healthy, happy life.
Most of the ready-made food we eat today is ultra-processed. As tasty as they may be, they can be even dangerous from a health perspective. There have been concerns that such ultra-processed food makes us crave more and eventually leads to obesity. Dr. Chris Van Tulleken, a television presenter and researcher, wanted to prove these concerns – using his own body as the test subject.
Dr. Chris filled 80% of his daily diet with ultra-processed food for 4 weeks. This means 4/5th of the foods being eaten are packaged and ready-made items like burgers, candy, chocolates, chips, and so on. If it sounds similar to your present diet, then Dr. Chris’ experience may be an eye-opener for you. The whole experience is available to watch as a mini-documentary.
The Effects Of The 80% Ultra-Processed Food Diet
The immediate effects, Dr. Chris reports, were poor sleep, low libido, anxiety, sluggishness, unhappy feelings, and heartburn. He also developed piles due to constipation. He said that he “felt ten years older”.
In that 4 weeks, Dr. Chris’ weight had increased by nearly 7kg and had made him overweight. He estimates that, at that rate, in 6 months he would have gained 38kg. The weight was not the only visibly drastic change. Take a look at the video yourself:
Scans of Chris’ brain activity showed that the areas that control reward had become connected to the areas controlling automatic, repetitive behavior. This meant that his brain told him to eat ultra-processed food even if there was no need for it. The response was similar to when substances such as drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes are used addictively. The changes were not permanent, but Dr. Chris sounded an alarming warning: If a 42-year-old’s brain was changed that much in just 4 weeks, imagine how children’s developing brains are affected.
We are yet to figure out the reason behind this effect of ultra-processed foods. Chris conjectures that it is primarily because of their constituting nutrients and the way they are processed.
Once You Start Eating, It Becomes Tough To Stop
In the documentary, Chris speaks with Dr. Kevin Hall, a National Institutes of Health senior investigator. He reveals that a study was made comparing two diets that had the same nutritional quantities but one was made up of about 80% ultra-processed foods.
The study revealed that those who were given the ultra-processed diet ate about 500 calories more every day. In about 2 weeks, they gained about 1kg of weight. Blood tests showed an increase of the hormone that controlled hunger and a decrease of the one controlling how full we feel. The study suggests that this is how these foodstuffs encourage overconsumption.
Chris’ experience was in line with the findings of this study. He talks about finding himself “craving food much more often”. Some studies have shown that foods that have high fat and carbohydrate content can activate the areas in the brain that control motivation, emotion, and reward. A study based on brain imaging suggested that the more reward you experience from eating such foods, the more you will have to eat to maintain that enjoyment.
However, Chris adds that he does not think that food companies intentionally want to make people obese. Unfortunately, the side-effect of extremely delicious ultra-processed food is that they are addictive.
Moreover, it is very difficult for most people to remove ultra-processed foods from one’s diet. Chris says that their convenience, availability, and marketing all add to them being present in some form in our daily diet. The key here is moderation. Rio Huntriss, a dietitian, says that occasionally enjoying such foods is not likely to have such a health impact. Just don’t make it everything you eat every day.
For full references please use the source link below.
Video can be accessed at the source link below.
Calories are units of energy, and we measure our food by how many energy units it provides for us. Our calorie needs depend on so many factors. The most important are: our weight, height, age, and level of activity we practice during the day. You must have heard someone complaining about not losing weight at least once, even if they eat only healthy food. Lots of healthy food is high in calories. That food is good for our health, but it won’t help us lose weight if we eat it too much. If you plan to lose weight, you have to be in a calorie deficit.
The simplest explanation is that a calorie deficit is the state you achieve by burning more calories than you consume. If you reach a calorie deficit and put your body in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight, but you will gain weight if you consume more than you burn. You are likely asking yourself how many calories to eat to achieve a calorie deficit? You can google “calorie calculator,” this calculator, with the help of information about you, will estimate your BMI. Based on your BMI, it will count how many calories you should take daily to maintain a certain weight, how many to lose, and how many to gain weight.
There are few things you can try to achieve a calorie deficit:
To be in a calorie deficit, you don’t have to starve yourself. It doesn’t even have to mean that you have to eat less.
Here are few diet tips that can help you put your body in calorie deficit:
Protein can help you feel full, and if you feel full and satisfied, you will more likely stick to a diet plan.
Food like cucumbers, lemon, green salad, broccoli are deficient in calories, but if you eat it with every meal, it will fill up your stomach, and you will be full till your next meal.
Drinks with a lot of sugar have a lot of calories, but these drinks are not nutritious. Sweetened beverages won’t satisfy your hunger, and they won’t provide necessary nutrients for your body. Sweetened beverages also have a negative impact on your dental health, says Smile Solutions.
Try finding a way to make a healthier version of your favorite food. It will be less likely to give up your diet plan by not entirely giving up your favorite food.
You can’t eat something you don’t have. Also, don’t go shopping hungry, make a list of groceries you need, and don’t look around the supermarket a lot.
Choose your favorite type of physical activity and practice it more. Go to the gym, or walk instead of using public transport or car, you can also ride a bike. Remember, this won’t work if you overeat, so combining exercise and a healthy diet would be best. If you don’t see any workout results, perhaps you can try adding chromium for weight loss to your diet. Chromium can enlarge lean body mass and decrease the percentage of body fat, which leads to weight loss.
You can easily find information about calories in food. Research the food you are often eating, find out about how many calories that food contains. Don’t forget to weigh and measure your portion. That way, you can be entirely sure that you are staying in a calorie deficit.
Contact a weight loss clinic if you have any concerns or questions about weight loss. The team of experienced professionals will inform you about everything you need to know about calorie deficit and weight loss in general. Also, there you will get adequate attention and help to reach your goal weight safely and healthily.
