Last week we talked about why it’s getting so dang hard to lose weight as we get older. Remember the day when you could lose weight by booze binging on a Friday night, then eating M&Ms, or a few nachos or chocolate chip cookies, then do it all over again and get skinny – as long as your calorie intake was low? Yah, those days are over. There’s no cheating on this. And any, like ANY sugar, will throw you off your game.
Last week I gave you clear steps: no food stimulants (sugar, booze, etc.) or refined foods (dairy, breads, etc.), vitamin and mineral supplements, exercise and basic stress management. How’d it go? Hard right. It takes discipline. If losing weight were easy we’d all look like Jennifer Aniston or Cameron Diaz.
This is like rocket science. We are solving the biochemistry of the muffin top, the physics of the beer belly, the string theory behind the pooch, and the electromagnetism of the donut or spare tire.
I’ll tell you what inspired me to actually get some discipline. It’s when I noticed that I was doing this weird thing, in public, as though no one could see me. Like when old people fart and think you can’t hear it or smell it. It’s that. Every time I went to sit, including at a restaurant or coffee shop with a colleague, I would lift my jeans over my fat roll and give it a tuck. Didn’t happen. Carry on. Kind of like when guys adjust their peen in their pants, left, right, centre. The ole penis shift. No one saw that right? We all saw it bud, gross. Even grosser? The jean yank over your glorious roll of fat, tuck that puppy in. Sweet.
I take no solace in the fashion shift to high wasted jeans. The look of endless ass or butt cheeks does me no favor. Anyway, our job is to fix the problem, the actual fat. So if you followed my steps from last week, good on yah. Now, let’s ramp up and drop those pounds a little quicker. Here are some stealth ways – some you’ve heard of, some may be new.
1) Don’t eat after 6 or 7 pm. Nothing. Just herbal tea. This simple rule will make a huge difference. Eating late at night throws your metabolism off kilter, which can lead to weight gain.
2) Have one main meal per day, not three. Contrary to popular belief, but not contrary to tradition, make dinner your largest meal of the day, just have it earlier. Experts were saying make lunch your largest meal for several reasons, however, this line of thinking has changed. Your body is ruled by the Sympathetic Nervous System during the day, that’s energy spending active mode, eating a huge lunch will send you prematurely into Parasympathetic mode, rest and digest, we don’t want that until the evening. Hence, make dinner your largest meal.
3) Night out? Substitute Kombucha for alcohol. It’s a lot like cider in taste, only better, and curbs alcohol cravings. It actually has about .05% alcohol.
4) Add proteins to carbs to keep glucose levels in check. So if you’re absolutely dying for a bowl of air-popped pop corn, add butter (grass fed organic) and don’t be shy about it.
5) Finally, try intermittent fasting. Back during paleo times we did not have access to food 24/7. Looks what it’s doing to us now that we do?
Intermittent Fasting is really simple: pick an 8 hour window during the day to eat. 10 am to 6pm, 11am to 7pm, and if you’re a night owl, say noon to 8pm. 16 hours per day with no food creates a carefully timed famine mode. You know why they call it breakfast, you break the fast. This is simply taking your sleeping fast a step further, it lasts a few hours longer.
Here are the benefits to Intermittent Fasting, according to the latest research:
--It helps to reset the body to use fat as its primary fuel, versus having a constant supply of glucose from high carb, high sugar foods. It normalizes insulin sensitivity (that’s sugar uptake) and leptin sensitivity, this in turn boosts mitochondrial efficiency. These are your cells energy factories.
--Normalizes ghrelin levels – this is the hunger hormone – bringing that in check. Take it from me, as someone who loves to have her hand in a bag of dark chocolate pumpkin bark anytime after I put the kids to bed, I need to get this in check. I actually believed I NEEDED chocolate at night. Like my life depended on it.
--Reduces oxidation in the cells– fasting actually reduces oxidative damage inside your wee cells. We all know what oxidation does right? Inflammation much?
--Last and my favourite, now that I’m 40, it raises Human Growth Hormone. This is the hormone that starts to tank after 25. When it’s firing, it keeps us lean and mean in a good way. I want this one back. It’s a fat burning hormone that slows aging.
Need I say more? Your take-away should be first, eat clean and healthy, loads of vegetables, and take your supplements per part 1. And second, eat in an 8 hour window until you reach your desired weight. Then you can open it up a bit, but remember, going back to your old ways will mean going back to your old weight. Stick to this for a month, give take, and you will lose that last 10 pounds. Good luck, go forth and conquer. And, please, email me with your success stories.
xo Shannon