fat loss Archives - Hudson Valley Chiropractic & Wellness

Gym-free workouts: Bust your Gym Rut!

May 11, 2016 by drchrista 1 Comment

Looking for a gym-free workout? Are you stuck in the same out routine at the gym? 30 minutes on the cardio machine, a circuit or two of the weight machine and then you’re done? Has your progress plateaued leaving you frustrated and unmotivated? Tired of the ‘scene’ at your local gym? Or maybe you’re just not thrilled at the idea of being inside a smelly gym when the sun is shining and there is a nice breeze outdoors. If so, then here’s some fun gym-free workouts to bust your gym rut!

Take your workout to the woods! If you’ve been following me on Instagram, then you know I love MovNat! What’s that you ask? Besides being the original gym-free workout, it’s a system for teaching and training normal and natural movement patterns- ones that many of us have lost or are deficient in because so much of our modern lives are oriented around being ‘chair shaped’ humans. Though doing workouts outside is not required, it makes it so much more fun to be outside as you balance on a log, jump from rock to rock, or climb a tree. (See this video and tell me that doesn’t look like way more fun than 30 minutes on the dreadmill?!) It feels more like playing than working out! Practice these movements and I dare say you’ll be more able to keep up with your kids as they play outside! (They are playing outside, right???)
Try an aerial silks or yoga class! More like vertical dancing, aerial silks can be a great way to indulge and augment a creative, flowing type movement practice. It takes both flexibility AND strength to climb the fabric and do some of the moves. Aerial silks are fun way to take your yoga practice to new heights (pun intended!) or work towards your first pull-up. If you are a Hudson Valley local, check out Hudson Valley Circus Arts for classes. I’ve taken classes from Mai Frank and she’s a fantastic instructor!
Parkour!!! (Have you seen that episode of The Office?) Parkour is an AWESOME gym-free workout! Again, you’ll be having so much fun, an hour long class will FLY by. Don’t be intimidated by the versions of Parkour that you see in the movies or on YouTube. Those folks are long term practitioners of this movement discipline. The basics of Parkour are accessible to everybody with a body! For Hudson Valley locals, check out Innate Movement Parkour in Kingston, NY. The instructors are fantastic! Both encouraging and safety conscious, they emphasize safe movement progressions tailored for the individual. They offer classes for both adults and kids, of all ability levels. If you’re a parent with a hyperactive child and you are dreading the approach of summer & the kids being home from school- definitely check out their summer camps!

These are all gym-free workouts I have tried and LOVED! Give them a try and your might find yourself in the best shape of your life!

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Paleo Diet: Top 5 Mistakes People Make on Paleo

February 24, 2016 by drchrista 1 Comment

The Paleo diet has been gaining in popularity. I see many patients come into my office having tried it, but not quite getting the results that they hoped for or expected. Based on their experiences, I wanted to share what I think are the top 5 mistakes people make on the Paleo diet.

Not eating enough vegetables. Meat & veggies are like yin and yang to each other. There’s evidence that the antioxidant chemicals in vegetables are what helps reduce the potential cancer-causing properties of meats. (Read more in this article I wrote after the WHO linked meat to cancer and nearly broke the internet.) I like the hashtag Stacy Toth at Paleo Parents uses on their Instagram account #morevegetablesthanavegetarian. Could you say the same about your plate?
Not fully eliminating grains for at least 30 days. I see some folks who say that a Paleo diet didn’t work for them and then upon further investigation, they are still ‘cheating’ with a slice of pizza or having oatmeal for breakfast. Or maybe they are trying, but haven’t checked other foods for hidden gluten-containing ingredients- like sauces and salad dressings. As a functional medicine doc, I use a Paleo protocol as a way to jump start healing of a leaky gut and to reduce inflammation. The interaction of gluten proteins with the lining of the gut is happening on a microscopic, cellular level. This means, any amount of grains is too much. (Certainly if you can see enough of it to put it in your mouth it’s too much!) I support folks experimenting and finding out what works best for them and even finding ways of ‘relaxing’ a bit about food, but this should come after a full elimination period. So if you don’t see the results you want after 30 days on Paleo, but haven’t been honest about grain consumption, well please don’t tell your coworkers that Paleo failed you and is somehow all bunk. Ditto all of the above for dairy.
Still relying on processed foods. Because of the increased popularity of the Paleo diet, a whole cottage industry as grown up around making Paleo processed foods. It’s a nice convenience, but it can be a reason people don’t achieve the results they want. Paleo bread might not have wheat or other grains in it, but the food has still been processed since it’s original form. As I tell patients- there is no Bread tree or plant that one can simply go and harvest loaves of bread from- Paleo or otherwise. Also, if you’re constantly making treats or using lots of almond flour to ‘bread’ things, you may be very quickly and easily exceeding your needed caloric intake with the fat content of the almonds (Fat is like what your first grade teacher said about glue- “a little dab will do ya!“) The goal is to have most of your food come from WHOLE sources with the most ‘processing’ it having gone through before you put it in your mouth is when you cook it. Beware of any foods that come in any package- but particularly a bag, a box or a can. If it bears a government-mandated nutrition label, that’s another clue that it’s no longer a ‘whole’ food. It’s not that these foods should never be apart of your diet, but the majority of your food intake should be real, whole sources, not processed foods.
Not finding your best macronutrient ratio. Many folks assume Paleo is “low carb” or just another form of Atkin’s. I think that what sets a Paleo diet apart from just another Atkin’s diet is the emphasis on food quality and vegetable intake and also the emphasis on flexible macronutrient ratios. Though a Paleo diet is “low carb” compared to the S.A.D., the amount of carbohydrate can be flexible and based on an individual’s needs. For example, I think of 100-150g of carb/day as the ‘sweet spot’ that will be effective for most people, while still helping to maintain thyroid and adrenal health. However, in someone who is trying to address blood sugar issues or pre-diabetes, they may have a period where they need to go lower than that with their carb consumption in order to see results. Once they restore insulin sensitivity, they may be able to handle a slightly higher carbohydrate intake. The point is, we see a variety of macronutrient ratios in the diets of healthy, traditional cultures. Do some experimentation (with real, whole foods!) to find the ratio that works for best for you and bear in mind that this ratio may change as your health status or goals change.
Not giving it enough time/expecting the quick fix. A Paleo diet can do wonders and change lives in very short order. But- usually when it has amazing results it’s because a person is reasonably healthy and still has good metabolic flexibility to begin with. If you have a chronic health condition that you have been trying to address for years, it’s not realistic to expect to see everything to be reversed within the span of a month. Many patients come to me with weight loss as their main goal. If they have had a pattern of chronic inflammation and immune system imbalance, it often happens that they have to heal from that before they can take on weight loss in a healthy way. Fat is the like an energy savings account for the body. If your body is getting constant signals that it is in crisis mode, needing to survive, it’s not going to give up or dip into that critical savings account easily. Be patient. Focus on healing and improving your health. Paleo is not another crash diet to try for short term results, but a sustainable philosophy and way of eating that can have powerful & positive impact on your life.

