There are a ton of tips and tricks, when it comes to weight loss. You’ve probably tried them to no avail. Yes, they work at first, but they are not sustainable.
So what does it take to lose weight sustainably and keep it off?
Enjoy this quick q & a that will get you on the path immediately.
Q. How can you lose weight in a healthy manner?
A. We can lose weight healthfully when we eat a diet that provides for all of our unique nutritional needs – once your body has what it needs – and what it doesn’t need is eliminated, weight loss is a good ‘side effect’.
For healthy weight loss, we need to create a foundation on which weight loss can stand. That means REAL unprocessed food (as opposed to “empty calories”).
Q. How can we deal with cravings?
A. When our nutritional reserves are optimal, we don’t have cravings for junk food or sugary foods – and as a result of this we have a natural desire for healthy foods, therefore eliminating the need for “willpower”.
Q. Does fat make us fat?
A. No weight loss program is worth it’s shirt if it doesn’t include wholesome saturated fats and essential fatty acids. Contrary to popular belief, fat doesn’t make us fat, but rather healthy fats are converted to energy, nourish our brain, cellular membranes and the myelin sheaths that cover our nerves etc. In fact, a deficiency of essential fatty acids can lead to insulin resistance and subsequent weight gain. Saturated fats and cholesterol nourish our glands preventing hormonally imbalance induced weight gain. While our culture is obsessed with low fat foods, this approach just isn’t helping people lose weight in a sustainable way, nor does it help us keep it off. Otherwise we would all get skinny and stay there. Without adequate good quality fat in our diet, we turn to more carbohydrate food, which in excess is stored as fat.
Q. Do diets even work?
A. Any person who has tried dieting will admit that in the long term, dieting doesn`t work and in fact wreaks so much havoc on our metabolism, that it causes us to gain even more weight when we quit the diet.
Q. Is it still possible to eat and do the things we want and not be overweight?
A. Yes, absolutely. Rather than being focused on counting calories, we can instead focus on upgrading the QUALITY of our food choices, rather than obsessing about the QUANTITY of nutrients, fat grams and calories that we eat. You can make a health version of anything. There is no need to deprive ourselves. Once we meet our nutritional deficiencies, the cravings subside and after that it is easy to have a few chips or none at all WITHOUT the need for willpower!
Eat what you have a desire for, but make these foods at home with REAL food ingredients instead of white sugar, white flour or processed oils (refined, bleached and deoderized ones). By doing this, we increase the nutrient value of the food and thus creating a greater feeling of satiation and satisfaction so that we do not even want to eat as much. Nutrient dense foods keep our blood sugar stable so that we stay full for much longer.
When we have certain cravings for unhealthy foods, instead of trying to use willpower to overcome them, we can fill that longing by decoding our cravings.
For example, a person who craves sugar can be deficient in protein, fat or minerals (or all of them!), or they could have insulin resistance. This kind of craving doesn’t ask for us to restrict and eliminate foods from our diet, but rather to add more of the right ones.
Or let’s say if we crave potato chips, our body could be asking us for more healthy fats or the mineral profile that is contained in unrefined REAL sea salt (table salt is devoid of the array of synergistic minerals that are found naturally salt before processing-these naturally occurring minerals are refined out during industrial processing methods). While to the tongue, chips may satisfy a craving for salt or fat in the short term, the body still isn’t satiated because both the oil (refined vegetable oil) and the salt (table salt) used to make the chips are devoid of their naturally occuring nutrients. This kind of craving could be naturally circumvented by adding seaweeds, unrefined sea salt such as Celtic Sea Salt and more good fat to the diet such as nuts, seeds, butter or coconut oil.
Q. What are the best ways for our body to staying healthy and fit?
A. Eat REAL whole food in its natural form and spend time outdoors walking, take up a sport, garden…. whatever floats your boat. When it comes to weight loss though, what you eat is more important than how you exercise. No amount of exercise can compensate for nutrient deficiency or a damaged metabolism. In some cases, exercise can even make weight loss harder for a person who is really depleted. No doubt, movement is essential for our health, but so is quality food, fresh air and the natural Vit.D that is generated by our skin in the sunlight. Take care not to equate fitness with health. They are not one and the same.
Q. In your opinion, who is more to blame for child obesity, children or adults?
A. Well I definitely would say that parents are responsible, yet they cannot really be blamed in a time in history where we have all been bombarded and influenced by slick advertising and sneaky marketing tactics posing as health campaigns. The food industry has worked hard to convince us that processed food products are good for us, with their whole host of added synthetic nutrients.
