When It Clicks: This Is What It Looks Like

When It Clicks: This Is What It Looks Like

Feb 16, 2015 | Blog

I don’t do many guest posts here in this space. I’m uber protective of you guys – my readers, my friends – and I don’t like the idea of letting other people push their agenda over here. Go do that someplace else. No time for it. I’m trying to help people change their lives, find a healthier relationship with food and burn fat without losing their minds. And then I read a post that I immediately knew I needed to share. A post that perfectly depicts what it looks like when that mindset shift happens between “What’s the most effective diet” and “I am ready to figure out my own fat loss formula for life”. It so happened for Emily. Now, Emily happens to be my sister. Emily happens to be an incredible writer & has her own blog. She put it best, though: ” This ain’t no family-promoting-family-’cause-we’re-family situation.” Neither of us do that. Sure, we’re fans of each other’s work but we protect our space. I knew I needed to share her story because it’s a perfect depiction of the paradigm shift I’m trying to help you make. So with that, here’s Emily.

*Disclaimer: There is some cursing in her post*

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In the years before my dad died, he discovered the Atkins Diet.

He was so fucking stoked, you guys.

He was losing weight eating meat, eggs, cheese, meat, and meat.

I was dubious.

“How are you losing weight eating all of that fat?”  It was a leading question coming from me, his trendily vegan daughter who was healthier and more conscious than everyone else because I ate salads and French fries and tofu.  How far did that tofu travel to get to me?  No matter.  I’m vegan.

He explained some of the principles.  I was skeptical, but couldn’t argue with what I was looking at: a dude who’d lost a considerable amount of his I-enjoy-the-hell-out-of-food belly.

After he died, I drank a whole lot of Captain Morgan’s and chased it with root beer.  I have no idea what I ate, but I know I drank my way up the scale.  After the grief broke its spell over me, I looked down and was displeased with what I saw.

I knew someone who’d had success with Weight Watchers and decided to give it a go.  It was the first time I’d actively tried to lose weight.  I got the books and joined the chat rooms and easily dropped pound after pound.  Seeing the scale move was exhilarating.  Needing to buy new pants was bliss-inducing.

My boyfriend of five years proposed in the woods.  Soon after the honeymoon, two pink lines showed up and my body wasn’t fully mine again, it turns out, for almost seven years.

My kids are 6.5 and 4.5, and just this morning I stepped on the scale and saw the lowest number I’ve seen since Mr. 4.5 was born: 163.6.

I’m a little bit high on that number right now, thankyouverymuch.

Because here’s what: I’m doing this new thing where I’m eating food that feels good in my body  I’m not measuring it.  I’m not counting it.  It tastes fucking great.

And I’m looking how I want to look.

Okay, so here’s what happened.

At the beginning of the year I noticed that my pants were getting tight.  Walking around the restaurant on a busy Friday or Saturday night, I could feel my body in a way I didn’t like.  I could feel mounds of girth forming on my back under my bra.  A little bit of this is par for the course for most of us, but this was new territory.  I hated how it felt.

Begrudgingly, I admitted that I was the only person who could do anything about this situation and I jumped back onto Weight Watchers.  This time, I wasn’t vegan and I was a mama and so my food landscape was quite different than it’d been during my first go round; my kids would only tolerate so many quesadillas.

But I started doing it anyway.  I cooked for them and I cooked for me.  I ate a lot of carrots.  I snacked on Wasa Crisps slathered with Laughing Cow wedges.

I lost weight, but I thought about food constantly; because I need my brain space available for things other than Points-obsession, I started poking around on the interwebs for a new way.

And then I listened to this podcast and I was like HOLD THE DAMN PHONE.

Disclaimer: the woman responsible for this flawlessly-executed podcast happens to be my step-sister, but this ain’t no family-promoting-family-’cause-we’re-family situation. Betsy (I’m sorry Bets, I just can’t call you Elizabeth) knows her shit.  Trust me on this, guys.  I wouldn’t make you suffer through a boring, preachy podcast – promise.