I’d love to hear what you think. Have you made one or more of these mistakes yourself? (I know I have!) Is there another mistake you think people more commonly make than one of these 5? Let me know in the comments section!

Low carb: the solution for lasting weight loss & better health

February 17, 2016 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Low carb diets seem to carry some sort of undeserved apprehension lately, so it was really great to see this article making the rounds on social media this week. Of course, this probably has to do with the fact that “low-carb” and Atkins have unfortunately become synonymous- like using a “Kleenex” instead of a tissue and “Chapstick” as opposed to lip balm. Let’s clear that up right here and now- Atkin’s is a type of low carb diet, but not all low carb diets are Atkin’s. My theory is that the apprehension comes about because most of us know someone who lost a ton of weight on Atkin’s- then gained it all back when they resumed eating “normally” again. The implied assumption then, is that Atkin’s (and by extension all low-carb diets) doesn’t work. This is a logical fallacy and is just plain wrong.

Let’s turn it around for a moment and make the opposite assumption. If eating “normally” is what caused a person to gain excess weight in the first place, doesn’t it make more sense that their return to “normal” eating after a low carb diet is a much better reason for why they gained that weight again?

Obesity rates decline with adoption of high fat, low carb diets

Emerging research is corroborating this assumption. The meteoric rise in obesity rates seems to originate in the late 70s- right around the time that policy recommendations were being implemented that vilified cholesterol, saturated foods and animal products. The 80s were the heyday of the low-fat craze, with new “fat-free” Frankenfoods being developed at an unprecedented rate. Obesity has continued to skyrocket despite our adoption of these policies and low-fat foods. Yet, in Sweden, up to 23% of the population embraces a high fat, low carb diet. And while obesity rates continue to climb steadily elsewhere in the world, Sweden is actual seeing a decline in their obesity rate.

High fat, low carb diets produce less insulin; body fat storage

What we know about the biochemical mechanism underlying this phenomenon also reinforces low carb diets as the answer to lasting weight loss and better overall health. Insulin is a hormone that is released in the presence of carbohydrate and to a lesser extent, protein. (Notice that fat does not provoke an insulin release.) Insulin’s job is to lower blood sugar. It does this in two ways. First, by triggering uptake of digested carbohydrates (glucose) into the cells to be made into energy to fuel them. But it also acts as a storage hormone, causing any excess sugars to be cleared from the blood and stored in the fat tissue as triglycerides for later use. This where many folks run into problems losing weight. They overeat carbohydrates, keeping insulin high and promoting storage of any excess carbohydrates and even calories, as fat. A high fat, low carb diet by contrast reduces the need for insulin. In the short term, this means less excess insulin to promote fat storage. Long-term, less insulin means less stimulus for the development of insulin resistance & type 2 diabetes.

Fat does not cause clogged arteries

The reputation of low carb diets also suffers from mistakenly assuming that saturated fats and cholesterol clog arteries. While it’s true that cholesterol is the main constituent of the arterial plaques, that doesn’t meant cholesterol causes the plaque. The analogy I use is of spackle. You don’t blame the hole in the wall on the spackle just because it is there plugging the hole. The same goes for cholesterol, which did not cause the “hole” in the artery. This damage is more likely to come from elevated blood sugar, elevated insulin or even turbulent blood flow in an area due to poor mobility and a sedentary lifestyle.