Excess weight has been associated with a number of diseases over the years. They include hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease, among others. Cutting that excess weight can be a difference-maker health-wise. This can be a struggle as you have to make a number of significant changes. And when you don’t have the right plan for your weight loss goals, it becomes even more challenging. Here are a few tips you should use to not only make but also keep your goals.
Be Prepared
When embarking on this journey, you need to be ready to go the distance. Weight loss won’t happen overnight. It’s a gradual process that has to be treated with the sensitivity it requires.
You also need to take a readiness test of your own to ascertain your readiness by answering a few questions like:
If you have these answers, then you can start small.
Start Small
This isn’t a sprint, and you’re likely to wait a while before you get to the weight you desire. Start small and don’t burn up too much energy and drain all motivation in your first few days. When you start at high speed, you’re likely to burn out early with little change. This can make you lose hope in the process. First, get a weight loss DNA test from myDNA, then set out to lose at least 1 kilogram per week. With this, you can put emphasis on burning at least half of the calories you consume.
Keep a Food and Weight Diary
Discipline comes with the territory where you want to shed that extra weight you’re carrying. You need to self-monitor what you eat and also the gains you make on this journey. That’s why you need a diary. The diary can be a physical one, a website or as many would have it today, a mobile app. You’re much more likely to keep up if you record your progress than trying to see weight loss in the mirror.
Find Motivation
Motivation is key if you’re ever going to get to your weight loss goals. And it should be something that comes from deep within you. List down why you’re embarking on this journey somewhere visible to you daily. It may be you want to fit in that swimsuit on your annual vacation. You can also do it for health reasons. Whatever it is, let it come from within as it will keep you in it long-term.
Eat Healthily
Being mindful of what you eat should now come naturally to you. Seek to reduce your calorie intake over time. Eat more foods that are plant-based such as fruits and vegetables. You should also reduce your sugar intake as much as possible. And look to eat more whole grains than refined ones.
Conclusion
Making and keeping your weight loss goals can be a struggle if you don’t know how. With these tips, you know exactly where to start from and how you can keep working towards your goal during your entire journey.
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | mercola.com
Dr. Steven Gundry, a cardiologist, heart surgeon, medical researcher, and author, is perhaps best known for his “Plant Paradox” book, which was a massive bestseller. He has now published another book called “The Energy Paradox: What to Do When Your Get-Up-and-Go Has Got Up and Gone.”
As the name implies, this book delves into the origins of fatigue and how to improve your energy at the molecular level. While he had not planned on writing a book about energy optimization, upward of 60% of his patients suffer from fatigue and a feeling of general malaise, so, clearly, this is something that affects an enormous number of people.
The good news is there’s a lot you can do to improve your energy levels. One such strategy, which I embraced years ago, is time-restricted eating (TRE), a form of intermittent fasting in which you restrict all of your food intakes to a certain number of consecutive hours each day.
As an added boon, this strategy doesn’t cost you a penny. If anything, it’ll save you money. Gundry was ahead of the curve on this one, having written about TRE in his first book, “Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution,” published in 2006.
“I had an entire chapter in that book devoted to time-restricted eating, and my editor at Random House at the time, Heather Jackson, said, ‘This is so crazy that I’m not going to let you do this.’
She said this. True story. And I said, ‘Look, I’m telling you, I’ve been doing this now for four years and I’ve been using it on my patients and it’s not crazy. Here’s the research.’ And she said, ‘OK. I’m going to give you two pages to make your case. I’m throwing the rest of the chapter away.’
So, I got two pages. I saw her at the mindbodygreen symposium last summer, before the COVID-19 outbreak. She came up to me and said, ‘You were right. I apologize. You weren’t crazy, you weren’t nuts. Everybody now knows.’”
Indeed, in recent years, TRE has gained a lot of recognition as mounting evidence shows the simple act of restricting the number of hours during which you consume food during the day will improve your health in a variety of ways, primarily by improving your mitochondrial health and metabolic flexibility.
As noted by Gundry, keeping your eating to a window of six to eight hours a day is an achievable goal for most people. However, most need to gradually ease into it.
“Metabolic flexibility is probably the underlying problem in the vast majority of diseases that we see and I wrote the book to try and make it easy,” Gundry says. “What I see in my practice is that a lot of people go, ‘OK. I usually eat breakfast at 7 and starting tomorrow I’m going to start eating breakfast — break-fast — at noon.’ And they fall flat on their faces.
They get headaches, they get hungry, they don’t think right. They have no energy and they decide ‘This isn’t for me.’ That’s because they have a high insulin level, they’re insulin resistant and can’t use stored fat as an energy source …
So, in the book, what I do is, over a six-week period, I get them used to eating during a shorter and shorter time window. It’s very much like learning a new exercise program. I couldn’t run a marathon out the bat, but I can train and get there. So that’s what we do.”
Part of the process involves retraining your circadian rhythm. Your food intake, which impacts the circadian rhythm of your gut microbiome, and other circadian rhythms are intricately connected, and the more you can realign these circadian rhythms, the better your whole body will function, including your mitochondria.
At the most extreme end of TRE is the one meal a day (OMAD) routine, which can work well if you’re young and healthy. However, once you get into middle age and older, I believe it can start to backfire. I’m also not convinced that it’s healthy to remain on an OMAD diet in perpetuity, for the simple reason that your body will typically work best when you challenge it now and then.
During winter months, about six months out of the year, Gundry promotes using a two-hour, or even as short as a single-hour eating window during weekdays, and then eating during a much longer window during weekends. He’s been doing this for the past 21 years.
For me, cycling — mixing longer and shorter fasting intervals — has been a key to long-term success, and taking the weekends off from this strict regimen may be part of why this strict regimen has worked so well for so long for Gundry.