I listened to her episode about what happens inside our bodies when we start the day with carbs.  Nutshell: our bodies are in prime fat-burning mode when we wake up.  If we avoid carbs in the morning, we burn more fat and stuff, and – just listen to the podcast for the real, intellectual, fun explanation.  SHE’S THE EXPERT, OKAY?  But it made very clear sense to me.  I could understand what she was talking about.

I started drinking BulletProof coffee.  You guys, it’s fucking delicious.  You just blend a tablespoon of grass-fed butter and a tablespoon of high-quality coconut oil into your coffee and WOWZA.  I don’t even miss putting sugar in my morning espresso and I used to be a super-sweet-coffee drinker.

Some people can drink BulletProof and it fills them right up for hours.  Because I so often want to be like everyone else, I tried this.

No way.

I need food in the morning.  Period.

At first, I thought this meant I was “doing it wrong”, “it” being following the rules properly.  (I like rules only because it allows me to eventually hate them; sometimes I need a non-human thing to be mad at.)  I became frustrated by all of the seemingly contrary health and wellness and nutrition information in the world today.  I wrote this blog post, “Is This The Hardest Time In History To Be Healthy?”.

And then I got this comment:

“Hey Em – just my $0.02 on this: All the “right” and “wrong” answers are inside YOU. And that’s not meant to be some woo-woo New Age bullsh*t. You can try new things and monitor how they make you feel. Are you more hungry? Less hungry? Experiencing more cravings? More moody? More tired? Less tired? Tweak one variable. How do those factors change? Tweak a second variable – are you balancing your hunger, energy, cravings & mood? Is your body changing? Sometimes we get stuck in analysis paralysis and don’t move forward because we can’t see through all the opinions. In reality, the only thing that matters is how your food choices make you FEEL and whether or not they allow you to progress towards your goals. Just one opinion. 🙂

Okay, so first, we all know how much I LOVE New Age woo-woo bullsh*t.  Seriously – bring it on.

Second, OH RIGHT.

WEIGHT LOSS AND FEELING GOOD IN OUR BODIES IS THE SAME AS EVERYTHING ELSE: THE ANSWERS ARE IN US.

This comment was – you guessed it – from Betsy.  I told you she was on point.

I know that there are eight million reasons why so many women struggle with body image and weight loss.  Some are societal.  Some are psychological.

But like everything else I’m discovering, I’ve learned that my issues around true health and wellness are rooted in…

Who wants to guess?

I know you know the answer…

Wait for it…

Got it!?

FEAR.

Shocking, right!?  I want rules to follow because I’m scared that if I don’t have a framework, I’ll be out of control.  I’m  scared to trust myself.

Because trusting myself to listen to my body means that what my body does is a result of me, and oh, should we just stop here and notice the irony?

I’m an advocate for personal and emotional accountability – I get paid to work with people on these ideas – and yet I’ve been running away from the very obvious truth: how my body feels, performs, and looks is up to me.

Funny, huh?  How the most obvious things are sitting right there, waiting to be seen?

So here’s what I’ve done: I’ve been reading and listening to podcasts and am really digging the science behind a high-fat diet.  I’m talking to people, and, finally, I’m listening to how my body feels when I eat certain things.

Here’s what I know to be true for me:

  • I don’t want to think about food all the time.  (Unless I’m in Corsica or Italy, and then I onlywant to think about food.)
  • I don’t want to count points or calories or measure my food in measuring cups before I eat it.
  • I want to eat when I’m hungry.
  • I want my body to be lean and healthy and strong.
  • I want to eat real food.  Whole food.  Nourishing food.

So here’s what I’ve been up to.

BulletProof Coffee in the morning.  As I mentioned, I tried just drinking the BulletProof, but it wasn’t enough – I was still obsessing about when I could eat again, and then I remembered, oh, right, if you’re hungry then EAT SOMETHING.  So I started eating two or three eggs scrambled with 1/4 of an avocado, spinach, and a little bit of onion.  This fills me up for a few hours, and that’s the business right there.

Then, it’s usually some sort of veggie-heavy lunch with protein.  I’ve been into kale and broccoli and meatballs.