Low carb diets can be sustainable & healthy

We are left with the real culprit- the return to so-called “normal eating.” If people return to anything that approximates the Standard American Diet- they are likely returning to a diet full of bread, pasta, and other processed foods. I’ve worked with many patients who think they ‘eat healthy.’ When I investigate this further, they eat oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and often pasta for dinner. They’ve assumed that because their meals were “low-fat” they were healthy. Meanwhile, what they actually ate were carbs, carbs and more carbs. No vegetables, certainly nothing with much color, and they’ve insured that insulin level spiked several times throughout that day (with resultant plunges as well). The S.A.D. averages over 300g of carbohydrate per day. The health benefits of “low-carb” can start with carbohydrate levels as high as 100-150g/day. Atkin’s and ketogenic diets, also known as ‘very low carb’ are often under 75g of carbohydrate/day. If one’s primary carbohydrate sources are from vegetables instead of processed grain products, it can be very easy to sustain a healthy diet of 100-150g/day of carbohydrate. Some can even get by on less by including increased levels of high quality fats in their diet. By finding a healthy level of carbohydrates that works for you, you can achieve lasting weight loss while improving your health!

Fat Loss Simplified!

December 28, 2015 by drchrista Leave a Comment

This time of year, many people aspire to lose weight and get in shape in the coming year. When they say “lose weight,” almost all of us mean fat loss. Unfortunately, there is so much conflicting and just plain wrong information out there, that most people will start a program, see little if any results, and give up before February rolls around. So how do you break the cycle and find a leaner, fitter you?

Fat loss is 80% diet. If you’re killing yourself with an hour a day on the treadmill or elliptical, then coming home and diving into pile of junk food because ‘you earned it,’ then the point is being missed. You’ve probably seen the popular meme “you can’t out run a bad diet.” It’s true. You can drop 10 or 15 pounds and still have terrible blood lipid or sugar numbers because of what you are eating. Isn’t the whole point of doing all that exercise in the first place to be healthier?
Instead of calories in, think about calories stored. This is a concept Mark Sisson talks about on his blog, Mark’s Daily Apple. Part of the problem with trying to increase your caloric expenditure (exercising) while simultaneously decreasing your caloric intake (dieting) is that this sends signals to the body that it is in danger. In the interest of your survival, several hormonal mechanisms are activated. First, cortisol is raised to increase your blood sugar levels. If you don’t immediately use this sugar for energy, it’s then stored as fat, under the influence of insulin. The hypothalamus, a control center in your brain, will send out signals to down-regulate (decrease) your metabolism, while simultaneously increasing your appetite in order to save energy and ensure your continued survival. So instead of trying to decrease your calories, to optimize for fat loss, focus on feeding your body high quality, nutrient dense foods like meat, fish, fowl, eggs, plenty of vegetables, a few fruits, nuts and seeds. (They contain fewer calories then processed foods anyway.) Also, make sure you get plenty of high quality fat in your diet. Fat DOES NOT make you fat! Repeat after me: FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT! Fat is the only macronutrient that does not provoke an insulin release when digested. Carbohydrates do (and proteins to a lesser extent) and the more processed the carbohydrates, the more insulin is secreted. Under the influence of insulin, any excess carbohydrates in the body are stored for later use as fat. This was a very handy adaptation when our species was evolving and living as hunter-gatherers. It helped us survive in times of famine and food scarcity. Unfortunately, these days, with food always being plentiful, we just keep eating- particularly carbs and processed foods- and never signal to our bodies to dip into those stored fats. So, if you are currently overweight and trying to lose fat, you will have better success by limiting carbohydrate intake to just vegetables and increasing your intake of high-quality dietary fats in order to encourage your body to use fat as its primary fuel source. (High quality fats include coconut oil, grass-fed butter and ghee, animal fats from pastured & grassfed animals, occasional use of pure extra virgin olive oil, avocado or walnut oils. Do NOT increase consumption of processed trans and polyunsaturated fats like corn, soybean, canola or vegetable oils. These introduce dangerous free radicals into the body that actually make atherosclerosis worse! Eliminate them at all costs!)
Focus on aerobic exercise. During aerobic exercise, we are able to take in enough oxygen to preferentially burn fat for fuel, the holy grail for fat loss. This discovery is what lead to the ‘aerobics’ craze in the 80s. (Remember Jane Fonda and all that Lyrca?) The thing is, we’ve gotten so focused now on “burning off” all those offending calories that we’ve missed what constitutes ‘aerobic exercise.’ We think “no pain, no gain” (another terrible T-shirt from the 80s) and work harder. Except once you’re working at pace where you can no longer breath through your nose easily, you’ve exceeded this aerobic threshold. Said another way, you are no longer burning fat. Regular old walking is great aerobic exercise for fat loss. If you’re an endurance athlete, get a heart rate monitor and use the Maffetone method to calculate your aerobic threshold and then train only below that heart rate until you see fat loss.
Strength train. The rate of your metabolism is primarily determined by the amount of lean muscle mass you have. More lean muscle tissue = a speeder metabolism. Also, we have some good data that shows that strength training and building muscle helps ‘partition’ your weight loss to make sure that it comes preferentially from fat tissue instead of muscle tissue. If you’ve experienced the pain of yo-yo dieting- where you lost the weight only to gain it back and again (and then some) this is your best strategy to prevent this from ever happening again! By strength training, you will keep your lean muscle tissue and therefore keep your metabolism revved up while getting rid of excess fat tissue. The best strength training to do is to lift heavy a couple of times a week in the big compound lifts like the squat, deadlift, press and pull-up. If you don’t know how to do these lifts safely, please seek qualified instruction from a certified and credential trainer or strength coach. For women, please do not worry about getting bulky from lifting heavy. If you lift heavy, for a short set of 4-6 reps and then give yourself a rest of 3-5 minutes between sets, you will signal increased strength without increased bulk (hypertrophy). Conversely, the best way to increase the size of the muscle is to do light weight and high reps. Also for the ladies, it is so empowering to lift heavy and see how strong and capable your body is! Strength training is a veritable fountain of youth for both men and women as its keeps joints strong and healthy while keeping metabolism high so as to prevent those extra pounds from creeping on each year.
Exercise really hard on occasion. Once you’ve got all that down- eating an appropriate diet, walking or slow running (or whatever exercise method floats your boat) and strength training, then its time to add in a few bouts of sprinting. This only needs to be and should only be done 1-2 times a week and doesn’t have to be very long. One study found that women who sprinted hard on a bicycle for 8 seconds, followed by 12 seconds of rest for a total of 20 minutes, over 15 weeks, had lost 3 times as much body fat as their counterparts who cycled at a steady pace for 40 minutes. (Most of this fat was from their thighs and buttocks too!) Research shows that high intensity interval training has the ability to decrease insulin signaling (decrease fat storage), decrease blood glucose and increase fat oxidation- all in way less time than steady-state cardio. And it doesn’t take much. One or two, short high-intensity session as week is all you need.