“I think you’ve got to break it up. I don’t do it all year round, and I break it up on the weekends, and the reason I do that is so I won’t go mad,” Gundry says. Another important detail with regard to timing is to avoid eating at least three hours before bed. Even if you restrict your eating to six hours or less, if you eat too close to bedtime, you’re canceling out many of the benefits. As explained by Gundry:
“It’s really important to stop eating at least three hours before bedtime for a couple of really important reasons. No. 1, you’ve got to undergo mitochondrial repair during the night.
You have to undergo brain cleaning during the night from the glymphatic circulation. Digestion takes huge amounts of blood flow, and if you’re eating, all that blood flow is heading down to your gut when it should actually be going up to your brain.”
Gundry quotes data from Satchin Panda, which shows that rats raised on a standard American diet equivalent that also are put on a TRE regimen fare much better than those who are not on TRE. This despite the fact that they’re eating the same thing. The same has been shown to hold true in humans.
Remarkably, Panda has shown the average American eats for 16 hours a day. Essentially, they’re grazing all day long, stopping only while sleeping. About 90% eat for more than 12 hours.
Simply reducing your eating window to 12 hours would be an improvement. As noted by Gundry, “Big Food, Big Agriculture has convinced us that this is the proper way to eat.” In reality, the only thing these big businesses and their recommendations are good for is a disease.
Gundry and I are also in agreement about the dangers of electromagnetic fields (EMFs). I’ve previously written about how magnesium can help mitigate some of the damaging effects from EMF, and Gundry has a patient who appears to have had success using this strategy. Melatonin, which is a very potent mitochondrial antioxidant, is another potential mitigator.
“Melatonin is a very interesting way of mitigating against the bad effects of EMF,” Gundry says. “Now, as I talk about in the book, I used to think that people who said that they were sensitive to these invisible rays [EMFs] were out on the lunatic fringe.
But the longer I’ve been doing this, I’ve had some fantastic experiences with very credible people, who when we mitigated EMF got well. One patient was profoundly affected by her husband’s AICD, a defibrillator, which was communicating his EKG with a satellite.
As soon as it went into him, she couldn’t sleep next to him. She had migraine headaches. We finally turned off the transmitter in his AICD, and just like that, all of [her symptoms] went away. So, these people are canaries in a coal mine and we have to believe it.”
While antioxidants like melatonin can certainly help improve mitochondrial function, I think there are better ways than simply piling on antioxidants. You also need to remove dietary and lifestyle factors that cause energy depletion in the first place. EMF exposure is one environmental factor. Leaky gut, caused by lectins in your diet, is another factor that needs to be addressed.
According to Gundry, a leaky gut is an underlying condition of most chronic diseases, so, if you have a chronic ailment, chances are you have a leaky gut. Thanks to Dr. Alessio Fasano, who heads up the Celiac Research Center at Harvard, we now have sophisticated tests that can diagnose this problem.
Fasano discovered the mechanism by which lectins cause leaky gut, and gluten is a lectin. When these and other food particles are able to cross your gut lining, they cause chronic inflammation, which requires a lot of energy to combat. This is one reason for your fatigue and general malaise. Gundry explains:
“If your immune system is distracted down to your leaky gut, first of all, it’s not going to be available when [pathogens] come in through your nose or mouth. And secondly, your immune system is so hyperactivated that when it sees something that might not be all that important, it goes crazy and you get a cytokine storm. That, of course, is one of the major lethal consequences [of] the Western diet.”
Another dietary factor that decimates mitochondrial health, and thus energy production, is omega-6 linoleic acid (LA). “In the book, I talk about the Goldilocks effect,” Gundry says. However, LA is naturally found in virtually all foods, so it’s near-impossible to become deficient. The problem really is an excessive intake, which is near-universal in Western countries due to processed food.
The primary culprit here is industrial vegetable oils, which most people eat far too much of. If you’re eating a whole food diet, you’re more likely to have a healthy ratio of LA, but even then, it may be causing trouble if you’re eating too many LA-rich foods, such as conventional chicken, for example.
You can learn more about the mechanisms of action behind LA’s damage in “Why Chicken Is Killing You and Saturated Fat Is Your Friend” and “The Type of Fat You Eat Affects Your COVID Risk.” Olive oil is another food that is high in LA, but it also has other components that may modify some of the risks. Still, I choose to limit my olive oil intake. Overall, I try to keep my LA intake below 5 grams a day, regardless of the sources. Gundry has a more favorable view of olive oil, stating:
“If you limit your eating window, you actually stop that process from happening, which is really miraculous, No. 1. And No. 2, shameless plug for myself, with my Gundry MD high-polyphenol olive oil, you only need a tablespoon a day to get the equivalent polyphenols of a liter of olive oil a week.”
When it comes to fats, Gundry is a proponent of short and medium-chain fatty acids. “For multiple reasons, I’ve been extolling the virtues of MCT oil since the ‘Plant Paradox,’” he says, adding:
“I think the saturated fats have other benefits. In particular, the saturated fats in cheeses may be one of the unsung heroes in longevity that I think needs more attention … I take care of a huge number of people who carry the APOE4 mutation, which is the Alzheimer’s mutation. I noticed early on that cheese really elevated not only small dense LDLs, but also elevated for most of my patients’ oxidized LDL …
I don’t like the traditional cholesterol theory of heart disease. On the other hand, I think oxidized LDL has an interesting place. What’s interesting is that when I’ve separated my patients into having them eat sheep cheese and goat cheese, I found dramatically different results.
I initially attributed it to the fact that sheep and goat have casein A2 and not casein A1. And I think casein A1 is a pretty bad actor. So, I said, well, I’m going to start letting my APOE4 [patients] have sheep and goat cheese, but in moderation. When I did that, I didn’t see this oxidized LDL.”
