Optimising weight, a holistic approach
By Susan Jones - The Way to Health
Consuming the right foods for you is a much better option to promote fat loss, than drinking shakes that contain synthetic vitamins and cheap minerals masquerading as food substitutes.
Fast diets don’t deliver the right nutrition consistently and are unsustainable for the long term. I believe ‘Personalised Nutrition’ is the future of health! Using drugs or even surgery is promoted by the medical professionals who generally have no deep understanding of what the human body actually needs to create optimul health. Food should be your number one focus when you have decided to start a journey towards a healthier you. The latest craze is injections to make you lose your desire to eat. Most of these methods involve or result in restricting foods or numbing your natural desire for nutritious food. These methods promote blood sugar dis-regulation and causes hunger in-between meals. Once your body is receiving regular and appropriate nutrition for your current blueprint of your health (pathology) you should no longer suffer from hunger! Counting calories is also a very restrictive way to lose weight. Your body is still not receiving the correct focused nutrition needed for good health.
Consuming too many processed foods regularly can cause our underlying health to deteriorate (aka inflammation) to the point where the body can’t cope anymore and leads to many autoimmune and metabolic conditions developing.
Exercising is fine if you are not overweight or obese. Some people really don’t want to exercise as it’s NOT fun. Weight loss is possible without strenuous exercise. Even a sport I used to love as a teenager, basketball, was off the table for me when I was obese. I didn’t even consider doing regular exercise because it was too hard when I was overweight as I was focused on ways to get rid of the extra tyre around my middle using other means! Too much exercise can also be a stressor on the body. Once you reach your ideal body weight, I suggest finding a movement that you love! There are many to choose from such as simply walking the dog, lifting weights, cycling, exercises using your own body weight, to aerial silks! Find out what is available in your area. Check out YouTube, Facebook and Instagram for tutorials. Experiment and find something you like doing that is challenging.
Apart from ensuring you are consuming enough beautiful nutrient dense unprocessed whole food, here’s a few other things to consider if weight loss is your goal. Although remember you don’t necessarily want to lose weight but you do want to lose excess fat!
1/ Drink enough water! Helps your Liver do it’s job on detoxing properly.
2/ Get enough sunlight! Did you know that Vitamin D is actually a hormone!! Fat loss occurs more easily when your vitamin D stores are adequate (at least over 50). The dminder App can help you to learn when is the best times to be outside to optimise your D levels in summer or winter and indicates what coverage of clothing you should wear.
3/ Getting a good sleep is very important for weight loss. A restful sleep of at least 7 to 8 hours each night will improve your digestion (allowing us to extract more nutrition from the food) and improves our sleep! Interestingly your body releases approximately 80% of the excess fat during a good night’s sleep by breathing it out! Sleep Hygiene can also improve sleep – cool breathable bed clothes (cotton and wool or alpaca blankets); a cool quiet room and a cool bed helps reduce your body temperature slightly and shortens the time you go off to sleep (your body temp actually drops as you fall asleep); unplug from electronics for at least an hour or two before bed; setting a strict sleep schedule; 30 minutes of exercise daily; or avoiding any stimulants like caffeine, nicotine or alcohol for 6 hours before bed time.
4/ Resetting your Circadian Rhythm. Being outside during the first two hours of sunlight in the morning for at least 10 minutes and again in the late afternoon triggers release of some critical hormones; an increase in Cortisol in the am and in the evening; cortisol is reduced and Melatonin is increased to prepare us for sleep. Melatonin is triggered by the very specific type of light that occurs at sunset. Our body consists of many ‘clocks’ in our cells and in our brain that are reset every day. Getting up with the sun and going to bed with the sun will helps us feel so much better as we become in sync with nature.
5/ Grounding – standing outside on the ground or a conductive surface such as a cement driveway in bare feet for 20 minutes allows the transfer of positive electrons from the ground to pass into our body while the negative electrons flow back into the ground – reducing inflammation and the effects of stress.
6/ More recent research has shown that positive thoughts and healing chants for self-talk to our bodies water (specifically aiming our thoughts and talking to the water already contained inside our body, can help improve the biophotonic emissions to amplify the water’s energetic quality. Water’s biophotonic energy can be measured! This too has been shown to reduce stress and inflammation.
7/ Purposeful slower eating of your meals can increase the time for food to pass through the stomach and digestive tract. Savouring the taste and texture and appreciating where and how that food arrived on your plate, while consuming the meal all contribute to falling in love with your food again! Food shouldn’t be considered a side show or just fuel – it is the main event and includes conversation and enjoyment as well! We should take a leaf out of the Italian’s social meal habits with their yummy Mediterranean Food!
8/ Eating more protein as we age will improve our lifespan and quality of Life. As we grow older our bodies start to become somewhat less efficient at consuming protein, but I believe this is because we have the mindset that older people are slower and we tend to just accept that we will suffer from pain and health problems. But this is not normal – the medical fraternity want to keep you thinking that way as it increases their profits and keeps them in business. We need to take control of our own health – no-one knows our body better than we do!
9/ Less stress all round can only improve our health outcome. These days stress is part of everyone’s lives – Find ways to relax such as with meditation, grounding, positive self-talk, reduce reliance on processed foods and sugar.
10/ Use a small plate such as a luncheon plate rather than a dinner plate. If you are consuming nutritious whole foods and low carbohydrates along with healthy fats and a lovely range of different vegetables regularly (& a few fruits) your body will be receiving plenty of nutrition, so you won’t need to eat more than three times a day.
11/ You shouldn’t start to feel hungry until about an hour before your next meal. Having the gap of 4 to 5 hours between meals gives your body time to properly digest the meal, and allows enough time for healing and preparing for the next meal. Your stomach acid is reduced every time you have food. If you are used to having in-between snacks you might find that you suffer from reflux or indigestion. This is caused by a low stomach acid. Contrary to what the doctors say it is not helpful to take ant-acids or PPI’s as these are really band-aids and doesn’t address the real problem. You really need to be doing the exact opposite! That is to increase your stomach acid by eating more protein and only having 3 meals a day.
12/ No commercial sugar (as the body sees it as toxic! Commercial sugar is the man made white crystalline powder produced in a factory and has NO beneficial vitamins or minerals in it. The body stops doing everything straight away to detox from only 2 substances Sugar and Alcohol as they cause many body systems to become dysfunctional. A tiny bit of natural sugar such as from honey straight from a beekeeper (not from the big honey brands in the supermarket) is ok occasionally. Fructose (the natural sugar in fruit) is the other source of sweet foods that we are able to consume in moderation. Fructose it dealt with in a slightly different way so is not as toxic to the human body.
When looking at a Nutrition Panel on a product in the supermarket look for a sugar content of less than roughly 7 grams of sugar for each 100 grams. If it has more, then it is very likely to have added sugar (commercial) of some description. Did you know there is over 50 different names for sugar? That has been done on purpose to disguise that they have added a lot of sugar.
Weight Loss can be easy and achievable!!
If you need help to find your health again I use an amazing personalised scientific Nutrition Program from Germany that matches the right foods to your body! Contact Susan on 0419550700 or email susan@thewaytohealth.com.au or message her on Facebook or Instagram. She is also on “X” (formally called Twitter) and LinkedIn. Check out her website https://www.thewaytohealth.com.au