Moderate amounts of alcohol have been linked with health benefits including, heart health, mental health and even longevity. Alcohol can increase HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol), and improve your sensitivity to insulin. Alcohol also can help with occasional stress, socializing and even make you appear more attractive! What could possibly go wrong?

If weight loss, particularly fat loss is your goal, then you may want to reevaluate your relationship with alcohol. Alcohol can negatively impact your ability to lose weight. Alcohol a toxin, provides no nutrients but does contain 7 calories per gram. When you consume alcohol, your body will prioritize metabolizing it over any nutrient consumed with it.

Alcohol can increase fat storage. Your body is unable to store alcohol, but it can and will store the carbohydrates consumed with it. Hence, carbohydrates found in beer, wine, sugar-based mixers as well as the foods frequently consumed along with alcohol are more easily stored as fat, particularly in the midsection. Beer belly explained!

Alcohol can increase your appetite, otherwise known as the munchies. Research has demonstrated that neurons in the hypothalamus are triggered increasing hunger. Alcohol is also well known for lowering your inhibitions meaning you are more likely to splurge on the fried calamari appetizer, nachos with cheese or fries with your burger.

Alcohol can also affect your hormones, such as lowering testosterone, increasing estrogen and cortisol levels. These undesirable shifts in hormones impact your ability to build muscle and lose fat.

Alcohol also negatively affects your sleep, the only time you actually build muscle and burn fat! Alcohol lowers melatonin production, acts a diuretic (you may need to urinate), and suppresses your ability to have deep restorative sleep by interrupting the sleep cycles.

Conclusion: alcohol can slow weight loss BUT it doesn’t have to.

There are many factors that influence how alcohol can affect you personally. These include your overall diet and lifestyle, how much you are drinking, the frequency and the amount and what you are drinking. In addition, there are other factors influencing how alcohol affects you, such as, genetics, age, or an underlying health condition.

How can you enjoy the occasional adult beverage without derailing your weight loss goals?

1. Skip the juice, simple syrup or soda mixers. Instead, mix with soda water, lemon or sip it straight.
2. Eat with protein. Ie: shrimp cocktail or edamame appetizer.
3. Drink extra water, before, during and after!

Final take away: alcohol can be enjoyed if done responsibly as part of an overall healthy diet and lifestyle. However, if your weight loss efforts have stalled, you may consider the impact alcohol consumption may have as it provides empty calories, can increase fat storage and lead to overeating.

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.

Stress, often referred to as the silent killer, can be the source of your extra padding, particularly around the middle. Stress is a normal physiological response to a perceived threat. Acute stress, such as experienced when you avert a close collision on the road is easily resolved and does not usually result in long-term consequences. In contrast, chronic stress is a prolonged but persistent stress that lasts for long periods of time of such as living through a pandemic and if left unmanaged can lead to negative consequences! Beyond affecting our weight, stress affects our immune system and has been linked with every major modern-day disease, such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Stress is also tightly linked with our perceived level of happiness and overall sense of well-being.

Simply put, stress does not stay in your head and through a cascade of hormonal triggers impacts how your body utilizes and stores energy. In response to stress, your body triggers the release of cortisol, considered the main stress hormone. Cortisol signals the body to increase the production of glucose by breaking down glycogen, the storage form of glucose, for immediate energy. Unfortunately, overtime continuous elevated levels of cortisol, can turn protein from your muscle into glucose using a process called gluconeogenesis. In an additional attempt to keep glucose in circulation, cortisol also inhibits the effect of insulin, increasing insulin resistance and associated weight gain. Cortisol also triggers the relocation of fat stores to visceral fat, such as found in your abdomen. This entire process of increasing weight and fat storage can occur while your diet and activity levels remain the same!

Of course, stress can also affect our food choices. As a direct result of elevated cortisol during stress, cravings are amplified for foods that can break down easily to glucose and momentarily may make us calmer and feel better. Cravings for treats such as cookies, ice cream or pizza are common. Ironically, these foods only provide a quick fix, depleting your reserves even more and leaving you wanting more.