One potential mechanism for this might be because casein is a protein that can cause autoimmune reactions and contribute to leaky gut, which in turn contributes to increased LDL oxidation.
While most of Gundry’s autoimmune disease patients respond extremely well to Gundry’s plant paradox program, about 10% still do not farewell. Food sensitivity analysis has revealed a large number of them are sensitive to both casein A1 and casein A2.
Once their leaky gut is repaired, however, which may take up to a year, their immune systems typically become tolerant to these things again. “So, I think you can retrain the immune system once you get a good microbiome and seal the leaky gut.”
While some autoimmune patients have reversed their conditions using a carnivore diet, popularized by Dr. Paul Saladino, who is a leading authority on the science and application of the carnivore diet, Gundry recommends limiting meat because of its effects on your gut microbiome. Interestingly, Gundry will be interviewing Saladino very shortly and that interview will be on his site. It should be a fascinating discussion.
“I have nothing against the carnivore diet as an elimination diet,” he says. “In fact, when Saladino was first on my podcast, he credited me as being the father of the carnivore diet because all plants are evil. And I went, ‘Please don’t do that to me.’
I think one of the mistakes that people make in, particularly, a keto diet where they’ve eliminated fiber, you actually starve your gut microbiome from making butyrate. The other, I think worrisome, part about a carnivore diet is you tend to make more hydrogen sulfide. I’m a huge fan of hydrogen sulfide, the rotten egg smell … but again, we get the Goldilocks rule …
Some is really good for you, it’s really good for mitochondrial function, but a lot is really toxic. And there’s some evidence with carnivore diets that you produce too much hydrogen sulfide. Now, I also understand the argument that if we eat a lot of gristle and a lot of mucin, basically nose to tail, that you can make butyrate by fermenting protein-based animal ingredients. I think you can.
But if you look at all the super long-lived folks, one of the things they have is really great production of butyrate. Butyrate, that short chain fatty acid, does so much good for mitochondria, I can’t even begin to tell you. Well, I do in the book.”
I agree that a strict no-carb diet is a mistake. Healthy carbs — think plant foods rich in fiber — need to be cycled in, there’s no question. Not every day, but certainly once or twice a week, even when you’re on a ketogenic diet. I recommend restricting carbs to about 50 grams or so for most of the week and then increasing that to 100 or 150 grams once or twice a week once you’re metabolically flexible.
Meat, of course, is also a source of protein, and while too much protein can be harmful by activating mTOR (thereby contributing to cancer and other problems), too little can be an unmitigated disaster, as I found out.
For a time, I aggressively restricted protein in an effort to minimize mTOR and ended up developing sarcopenia (muscle loss). The lesson here is that you need protein, especially if you’re working out, and especially as you get older. With regard to mTOR activation, Gundry notes:
“The only way we can actually measure the effect of mTOR long term is insulin like growth factor IGF-1. I take care of a lot of super old people, 95 and above. I have a lot of 105-year-old patients that I study, and they all have very low insulin-like growth factors.
We’ve tried experiments with patients, really reducing their animal protein and replacing it with plant-based protein. I’m not taking protein away. Their insulin growth factors will drop 50 to 70 points in a matter of months, and I think that’s pretty interesting.
The other thing that’s interesting is that exercise will actually change your gut microbiome to eat branch chain amino acids before they get into you, and branch chain amino acids are one of the biggest stimulators of mTOR.
That’s why, if you’re building muscle and you’re a body builder, you gulp branch chain amino acids all the time. So, I think, probably Saladino — who exercises and also does TRE and has pretty good IGF-1s — can tolerate a very high animal protein diet.
The other thing that I’ve written about in all my books is that beef, lamb and pork have a sugar molecule called Neu5Gc, and fish and chicken have Neu5Ac. Many people make an autoantibody to Neu5Gc, so they attack their own blood vessels if exposed to beef, lamb and pork.”
Lastly, Gundry points out the importance of exercise. When you work your muscles, especially the big muscle groups, myokines are produced, which help grow new brain cells and aid your mitochondria. However, contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need to exercise continuously for 30 to 60 minutes each day, Gundry says. It’s OK to break it into smaller segments.
“Even walking up and down stairs for a minute may be as effective as walking 10 minutes on a level surface,” he says. “Doing a plank while you’re watching TV for a minute is a phenomenal exercise. My favorite is when you’re brushing your teeth, do deep knee bends, do squats.”
This interview coincides with the release of “The Energy Paradox: What to Do When Your Get-Up-and-Go Has Got Up and Gone,” so to learn more, be sure to pick up a copy. You can also learn more about Gundry by perusing his websites, GundryMD.com and DrGundry.com.
He has a weekly podcast that you can tune into as well for a wide range of health information from Gundry and his guests. You can also find him on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Dr. Mercola Interviews the Experts
This article is part of a weekly series in which Dr. Mercola interviews various experts on a variety of health issues. To see more expert interviews, click here.
Over the years, I’ve done several interviews with Dave Asprey, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of bulletproof.com, including one in which we discuss how ketones may be useful against COVID-19. Here, we discuss his latest book, “Fast This Way: Burn Fat, Heal Inflammation, and Eat Like the High-Performing Human You Were Meant to Be.”
As the name implies, the book is about fasting and all the magnificent health benefits it provides. Is it for everyone? No, and he will be the first to admit that. But it can benefit most of us, certainly, those of us who are either overweight or obese. In his book, Asprey tells his own journey into fasting and what he’s learned along the way.
“The word fasting is associated with pain, and I wanted to teach people some hacks for fasting,” Asprey says. “I also put a whole chapter in for women, because fasting doesn’t work for everyone and there is no one best kind of fasting. The evidence seems pretty clear that fasting the same way every day or every week is probably also not the best strategy.
