Sustainable Weight Loss Q & A
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!
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