GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Question:

I don’t feel like I eat a lot, why am I not losing weight?
I eat very healthy, why am I not losing weight?

There are several healthy diets and hundreds of healthy foods out there, but just because they are “healthy” or you know some skinny people who follow these diets (raw food, vegetarian, calorie restriction, high protein, food combining, etc.) does not mean that they promote or encourage weight loss/fat loss and are right for every body. A diet that promotes fat loss is one that provides the proper amount of calories for YOU, based on your age, sex, weight/lean tissue and activity level. It should be balanced and contain some form of protein, carbs and fat at every meal and these meals should be made up of REAL WHOLE FOOD. A meal plan or diet such as the above encourages fat loss by keeping your blood sugar and insulin levels steady and regular, by supporting the growth of lean tissue, and by supplying an abundance of fibrous watery vegetables and fruit which help to cleanse and nourish your body while removing excess waste. The protein and fat in the meal will slow down the digestion of and therefore lower the glycemic index of the carbs at that meal, the protein will also stimulate the release of glucagon, a hormone that helps to burn fat as opposed to insulin which tells the body to store sugar as fat. Many years of eating refined carbs have made us sensitive to them. It is crucial to our health that our blood glucose level does not get too high or low, our body uses insulin and glucagon to make sure of this. After years and years of your pancreas repeatedly pumping out insulin to control high blood glucose levels the cells in your body stop responding to insulin(insulin resistance) forcing your pancreas to work harder and secrete more(hyperinsulinemia). This is called insulin resistance. Most people that are overweight or struggling to lose weight have this to some degree. Your pancreas cannot keep up with this demand and will eventually burn out, producing inadequate amounts of insulin to bring your blood sugar down to a normal healthy range. So your blood sugar levels remain high. This is adult onset diabetes or Type II diabetes. Hormones work together with one another. Control your hormones, control your weight. Do this by eating meals and snacks frequently and consistently that contain protein, carbs and fat from real food and by doing high intensity circuits and interval training(I’ll show you how). If you are not eating enough cals, or you are eating too many cals, your body will store them. If you are sensitive to carbs, even if they are healthy your body will store them, unless properly combined with protein and fat and low glycemic. A print out of guidelines for proper eating are yours free with any number of sessions.

By Lee Crompton - CPT, RHN

THE MEALPLAN

By following my guidelines for proper eating and exceptional health you can expect to experience an increase in energy, an increase in lean muscle tissue, a gradual loss of body fat, improved mental clarity and decreased carbohydrate cravings.

The guidelines are based on the Zone and the Paleo Diet. The Zone was developed by Dr. Barry Sears and is used to balance blood sugar and insulin levels while facilitating weight loss. The Paleo diet is bacically our original hunter/gatherer diet before industrialisation and manufactured food. It has been used successfully for weight loss, lowering insulin leves, and managing many disease symptoms. You can read more here about it.

It is balanced in that it contains protien, unrefined carbs and healthy fat. Their are no food groups missing although as you will see there are many foods missing(fake foods). Your guidelines for healthy eating offer a lot of food choices and is rich in vitamins, minerals and fiber.

Freebies or foods that can be used freely are raw apple cider vinegar, fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice, garlic, spices, herbs and gound kelp or dulse is encouraged so long as though their is no known allergy to iodine. Use these foods to enhance the flavor and nutritional value of your meals.

For following your meal plan, sticking to the guidelines and having dicipline you should reward yourself with two cheat meals per week at any time of what ever it is that you have been craving, use this meal wisely. This will prevent binging and help you to stay on track during tough times. You can make up very tasty snacks that can do a good job of satisfying cravings without having to use your cheat meal. A sweet and delicious shake made of 1/3 of a ripe banana, 1 cup strawberries, 1 cup of plain whole yogurt(not typically paleo), and 1 tsp of flax, fish or olive oil should do the trick. Blend and enjoy as a shake or just mix in a bowl.