We must consider that essentially we have all become part of an experiment. 100 years ago, we ate REAL food. Nowadays, many children’s diets contain a large proportion of prepared foods that come out of a package, instead of being prepared fresh in our kitchens and on our stoves.
As a mom who feeds her children primarily foods cooked “from scratch”, I notice that when I have certain children over for play dates, they are very nervous about trying our REAL food. For example, one day I pulled out a strip of nori paper (the seaweed used to make sushi) and offered it to the children as an afternoon snack. My son’s friend looked really nervous at the sight of it and I had this immediate instinct to grab the package that it came in and show him “where it came from”. Instantly his shoulders relaxed and he was willing to try it. It seems that we have a new generation of children who associate food more with plastic wrapping, than they associate it with the farm or garden!
Q. Is child obesity increasing or decreasing for our country?
A. According to the Childhood Obesity Foundation “Obesity rates in children have almost tripled in the last 25 years. Approximately 26% of Canadian children ages 2-17 years old are currently overweight or obese.” http://www.childhoodobesityfoundation.ca/statistics
Q. Which types of food help promote weight loss?
A. REAL whole foods that provide all the intended nutrients in their synchronistic ratios (as they are found in their natural form before processing). Good fats such as unrefined coconut oil and essential fatty acid supplements such as cod liver oil (together the coconut oil and Vit.A found in cod liver oil help the thyroid function properly- which is essential for weight loss). In addition coconut oil is an MCT oil (medium chain fatty acid) which means it is a fat burning oil! When it is metabolized, it actually uses up more calories than it contributes! Cold water fatty fish -source of good protein and good fat (essential fatty acids). Green Leafy Vegetables (a surprisingly good source of protein and rich in minerals and chlorophyll). Essentially, fulfilling our needs for the right kind of fats and adequate protein consumption, both help to stabilize our blood sugar so we don’t end up craving the sugary, oily or salty junk foods that typically cause people to put on the pounds.
While I recognize that some of what I shared is in direct contradiction to what we are commonly told to do to lose weight, we must consider that in REALITY what we are told to do (namely counting calories and restricting fat by eating low fat versions of everything) just doesn`t work in real life.
So why would you keep doing what doesn’t work?
People do this all this time and still remain overweight because the problem does not lie with quantities of food as much as it reflects poor quality choices or true metabolic imbalances with deep underlying nutritional deficiencies.
Many obese people eat few calories, and many very thin people eat a lot of calories, yet cannot keep their weight on. That is a fact.
We need to start thinking outside the box and open ourselves to a new perspective. The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over, yet expecting different results- and this is how most people approach weight loss!!
We know that diets help us lose weight fast, but that it won’t last – and we do it even knowing that we put ourselves at risk for gaining more weight later.
At some point we need to acknowledge that fad diets don’t work and start looking beyond the surface and at what our body is really trying to tell us when we hold onto stubborn weight.
The root cause of weight problems is a combination of emotional, psychological and biochemical factors and is reflective of deep nutrient and metabolic deficiencies.
In our fast paced and fast food world, we have a population of overfed, yet undernourished adults and children.
Getting started on the path toward sustainable weight loss is simple though. We must upgrade the QUALITY of the food we eat and go back to the old ways of eating food as it has been provided for us in its natural form- preferably in season and grown locally. This is a key first step to solving the problem of both adult and childhood obesity.
Want to learn more about sustainable weight loss?
If you are tired of dieting or feeling futile about your weight, click here to get access to my free training! You’ll learn uncommon nutrition wisdom about the underlying causes of unexplained and stubborn weight gain. I will show you how you can simply get your body back – without having to obsess about it. Best of all, you’ll learn how to do it without having to give up the rich, sweet, creamy foods you love!
Ever wonder why some people can eat whatever they want and remain thin, while other’s have to “diet” just to maintain their weight? By understanding the effects of stress on the hormone leptin, this occurrence will no longer be such a mystery.
“Fat Programs” is the term that Jon Gabriel, author of “The Gabriel Method” uses to describe a metabolic profile that can cause a shift in the body’s internal “set point”, signalling the body that it needs to be “fat” for reasons of self preservation and survival.
Leptin is a hormone secreted by our fat cells that tells our brain how much fat our body is carrying.
Leptin is responsible for:
1) regulating body weight
2) feelings of satiety
3) reduces sugar cravings
4) signals the thyroid to speed up metabolism
5) signals the liver to start burning fat
When leptin levels rise, we eat less, we burn more calories and we burn fat easily.
While uncommon, there is a rare genetic defect that causes a severe deficiency of leptin that causes obesity. When people with this condition are treated with leptin, they lose weight.