Finally, stress induced cortisol can have a devastating impact on your sleep. Sleep deprivation only further increases stress, hunger hormones and inhibits your ability to build muscle or lose fat.

Here are action steps you can take today to help protect yourself from the insidious effects of chronic stress:

1. Diet: the best time to prevent an unwanted behavior is before it happens! Plan ahead and don’t give yourself a chance to make a bad decision. Start early in the day by packing your diet with adequate amounts of protein, healthy fats and a variety of vegetables. Most people don’t cave to stress at 9:00am, so use that to your advantage.
2. Exercise: schedule in activity. Ten minutes of physical activity especially in nature has demonstrated to significantly lower levels of stress, while increasing endorphins (the feel-good hormones).
3. Mindfulness: meditation continues to be recognized as a top tool for managing stress. In addition to meditation, diaphragmatic breathing techniques or EFT tapping are also strategies you can also implement to significantly decrease the release of stress related cortisol.
4. Sleep: make it a priority as it may be the MOST important, yet challenging strategy to combat stress. Stay on a schedule, use a sleep meditation and finish your last meal 4 hours before bed.

Final takeaway: stress can be a covert operator, altering food choices while increasing fat storage. You do have the power to fight back by adopting proven tactics that address your personal challenges!

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.

Tell me it isn’t true! After decades of serving as royalty symbolizing the epitome of the “perfect” protein source, the crown is being taken away. Move over chicken, or should I say “MOOVE” over chicken and make room for beef!

Shocking as all this is, let me break down for you the mounting research connecting the introduction of seed oils (ie: soy, corn, etc) into the human food supply with the astronomical rise of obesity as well as all of the modern-day lifestyle diseases such as: heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Industrial seed oils, which are highly processed oils such as soybean, corn or canola were only introduced in the early 1900’s. It all began by Proctor and Gamble whose main product at the time, cottonseed oil became displaced by the discovery of oil. They discovered that by hydrogenating the Cottonseed oil, which up to that point was considered a toxic waste product, transforming into a lard looking like product, that could be sold for cooking. The birth of Crisco and the beginning of a major shift in a source of fat in our diets.

It wasn’t long before the meat industry, realized that feeding their animals grains, instead of grass that they were able gain weight faster, creating higher yield and larger profits. In addition, these grains are subsidized by the government making them cheap and even more appealing. If you have ever noticed the increased marbling of a ribeye steak or the increased size of the chicken breasts, then you may want to know that these animals are not only fat, but they also sick. In our modern era, it is much more important to start paying more attention to what we are eating is eating!

Poultry has the highest concentration of linoleic acid. This is the predominant polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), prevalent in sunflower, safflower, soybean, corn, and canola oils. How do these fats contribute to obesity? These fats are essential and must be obtained from your diet and your body will use whatever fats you consume to form critical roles such as regulating inflammation, immunity, blood vessels, platelets, synaptic plasticity, cellular growth, pain as well as becoming part of cell membranes. When these particular fats become part of your fat cells, they make them more sensitive to insulin making them able to store more fat. This means more calories are stored as fat and in addition, with all of those calories being put in storage, you are left hungrier and in search of more calories! So, you are able to gain weight, particularly fat faster and lose weight slower. Still think those abnormally large chicken breasts are a good deal?

What action steps can you take today to support your weight goals?

1. Limit poultry (even organic is fed corn), conventional raised beef and pork, farmed raised fish/ seafood, processed meat alternatives containing soy, corn or canola.
2. Be aware of bottled salad dressings that frequently are made with canola or soybean oil.
3. Avoid processed foods made with soy, corn, canola, safflower, sunflower, etc.
4. Eat more wild fish, 100% grass finished meat and pasture raised chickens and eggs.
5. Eat more Chia seeds, hemp nuts, walnuts and flax seeds.

Final takeaway: eat animals that are lean and healthy like you want to be.

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.

Obesogens are toxins prevalent in our environment that act as endocrine disruptors and alters the way your body utilizes calories. This means that in-spite of eating protein and exercising at the gym, these compounds may be instructing your cells to become fat cells. These toxins are stored in our fat, meaning more they promote fat formation in an attempt to protect you.  