By afternoon I’m usually in a multiple-hour stretch of not being hungry.  This is super new for me.  I used to be hungry constantly in the afternoon, which is when I’d snack on fake food.  Now, if I get hungry I eat a bite or two (who am I kidding it’s always two) of almond butter or a handful of macadamia nuts.

Then a light dinner because, well, I’m usually just not that hungry in the evenings anymore.

I’m not crashing in the afternoon and making myself more coffee.  Also, I’m INCREDIBLY thirsty all the time.  I’ve read that this happens sometimes when people get rid of carbs and sugar.  I’m drinking an insane amount of water.

Here’s what though: I wasn’t even consciously thinking about going low carb.  And the thought of eliminating sugar was something I considered impossible.  And while I’m not being dogmatic (I ain’t never giving up my Sriracha, which has a tiny bit of sugar in it), I’m not craving sweets.

Oh, and hot yoga.  I’m doing it twice a week.  Except when the car battery dies and I can’t make it in time.  My arms are cut right now, you guys.  I’m rocking out push ups like a boss and am constantly flexing my biceps and poking them with pride.

You guys know me – I LOVE good food and  often struggle to commit to exercise.  So you know I’m not pushing anything in terms of “a way” of eating or moving that’ll work for everyone.

It’s just that it’s impossible for me to ignore the very real fact that we can figure out everything in our lives – EVERYTHING – if we:

TRUST OURSELVES; LISTEN TO OUR LOUD, LOUD TRUTH; AND FEEL OUR WAY BACK HOME TO OURSELVES.

With that?  Imma go make me some espresso with some fat mixed into it.

LOVE,
*E

Q&A 7: Cholesterol Is Not the Culprit – What is Really to Blame for Vascular Disease?

Q&A 7: Cholesterol Is Not the Culprit – What is Really to Blame for Vascular Disease?

Feb 14, 2015 | Blog, Podcast

Today we’re answering a question from a listener concerned that eating more fat will raise her cholesterol levels. We talk about the MAJOR myths about cholesterol including how cholesterol is actually a healing substance and the fact that high cholesterol is a sign of chronic damage in the body. We talk about how to identify the REAL source of the problem to avoid what doctors measure as “high cholesterol”. We talk about how cutting out dietary fat can actually send your body’s production of cholesterol into overdrive and what you need to do to stay healthy & maintain your vascular health.

Listen Now!

Download Episode

Question: Eating more fat is really helping my energy levels and satiety but I’m worried about my cholesterol. Won’t eating more fat raise my cholesterol levels?

Answer: Increasing your consumption of dietary cholesterol DOES NOT mean increasing your serum cholesterol. In fact, cholesterol is deployed to the site of injury or inflammation in the body to help you heal. Instead of trying to reduce your body’s protective mechanism, we need to find out why the injury or inflammation is occurring in the first place and resolve THAT.

Furthermore, cutting cholesterol from your diet doesn’t lower your cholesterol. In fact, it increases your body’s production of cholesterol.

Resources:
Primal Body, Primal Mind
Eat The Yolks
Elizabeth’s e-book
Hormones Trump Calories
Carb Timing

My Personal Lab Work (“Present” refers to June 2014 so its been a little while. I’ll have to get more done soon to see further improvements)

my labs

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What You Need to Know About Fruit and Fat Loss

What You Need to Know About Fruit and Fat Loss

Feb 9, 2015 | Blog

Fruit is one of those “slippery slope” cases within the Primal way of eating. More than that, for weight loss in general there are tons of different opinions on fruit. I want to address both. I want to take a look at the Primal perspective on fruit but also the physiological perspective – how does fruit impact fat loss? Should you eat fruit for optimal results? Are there ways to enjoy fruit and fat loss at the same time?

In the Paleolithic Era, fruit was not available year round. Our ancestors certainly enjoyed fruit when it was in season but it wasn’t available year round. During the warmer seasons when fruit was available and other food was more abundant, they would eat more with the intention of storing fat for times when food wasn’t quite so available. Fruit (and the sugar within it, known as fructose) is uniquely qualified for this job of storing fat. Let’s look a little closer at fructose and why we need to be very careful about how and when we consume it.