There is also a condition called Cushing’s Sydrome which causes chronically elevated levels of cortisol in the bloodstream. These people are also typically overweight and have leptin resistance.
However, the majority of overweight people do not have a deficiency of leptin, in fact they have an overabundance of leptin because the more fat cells one has, the more leptin is produced.
So why would a person produce so much leptin, yet not maintain a healthy weight?
The trouble is that overweight people are leptin resistant, meaning that the body is not listening to leptin. The net effect of leptin resistance is the same as having little or no leptin. The worse the leptin resistance, the fatter someone will become. The answer is not in more leptin but in getting your body to start listening to leptin again (become more sensitive to leptin again).
Certain chemical and hormonal signals can cause or influence leptin resistance, such as:
chronically elevated cortisol
elevated triglycerides
insulin resistance
inflammatory conditions
Our internal set point for our weight is determined by our sensitivity to leptin.
Researchers believe that leptin plays a dominant role in managing your body’s “internal set-point” (an ideal weight that your body wants to be) and that it will seek to maintain that weight. The level of our internal set point is determined not only by genetic factors. Our internal set points shift, depending on the kind of stresses or stress responses that we engage.
“If your body decides for survival reasons that your internal set point should shift to being fatter, you’ll become leptin resistant. Anytime your body decides it is more advantageous to be thinner, it will become sensitive to leptin.” Jon Gabriel
Modern stressors can create a metabolic profile that is akin to old world stressors that we no longer need to adapt to – like living outside in the winter or famine.
In the case of starvation or cold (chronic stress) we increase our weight for protection.
Whereas, in the case of needing to protect ourselves from a predator (acute stress) we lose weight for protective purposes as well, namely so that we can escape fast!
Interestingly enough, the physiological responses to the stress of starvation and cold temperatures causes elevated cortisol (plasma & intracellular), elevated triglycerides and insulin resistance.
As previously stated, these are the same chemical signals that cause us to resist leptin, signalling the storage of fat for protection.
Except that today chronically elevated cortisol, triglycerides, inflammation and insulin resistance can come from any one or a number of physical, environmental or emotional stressors that are completely unique to modern day life.
“…the stresses of modern living are creating the same metabolic profile as perpetual starvation and/ cold weather, thus tricking our bodies into activating ancient survival mechanisms that cause our set point to shift toward fat accumulation.” Jon Gabriel
On the other hand, acute stresses, such as exercise can lead to reduced cortisol and triglyceride levels in the blood, as well as increased insulin sensitivity.
So as to be expected, acute stress such as in the flight or fight response can make the body thinner.
Your body is simply interpreting the stress one way or another.
It may be that stresses that are unexpected and come on fast would cause us to lose weight, while those that creep up on us (and are persistent) such as constant daily stressors are interpreted by the body to be more like the chronic stress of famine and cold weather – causing us to gain weight.
These are the modern stressors likely to turn on ‘Fat Programs’:
chronic yo yo dieting
nutritional deficiency
toxic chemicals
radiation
medication
food additives
artificial sweeteners
mental, emotional, physical, spiritual threats or starvation
dehydration
oxygen deprivation
sleep deprivation
So while there is a biochemical basis for our current tendency to be thin or overweight, we are not powerless in the face of our cravings.
We can assume responsibility to reduce the stress in our lives by feeding ourselves – body, mind and spirit – and doing whatever it takes to create the shifts that we need to – lifestyle wise – to reset our body’s weight “set point”.
It begins with looking for the cause – not stressing our body – through deprivation, will power or over exercise.
Want to learn more about sustainable weight loss?
If you are tired of dieting or feeling futile about your weight, click here to get access to my free training! You’ll learn uncommon nutrition wisdom about the underlying causes of unexplained and stubborn weight gain. I will show you how you can simply get your body back without having to obsess about it. Best of all, you’ll learn how to do it without having to give up the rich, sweet, creamy foods you love!
Reference:
The Gabriel Method- The Revolutionary DIET FREE Way to Totally Transform Your Body
I recently shared a video about how I gained weight in what literally seemed like overnight. You can watch it here.
In response I received a couple of ‘I am above all this weight loss’ talk e-mails from my subscribers.
Ok, they didn’t exactly say that….but it was insinuated.
Here is an example of one of them… “I am struggling with this line of marketing. I’m really focused on losing hate, not weight and focused on non-weight health goals. I know that you’re probably appealing to more people because we live in a fatphobic society, but getting this in my inbox is off putting. I appreciate your work and have been a supporter in the past, but I’m gonna have to unsubscribe if this sorta thing shows up again.”
I titled the e-mail ‘How I woke up fat one day…..).