Obesity has continued to rise steadily and is predicted to continue to climb. In light of current research, it is clear that diet and exercise are not only not the only variable involved in this shift, but toxins called obesogens that alter our metabolism to promote weight and fat gain. In fact, some believe we are actually eating less, exercising more and continuing to gain weight!

Consider that in 2006 scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health reported that the prevalence of obesity in infants under 6 months had risen by 73 percent since 1980. Apparently, even animals such as rats are also gaining weight. Diet and exercise does not explain this alarming increase obesity in these populations. Hopefully, this growing pile of evidence is enough to convince even the most skeptical that something beyond eating more and moving less may be contributing to our growing problem.

It is not a surprise that so many people are frustrated by their efforts to obtain their preferred weight!

What are my top suggestions that you start today to keep the scale going in your favor?

1. STOP taking in the toxins. This is easier said than done!
   • Eat organic produce as much as is reasonably possible.
   • Choose organic, grass-fed meats and wild fish or seafood. Remove the skin as this where toxins are stored.
   • Limit dairy, as this is the top method animals have for removing toxins, breast milk!
   • Choose clean filtered water. Consider a home filtration system under your sink.
   • Avoid storing or cooking food and water in plastic.
2. Provide your body the essential nutrients required to address all three phases of detoxification.
   • For example: Cruciferous vegetables, green tea and lemon.
3. Consider other lifestyle modifications that support detox.
   • For example: sleeping, exercising, sauna or massage.

Final takeaway: there are many reasons to eat better and exercise more, but in order to achieve your weight loss goals, you may need to also consider the effect of environmental toxins.

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.

It’s the Bacteroides against the Firmicutes and the winner gets control over your weight.

That’s right, in spite of your best efforts to make diet and lifestyle changes that support your weight loss goals, there is an ecosystem of bacteria that is fighting for its’ own survival that can alter how your body responds to nutrients. We have identified two main families of bacteria the Bacteroides and the Firmicutes. Apparently, individuals who have more Bacteroides are able lose weight more easily and stay lean. In contrast, the Firmicutes cause more calories to be stored as fat, regardless of where those calories come from.

Research has demonstrated that transplanting fecal material(yes, I mean poop) composed of intestinal bacteria from an obese human transplanted into the colon of a normal weight laboratory rat causes significant amounts of weight gain even when the diet remains unchanged. In addition, consider the use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics used for decades in animal production to increase growth rate!

If the change in how your body utilizes calories isn’t enough, consider that these bacteria are powerful enough to drive your behavior, even if it may be harmful. Have you ever noticed that once you start eating certain foods, you are driven to continue to eat that food. Again, this is about survival and when it comes to bacteria, they are capable of traveling from the gut via the vagus nerve to the brain to direct you to consume more food that directly feeds them! Guess what food these harmful bacteria feed on, sugar and foods that quickly breakdown to sugar. Who is really in charge here?

How can you take back control and arm yourself against the Firmicutes and support the Bacteroides?

Here are my top suggestions that you can start today:

1. Starve the Firmicutes and Feed the Bacteroides! Eliminate highly processed carbohydrates. Ie: Sugar, bread, cookies, etc. Consume plenty of pre-biotic fiber such as found in Jerusalem artichokes, chicory root, raw dandelion greens, leeks, onions, garlic, asparagus, spinach, beans, green bananas, oats, and soybeans.
2. Get more Omega-3 fatty acids and less omega-6 fatty acids, this has been correlated with an improved bacterial ratio in the gut. Eat more wild fish, grass-fed meats, walnuts, and less poultry.
3. Limit use of antibiotics as well as consuming them in animals. Avoid artificial sweeteners like Sucralose that have shown to alter the bacteria in the gut. Include a variety of fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, kefir, kombucha tea, or apple cider vinegar.

Final takeaways: the next time you sit down for a meal, remember you are not the only who is eating and you can decide which team of bacteria you want to support.

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.