Fructose is the type of sugar found in fruit. It is the sweetest of all naturally occurring carbohydrates – sweeter than glucose! Because of its intense sweetness, the food industry has adopted it as an additive to enhance sweetness “naturally” via the development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Now, fructose is hardly limited to fruit. Fructose (and HFCS) can be found in the majority of processed food products as a sweetener and to help extend shelf life.

Initially, fructose was hailed as a beneficial sweetener with positive health implications. This is totally untrue, but there’s a reason the food industry came to this conclusion. Whereas glucose can be used by any cell in the body for energy, fructose must be metabolized by the liver. When you eat foods containing glucose, they are broken down and the glucose goes to your blood stream, raising your blood sugar. Fructose skips that part. It doesn’t end up in the blood stream and so it doesn’t raise your blood sugar in the same way – it goes straight to the liver as the liver is the only place fructose can be metabolized. Sounds like a great thing – fructose won’t raise your blood sugar the way glucose does – but it’s not quite so simple.

Fructose is THE MOST lipogenic carbohydrate. In plain English: when compared to allllll other carbohydrates, fructose is the most easily and readily converted to fat. Bad news! With the fructose load in the Standard American Diet (coming mostly from processed foods) the liver gets easily overloaded and converts all that fructose very quickly and efficiently to fat.

It gets worse. Fructose encourages muscle and fat cells to become insulin resistant. Remember that insulin dictates fat storage/fat release. When your muscle and fat cells are insulin resistant, that accelerates fat storage and makes fat burning much more difficult.

Finally, fructose does not trigger satiety signals the way that other sweeteners do. This is why you can eat a pint of blueberries or an entire watermelon and never feel full. This is part of the reason that processed foods feel so addictive. It worked out really well for our Paleolithic ancestors – they could gorge on fruits and berries during the summer and store fat as energy for the winter. We, however, don’t experience periods of famine and fructose is abundant year round. The result: accelerated fat storage and slowed fat release.

The best thing you can do to prevent excess fat storage from fructose is to avoid processed foods. From there, however, be mindful of your fruit intake. For maximum fat loss, consider fruit a carbohydrate and enjoy it after a workout or with your evening meal.

For detailed information on carbohydrate strategies for fat loss including more on fruit, wheat, oats, gluten plus strategies for improving your carbohydrate tolerance, check out the comprehensive carbs & fat loss ecourse! Follow the link below and use the coupon code Primal10 to get lifetime access for only $69 (including troubleshooting help from me on demand!)
https://www.udemy.com/carb-strategies/?couponCode=Primal10

Q&A 7: Cholesterol Is Not the Culprit – What is Really to Blame for Vascular Disease?

Episode 12: Hormones & Fat Loss – How To Balance Your Hormones Naturally

Jan 31, 2015 | Blog, Podcast

Your hormones control your ability to burn fat. They can put you in fat storing mode or fat burning mode. But most people don’t know whether or not their hormones are balanced! It’s easier than you think! Our hormones are CONSTANTLY signaling us and letting us know when there is a problem, we just don’t know how to interpret the signals! In today’s episode we talk about how you can quickly identify if your hormones are balanced, which hormones are out of balance and we talk about specific steps to take to achieve balance where you need it most!

Listen here!!

Download Episode

Common Obstacle: Generally speaking, we have no idea how to balance our hormones naturally. Heck, we don’t even know if our hormones are balanced to begin with or how we can find out. One of the facts I’m working hard to establish in this hormone mini series is that our hormones dictate whether we’re in fat burning mode or fat storing mode. This makes hormonal balance VERY important. Without it, we’re fighting an uphill battle to fat loss. People ask me all the time how they can figure out if their hormones are balanced and they assume it will take prescription drugs or expensive treatments to normalize their hormones. In most cases, that’s just not true. It’s far easier…

Solution: What is most exciting to me about hormonal signaling is that we have the ability to interpret what is happening inside our bodies! Our hormones SIGNAL US to tell us what’s going on! Most of us just don’t know what the signals are or what they mean. But, once you know that part of the equation, all you have to do is pay attention and you’ll have a REALLY strong indication of whether or not your hormones are balanced! Not only that, you’ll have all the information you need to make adjustments and get back in balance. You can have TREMENDOUS insight into your hormonal balance just by paying attention. The human body is FANTASTIC about communicating when things are right or not so right!