So there you have it- 5 simple steps toward obtainable and sustainable fat loss that will also help you become healthier in the process. Sure, there are other ways to lose fat- like crash dieting or becoming a cardio junkie, but those methods ruin your hormone balance and/or increase your level of inflammation and chronic disease risk. And if you’re just going to ruin your health in the end, what’s the point of doing all that hard work in the first place?

If you’d like to start a journey towards losing fat and getting healthier in the coming year, but are unsure about how to start or need help staying on track, you may want to check out the New Year, New You! whole-food based cleanse that I am offering starting in January. You can learn more about the program here.

How to avoid death by sitting

October 8, 2015 by drchrista Leave a Comment

It’s almost old news now, but sitting is no good for you. Well, let me be more specific- chronic sitting in the same position (usually in a chair) is no good. Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years, here’s just of few of the negative impacts of prolonged sitting:

decreased metabolism in the core muscles
increased risk of chronic disease & death even if you exercise
weight gain and obesity
‘chair butt’ (a flat, but wide posterior)
shortened calf muscles
shortened psoas muscle
tucked pelvis
alignment adaptations that can lead to low back pain, knee pain, hip pain or even pelvic floor disorders
chronic neck tightness and headaches

You can also get caught up by reading more here, here and here.

In a nut shell, I’ve joked with many people that as a chiropractor, I have a job because people sit too much. I mean it light-heartedly, but sadly there is a kernel of truth to the joke.

So what to do to be healthier, extend your life and lessen your bill at your local chiro’s office? It may surprise you, but the answer is not to simply stand all day long at work either. Walking work stations utilizing treaddesks have become en vogue recently as well. This is certainly better from a ‘calories burned’ perspective, but it still misses the bigger picture. Kale is a superfood, but if kale is all you ever ate, you’d still end up with a nutrient deficiencies. Same with walking. It has a ton of benefits for your body- you should do a lot of it. But if its the only way you move your body on a daily basis, you’re still going to be deficient. For instance, walking won’t do much for the balance of muscles in the shoulder girdle that need to hang, grip and pull.

I could go on and write a whole big blog post about what you should do instead, but why reinvent the wheel? Katy Bowman has already written the book on the subject- literally. Her newest book, Don’t Just Sit There! is now available in paperback. Use the box below to sign up for my newsletter. You’ll get my free PDF 7 ‘Health’ Foods to Ditch to Lose Weight & Feel Great AND one lucky winner will be chosen to receive a copy of Katy’s book, on me. Giveaway closes on October 31, 2015 at midnight, so sign up today!

Ancestral Health

August 20, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

We have more access to more information about health and disease than at any other period of human history and yet, we are arguably the most unhealthy we have ever been.

Here in the U.S., the sky-rocketing rates of obesity are a daily news story. Rates of chronic illness like heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and autoimmune disease are increasing at alarming rates. Diseases we thought only happened in aging adults are occurring in younger children.

Ironic isn’t?