It’s inevitable, you think, you are getting older, your diet hasn’t changed, yet your waistline has! You blame it on a slowed metabolism that is often associated with aging. What if this did not have to be the case? What if there was a way to keep the fire stoked on your metabolism, well into your later decades?

Weight gain, and most importantly feeling out of control with your body does not have to accompany aging! Certainly, there are changes that occur as we age, however the biggest impact on our metabolism as well as overall functioning is mostly within our control, this is the amount of muscle we have.

After the age of 30, we start losing as much as 3% to 5% per decade. Over a lifetime, loss of muscle can be as much as 30%! Muscle is the most metabolically active tissue in the body, meaning that with less of this precious cargo, your ability to burn calories even at the same weight goes down. Use or lose it, as the saying goes has powerful implications when it comes to maintaining your metabolism. Let’s consider this scenario from your body’s view of the world, which is to protect you and ensure you don’t use more calories than is necessary. If you stop using your muscles, slowly overtime, as is often associated with aging, or abruptly, as can occur with an injury, your bodies response is to get rid of muscle as quickly as possible. In fact, disuse, such as seen with those on bedrest, even for previously healthy adults, can lead to 12% loss of muscle in just one week!

What steps can you take today to keep your metabolism fired up?
1) Exercise: whatever activity you enjoy that is able to get your heart rate up and challenge your muscles. It is critical to continue this activity consistently above all else! Your body needs to move every day. I would prefer that someone did 10 to 30 minutes of activity everyday, versus 90 minutes one day a week. Ultimately, any exercise you choose should be sustainable over the long run. It may be an accomplishment to finish a marathon, but most people will not be able to sustain that level of activity.

2) Diet: when it comes to building muscle, protein quantity and quality are critical. 30 to 50 grams of protein at each meal is a wide range to shoot for. Quality of protein is also critical, there may be protein in grains and vegetables, but your ability to utilize that protein may be very different than the protein you get from an egg for example. Personalization of these recommendations are key. Many factors affect your personal ability to digest and ultimately use protein that you are consuming.

3) Sleep: this is actually the main time that you rebuild and grow muscle, assuming you have stimulated it during the day! In addition, sleep impacts hormones such as cortisol and insulin that are also necessary to be in balance for muscle growth to occur.

Final takeaway: There are things that we can’t control as we age, but maintaining a healthy metabolism doesn’t have to be one of them. Stand don’t sit, consume high quality protein and make sleep a priority.

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.

How to lose fat: sleep more and exercise less!

Do you find it shocking that the secret formula for burning more fat does not mean skimping on sleep or logging extra minutes at the gym?

The fact is long bouts of steady state cardio do not lead to sustained weight loss or an improved body composition. Unfortunately, repeating the same exercise everyday will diminish its impact overtime, meaning that you have to continually lengthen your workout to achieve the same affect. If your goal is to improve your bodycomposition by losing fat, while gaining muscle this strategy is not in line with your goals. The answer to this dilemma, may be found by considering the role of the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is in control of maintaining weight as well as bodyfat. However, it remains wired from times of starvation as well as constant activity and its’ top responsibility is to keep you alive and protect its resources, this is true even in the case of obesity! It is not surprising that people can get frustrated and return to their sedentary lifestyle.

Sleeping an under-appreciated weapon in the battle against bodyfat is considered the top sports supplement for athletes. Even, Tom Brady has his own recovery sleep wear partnership with Under Armour, recognizing the powerful punch sleep quality can contribute to his performance. Going to the gym is where you make microscopic tears in muscle fibers by exercising, but sleep is the time you actually build muscle as well as lose fat. Consider that insulin, the hormone responsible for energy storage is directly affected by the quantity and quality of sleep we get. One night of bad sleep and your blood glucose can appear prediabetic, 3 consecutive days of poor sleep and you may appear completely diabetic. In addition, the hormones that help manage our appetite Ghrelin and Leptin increase without adequate sleep leading to cravings for high glycemic carbohydrates. This is your bodies response to provided you with quick sources of energy. Unfortunately, indulging in those cravings only make your energy levels dip further while hastening any weight or fat loss efforts. Motivation to maintain better diet and lifestyle changes become increasingly challenging.