I am sure that a few more likely unsubscribed, just because I used the word ‘fat’ too and didn’t bother to take the time to tell me about it.
Honestly I appreciate the feedback.
In fact I was waiting for it.
I have some strong opinions on this topic that I know are polarizing – and I have known for some time that telling my truth about this topic would be a trigger.
It seems that people are in one of 4 camps (or a combination thereof) when it comes to talking about weight from what I believe to be false perspectives.
Camp 1: Super sensitive about the topic. Have chosen to accept and even embrace being overweight. They focus on acknowledging the beauty of their body at any size. Adamant that weight has nothing to do with health. Believe that people who care about their weight and the shape of their body are shallow and un-evolved.
Camp 2: On your high horse. Think fat people are lazy and have no self discipline. Think being thin and fit equate to health. Subscribe to the idea that calories and exercise are the key, and that fat people should just eat less and exercise more.
Camp 3: Obsessed with being thin. Think food is the devil. Imagine that if they ate healthy, it would be boring – yet eat nothing more than coffee, salad, carrots and celery sticks to stay thin. They might binge eat, diet, or possibly even starve themselves and purge. Never satisfied with their body or their looks. Image comes before health.
Camp 4: Secretly wish they were thinner, but nod in agreement with camp 1, lest they appear shallow. Don’t understand why they are overweight, despite eating healthy and exercising. Losing weight seems futile. Not willing to do what camp 2 & 3 are willing to do to look a certain way, yet harbour a repressed desire to be a certain weight.
As for me, I have lived in a combination of camp 3 and 4.
I was obsessed with my weight in high school.
But then I became an alternative hippy, health nut and discovered that the only reason I was so called fat, was because I was nutritionally deficient and not even eating real food.
I just naturally lost the weight as a result of focusing on health.
I thought that was enough…..and it can be. Unless you’re insulin resistant, hormonally challenged or pushing or past 40 (or all of the above).
I see beautiful overweight people every day – and feel that beauty is more about who you are and how you carry yourself.
But I am not going to sit here and pretend that I believe that being overweight is healthy.
No I won’t.
Just as much as I wouldn’t agree that being thin equates to health.
Yes, we must love ourselves at every weight and appreciate our body as it is, but we must also recognize that being overweight is not a sign of good health, but a symptom of imbalance.
If you don’t like it, it offends you or disempowers you in any way, then you might want to ‘unfollow’ me on Facebook or unsubscribe from my list because I will continue to talk about this.
I don’t believe that health related goals are in any way apart from weight loss ones.
And I am not going to pretend to agree that optimal health can include being overweight.
Optimal health and the absence of a bona fide diagnosed disease are not one and the same.
I don’t care if you think I am shallow and have sold out in some way by choosing to focus on helping people with their weight.
I tell my students this all the time, because they too, often feel that the subject of weight loss is a shallow goal in comparison to how far good nutrition can take you in terms of all areas of well being.
Personally, I don’t give a shit why someone wants to lose weight.
All I care is that they are motivated.
It is not about what I want. It is about what THEY want.
If having a certain weight is what inspires people to eat healthy, then so be it.
In fact, I welcome the diet obsessed people in camp 3.
20 + years ago, I was there. I get it.
And by the way, I think it is far from shallow to want to look a certain way.
That’s BS.
There is nothing shallow about wanting to be the best version of yourself in any area of your life.
I care about helping the people who are not suppressing their desire to lose weight, yet are being lied to through the marketing of fad diets that are not sustainable at best – and at worst harmful to their health.
In fact, recently someone messaged me that she lost over 60 lbs on a one of these fad diets that include processed foods (protein powders, bars and the like) and guess what she got along with it – a sludgy liver and pancreatitis.
Shallow for wanting to prevent people from having to go through unnecessary pain? I think not.
If you are really so amazingly evolved, wouldn’t you rather see these people in my world, healing themselves at the level of root cause – with someone who gets it, cares and doesn’t for a moment think that they are lazy or undisciplined – than in the hands of so called experts who starve and over exercise them, have them stay so desperate that they get their stomachs stapled, hurt their metabolisms from chronic dieting or simply quietly live in self loathing?
Sheesh. I would never reduce the topic of weight loss to being irrelevant or not worthy.
There is way too much at stake for people.
Not just their health, but the quality of their lives.
I am also interested in helping the people in camp 4.
That is where I was for the last 15 years.
Simply accepting being 20 lbs overweight for years as a necessary evil of having babies.
But it isn’t futile honey.
I know you ‘get it’ or sense on an intuitive level that the extra weight is your body ‘trying to tell you’ something.