Your hormones are constantly signaling your body based on internal and external triggers. More often than not, we can feel and sense those signals. Shifts in your hormones will cause changes in your hunger, stress level, energy level and cravings. If we understand which hormone triggers which sensation and why, we can respond intelligently and encourage our hormones to work in our favor and not against us.

Practical Implementation:

  • Keep a food journal. Write down everything you & drink
  • Keep a regular tab on your mood, ability to focus, stress level, hunger, energy and cravings.
  • Pay attention to patterns – what foods satisfy your hunger? What foods never do? What foods trigger cravings? Do certain situations trigger cravings? What foods drain your energy? What foods sustain your energy? These patterns give you TREMENDOUS insight.
  • For specific links between sensations and hormones including how to adjust for excessive hunger, cravings or low energy, click here to listen to the full episode. We talk about what hormones trigger hunger and how to reduce it, what hormones trigger cravings and how to satisfy them, and particular hormonal imbalances that drain your energy and how to make different choices to boost your energy.

Resources:
Episode 11 – Eating to Optimize Hormones for Fat Loss Pt 1
Episode 09 – Carbohydrate Spillover: Is the WAY You Eat Carbs Making You Fat
Episode 07 – Carbs & Fat Loss
Hormones & Fat Loss ebook! 50 pages of diet & lifestyle strategies to help you naturally optimize your hormones and get into fat-burning mode!!
Bulletproof coffee 

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Hungry All The Time? Here’s Why (And How To Fix It)

Hungry All The Time? Here’s Why (And How To Fix It)

Jan 23, 2015 | Blog

If you have struggled with your weight for a long time or constantly cycled on and off crash diets, there is a very good chance that you have messed up the satiety signals within your body. That means that your body might not effectively get the messages from your hormones that you’re full. The result? Endless snacking and munching. A feeling of being hungry all the time. A higher than normal volume of food required to make you feel full and sastisfied. Chronic hunger. That kinda stuff. Fortunately, you can get those signals back in check with some straight forward changes to the types of foods you eat. Let’s look at the hormones in charge of hunger and satiety and how we tend to mess them up with our Standard American Diet (SAD).

Leptin is at the top of the hormonal hierarchy when it comes to fat loss and body composition. Here’s the thing about leptin: it’s JOB is to keep you from storing too much fat. Unfortunately, when it’s signaling ability gets screwed up, it can make it very difficult for you to release and burn fat. Leptin is released by our fat cells. Consider it the “hall monitor” of fat accumulation. It is always assessing how much stored fat you have and signaling the body to trigger feelings of satiety when there’s enough, and turning down satiety when there’s not. When you start accumulating excess body fat in your adipose tissue, your fat cells release leptin to signal the brain that plenty of fuel is available. This signal then kicks off a cascade of events to decrease your hunger and increase your metabolism (via stimulating your thyroid and adrenals).

On the flip side, when there aren’t an excess of fat cells secreting leptin, the low leptin levels communicate to the brain that there isn’t enough energy stored and so your appetite is stimulated and your metabolic rate is slowed down.

Sounds like a pretty perfect system that should keep anyone from gaining too much weight, right? Unfortunately, just like what happens with insulin, we fuel our bodies so poorly that leptin’s ability to signal goes very wrong. Just like we have the carbohydrate cycle, there is a similar cycle I’ve put together to show how chronically high carbohydrate diets and high insulin levels impair the proper function of leptin in a big way.

Let’s look at what happens here – and remember – this is what happens over time, leading to excess weight gain, insulin resistance and ultimately leptin resistance making it hard for overweight and obese people to break the cycle and successfully lose weight.