If you’re old enough, you may remember a time when obesity was rare; when cancer was rare and only your rapidly aging grandpa has developed ‘diabeetus.’ So what happened? What has caused such a profound change in our health?

There are many answers to that question and as of yet, no proven smoking gun. Searching through the myriad of possibilities would take time we don’t have. What we need is a framework for understanding what effects health and gives us a blueprint to search for the place where we seem to have gone off the map.

The concept of ancestral health is that framework.

We think that cavemen lived ‘short, brutish’ lives, but archeology says that is not really the whole story. Sure, life expectancy was low, but that was a population average, mostly skewed because childbirth was such a dicey proposition. There were plenty of early humans who survived well into old age if they managed to survive disease epidemics, broken bones or becoming a meal for another creature. The point is, even if they made it to past all those hurdles, obesity heart disease and poor health weren’t destined for them simply by virtue of having reached that age.

From what archeology studies tell us, hunter-gatherers were lean, well-built with little tooth decay and no need for orthodontics. By studying modern hunter-gatherer tribes, we have inferred that they spent an average of 20 hours a week engaged in activities necessary for survival, spending the rest of their free time visiting relatives, creating art, or engaged in other leisure activities.

Can you imagine? All your needs met in the space of a part-time job? Very little stress and plenty of time to kick back, relax and enjoy life. No running yourself ragged, running in literal circles, going to gym to keep fit. No having to watch every last piece of food you ate in order to stay trim. No smartphone constantly ringing with requests from people who need something from you…right now! Growing old gracefully, with a strong, supple body. Getting plenty of restful sleep each and every night. Unburdened joy. Not sounding so bad, eh?

So how do this relate to health?

Well I’m glad you asked because you see, we have those same bodies. Bodies that want to be lean and fit and healthy and strong. It is our genetic potential and can be our genetic reality under the right circumstances. The problem is that we have changed the rules of the game much faster than our ancient bodies can keep up with and adapt sufficiently to. Since World War II, we have introduced 50,000 novel chemicals into our environment. We haven’t studied the long-term safety of most of these, let alone the combinations of them that we are exposed to daily. GMOs in our food supply, animals raised on grain instead of grass, pharmaceutical drugs, indoor lighting, smartphones, tablets and laptops, constant stress, automobiles- all are things that are completely new to humans beings in the last 100 or so years. All are interacting in ways that eroding our health.

The sad fact is that many of us don’t eat real food anymore. Many of us spend hours a day only exercising the tiny muscles in our hands while sitting on the biggest muscles of our hips and thighs. This is not how our bodies were designed to function and it is slowly killing us.

Using this framework, I make recommendations to my patients to get their current reality to be more congruent with their ancient genetics. Why? Because when these two are aligned, improved health is often the outcome. I may encourage patients to eat a more whole food diet, or to sleep in pattern that aligned with their brain’s ingrained circadian rhythms or to move and exercise in way that builds so-called ‘functional movement’ patterns. In doing so, we honor the innate wisdom of our bodies and their desire to be healthy.

7 Paleo diet weight loss mistakes

February 18, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Did you start a Paleo diet this year hoping to lose weight? Have you seen all the buzz about other people who have lost weight on a Paleo diet without counting calories, all while eating bacon and butter to their heart’s content? Are you becoming frustrated that you aren’t seeing the same results???

You aren’t alone!!! If you aren’t losing the weight that you want to, it doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with you or that “Paleo doesn’t work.” There are several common mistakes that newbies and seasoned veterans alike make when it comes to Paleo eating for weight loss. I’ve made a few myself. In this post, I’d like to share with you 7 of the most common reasons people don’t realize their weight loss goals on a Paleo diet.