So, how do you make it so you can fast without pain when you have stuff to do? And how do you make it so you fast with all of the emotions of fasting when you want to really dig deep and do the meditation, personal development side of fasting? Sorting through all that hasn’t been done in a book, so that’s why I wrote it.”
As noted by Asprey, a common concern is that fasting will put your body into starvation mode, thereby actually preventing fat loss. This is a persistent belief, but it’s not true. That said, some strategies will indeed activate the starvation mode, such as when you’re eating a low-calorie diet for months on end. Asprey tells a personal story that encapsulates this dilemma:
“On my journey of losing 100 pounds, I was doing what everyone said would work. I went to the gym an hour and a half a day, six days a week, halfway tough cardio until I could max out all but two machines, and I would do 45 minutes on the treadmill at a 15-degree angle wearing a backpack — really just pushing it.
And, I went on a low-fat, low-calorie diet. At the end of 18 months, I’m sitting at a Carl’s Jr. with friends. I’m eating the chicken salad with no chicken and no dressing and my friends are eating double western bacon cheeseburgers. I looked around and I’m like, ‘I exercise more than all my friends and I eat less than all my friends, even though I’m taller than they are. Maybe I’m just eating too much lettuce.’
To have a 46-inch waist after that much exercise, low-calorie dieting and all the suffering and intense hunger … My god, the sense of personal failure that comes with that, it’s one thing that holds people back and makes us stay heavy.
What’s going on there is there is a hunger set point that is caused by ghrelin, one of the hunger hormones. It’s a precursor to leptin. Research has shown that when you lose weight using a low-calorie diet or excessive exercise — and I was doing both — your hunger set point will remain your fat set point, and it will always do that.
The thing that turns your set point for hunger to your actual weight instead of to your fat weight is ketones. So, if you were to fast for a couple days or use the fasting hacks that I talk about in the book — there are three fasting hacks to turn off hunger, and two of them are going to help get your ketones up — even just one dose will reset your hunger levels.”
As explained by Asprey, yo-yo weight loss and weight gain occur because you’re on the wrong diet. Key dietary principles for losing the excess weight and keeping it off include:
So, what are the main benefits of fasting? Is it just the ease of weight loss? As explained by Asprey, there are many other health benefits to fasting besides the fact that stubborn weight will fall off. Importantly, the primary benefit of fasting is that it makes your body better at making energy.
This in turn has several benefits, one of which is improved blood sugar regulation, which will allow you to stave off insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction and all the diseases of aging associated with that. As noted by Asprey, if you can avoid cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease, you’re probably going to live longer, as these are the primary killers.
Fasting is also antiaging because it improves autophagy in your mitochondria and cells. Autophagy is a natural process that cleanses and detoxifies your mitochondria and cells. By breaking down old, damaged organelles, fresh, new ones can be made to replace them. And, with healthy, new mitochondria, your body can make more energy, more efficiently.
“That’s an unappreciated side of fasting,” Asprey says. “High-intensity interval training will do something similar, but when you combine that with fasting, your body is like, ‘Get rid of that old stuff.’ It’s kind of like a snake shedding its skin. It’s that autophagy process that is a really big deal.”
As mentioned, about half or more of your daily calories should come from fats, but it’s crucial to avoid certain types of fats. I’m currently writing a book on what I believe might be the primary disease-maker in the Western diet, namely omega-6 linoleic acid (LA).
LA makes up the bulk — about 90% — of the omega-6 consumed and is the primary contributor to nearly all chronic diseases. While an essential fat, when consumed in excessive amounts, LA acts as a metabolic poison.
The reason for this is because polyunsaturated fats such as LA are highly susceptible to oxidation. As the fat oxidizes, it breaks down into harmful sub-components such as advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALES) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMS). These ALES and OXLAMS are actually what cause the damage.
One type of advanced lipid oxidation end product (ALE) is 4HNE, a mutagen known to cause DNA damage. Studies have shown there’s a definite correlation between elevated levels of 4HNE and heart failure. LA breaks down into 4HNE even faster when the oil is heated, which is why cardiologists recommend avoiding fried foods. LA intake and the subsequent ALES and OXLAMS produced also play a significant role in cancer.
HNE and other ALES are extraordinarily harmful even in exceedingly small quantities. While excess sugar is certainly bad for your health and should typically be limited to 25 grams per day or less, it doesn’t cause a fraction of the oxidative damage that LA does.
Processed vegetable oils are a primary source of LA, but even food sources hailed for their health benefits contain it and can be a problem if consumed in excess. Cases in point: olive oil and conventionally raised chicken, which are fed LA-rich grains. To learn more about this hidden source of LA, see “Why Chicken Is Killing You and Saturated Fat Is Your Friend.”
Many now understand that your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is very important, and should be about 1-to-1 or possibly up to 4-to-1, but simply increasing your omega-3 intake won’t counteract the damage done by excessive LA. You really need to minimize the omega-6 to prevent damage from taking place. For more details about how to track your LA intake and minimize it, please view my recent article on how to do this.
Contrary to popular belief, fasting doesn’t have to be difficult or painful. Asprey details three fasting hacks in “Fast This Way.” The first one is to increase your ketone level. As explained by Asprey, hunger hormones start shifting when your ketone level hits slightly below 0.5, which is not yet the level at which you enter nutritional ketosis. He explains:
“Ghrelin will drop at 0.38, so almost no ketones. The hunger that comes with the ghrelin turns off. But there’s also a satiety hormone, the one that makes you feel full, which is called CCK or cholecystokinin. CCK, when you hit levels of 0.48, CCK makes you feel full. So, if you can get your ketones up to that level in the morning, then you will not pay attention to food.