The exercise and sleep habits that we have been practicing for decades have misled us!
What can you do right now to take advantage of nature to achieve the fat loss goals you are seeking?

Here are my top suggestions that you can start implementing today:
1) Vary your exercise routine, never do the same workout 2 days in a row. For example: alternate walking, swimming and biking or if walking is your only option, rotate a short, fast paced walk with a few longer, slower paced walks
2) Add interval training to your cardiovascular workouts, specifically high intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT has demonstrated to burn fat, build muscle and increase the number of Mitochondria. Fat burning occurs in the 24-48 hour window after exercise has occurred. There are many ways to do HIIT, but a simple way to begin is to challenge yourself to go “all-out effort” for 30 to 60 seconds and alternate with 60 to 120 seconds of “recovery”. As always, listen to your body and know your current fitness level.
3) Make sleep a priority. Practice good sleep hygiene, such as, staying on a schedule, keeping your room dark and cool, remove electronics, consider a sleep meditation practice and, eat your last meal at least 3 hours prior to bed. Meal timing in particular has recently gained more attention in its powerful ability to affect your bodies circadian rhythm.

Final takeaway: appreciate your bodies amazing ability to adapt to stimuli, and that by utilizing the latest science, you too, can have more control in your ability to achieve your fat loss goal!

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.

Why focusing on weight loss may be the wrong goal! Instead, focus on fat loss for a more meaningful transformation!

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to lose weight, yet so easy to gain it back?

The answer may reside in part by evaluating your bodycomposition changes to specifically identify where you lose the weight? Unfortunately, traditional dieting and exercise programs most frequently result in the loss of lean body mass or muscle and worse than that the weight gained back is mostly fat. According to studies, an average of 11lbs of fat is gained every time you diet. Ultimately, this leaves in a more vulnerable position, with a now much slower metabolic rate to gain all the way back and more! No wonder, many people get frustrated and feel achieving their preferred weight is unattainable.

However, changing your focus to losing fat and maintaining or increasing muscle will maintain or even improve your metabolism making sustaining results a lot more attainable. We have new appreciation for these two critical segments of the body: fat and muscle. We now understand that they are not inert but are actually endocrine organs producing hormones that communicate with every cell in the body. In addition, where fat can survive on very little calories, muscle burns at least 3 times as many calories to sustain itself. Fat, specifically visceral fat stored in the abdomen and around your organs produces inflammatory messengers that only encourage more fat storage. In contrast, muscle the most metabolically active tissue burns calories and fat 24/7, even while sleeping!

What the top action steps you can take today to lose fat, gain muscle and take back control over your weight?

1) Include adequate amounts of high-quality protein, defined as ones that contain the best profile of amino acids to meet our needs (ie: whey protein, eggs or hemp if you are vegan) at every meal.
2) Also include plenty of vegetables that contain essential vitamins and minerals that are cofactors in shuttling those essential amino acids into your cells.
3) Eat more fat! In order to lose fat, you need to eat fat. Your body will burn what you are consuming. Focus on good sources of monounsaturated fats, saturated fats, and polyunsaturated fats, such as olive oil, butter and sockeye salmon or ground flax for vegans.
4) Limit consumption of processed carbohydrates, such as bread, pasta and cereals. Higher glycemic carbohydrates such as these, trigger insulin, the energy storage hormone to store any extra calories as fat. How do cows get their marbling or chicken get uncharacteristically large breasts: grains!
5) Exercise is an essential component of any weight management program both cardio as well as weight resistance to ensure muscle mass is maintained while fat is lost. Cardio when performed at high intensities for short bursts can burn fat long after the activity is completed. Weight resistance ensure that the muscle you have will need to stay even while you are losing weight.

Final take away: any diet or lifestyle changes that you make need to be practiced consistently and sustainable over the long term. Focus on progress, not perfection and eventually you will adopt the necessary habits to support your goals

If you want to know how a personalized plan could be the missing link in achieving your goals, please call now 941-685-8074 or click here to schedule a free 15 minute discovery call.