You’re eating too much. At some point, calories do matter! I wrote more about this here, but the ‘unweighed, unmeasured’ ideal of Paleo works best for people who have a lot of weight to lose, who are making the switch away from a really poor diet to begin with or who already have good appetite control. If you only have 10-20 pounds to lose, already eat a decent diet, or tend to struggle with strong cravings or emotional eating, you really need to do some tracking of your caloric intake for a few days. You don’t need to to obsess about it, but you may find that you are eating 800 calories just in nuts. Or maybe you’ve been a little too liberal with the grass fed butter. Healthy fats are good for you and essential to a healthy diet, but remember that they do have more then twice the number of calories per gram as protein or carbs, so they are easy to overeat.
You are too inflamed to lose weight right now. Whenever there is chronic inflammation in the body, cortisol is secreted in order to control and suppress the inflammatory response. It acts like the brake on the whole thing. Cortisol will also affect blood sugar regulation and under the influence of the cortisol, we tend to store more adipose (fat) tissue, particularly in the abdominal region. If you have unaddressed food allergies/intolerances, autoimmune disease or hormone imbalances, your cortisol is going to be too high and this will make weight loss more difficult. In this case, the first and primary focus should be calming down the inflammation. Once that is addressed you can begin to eat and exercise in a manner that will support your weight loss goals.
You aren’t sleeping enough. Yes! You can sleep your way to a skinnier you! Sleep deprivation increases cortisol levels. Also during sleep, the body produces growth hormone, which helps build & repair muscle and burn fat. It has also been shown that a lack of sleep can lead to increased cravings and less ability to resist those cravings. If you aren’t getting enough sleep or aren’t sleeping well, you’re not going to be able to reap the full benefit from any exercise that you are doing or from the diet changes that you have made. Eight hours of sleep a night needs to be the minimum. Sleep in a dark room with as little noise as possible. Remove electronic devices from your bedroom. You can read more about good sleep hygiene here.
You are over or under exercising. Exercise is a stress to the body. It works by actually tearing the muscles a bit or putting stress on the bones, and when the damage is repaired, our bodies make the tissue a little bit stronger in order to be better prepared for future stresses. This means that adaptation and the benefit from exercise technically comes from the REST period AFTER the actual physical exercise! So if you are doing hard workouts 5-6 days a week, going for broke every time, you are probably over training and causing too much stress and damage while not giving the body a chance to repair and adapt to the stress. At the same time, if you aren’t doing any sort of physical activity and you have a pretty sedentary job or sedentary hobbies, you may not be giving your body enough of a stimulus to lose weight. At the end of day, fat loss depends on a calorie deficit. The most fun and beneficial way to do this is to eat a nourishing, whole foods Paleo diet while increasing your activity a bit. You don’t have to be an exercise junkie or have a gym membership, just try incorporating more walking into your day, riding a bike to do errands in town, etc. You can also find plenty of quick, bodyweight exercise routines you can do from home on the internet. Jump squats, push-ups, pull-ups, planks, burpees are all great full-body exercises that can be done in various combinations and sets to get a short HIIT workout in without even leaving your house.
You aren’t eating enough protein. Protein helps repair muscles and tissue and also provides satiety from a meal. A minimum standard for protein is 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. If you are trying to lose weight and especially if you are exercising more, I recommend people aim for 1 gram per pound of body weight in protein a day. (Also, the math is WAY easier!) So a 150-pound person should aim for 150 grams of protein a day. A large egg contains approximately 7 grams of protein. So if you are only eating 1-2 eggs in the morning, you might need to add a denser source of protein to your breakfast. Try adding some leftover chicken, pork or beef from dinner the night before. I also like to add a tablespoons of grass fed beef gelatin to my coffee for additional 12 grams or so of high quality protein.
You are eating too much or too little carbs. If you followed the USDA food pyramid guidelines, you’d be eating 300g or more of carbs a day. Processed foods, because they often contain a lot of hidden sugar, are also really high in carbohydrates. Carbs in and of themselves are not bad, but carbohydrate intake has to be matched to activity level. If you sit at a desk all day and don’t exercise regularly, eating lots of sweet potatoes and bananas is probably going to stymy your weight loss efforts. Conversely, if you are doing Crossfit 4 days a week and eating 50g of carb a day, you may find that your performance is suffering. Also, you may find your carb carving increase to the point where you can’t resist gorging on non-Paleo dense carbs, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to eating healthier in the first place. A good range for most people to start is 100-150g of carb a day. After a month or so, see how you look and feel. If you are leaning out, but still have energy and aren’t craving sweets all the time, you’ve hit the sweet spot with carbs. (Bad pun definitely intended.)
You are eating to many nuts/snacks/treats. I find a lot of people are addicted to snacking. A question I hear often, is “what can I eat for snacks?” Ideally, you shouldn’t need snacks. If you have to pound two fistfuls of almonds between breakfast and lunch or you become a hunger monster, then you aren’t eating enough protein and/or fat at breakfast. Nuts are great and certainly worth eating, but because of their portability and Paleo-friendliness, a lot of folks new to Paleo over-do them at first. I also see people go over board on the Paleo ‘treats’- muffins, cookies and breads made with almond or coconut flour instead of regular white flour. These can pack an even greater caloric punch without having the same feedback mechanism that tells the brain, ‘stop, I’ve had enough’ as the whole food. Treats should be just that- occasional treats, not everyday food items. The same goes for snacks. Nuts can be great to carry around and have when you’re in a pinch, but if you are trying to lose weight, don’t rely on having them everyday as a ‘snack.’ Before having a snack, check in with yourself to make sure you are legitimately hungry. A lot of people snack for reasons other then hunger- they are bored, stressed, tired or even just because its a certain time of the day. If you aren’t hungry, then find something else to do to break the habit. Drink water, stand up & stretch or even just do a mini-meditation session where you take 10 deep breaths, and just focus on the breathing. If you, however, legitimately hungry then have your snack and try to make tweaks to your next meal to make it more satisfying for longer.

Have you been making any of these common mistakes? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below!

When calories count and when to count your calories…

January 29, 2014 by drchrista 1 Comment

In my last post, I explained why the simple “eat less, exercise more” approach doesn’t work for everyone. I laid out how several different hormonal systems of the body regulate and control metabolism and appetite. Severe calorie restriction diets often don’t work, certainly not for the long term, because these hormone systems are designed by nature to decrease our metabolism and to store fat as a way to survive if the amount of food going into our bodies is too low. Many of the patients I work with in my practice have metabolic dysfunction. Their hormones and endocrine system are all over the place from years of stress and chronic illness. Because of this, I encourage them eat freely of a healthy, Paleo-type diet, the type of diet that will allow them to begin healing the metabolic dysfunction by stacking their diet with the most nutrient dense foods available. Their first priority is to heal the metabolic dysfunction.