Camp 1 people, I get it. I love seeing people not let their weight stop them from being, doing, having or giving back in the world in any way they feel inspired – that is commendable and I embrace people like that being in my world.
Camp 2 people however, you piss me off.
Just because eating less and exercising more works for you, doesn’t mean it works for everyone. You obviously know nothing about having a damaged metabolism.
It is not your ignorance that I don’t have the patience for – it is your judgment. The way you treat overweight people is despicable.
If you look down on overweight people, then I am sorry, we can’t be friends.
If you are in camp 1 or 2 and not interested in healing the underlying health issues that lead to weight gain, then you might as well move on, unsubscribe from my list or do whatever you need to do, to not hear all the stuff I am going to keep shouting from the rooftops about being fat.
By the way….in no way was I surprised that calling myself fat would offend some people.
Before I go on, something you have to know about me is that it is my nature to be irreverent. My close friends know that.
I really don’t care about being neutral, nice or politically correct on the internet.
Sure in person I would be much more tactful, but this isn’t a note to anyone in particular, so I am just going to tell it like I see it.
I care more about this message getting out there, than having you like me.
I didn’t say you are fat or anyone else is fat.
I said one day I woke up fat. Yes, me.
I didn’t say I was a bad person, lazy, lacking will power or a junk food addict….in fact, I didn’t even say that I was unhealthy or that I looked bad.
I just said that one day I woke up fat, that I felt shocked, confused and concerned, because I was.
I said that I was embarrassed as a nutritionist. Let’s face it, the public expects me to at least maintain a healthy weight if I am to be trusted to help them with their health.
There is some truth it it. Although being thin doesn’t equate to health either.
People who are healthy and balanced do not suddenly gain weight overnight.
What happened to me was a ‘symptom’.
My body was screaming for my attention, duh!
What happened to me was not something to just accept. And if it has happened to you, you shouldn’t accept it either!
I said it and I will say it again. Weight is not apart from other health goals!
You don’t lose weight to get healthy (this is a false paradigm).
You focus on uncovering the root cause of the symptom of weight gain and the weight releases on its own accord – without trying to force it off through calorie counting and exercise (another false paradigm).
I got fat because I was stressed to the max, not getting enough sleep, I have hereditary tendency (being of aboriginal decent), my biological father is insulin dependant and I’ve been hypoglycaemic for years (which I had minimized the importance of looking at seriously)!
Being fat woke me the fuck up to lingering health issues that I was ignoring!
If you too had a knee jerk reaction to my video about how I woke up fat one day, you likely didn’t take the time to listen to my story, hear my sincerity and just assumed I was being shallow and lowering myself to market a weight loss program.
That I take offence to.
First of all, it is offensive to have had my feelings and my experience dismissed.
Don’t you dare tell me how I feel is wrong or insignificant. How I feel is how I feel period.
Secondly, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning to market a program around something I wasn’t passionate about or had personal experience with.
End of story.
I can assure you this topic has become a passion of mine and you’ll be hearing more about it, so if talking about weight loss is beneath you, offensive or in general not interesting, now would definitely be a good time to unsubscribe from my list.
I write, teach, speak and create programs that are relevant to where I am at on my journey.
If you need me to be nice all the time, neutral or just talk about one subject, then you are in the wrong place.
I am passionate a lot of things: the art of food, the science of nutrition, the food traditions of our ancestors, supporting people to live their dreams, business success, consciously creating my reality, transformational coaching, birth including home births with midwives and yes – unassisted childbirth, moon cycles, seasonal rejuvenation and now, because my life experience has called me to it – weight loss.
This is the season I am in.
Take all of me or none of me.
Soooooo, is it hate to talk about weight?
The answer is no.
It is not hate to talk about weight.
I am going to keep talking about it because I care.
I care more about the people I am here to help, than avoiding the disapproval of people who just don’t get it.
And that my friends is anything but hate.
Want to learn more about sustainable weight loss?
If you are tired of dieting or feeling futile about your weight, click here to get access to my free training! You’ll learn uncommon nutrition wisdom about the underlying causes of unexplained and stubborn weight gain. I will show you how you can simply get your body back without having to obsess about it. Best of all, you’ll learn how to do it without having to give up the rich, sweet, creamy foods you love!
Q. How can you lose weight in a healthy manner?
“Fat Programs” is the term that Jon Gabriel, author of “The Gabriel Method” uses to describe a metabolic profile that can cause a shift in the body’s internal “set point”, signalling the body that it needs to be “fat” for reasons of self preservation and survival.
In response I received a couple of ‘I am above all this weight loss’ talk e-mails from my subscribers.
I care more about this message getting out there, than having you like me.