The first step to get your levels up is mycotoxin-free black coffee — the Bulletproof beans are that. I did the original research about this. Anything that causes inflammation is going to make you hungry because inflammation just means the electrons that should be powering your thoughts are going to create inflammation in the body. They must go somewhere.
These toxins are present in very small amounts. Coffee that has more than five parts per million is illegal to sell in China, Japan and Europe, but it gets sent to the U.S., and we wonder why we get really hungry two hours after we have coffee and why we want sugar in our coffee.
It has to do with toxins, not coffee itself. A study at UC San Diego is really interesting. They found that the amount of caffeine present in two small cups of black coffee will double ketone production.
The second way is to make the coffee ‘bulletproof.’ And what that means is, you take your mycotoxin-free beans and you add some MCT oil. The 8-carbon chain (C8) MCT is the correct one. C8 MCT raises ketones four times more than coconut oil. [Then] you [add] butter and blend it or really shake it.”
Asprey funded research at the University of Washington with Dr. Gerald Pollack, who determined that when water is mixed with grass-fed butter or MCT oil, it creates a very large exclusion zone (EZ) in the water, and this EZ is important during fasting.
When you drink regular water, your body takes the water and puts it near your cell membranes, which are made of tiny droplets of fat. Body heat warms the water, converting it from bulk water into EZ water, which your body requires for ATP production and other biological processes, including autophagy and protein folding.
“When you put that tiny bit of butter and the MCT oil and you blend it in the morning, the MCT is going to raise your ketone levels very meaningfully. I can always get to 0.5 with just a Bulletproof coffee. But you’re also getting this water in the form of the coffee that is already primed for your body to use it to start burning fat, to start making energy,” Asprey explains.
“This is why taking a bite of butter and drinking a cup of coffee isn’t going to do it for you. It’s a different process. And I have noticed profound differences from doing that … I have found that for women, in particular, starting out with this really helps, especially if you’re over 40.”
A third fasting hack is to make sure you’re getting enough prebiotic fiber. According to Asprey, long term fasting and/or eating a carnivore-like, zero-carb diet for extended periods of time without cycling healthy carbs back in can alter your gut microbiota, which in turn can cause sleep disruptions.
When you feed your gut bacteria with prebiotics, they convert the prebiotics into propionic acid and butyric acid (butyrate), and butyrate is very pro-ketogenic.
“In fact, you can get into a state of ketosis by taking a handful of butyrate capsules,” Asprey says. “You want more butyric acid if you want to live a long time and have a healthy metabolism, and studies show massive hunger suppression when you do this.
So, if you put prebiotic fiber, which has essentially no flavor, in your coffee in the morning … you’ll also find that you care nothing about food. I was able to quadruple the number of species of [beneficial bacteria] in my gut using this. It’s totally compatible with fasting and it turns off hunger like no one’s business.
So now you’re saying, ‘Wait, a minute. I could have the coffee I was going to have anyway. I don’t put the sugar and artificial crap in it. I get the mold-free coffee and then I have a choice of drinking a black, of adding butter and MCT, and/or adding prebiotic fiber.’
What you do then is you drink this and you just stop caring about food, you go into the zone and you have the best morning you’ve ever had. Then the next morning, maybe you only have black coffee or maybe you have tea or maybe you have nothing at all, but it’s OK and it’s even preferable to mix up your length and style of fasting.”
In the interview, Asprey discusses several of the diet traps that people get themselves into. As general guidance, Asprey and I both agree that the best strategy to stay out of trouble is to cycle in and out of whatever routine you’re doing, be it low-carb keto or fasting.
While you may need to be very strict in the beginning, once you’re metabolically flexible, mix things up once or twice a week. Eat three meals instead of one and/or spread them out. Add in more carbs.
“The idea is to be flexible about your fasting regimen,” Asprey says. “I don’t even like the word regimen. It’s just a practice that we do and it’s a practice that makes us feel good, it makes us perform better. And it makes us age less, but doing it too much is a real danger.
If you’re going to do something like a four-day fast, after about 48 hours, there’s all sorts of additional forms of autophagy that turn on. Once every three or six months, doing a 48-hour fast is really well-advised. But man, as a weekly practice, that’ll mess you up …
Women will hit the wall before men do. I think there are evolutionary reasons for this. But it’s a big problem and I oftentimes see thyroid problems manifest and autoimmunity. There are good studies that show chronic stressors trigger autoimmunity, and over-fasting is a chronic stressor almost by definition.”
One reason why fasting is a stressor is that it releases toxins from your fat cells. A simple intervention to address this is the use of activated charcoal when you’re fasting. This is particularly beneficial if you’re also doing saunas.
“The universal thing that will happen is you will experience massive brain fog. You’ll feel like a zombie. This was a big thing for me because I had toxic mold exposure [and] I had heavy metals. You have these very interesting things in your gut, these gut bacteria that make lipopolysaccharides (LPS).
LPS’s can cross the gut barrier and then they cause inflammation in the body and trigger cravings in the brain. So, when the bad bacteria in your gut are going, ‘I didn’t get my sugar. I didn’t get any food. Oh, my god, it’s a mortal threat. If there’s a threat, I should release toxins.’
So, they ramp up their LPS production and then you’ll feel like garbage. Then you have to use even more willpower to get through your fast — or you could take activated charcoal that binds directly to LPS. Then you don’t feel the hunger and you don’t have to take the biological hit of all the toxins you’re releasing from your fat, and that really makes a big difference.”
In his book, Asprey also discusses how to integrate exercise into your fasting regimen. The best time to exercise is at the end of your fast. He explains:
“There’s something in the body called mTOR, which drives growth. mTOR will drive muscle [growth]. So, if you want to get a bicep, then you need some mTOR. But if your mTOR is chronically elevated, your risk of cancer and the diseases of aging go up. If you eat too much protein, especially certain amino acids, your [mTOR] level goes up and stays up, and that’s not good for you.
