The Primary Purpose of Eating

Most of the talk around nutrition revolves around weight loss.

And while being overweight is definitely a prevalent issue - especially in American culture - the primary purpose of eating is to provide our bodies with the things they need to function, to heal, and to prevent disease.

If you're not seeing success on the scale, it might be time to flip the script by thinking about your health first and then the number on the scale.

Firmicutes and Weight Gain

Firmicutes and Weight Gain:

Firmicutes are a type of bacteria found in the human colon that are very efficient at extracting extra calories from any food causing more calories to be absorbed in the body leading to extra body fat stores and weight gain.

They must be in balance with another type of bacteria called bacteroidetes. These two types of bacteria make up 90% of the bacteria in the colon and have to be in the right ratio for proper digestion. When the ratio shifts andfirmicutes outnumber the bacteroidetes weight gain starts.

Processed carbohydrates feed firmicutes causing their population to explode in the colon leading to major imbalances and weight gain.

1. Reduce processed carbohydrates to under 100 grams per day, 50-70 grams is ideal.
2. Load up on lots of vegetables and berries
3. Increase healthy protein and fats
4. Intermittent fast and only eat your meals between 11 AM and 7 PM

Why Exercise Won't Make You Lose Weight

Abs are made in the kitchen.

Article: https://www.cnn.com

Intermittent Fasting 101

Intermittent Fasting 101:

Intermittent fasting is when someone is going longer periods of time than normal without eating food.

Not long ago this was something humans did on a regular basis, if you had an unsuccessful day hunting/fishing/gathering food then you didn't eat! This allows your body to burn up all the readily available sugar/carbohydrates in your system and then switch over to burning fat and protein for energy. Most people have more than enough fat on their body to not worry about burning the protein/muscle on their body for energy.

Every night when you go to bed your body is going to be switching over to ketosis for a short period of time before you eat again in the morning. After you eat breakfast your body is now using carbohydrates for energy again given you ate something that has carbohydrates.

When your body switches over to ketosis during a fast it will first start to burn the extra fat stores on your body. The fat you store on your body actually has a purpose! It's there for times when there is no food around, but in this day and age there will always be food around so we just keep on storing it as fat.

Research has shown intermittent fasting to be very valuable from a weight loss standpoint and even potentially in different types of cancer treatment when done properly. Extra sugar is stored as fat on the body, and many forms of cancer use sugar as their main source of food, so it just makes sense!

You don't want to stay in a fasted state long term though because your metabolism will drop and cause other long term problems. just doing it for a day here and there is the best way. Plus if you do it long term you won't have the energy to work, workout or be active.

The best way to do any sort of fasting would be to do it on days where you aren't exercising or as active as normal. Try eating less food on your inactive days and don't eat right when you wake up in the morning or right before bed. Keep your meals to the middle of the day so the length of time between meals is the longest. The day before and after a fast you would want to go back to eating like you normally would.

Exercising Without Exercising

Would you like an hour of daily exercise without actually exercising?

The way you eat could be equivalent to an hours worth of moderate intensity exercise every day.

This study showed that when total calories were kept the same a low carbohydrate diet (10%) with moderate to high fat (60%) burns 300 more calories per day than a high carbohydrate (60%) low fat (20%) diet.

This difference in diet alone is equal to 1 hour of moderate intensity exercise per day.

Doing this type of diet in conjunction with exercise is going to magnify your results. However you always want to make sure to have control of your diet before incorporating exercise.

Link: https://jamanetwork.com

Nutrition Promotes Weight Loss

Everyone can agree that exercise is healthy for us however it's not the key to weight loss, nutrition is.

"Regular physical activity reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia and some cancers by at least 30%,” they write. “However, physical activity does not promote weight loss."

The problem is that the more calories you burn during exercise the more calories you are going to crave afterwards. If you aren't eating healthy foods, you are going to magnify the problem with just eating more unhealthy foods.

Also, just because someone is skinny it means very little about their overall health. Whether you exercise or not, junk food is still inflammatory and will eventually cause disease.

Over and over we see people lose weight the easiest by putting their focus 100% on nutrition and not exercise, in fact many people who see the best weight loss results are only doing low intensity walking or bike riding on a regular basis.

How it needs to be done:

Learn how to eat healthy first and THEN implement an exercise routine! Your body will thank you.

Link: https://www.forbes.com

Eat Late, Gain the Weight

Food is energy. It doesn't make sense to eat a lot of food right before bed since it won't get used as energy but instead be stored as fat. However, it does makes sense to eat more food earlier in the day as it will be burned throughout the day and before bedtime. 

Another study looked at people who ate the exact same meals earlier in the day compared to later in the day. The people who ate the meals earlier in the day had greater weight loss than those who ate the meals later in the day.