But what about the healthy person who just wants to get fit, lean out and maybe drop a few extra pounds of fat? Or what about the person who has been following a Paleo diet for a while, but would like to make some progress on some aesthetic goals? For people with this sort of goal, monitoring calorie intake and maintaining a calorie deficit is what they will probably need to reach their goals.

It’s OK, and even useful to count calories if:

You are generally active and healthy and just want to drop a few extra pounds of fat.
You have been following a regime of healthy, whole food eating for some time (I would say at least a year.)
You have a history of disordered eating and have not learned to eat according to actual physical hunger.

The key to making a calorie restricted diet effective for the long term is to keep the calorie deficit mild. If you are say, a moderately active 140 pound woman with TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) of approximately 2,100 kCal a day, suddenly dropping calories to 1,200 calories/day may trigger some of these hormonal mechanisms that will slow your metabolism and make weight loss difficult. It also means that when you return to “normal” eating you are more likely to gain back all of the weight you lost. So if you are going to go to the trouble of counting and monitoring caloric intake, use the following strategies to insure that your hard work and effort pays off and that you can maintain your new, HEALTHY body for the long term.

Gradually increase your caloric deficit. If you are aiming for a 500 calorie/day deficit, start with 100 calories one day, then 200 calories the net and so on. This is less likely to flip off the “warning bell” systems in the brain.
Consider keeping calories from food constant and burning more through exercise. An extra 10 minutes of cardio at the gym, doing errands on bike or by foot where possible, and playing outdoors more are all ways to increase your calorie a burn a bit more each day without feeling like you need to ‘refuel’ more to keep your energy up.
Lift weights. When people say they want to lose weight, they usually mean they want to lose fat. When dieting alone, the body will burn fat, but it will also burn some lean muscle tissue as well. Lean muscle tissue is very metabolically active and the more lean body mass we have, the more calories we burn at rest, so its important to preserve as much of it as possible. The research is clear. When restricting calories, people who lift weights while dieting lost less lean muscle tissue then those who simply restricted their calories. Since the amount of weight each group lost was similar, this means the group that lifted weights lost more fat tissue then those who did not. The other bonus to lifting weights and maintaining your lean body mass is that when you return to ‘normal’ eating, your BMR (basal metabolic rate, or the rate of your metabolism at rest) while be higher, meaning you’ll burn more calories at rest then if you had lost lean muscle tissue. This helps to prevent the rebound or ‘yo-yo’ effect of dieting.
Get some sleep. Several studies have shown that when people are deprived of sleep, they eat more calories and make poorer food choices the next day. This seems to be related to cortisol and stress mechanisms that protect the brain. Getting enough sleep also helps you recover from exercise and may increase you metabolism by boosting levels of growth hormone and testosterone release, both of which help to boost your metabolism.

One of the reasons that the Paleo diet helps so many people lose weight is that they decrease inflammation and subconsciously decrease their caloric intake as well (usually). Whole foods are nutrient-dense, but not as calorically-dense as processed foods. In many cases, this creates enough of a calorie deficit that many people will lose weight, especially if they increase their activity level a bit. However, if you are eating a whole-foods diet, have cut out all the junk and are still having trouble losing weight, it may be time to go over your diet with a fine tooth comb, count up the calories and see where you might be “leaking energy” or unconsciously taking in more calories then you need. I did this recently and discovered I was probably taking in way more healthy fats then I needed to be. With this awareness and a little work to maintain the calorie deficit, you can be on your way to reaching your aesthetic goals in a healthy, effective manner.

Why you should ditch your diet

January 8, 2014 by drchrista 1 Comment

It’s January 8, 2014 already. Are you still on the straight and narrow, following your resolutions to get leaner and meaner this year? Or have you given up and gone back to your old habits already?

If you resolved to eat better this year, what happened? Wait, wait don’t tell me. You got too hungry. At some point your stomach was growling, your blood sugar was dropping and you said, ‘to heck with it, I need to eat, now!’

And that is exactly why diets don’t work.

I’m here to tell you, you’ve been sold a wrong bill of goods. If you’ve been told you just need to “eat less and exercise more,” and have done just that, to no avail, it’s not you, it’s them. You are not lazy, you are not gluttonous, you are not weak, but you are metabolically broken.

See, calories in = calories out is a math equation. It even has some basis in physics. It works on paper. It doesn’t work in real-live human beings. Here’s why:

HORMONES.

Think about it. Long ago, the amount of fat tissue we carried was crucial. Fat is very energy dense and is our stored reserves of energy. We needed a certain amount of it in order to survive, especially if food became scarce. If you’re female, you definitely needed a certain amount of fat in order to support a pregnancy, which is why females have a higher body fat percentage then males and why they will stop menstruating if their body fat percentage gets too low. Too much fat tissue isn’t ideal either. Back when we lived on the savannas, too much fat tissue would have made it more difficult to escape predators. It’s just like Goldilocks, we need the amount to be “just right.”