It’s not enough to trigger muscle growth, but it’s just enough to trigger inflammation. The way mTOR works is you suppress mTOR and then when you stop suppressing it, it surges forth and you get a big spike, which is what causes the benefits.
There’s three things that suppress mTOR and I call the strategy ‘tripling down on mTOR.’ The first thing that is shown to increase mTOR is fasting. The longer you fast, the lower your mTOR goes, which is good for triggering autophagy and things like that.
Other things that lowers mTOR are coffee and exercise. So, by having coffee during the fast, you keep cranking down on it, and then you exercise and it’s really low.
Then when you eat, which releases mTOR, and you have adequate protein in that meal, the body is like, ‘Woo-hoo, I’ve got a huge surge of mTOR and I’ve got protein present. Now, I’m going to go to work and I’m going to fix everything. I’m going to replace all the cells I got rid of during autophagy. I’m going to grow the new mitochondria.'”
This is why you get more out of exercise when you do it at the end of a fast. I’m convinced this strategy has helped me radically build my muscles and improve my strength. One small tweak that may be helpful if you’re doing very heavy exercise is to eat a small amount of food about 30 to 60 minutes before you start, essentially breaking your fast right before your exercise.
“There’s great logic in that advice,” Asprey says. “You fasted and then you broke the fast right before the exercise, because by the time those calories are digested and hit the blood sugar, you will be done with your workout. It’s going to be a good half hour before that stuff really hits the bloodstream.
So, I would totally support that unless you’re doing the kind of high-intensity workouts that I’m a fan of, the ones where if I tried to do it with a full stomach, I think I might throw up. They’re very short but they’re very intense.”
Asprey discusses a number of other antiaging strategies in this interview as well — things like hormone regulation and the use of testosterone, and how fasting affects these levels — so for those details, be sure to listen to the whole interview.
He also goes into some of the problems that can occur when you’re on a plant-based diet, and/or if your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is off-kilter, as well as how your diet and exposure to sunlight influence your circadian rhythm, and which supplements are helpful when fasting and which should be avoided.
Naturally, you’ll also want to pick up a copy of his book, “Fast This Way: Burn Fat, Heal Inflammation, and Eat Like the High-Performing Human You Were Meant to Be,” where he covers everything in greater depth. In addition to everything already mentioned, his book also includes information about intermittent hypoxic training and breathing exercises.
“What we know now, and what is in ‘Fast This Way,’ is that when you show your body that it will be required to regularly go without something it thinks it needs, you walk away from that as a stronger person.
Your willpower is stronger, but more importantly, your cells are stronger, and then they will give you more energy all the time. And, going from a 300-pound tired, fat, uncomfortable guy to where I am now, even though I’m 48, if I could do it, I think anyone could do it,” Asprey says.
To help you on your way, Asprey also provides a two-week program where he guides you through a 24- or 48-hour fast and answers questions on a daily basis. All you need to do is preorder “Fast This Way,” and then send a copy of your receipt to FastThisWay.com and sign up for the program. There’s an upload form on the website.
“I’ll teach you the fasting hacks. We’ll do some intermittent fasting together in a community, and then towards the end of this, we will actually do a 24-hour or 48-hour fast. I’m going to lead you through it,” he says.
“We also [cover] mediation and the gratitude side of this. I just want to teach you this book because I spent thousands of hours writing it and I want you to get it.
You can send your receipt in any time. The training starts right after the book comes out. The book hits shelves January 19, and January 21 I’m going to start the fast. So, if you want to ask me questions, I’m going to be there for you.”
Navigating eating for weight loss can be tricky – contradictory advice abounds, even among nutritional experts. However, often when you focus on eating healthfully, the weight eventually takes care of itself. Below are some food tips that will help you clean up your diet and make more healthful choices, which will help you lose weight as a result.
Emphasize Proteins
The most crucial nutrient for weight loss is protein. A high-protein diet has been shown to boost your metabolism naturally, and being a slow-burning energy source, it also keeps you satiated and reduces calorie consumption throughout the day. So, you just naturally burn more and eat less. A breakfast of proteins has been shown to lead to fewer calories consumed for the rest of the day. Switching out cereal or toast for eggs or cottage cheese is simple. Dairy products and eggs are good protein sources for vegetarians, while beans and chickpeas can pick up the slack for vegans. Shakes made from whey protein powder make a great on-the-go meal option.
Stay Away From Added Sugar
Sugar is added to an alarming number of foods in the modern diet. It is concerning and bewildering. Most people actually have a sugar addiction, whether they realize it or not, and the dopamine hits from sugar rival the similar effects of hard drugs. If you change one thing in an effort to eat more healthfully, it is this – cut out added sugars. Learn to read labels carefully, and keep in mind the various names sugar can hide under, like fructose and dextrose. Even “health foods” can be heavy with sugar. Items touted as “sugar-free” often replace cane sugar and corn syrups with sugar alcohols, which many people’s digestive systems do not handle well.
Go Brown
There is a substantial and well-evidenced link between refined carbohydrates and obesity. Refined carbohydrates spike blood sugar, resulted in a crash hours later that is accompanied with hunger, cravings, and increased calorie consumption. Ideally, all carbohydrates should be soaked or fermented prior to eating, in order to neutralize their phytic acid. An easier change, however, is simply to choose the brown carbohydrate over the white counterpart. Brown rice instead of white rice, wheat or whole-grain bread instead of white bread, and wheat pasta instead of white pasta. And always pair your quick-burning carbohydrate with a slow-burning fat or protein.
