Archive for Hormones

Want To Be Lean & Healthy? Get Normal!

0422161434aQuestions I’m often asked:

“How do I ramp up my metabolism?”

“How do I make my immune system strong?”

“How do I get a flat stomach?”

“How can I have more energy?”

(BTW, that’s Shelby and I on Marco Island a couple of weeks ago )

These questions are expressed from the perspective that if we could take a special supplement, cut a bunch of calories, walk a certain amount of steps, or find the right exercise, the things we hate about ourselves would go away and we’d be golden.

Really though, what we need to do is become normal.  God made our bodies spectacular; we just need to eat the right foods, think the right thoughts, sleep, and move often, to keep it so.

It’s not rocket science, but it’s tricky, because we’ve been inundated with terribly bad advice on diet and health for several decades now.

All those words of wisdom from our doctors/government/pharma, along with commercials and advertising, have us sicker, fatter, and more depressed than ever.

How to pull yourself away from 40 years of being told you need to count calories, shun fat, and take pills to feel good?

Educate Yourself!  We’re a chemistry set, not a math equation.  Work with your chemistry, and you become NORMAL (lean and healthy).   Here’s some wisdom:

Read here to learn how excessive Stress Hormones mess up your gut, your immune system, your sex hormones, your brain, and cause heart disease and weight gain. (Manage Your Stress = Think About What You’re Thinking About).

Read here about studies showing that Rosemary is effective against estrogen dominant breast cancer, and here to learn about studies showing how much more effective Turmeric can be than radiation and chemo, with none of the side effects.  ( Eat medicine foods daily!)

Read here to learn why award-winning cardiologist, Dr. Assem Malhotra, says we need to watch our sugar instead of fat when it comes to heart disease and weight.  (It’s not about the calories.)

Read here to learn how a lack of iodine can cause cancer and disease in many parts of our body.

Please, read, invest your time in learning about how your body works and what it wants. None of us are “low in medicine”; but we’re often full of crappy food, crappy thoughts, and lack of movement.  That’s all poison to the body, and your body will respond accordingly.

Eat Real Whole Foods, control your thoughts/manage your stress, move a LOT, get regular sleep.  It’s truly that simple.

Do You Ride The Diet Roller Coaster, Weekend Binge, or Punishment Exercise?

Two big steps to weight loss are at the end of this Post, but I want to start with a client email.

Most important lesson I have learned is I now have a more balanced life w/ exercise and eating. Always needed to have both diet and exercise to feel good.

Now, if I don’t make the gym, I don’t feel guilty, just make sure I am eating good food. And the scale is not topsy curvy on me. So used to gaining extra weight over the weekends. Now eating mostly at home, the scale is my friend on a Monday morning. Might be up very slightly, but due to maybe eating bigger portions on Sat and Sunday nights vs weeknights. Between hearing it from you, and also reading it in more than one article, I was able to put it into practice.

Beautiful weather yesterday, skipped the gym, we went for long walk around the neighborhood, then cooked burgers and hot dogs on the grill, w/ salad and tons of veggies. A nice relaxing night before another busy weekend.

Alan’s still amazed at all the good food we are eating, not hungry and he no longer has his sugar cravings.

So glad we decided to do this w/ you, and not doing it on our own. Well worth every penny. You make it so easy.

I’m a recovered Chronic Dieter-Weekend Binger-Punishment Exerciser; that whole “so used to gaining weight on the weekends/ balancing my eating and exercising”, spoke to me.

Can you relate?  Maybe you have a touch of my old diagnosis, here’s some clues:  The scale goes up and down, a lot.  You convince yourself you “need” a treat because you’ve been so “good”/you have major craving/ or after all, it’s the weekend.

You wake up mornings determined to (1) barely consume a thing, and (2) burn thousands of calories via workouts.  You believe this will burn butt or belly fat.

You LIVE by the 80-20, rule, which only makes sense because since calories rule, and weight is a math issue; a 20% indulgence can easily be nullified by starving/excessive cardio.

I could go on and on, but you get it, right? It’s a miserable way to live, it’s ineffective – especially long term – and consuming.  Who wants to be consumed with their weight or their body?  Not me!  Thank goodness for wake up calls, of which I had many.

One of them was when Mark gave me Dr. Perricone’s book, The Wrinkle Cure, for my 40th birthday. (Don’t judge – that’s my kind of book and Mark knows it.) The book preached eating fats for good skin. That was a conundrum for me as I thought fat was the devil.  At 40, I was deep, deep into chronic dieting and excessive exercise. It seemed to be working, except for the constant bloat, stomach problems, asthma, blood clots, varicose veins, and total disgust I had with myself after the weekend binges.

