Seeking Health

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Hi. This is Cath King from Seeking Health and today I’d like to talk to you about how to eat more to weigh less. I know it sounds like a contradiction but I promise you it’s not. This presentation is for anyone who’s reached a place in their lives where they feel like they’ve tried everything and are sick of diets and want a healthful, sustainable weight loss lifestyle that will keep working for them year in and year out. Today we’re going to explore:

• The role that calories play in weight loss

• The role your metabolism plays

• The role that toxins play

• The role of your mindset

Although you wouldn’t think to look at me now, I’ve always had a tendency to carry extra weight. My whole family has. And for years I tried to keep on top of it with eating less and exercise. I tried diets and cleanses. Which would work for a while, but then would leave me ravenous, facing cravings that seemed to just get worse. After I turned 35, and life was busy with work and family, I found even my “fat clothes” fitting way too tight and so I’d eat a bag of Oreos. I knew diets didn’t work. But what else was there? I was frustrated, discouraged and felt quite hopeless of finding a solution. So I just stopped trying.

As many of you already know, my Dad died when I was in my mid-30s of prostate cancer and I’d had my own health challenges. So instead of trying to lose weight, I focused on researching what was the healthiest diet and lifestyle. And once I found the healthiest and most natural diet for humans, I also solved my problem with weight. I now eat as much as I want. I’m never hungry. I absolutely love my food. I have abundant energy, I have perfect health all the time and I easily maintain a healthy weight and slim figure. I love being able to wear anything I want. I can even borrow my daughter’s clothes.

If you’re like me, you probably hate feeling hungry. It makes you miserable, obsessed with food and grumpy. Also, you probably also know that being overweight, increases your risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke, cancer, osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, gout, sleep apnea and brain atrophy, which increases the risk of dementia as you get older. You might have children you want to be there for and lots you still want to do with your life. But you’ve heard statistics like the life expectancy of obese people is 6 to 7 years shorter than that of normal weight people, not to mention having a lower quality of life.

You might have found that your weight makes life more difficult. It is harder to tie your shoes, fit in an airplane seat, or find a mate. Maybe you’ve experienced some form of discrimination or feel judged.

You probably have lots of things you want to do with your life but your weight gets in the way. You’ve probably also tried many diets that leave you feeling hungry, lacking in energy and ready to go back to your standard Aotearoa diet. So if any of this rings true for you, then this presentation is really for you.

So let’s get started with some of the facts about calories and the role they play for weight loss. Calories are a measure of the energy in our food, so they do matter, but they’re not the be-all-and-end-all of weight loss. And while it might seem that you should just be able to restrict your calories and lose weight, it doesn’t usually work out very well or last very long and calorie restriction gets old real fast.

Studies have shown that following initial weight loss on a calorie restricted diet, the levels of hormones that control hunger change in a way that increases hunger. So whenever you restrict your calories, your hormones will make you even hungrier. That’s because we’re designed so that periods of chronic starvation will trigger a strong protective mechanism to force you to eat as much as you can.

Another thing that happens when you restrict calories is that you also restrict the energy your body runs on, which leads you to feel tired, low in energy and lacking in motivation to exercise or do much of anything.

Finally, when you restrict calories, you also damage your health. Because usually when you restrict calories you also restrict the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants your body needs to be healthy.

But when you eat plenty of the right kinds of calories, your body will feel safe about not needing to store them as fat, your hunger hormones will decrease, no protective mechanisms will be activated, and eventually you’ll have so much energy that you’ll burst out of bed in the morning, fly out the door, skip down the road and seize the day. Exercise will seem far more appealing. Plus you’ll be getting all the vitamins and minerals you need for optimal health.