Watch Your Oils
Fats have often been demonized in health conversations, but the truth of the matter is that we need fats – but not all fats are created equal. High quality fats consumed less often will increase your health, and help you feel satiated so that you consume less calories during the day. Cut out all trans fats, and look to saturated and monounsaturated fats, which our bodies can process easily and put to use immediately. But even the best fats and oils will rack up the calories if used too liberally. Bake or roast your meats rather than fry them, and consider purchasing an air fryer to get a similar fried taste without the additional calories from oil.
Eat More Vegetables And Fruits
Health is more than calories and weight – it is also minerals and vitamins. This is where vegetables and fruits come in. Produce is low in calories, but high in fiber, increasing satiety. They also have a high-water content, again aiding in feeling satiated, as well as keeping you hydrated. But most importantly, they are laden with a variety of vitamins and minerals. While multivitamins and supplements are a great tool, our bodies were meant to run on food-derived vitamins and minerals – so put a wide variety on your plate! The world of vegetables and fruits is endless!
Pair Your Fuel Sources
Our bodies have three sources they can turn to for energy – carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Each has their role to play. Carbohydrates are what your body naturally turns to first, and it burns through them quickly. Fats and proteins burn more slowly, keeping you from “sugar crashes”, helping you feel full longer, and leading to a decrease in calorie consumption. Never eat a carbohydrate alone! You’ll be needing more energy within an hour. Pair your apples with cheese, your berries with yogurt, your toast with a good tablespoon of real butter.
Eat Real Food
One of the anchors of healthy eating, regardless of whether your weight loss method is veggie-heavy or nearly carnivorous, is to eat whole, real, single-ingredient foods. For some, this may mean learning how to cook for the first time, but you owe that to yourself. Shop the perimeter of the grocery stores, eschewing prepackaged or convenience foods. Yes, even if they’re toted as a “health food”. Whole foods are naturally filling, deeply nutritious, and even more cost-effective.
Video Source: SOMA Breath
In this video, Niraj Naik teaches you how to lose weight using just the power of your breath. How is it possible? We all know about the diet and exercise routines that help to lose weight. All fitness experts usually ignore the power of breath and breathing techniques. Learn what are good breathing habits and how to use breath to boost your metabolism and burn more calories. You will discover the best pranayama techniques to lose weight and how to practice Kapalbhati.
Video Source: Thomas DeLauer
Thomas DeLauer in this video will cover the biggest mistakes that people over the age of 40 make when it comes to intermittent fasting.
At this point, there are likely very few people living in the United States that don’t know that being overweight is a problem in this country. Despite this common knowledge, most of us still have some weight we could lose.
Why is this? Most likely, this constant struggle with weight in America is caused by a lot of issues. However, in most cases, the problem seems to be in setting unrealistic, unattainable, and non-specific goals.
For example, according to the Mayo Clinic, not all weight loss goals are created equal (some can actually do the opposite and be discouraging and cause us to gain weight in the long-run). They explain how “unrealistic and overly aggressive weight-loss goals can undermine your efforts.”
The Mayo Clinic says that focusing on “process goals” (goals that involve the steps necessary to achieving your overall goal) and SMART goals (see above) is more efficient than setting large and often unattainable goals. For example, make a goal to decrease the amount of sugar and fat you consume. Or another functional improvement such as adding a specific amount of fruits and vegetables to your diet and/or drinking a specific amount of water every day.
Even academic journals support the fact that setting goals help those trying to lose weight, however, these goals need to be something you can do. Keep reading for smaller examples that you can do to help you lose weight.
When trying to lose weight, we often get caught up in the latest fad diet — that inevitably fails. The reality is that in most instances the only thing that helps you lose weight is healthy lifestyle changes. Therefore, make healthy changes to your diet that you can stick to and consider taking a supplement aimed at helping you healthily control your metabolism and your glucose uptake.
By taking an R-ALA (Alpha Lipoic Acid) supplement, you can receive assistance in weight loss while simultaneously receiving the health benefits associated with this important antioxidant. Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) is an antioxidant that has been shown to support vitamin E and vitamin C levels in the body. This can help people struggling with weight loss and glucose uptake that assists with issues related to diabetic neuropathy. R-ALA may also enhance insulin action in the body, functional improvements in your cardiovascular health, encourage circulation, and prevent cellular damage.
Always be sure to consult your doctor before starting an ALA, R-ALA, or S-ALA supplement (especially if you have insulin sensitivity and/or diabetes) as an ALA supplement can lower glucose levels in the body. Be sure to monitor your glucose levels while taking this supplement regardless of a diabetes diagnosis.
What better way to get more exercise than by taking a class at Paddle Boarding Palm Beach? Plus, let’s be honest — if you live in Palm Beach, Florida, there’s no better way to get a workout than to spend time in the water. Not only does Paddle Boarding Palm Beach offer rentals and all of the gear you’ll need for snorkeling and kayaking but they also offer fitness classes including paddle fit, SUP yoga, and SUP fitness.
Why do great workouts like surfing and paddleboarding have to be something we only do on vacation? When surfing into shore on a paddleboard is so much fun – why not do it several times a week for a fantastic full-body workout? Check out Paddle Boarding Palm Beach in West Palm Beach to get a fantastic, fun, and relaxing workout!
According to WebMD, the majority of overweight people trying to lose weight set the goal of losing 32 percent of their body mass despite the fact that it’s “unlikely” that most dieters will ever be able to lose a whole 1/3 of their entire body weight. Be realistic about how much weight you can lose and then make mini-goals that are health-based to get there.
Instead of focusing on just losing weight, focus on actively feeling better than you normally do. Make it about getting healthier, not just about getting thinner.
Video Source: WP Easy Content
Feeling hungry all the time makes it difficult to concentrate on more important things, like paying attention to meetings, finishing projects, or studying for a test. If you’re feeling excessively hungry all the time, it might be due to reasons other than not eating enough. Let’s take a look at the top 10 reasons why you’re inexplicably hungry all the time.