Dr. Perricone had a lot of science in his book, and the whole “eat fat” message was being preached more and more.  It was getting hard to ignore.

Next wake-up: The “eat fat” paradigm was joined by the “eat Real Whole Food” paradigm.  Another shocker! And scary. I loved my Diet Foods.  I couldn’t imagine life without Diet Ice Cream, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Crackers, Diet Pizza, Diet Cereal, Diet Wraps, or Diet Desserts. (They’ve been gone for years now and I could care a less. Shows how wrong our thoughts can be.)

Further fueling my fire: I was a devout reader of all books and magazines Diet, like Oxygen/Muscle&Fitness Hers/Shape. All those women exercised like crazy, starved themselves for days, and had a cheat day.  They looked amazing and were definitely my role models.

I was brain washed.

I dropped all my subscriptions a few years ago. (Another thing I don’t miss – at all.)

Thank you God!

Thank You for the multiple wake up calls, because I’m someone who apparently only learns the hard way.

If you’re stuck in this vicious pattern, here’s a wake up call: Dieting doesn’t work.  Science and studies show that almost 99% of everyone who Diets gains their weight back.  99%!

Exercise – which is WONDERFUL – doesn’t take weight off.  Sucks, but true.  If it did, I’d weigh 50 pounds instead of 130.

Want to lose weight? Or at least get off the Roller Coaster of weight up and weight down?

Stop dieting, and stop the punishment exercise.  Eat Real Whole Foods, exercise smarter (not more), prioritize sleep, and put effort into managing your stress. Really.  But I said I’d give you 2 specific steps to weight loss.

1) Drop the grains.  White, whole wheat, quinoa, whatever.  If you have weight issues (and health issues) stop eating them.  You’ll live without your sandwich, your cereal, or your pasta.  Honest. I thought I’d die without those foods, but they’re not even a blip on my memory radar.  Try it for 3 weeks and see how you feel; watch your stomach flatten; access your energy levels/skin condition/immune function.

2) Quit the excessive exercise.  Studies have shown that it’s counter-productive for weight loss as excessive exercise (and punishment exercise) raises cortisol, and cortisol makes belly fat and prevents fat loss from fat cells. Besides, it’s impossible to out exercise a bad diet, impossible.

Lift, practice yoga, limit HITT workouts to a few a week, walk with a friend/dog/sister, or compete in your favorite sport because you love it.

Punishment exercise doesn’t work.

Two more tips:   Drop the unrealistic images -that we all hold- of what we should look like.  Magazines are photoshopped.  Actresses and models go through herculean efforts to be skinny because their living depends on it.  It’s not natural nor healthy.

Let’s be natural and healthy!

Finally, Action and Effort are necessary.  We’ve got to Plan, and then Stick To Our Plans.  Plan our shopping, cooking, packing, and workouts.

Got kids? Got a job?  Got a commute? Hormonal Issues?  Those are just details to be factored into your Plan, not excuses. They’re like the zombies on Walking Dead: we have to work around them.

That’s all for now.  If you want help, get in touch with me.  I LOVE this stuff!  You’re not doomed. You’re not destined to be overweight, or sick, or tired.  If you are, it’s just where you are right now, now where you have to be in a few months.

You could be a whole new you by Christmas!

Do You Suffer With Headaches or Migraines? Here’s Some Tips:)

st thomasConfession: Headaches and Migraines aren’t an issue I’ve struggled with very much.  Until 3 years ago, I’d only had 2 migraines, and a handful of headaches.  Then Menopause hit, or rather the tail end of Peri Menopause, and wow, I got a serious taste of some serious headaches.

For me, it was a matter of getting my hormones tested, and getting on some bio-identical estrogen and progesterone for a year. The headaches stopped immediately.  After a year, I went off both because subsequent testing showed that my hormones levels had gone from way too low to way too high.  I went cold turkey on the hormones out of fear, got on some great herbs, and all was well,…for a while.  Then the headaches came back.

A hormone test (January 2015) showed that my high levels had plummeted way back down to those of old Mother Hubbard, so this time I went on a natural progesterone cream(February, 2015), and added flax (oil and seed) very consistently to my diet to up my estrogen level naturally.  I’m due for another test soon, and I’ll let you know what my results are, but I haven’t had a headache since February.

Point of my story:  my headaches were hormone related.

What causes yours and what can you do about them?  You’re gonna need to put on your detective hat, because this is a condition that has so many causes and triggers.  Drugs are a bandaid at best, as they often don’t even work well with migraines; they don’t eliminate the cause of the pain, and they come with too many side effects to ignore.

Those side effects are real and scary. It’s worth the time and effort to figure out your migraine and headache causes, and then experiment with different solutions.