Use raw nuts and seeds (unroasted, unsalted), and add your fats to the meal at the end, after cooking when ever possible. An overly cooked or heated fat becomes unstable and more like a trans fat.

A good whole food multi vitamin/mineral may be taken to ensure that there are no deficiencies that could prevent optimum health. Eating the proper amount of nutrient dense foods and sprinkling ground kelp and dulse on your meals will help.

Do your best to drink half your body weight in ounces of water daily to ensure proper hydration and flush out waste.

You will find that there is a large amount of vegetables at your meals, do your best to eat as much of them as possible but be sure to eat all of your protein and fat as the latter two are what help to keep your insulin down.

GOOD LUCK, KEEP IT SIMPLE, TRAIN SMART, HAVE FUN

By Lee Crompton - CPT, RHN

How to Repair a Damaged Metabolism
By Tom Venuto

If you’ve caused metabolic damage as a result of following starvation diets or losing weight too rapidly in the past, it can be extremely difficult to achieve any further fat loss at all. The good news is, metabolic damage can be repaired. All it takes is the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition (NOT just a diet), all done consistently over time.
The big irony is that most of the diet programs that claim to help you get rid of excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets and not enough exercise (almost never any weight training).
It may take a little longer if you have really messed things up with severe starvation dieting in the past, especially if you’ve lost a lot of lean body mass, but it is never hopeless. Anyone can increase their metabolism.
Most people get an almost immediate boost in metabolic rate when they start the program. However, the results are not going to be “overnight.” Give it a little time…
Within 3 weeks your metabolism will already be more efficient. Within 6-8 weeks, it’s burning hot. Give me 12 weeks of consistent diligent effort, sticking with all the metabolism boosting strategies I teach, and your metabolism really will become like a turbo charged engine, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that.
What’s most important for upping your metabolism is CONSISTENCY in applying the Burn The Fat nutrition and training principles every single day.
That includes:
• Meal frequency: eat 5-6 small meals per day.
• Meal timing: eat approximately every 3 hours, with a substantial breakfast and a substantial post workout meal.
• Sufficient Caloric Intake: maintain a small calorie deficit and avoid starvation-level diets (suggested safe levels for fat loss: 2100-2500 calories per day for men, 1400-1800 calories per day for women; adjust as needed).
• Food choices: Select natural, unprocessed foods with high thermic effect (lean proteins like chicken, turkey, egg whites and fish are highly thermic, as are all green vegetables, salad vegetables and other fibrous carbs).

* Cardio training: Push up the intensity a bit if you really want to get a metabolic boost. Walking and low intensity cardio is fine, but higher intensity is more metabolism-stimulating.
• Weight training: The basic exercises that include the largest muscle groups or even call into play the entire body as a unit (squats, front squats, split squats, deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, overhead presses, all kinds of rows and core-activation exercises) will have a much greater metabolism stimulating effect than isolation exercises (concentration curls, calf raises, etc).
The weight training is extremely important in cases of “metabolic damage” because this is the stimulus to keep the muscle you have and begin rebuilding new muscle tissue, which is the engine that drives your metabolism.
The men don’t usually have a problem with the weight training, but I still hear women say they don’t want to lift weights as part of their fat loss programs. Well, people who wont lift weights can expect a very, very long metabolism “repair process” if they achieve it at all.
Consistency is the key.
Nothing will undermine the “re-building” of your metabolism like inconsistency. If you stop and start, or skip meals and workouts often, you will not even get off the ground.
After your metabolism is back up where it should be, it takes continued “stoking” of the metabolic furnace to keep it there. Once you get your metabolic engine running, you’ve got to keep feeding it fuel or the fire will die down.
Picture an old fashioned wood burning stove…
Imagine you’re in a cabin up in the mountains in the winter. It’s cold in there and you want to keep the cabin warm. Can you achieve this by feeding the fire once or twice per day? Nope. Not enough fuel to burn, so not much heat is generated.
What if you just toss an entire pile of wood in the stove all at once? Will that work? Nope. Lots of fuel, but can’t all be used at once… it just smothers the fire and the excess just sits there.
How about if you throw some tissue paper or crumpled newspaper in the stove, will that work? Nope - too quickly burning.
You have to keep putting small amounts of wood (the right type of fuel) on the fire at regular intervals or the fire burns out.
It’s also difficult to get the fire lit again. In the case of metabolism, it’s like going through that initial few weeks of overcoming inertia all over again.
Your goal is to get your metabolism burning hot and keep it burning and this cannot be achieved by missing meals, missing workouts or with sporadic, infrequent training.