Ever notice how some people seem to have no problem maintaining a certain weight, despite their eating habits, while others just look at food and seem to gain weight? Well, there is a reason for it. Several actually, but its a complex topic so I’m only going to address a small part of it here. Researchers who study this sort of thing have proposed a ‘set-point’ hypothesis of weight regulation. What that comes down to is this… the brain has a set point, or weight, that it would like to maintain. It then does everything it can to maintain this weight.

This means that when we eat LESS, our brains DECREASE our metabolism and INCREASE our appetite, to make sure we take in and hold on to enough calories to maintain that set-point weight. Conversely, if we are eating too much our brains should be telling our bodies to INCREASE our metabolism and DECREASE our appetite in over to burn off the excess energy.

Ever notice that animals in the wild don’t get fat? They can get big… there’s enough food out there to make an animal as big as an elephant or as small as a mouse, but they don’t get obese out there. Part of the reason for this is the set-point theory.

Now, how does that come back to hormones? Well, hormones are how your body talks to your brain- and vise versa- about regulation of energy. The thyroid gland, for instance. Normally, if your thyroid gland is humming along and putting enough thyroid hormone out there, the brain is happy and doesn’t need to ramp it up by secreting TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone. But if thyroid hormone production gets too low and metabolism drops, normally the brain will increase the amount of TSH in order to stimulate the thyroid gland to make more thyroid hormone. Normally. In the case of hypothyroidism, the brain may be telling the thyroid gland to make more thyroid hormone, but the gland can’t for some reason or other. Or maybe it can, but it can’t get delivered to the cells where it will increase metabolism for one reason or another. The result is that metabolism is slowed, while appetite stays the same or increases and the net result being weight gain. Is this person lazy? Are they a pig? Are they lacking self-control with food? NO! Their endocrine system is out of whack and foiling their efforts! (Having hypothyroidism is a not a get out of jail free card here. You still need to watch your diet and exercise, but just know that there is a right way and a wrong way to do this to get results, and if you are going with the old ‘calories in= calories out’ model, this is definitely the WRONG way to get the results you want.)

Another hormone that plays a key role in weight regulation is leptin. Leptin is actually secreted from the fat cells. It then talks to the brain about how much energy we have stored in the fat. The more fat tissue we have, the more leptin we make and vise versa. In normal, metabolically healthy individuals, more leptin signals from the body, especially if we are already at or slightly above our set point, means that our brain tells our body to increase metabolism and reduce appetite to burn off some of extra stored fat tissue that we don’t need. Less leptin signals do the opposite- decrease metabolism and increase appetite. Here’s the problem though, most obese individuals have what’s known as leptin resistance. The fat tissue is making plenty of leptin, but it has been doing so for so long that the brain doesn’t respond to it anymore. Imagine if someone is yelling at you all the time, so you start wearing ear plugs all the time. The ear plugs protect your ears from the yelling, but if that person decides to start whispering, you can’t hear a thing. It’s the same idea with leptin resistance and the only way to get more leptin to get through to the brain is to make more fat tissue.

(Breathe. Most of the science stuff is over. :-))

So if we have an obese individual with leptin resistance, what do you think happens when they try to eat less and exercise more??? That’s right, their body is now afraid that it is in danger of starving to death. It then sends out the message to DECREASE metabolism and INCREASE appetite, the LAST two things you want to have your body do if you are trying to lose weight.

Now, how do we start getting back on track and healing our metabolism? Well, first of all EAT. Think of your metabolism like a fire- if you don’t put a piece of wood on the fire every so often, it goes out. So don’t starve yourself and make sure you eat meals at regular intervals. Some people find that eating SMALL meals every 2-3 hours is really successful for them for this reason. It keeps their metabolic fire stoked. Second, pay attention to what you do eat. Calories in=calories out became popular for a reason- because there is a certain amount of evidence that at some point, the amount of calories you do or do not take in matters. Your best bet is to eat lots of nutrient dense, WHOLE foods. Animal proteins with their accompanying fat will help keep you satisfied by preventing wild swings in your blood sugar levels. Eat most of your carbs as veggies- they have more vitamins and minerals and fewer calories then processed wheat and grain products. By getting the nutrients you need, your body doesn’t need to increase your hunger to get them. And since they are lower in calories, you can eat more while feeling fuller, sooner and longer with fewer calories. Bonus: this method of weight loss doesn’t trigger the brain to defend the set-point weight in the same way as simply forcing a drastic calorie reduction on the body.

In time, when your body learns and begins to trust that it will be fed enough food on a regular basis and it will be fed nutrient dense foods with all the vitamins and minerals it needs to be healthy, it can heal the metabolism and begin to let go of the excess energy it was holding on to, thinking a famine was imminent. Losing weight this way is more natural, requires less discipline and lasts much longer then ‘crash diets’ with drastic calorie restrictions.

So ditch your diet. Eat real, whole foods exclusively. If it has a label with a calorie count on it, it’s probably a good idea to put it back on the shelf. Steer your cart over to the produce aisle and the meat case, where the food requires no labels, because its just food.