So, whereas calorie restriction leads to:

• Muscle loss

• Slower metabolism,

• Hair loss

• Bone loss

• Infertility

• Heart failure

• Fatigue

Healthy eating will lead to:

• Fat loss

• Faster metabolism

• Stronger nails

• Shinier hair

• Healthier skin

• Strong immune system

• Abundant energy

Remember that not all calories are created equal and that means that we don’t need to eat less, we just need to be eating right. Here’s an example of the difference eating right as opposed to eating less can make. You can see that eating 400 calories of vegetables is going to leave you feeling fuller than either 400 calories of oil or 400 calories of chicken. During a meal, the stomach expands, and internal nerve receptors sense the volume of food and the pressure on the stomach wall. These receptors send signals to the brain via the vagus nerve, causing the sensation of fullness. When the stomach contracts and empties, the desire to eat is felt again. Larger meals fill the stomach for longer periods of time and are more satisfying than smaller meals.

Highest satiating power is found with high levels of dietary fibre and water and low satiating power is related to higher fat foods. Fruit and vegetables have high satiating values, whereas bakery products like cakes, croissants and biscuits are the least satiating foods. You can also see here that animal foods have more than twice the number of calories by weight as plant-based foods. That’s huge when we’re talking about feeling satiated or full on fewer calories. So we want to get our calories from above the line. And it just so happens that the most satiating foods are also the lowest in calories.

Also when you eat plant-based foods, you not only feel fuller, but you also get more vitamins and minerals and that means you get to experience better health as well as losing weight. You can see here the huge difference in nutrition between plant-based foods – those satiating vegetables, fruits grains and pulses – and animal based foods. And obviously, the processed bakery-style foods are even worse in terms of nutritional value.

So to sum up calories:

• Traditional calorie restriction leads to increased hunger hormones.

• Traditional calorie restriction leads to lack of certain important micronutrients.

• Although you may crave processed, high-fat bakery style foods, they do not lead to satiation.

• Animal foods contain more than double the calories per gram than plant foods.

• A plant-based diet helps you to feel satiated with fewer calories and more micronutrients.

But another huge factor in weight loss is metabolism. Metabolism is how efficiently we use the fuel or calories we consume. Eating to satiation leads to a metabolism increase and decreased hunger, where-as chronic under-eating leads to slowing of the metabolism and increased hunger. So, as we’ve talked about already, you don’t want to restrict calories, under eat or feel hungry all the time.

Next is exercise. And yes, exercise is necessary for healthy weight control and just health in general. Cardio is great for burning calories, and so is really valuable. It also has other great health benefits and so should be included in any health program. But some other forms of exercise have other benefits for weight loss and increased metabolism.

Strength training really increases metabolism. Building muscle is so important because every kg of muscle burns 12 calories per day, where-as every kg of fat only burns 4 calories per day and that’s just at rest. So, when you increase your muscle mass, your metabolism also increases.

High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT, is just exercising intensely for very short periods of time. HIIT doesn’t burn calories the same way that lower intensity cardio does. But what it does do better than anything else is burn body fat – especially that stubborn belly fat.

The next important factor to increase your metabolism is to keep it plant-based. Research has shown that vegans have a metabolic rate that is 11% higher than those consuming meat, dairy and eggs as part of their diet. So not only can you eat more lower calorie plants, but your metabolism will also increase so that you are burning more calories even when you’re sleeping.

Low fat isn’t just important in terms of calories. Fat also interferes with your body’s sensitivity to insulin and therefore your use of energy and metabolism.

Hydration may surprise you, but water is involved with almost every biological function in the body, so therefore your body’s metabolism slows down in a dehydrated state. When your body does not have adequate amounts of water, your calorie burning machines (muscles) slow down dramatically. Over 70% of your muscle consists of water, so when they are not fully hydrated their ability to generate energy is severely inhibited.

Another important factor to understand is - your body’s ability to utilize fat as fuel is also restricted when you are in a dehydrated state. Combine these two factors and you have one slow metabolism!

But no discussion about metabolism would be complete without talking about your thyroid. The thyroid’s main role in the endocrine system is to regulate your metabolism. Every cell in your body depends on the thyroid to regulate its use of energy. If you struggle with weight, it could be because of low thyroid function.