I have only seen a handful of cases where all these things were done properly and there was still a longer “repair” process.
For example, one case was former ballet dancer. At 5′ 5″, she was previously 110 lbs and had increased to about 145 or so. She didn’t want to reach her previous 110, but find a happy medium of about 125 lbs.
I figured with 20 lbs to cut, this would be a simple and predictable process, but she had a challenging time (and I didn’t know why at first).
I later found out that she had been anorexic and bulimic for many years. This had caused a lot of damage, and although she did reach her goal, it took about twice as long as we had anticipated.
The good news is, even in this extreme case, the same nutrition and training principles worked! It just took a little longer. And by the way her program included some serious training with free weights and she ate a lot more (clean) food than she had ever eaten before. No “starvation!”
That’s the power of burning the fat and feeding the muscles.

About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling e-book, “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to burn fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com.
If you’re interested in the healthy, sensible way to take off the fat, while keeping all your muscle and actually increasing your metabolism in the process, then my Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle program can teach you how. No gimmicks or false promises. Just the truth - you have to work at it and you have to be patient. www.burnthefat.com

So what we’re talking about here is the Mediterranean diet. Yeah, you’ve been hearing about it since the 60’s but there’s a reason; it’s great for you. Quality protein, healthy fat, fresh vegetables, good wine in moderation and an appreciation, not an obsession for food all make for good health. The discovery of the Mediterranean Diet was actually the byproduct of a seven country wide study on diet and disease patterns throughout the world.

It was narrowed down to the Greek islander’s. During the course of the study it was discovered that some of the longest life spans and lowest rates of heart disease were found in the people of Crete. Later studies confirmed that Cretans also had much lower rates of cancer as well as type 2 diabetes.

Now they call it the Mediterranean Diet but it’s really the whole lifestyle because in addition to the way they ate (which hadn’t changed much since ancient times), the hard working people of Crete, mainly farmers, got loads of physical activity. But what about their diet? Delicious meals full of vegetables and fruits, fish and meat and lots of healthy fats and no processed foods(refined grains). The Cretans regularly took in high amounts of fat-up to 40 percent of their daily calories-much of it coming from olive oil; their average saturated-fat intake was among the world’s lowest, most likely due to the fact that their meat was pastured/grass fed and therefore much leaner and healhier. This diet has also stood the clinical tests as well. Huge studies have shown that when people are put on a Mediterranean eating program, they tend to live longer and have lower rates of heart disease and some cancers.

Eat more whole foods and fewer processed foods; avoid trans fats and use non hydrogenated fats, particularly monounsaturated fats like olive oil, for cooking and flavoring foods, and for salad dressings; eat an abundance of vegetables, especially leafy greens every day; eat some fruit, sprouted or fermented whole grains and legumes unless diabetic or insulin resistant. Keep animal-based foods clean and lean (organic and grass fed) including raw unpasturized dairy products if possible; eat nuts and seeds, such as almonds, walnuts and pumpkin seeds regularly in moderate amounts and raw or sprouted, not roasted, blanched or salted. Excessive heating of any unsaturated fat will damage or alter its molecular structure turning it into a trans fat and making what could have been very healthy into something very unhealthy. Olive oil and coconut oil are best for cooking.

 For some examples you can check out my recipes page.

By Lee Crompton - CPT, RHN