So you’ll recall that when we routinely eat high carbohydrate diets, especially processed, cheap carbohydrates that send our blood sugar through the roof, our body becomes far less sensitive to the presence of insulin. This is what we call insulin resistance and it causes our body to store more fat. More fat means that more leptin is going to be released (because leptin is released by our fat cells). Well, as you continuously pile on more fat cells, leptin secretion continues to rise. The same thing happens that we saw with insulin. Leptin is always around and your body tunes out the signals it is sending out. Leptin resistance and insulin resistance go hand in hand.

When you are leptin resistant to any degree, your body won’t receive the satiety signals it is supposed to. You can eat in excess without feeling full. Your hunger mechanisms are rarely turned off. Your metabolic rate slows because you aren’t receiving those messages that ample fuel is available (via your fat stores) so your adrenal and thyroid function slows. So you eat more, you are highly likely to store the food you do eat as excess body fat and you rarely feel satisfied.

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There is good news though. As with insulin, we have a tremendous amount of control over the action of leptin through the food we eat and the lifestyle habits we adopt. Because leptin is so significantly impacted by insulin, one of the most important things you can do to encourage healthy leptin signaling is to control blood sugar. How do we do that?

  • Eliminate processed foods
  • Reduce or eliminate wheat and grains
  • Focus on whole foods such as vegetables, fish, beef, poultry, nuts, seeds and some fruits
  • Eat protein and healthy fat at every meal
  • When you are ready, incorporate high intensity interval workouts 2-3 times each week.
  • Keep your sugar intake low – even natural sugars like honey

These metabolic hormones are all closely intertwined. We’ve talked about how insulin and leptin go hand in hand but you also see that leptin function influences your thyroid hormones and your adrenals. You cannot address one without impacting the other. If you do damage to one, it will impair the others. Remember that while calories do matter, you can’t make lasting progress without working towards balancing these critical metabolic hormones.

Ghrelin is a hormone secreted by your stomach that is responsible for making you feel hungry. Understanding what triggers ghrelin helps us to control and minimize both hunger and cravings. Increased ghrelin levels triggers your brain to stimulate hunger. It also encourages your body to store fat in your abdominal region. When we control our ghrelin levels, we control our hunger, our cravings and how quickly or slowly hunger returns after we eat. Low levels on ghrelin have the opposite effect – it minimizes our hunger and cravings.

Here are some strategies to consider to help keep ghrelin levels low and hunger and cravings at bay.

  • Avoid severe caloric restriction. Low calorie diets increase ghrelin production.
  • Eat your veggies. Non-starchy vegetables like Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage are high in both water and fiber. They stretch out your stomach, which lowers your ghrelin levels and keeps them low for longer.
  • Eat protein and healthy fats with each meal. This slows the digestive process and slows the rate at which food is emptied from your stomach. The longer you have food in your stomach, the longer your ghrelin levels stay low.
  • Avoid fructose, especially from processed foods, soft drinks and fruit juice. Yes, fructose is found in fruit but its most concentrated in processed foods in the form of high fructose corn syrup. Fructose raises ghrelin levels, making you feel hunger, and it also lowers leptin levels, preventing you from feeling full.
  • Eat often. Especially when you’re starting out in your fat loss journey you’ll be best served to eat every 3-4 hours. This will help keep your ghrelin low and your hunger and cravings to a minimum.
  • Avoid chronic stress. We all need to work on this one, but chronic stress increases ghrelin production.
  • Exercise regularly, especially in the form of high intensity intervals and weight training. These activities increase our production of human growth hormone, which inhibits ghrelin.
  • Make sure you’re consuming adequate omega 3 fatty acids, especially EPA and DHA, from oily, cold-water fish like salmon, sardines, anchovies or mackerel. Studies have shown that insufficient omega 3 intake increases ghrelin production.

Being hungry and battling intense cravings makes fat loss harder than it needs to be. Controlling hunger and cravings can make healthy eating almost effortless.

Wanna know more and take your results to the next level? Check out my Hormones & Fat Loss ebook! 50 pages of diet & lifestyle strategies to help you naturally optimize your hormones and get into fat-burning mode!!

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