And one of the causes of low thyroid function is toxins and that’s also something we need to consider for weight loss. Toxins impact on our ability to lose weight on a number of fronts. First, environmental toxins mess with our ability to balance blood sugar and metabolize cholesterol. Over time, the changes can lead to insulin resistance. And as we’ve just learned insulin affects how we use energy.

Also our body is very smart and it knows that if our body is assaulted by toxins, it needs to protect the organs essential for life. So it stuffs the toxins where they will do the least harm – in the fat cells and if there’s too many toxins, it will create more fat cells to accommodate them. Your body will do all it can to prevent losing the fat that’s keeping your organs and cells safe.

These toxins also contribute to weight gain by disrupting the hormone signalling system that regulates your metabolism.

And lastly, remember that nature’s solution to pollution is dilution. So if you have toxins in your body, you will also hold on to a lot of water weight, which makes you look puffier – around your face, ankles, and so on.

OK. So now we’re going to look at mindset factors for weight loss. There is a huge mind/body connection. And this can be some people’s primary reason for their inability to lose weight.

Our brains fall into the pleasure trap. We evolved to maximise pleasure and avoid pain with the least effort. Which worked really well when all that was available to eat were fruits and vegetables, with the odd bit of meat scavenged here and there, but it doesn’t work so well when meat, dairy and eggs are abundant and easily had or when concentrated, processed foods are available.

You see, what happens is that when we start out, we get normal feelings of pleasure from eating whole natural foods (just like any animal does when it eats its natural diet). But then we get introduced to processed foods and animal foods, which are a far more concentrated source of calories and so our brain sends enhanced pleasure signals because we’re getting more energy for less effort. Soon though, we experience neuro-adaptation to these unnatural foods and go back to experiencing just the normal amount of pleasure from eating them. But now, when we eat whole, natural foods, because they aren’t as calorie dense, we experience a lower than normal amount of pleasure from eating them. The good news is that it doesn’t take long to adjust back to a normal level of pleasure when we stop eating all the animal foods and processed foods – only a couple of weeks, in fact.

If you are overweight, it is because your brain has a reason for it. If you try to force yourself to lose weight anyway, you are waging war against your brain. This is a war you are bound to lose!

Stress is the number one cause of emotional eating. You see, the primitive brain doesn't understand modern stress. It interprets stress according to ancient programs. Modern stress is interpreted by the primitive brain as immediate physical danger, famine, or susceptibility to the elements, such as frigid temperatures. It responds with measures appropriate to the perceived danger. If your brain interprets stress as potential famine, it will demand that you eat while you can. It will also slow your metabolism, enabling you to gain weight as quickly as possible. It needs you to be fat and if you try to be thin, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Chronic emotional stress from grief, overwhelm, sadness, fear, anxiety, panic, depression, anger and frustration are often responsible for not only the cascade of stress hormones that get activated under chronic stress which can contribute to weight gain, but also contribute to a need to eat “emotionally”.

By the way, a thick layer of fat is also a great emotional shield. To let the fat go, you need to deal with the emotions it may be smothering.

Finding motivation and creating a compelling vision is also part of the role mindset plays, as is our conditioning about diet and health and our attachment to our current diet and lifestyle.

So a weight loss plan needs to address all these areas – calories, metabolism, toxins and mindset. And next week I’ll be talking to you about how to put all these factors together in a very easy, sustainable, effective approach that truly allows you to eat more and feel really satiated with no counting calories, or measuring portions, that maximises your metabolism, reduces toxins and creates a skinny mindset. And that same approach will also improve your over-all health and energy. So not only is this approach the most effective, I think, in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight, it also reduces your risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and normalises blood pressure. And I’ll be offering you a chance to get everything you need to put this approach into practice in the new year for a very special low cost.

I hope that if weight issues are something you’ve been struggling with, that I’ve been able to give you some hope that you can overcome these issues permanently.

So, keep an eye out for my email next Wednesday. I really encourage you to watch my next video on this topic and if you know anyone else who might benefit from this presentation, please share it with them. Until then have a great week and I’ll see you next Wednesday.

 Click here for part 2