Try shifting your meals earlier and don't binge eat before bedtime!

Read an article about timing your meals at sciencedaily.com!

Reasons Why We Are Fatter Than 30 Years Ago

Weight loss is so much more than just eating right and exercising more. This article does a great job bringing attention to a few other factors related to weight gain over the years.

Some of the factors that cause weight gain, or inhibit weight loss from the article: 

1. Pharmaceutical Drugs
2. Chemical Exposure
3. Altered Gut
4. Dehydration
5. Junk Food Marketing

I always talk about chemical stress in classes, it's something many people don't think or care too much about but it's going to have a massive impact on our health if we don't start addressing it. 

Also, I've never seen someone who's overweight and taking a lot of medications be able to lose weight either.

Full Article: www.collective-evolution.com

Energy Increase from Interval Training

As many of you know I'm a huge fan of changing your workout up and not doing the same exercise over and over. 

Research comes out daily showing how beneficial interval training is for our health. This study showed that after only 3 weeks of interval training our bodies ability to process and create energy was drastically improved! And the older someone was, the better results they saw! 

"The younger volunteers in the interval training group saw a 49% increase in mitochondrial capacity, and the older volunteers saw an even more dramatic 69% increase."

Start today and you will basically see an instant boost in your energy and your bodies ability to process food.

   

                 Source: sciencedaily.com

The Big Why

Why are you losing weight? 

Why are you eating healthier? 

Why are you exercising? 

Do you know why?

When trying to make a change it’s always hard to stay on track. Most people set a weight loss goal such as losing 15 lbs. and try whatever is the latest and greatest fad diet, which often includes pretty extreme caloric restriction. It’s not easy, and they feel deprived most of the time but the weight starts to fall off. Eventually they reach their weight loss goal!

The problem that arises is that the diet is not sustainable. Once they hit their goal, their pre-diet lifestyle starts to creep back and the weight comes back just as fast as it fell off. Sometimes with a few extra pounds. Research has shown the more times people diet, the more weight that they eventually gain.

Making a lifestyle change shouldn’t be for weight loss, it should be for long term health. Weight gain year after year increases the risk of all sorts of diseases including heart disease to diabetes to cancer.

Determining why you want to change your lifestyle is the most important aspect of making a long term change.

Do you want to be able to do your own yard work as you age?

Be healthy enough to play with your grandkids?

Prevent deadly conditions such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease?

Find your why that is bigger than your weight loss goal. 

  

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is when someone is going longer periods of time than normal without eating food. 

Not long ago this was something humans did on a regular basis, if you had an unsuccessful day hunting/fishing/gathering food then you didn't eat! This allows your body to burn up all the readily available sugar/carbohydrates in your system and then switch over to burning fat and protein for energy. Most people have more than enough fat on their body to not worry about burning the protein/muscle on their body for energy.

Every night when you go to bed your body is going to be switching over to ketosis for a short period of time before you eat again in the morning. After you eat breakfast your body is now using carbohydrates for energy again given you ate something that has carbohydrates.

When your body switches over to ketosis during a fast it will first start to burn the extra fat stores on your body. The fat you store on your body actually has a purpose! It's there for times when there is no food around, but in this day and age there will always be food around so we just keep on storing it as fat.

Research has shown intermittent fasting to be very valuable from a weight loss standpoint and even potentially in different types of cancer treatment when done properly. Extra sugar is stored as fat on the body, and many forms of cancer use sugar as their main source of food, so it just makes sense!

You don't want to stay in a fasted state long term though because your metabolism will drop and cause other long term problems. just doing it for a day here and there is the best way. Plus if you do it long term you won't have the energy to work, workout or be active.

The best way to do any sort of fasting would be to do it on days where you aren't exercising or as active as normal. Try eating less food on your inactive days and don't eat right when you wake up in the morning or right before bed. Keep your meals to the middle of the day so the length of time between meals is the longest. The day before and after a fast you would want to go back to eating like you normally would.

Exercise

When I talk about exercise with people many of them will respond,"well I walk a lot at work or during the day." or "I go for a mile walk every night after dinner." And that's great!

But, to me walking is not a form of improvement exercise (unless you get out of breath within a minute), it's an essential movement that your body requires on a daily basis just to function properly (digestion, joints, neurological, anti-inflammatory). Everybody should be walking at least a few miles on a daily basis even before thinking about other exercise.

By Improvement exercise I mean an exercise that's going to help you lose weight, gain muscle and reach the goals that you want. Unless you are already in the perfect shape that you want to maintain, walking probably isn't the best EXERCISE for you, although you should still be doing it on a daily basis as an essential movement!

The two best improvement exercises for weight loss and muscle toning are going to be weight training and interval training. These two have been shown over and over to help people reach their weight loss and health goals.

Keep walking but add weight training and interval training to your routine!