You already have my hormone/headache story. If your headaches are completely centered around your cycle, no matter your age, then you can assume it has something to do with your hormones.  This doesn’t mean – at all – that you need to start taking hormones!  That’s something for you and your doctor to figure out.

There’s other responses that could be triggering the headache (and cravings and PMS too):  low B vitamins, and low magnesium.  Both of which get depleted during our period. (or I should say, your period) B6 and B12 are the most commonly sited Bs when it comes to our hormones shifting and symptoms, but I recommend a good B Complex to every woman I work with.  Magnesium too; as a matter of fact, Magnesium deficiency is very common.  Studies show that at least 56% of our population is Magnesium deficient,  but my point with Magnesium and female cycles, is that it’s easy to become deficient right before your period, even if you aren’t usually.

So B vitamins and Magnesium, recommendations 1 and 2.  (These are the 2 supplements I have my girls on.)

Next, look at your life style patterns.  Do you sleep enough?  Do you drink alcohol?  What drugs are you on? Trigger, trigger, trigger.

Here’s a biggie:  do you eat gluten, or a high refined carbohydrate diet? Both can be HUGE headache/migraine triggers. For a one stop shop on this, check out the Wheat Belly blog.

MSG, artificial colors, flavor enhancers, histamine containing foods, artificial sweeteners, these can all be triggers.

Even healthy foods can trigger headaches for certain people; foods like eggs, dairy, nuts, …..pretty common allergens, and allergens can cause headaches.

One of my favorite go-to’s is America’s Pharmacist, Suzy Cohen.  That woman’s awesome, and prolific with both her free advice and books, so let’s start there.

Resources:  Her book, called Headache Free.  A podcast where she dispenses all sorts of great advice, here.   Her response to a question about tension headaches, here.  Her blog, here. And finally, a great article kind of wrapping up a whole bunch of her advice on headaches, here.

One last trick to try when it comes to headaches, a Liver Detox.  If you work with me, you know that I believe in always “loving my liver”.  I’m constantly taking dandelion or milk thistle, or doing a Biotics liver detox or taking Herb Pharm Liver tincture.  I also make sure to eat plenty of liver loving foods every single day.

If our liver is so overwhelmed with chemicals and toxins and sludge from high fructose corn syrup or trans fats or SUGAR, then of course it’s unable to perform perfectly.  One of the results from that would be toxins circulating through our brain and causing headaches.

If you think this might be your problem, get in touch with me.

You don’t have to suffer!  What I said in the beginning is true:  become a detective.  Headache meds are band aides with side effects.  Figure out your causes, and then work on natural and healthy ways to eliminate them.

86% of our health care expenses are spent on Life Style Diseases, like headaches and migraines.  That’s actually great news, because we can fix our life style and positively effect our health.

Have a wonderful day!

5 Love Languages, Greens, Chocolate, & 10,000 Steps: The Heart Weekend!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMark and I are on a Healthy Heart Weekend:  paddle-boarding, sight seeing, and a Marriage Conference with Dr. Gary Chapman of the 5 Love Languages.  We’ve slept in 2 different hotels in 2 days, but we packed all our food, so we’ve managed to eat well, move a lot, and do some Positive Thinking.  In other words, we’re traveling healthy.  I get a lot of emails and questions about traveling, and I want to answer them with a leaning towards Heart Health.

Heart Disease is the #1 killer in America, and it’s something we should all be working to prevent.  It’s showing up in children now – moms, here’s where we step in.

Heart disease is a LIFESTYLE DISEASE.  High blood pressure, plaque, heavy-dense cholesterol, high blood sugar, hard arteries….. these are caused by the what we put in our mouth, the exercise we don’t get, and the stress we don’t manage.

No one has heart disease because they’re low in statins.

Whether we’re traveling or home, it’s important to take the steps to make our body healthy.

Let’s start with food.  Our heart primarily runs on fatty acids for fuel.  Surprising? It’s the truth, so feed your heart healthy fats!  Have you read that the new Dietary Guidelines will “un-vilify” cholesterol as a cause of heart disease?  It’s true!

“Previously the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg/day. The 2015 DGAC (Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee) will not bring forward this recommendation because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, consistent with the conclusions of the AHA/ACC (American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology report. Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.”

What about the fact that Saturated Fat has NEVER been scientifically proven to cause heart disease?

“Saturated fat has remained the main dietary villain for heart disease for over 50 years. Last year a meta-analysis of 72 studies with more than 600,000 participants determined that there was no association between how much saturated fat people ate and their risk of having a fatal or nonfatal heart attack (Annals of Internal Medicine, March 18, 2014).”

This isn’t carte blanche to eat any thing we want.  Fats are very unique and different; some are great, some are good, and some are horrible.

Stay away from vegetable oils, margarines, and trans fats, they’re always bad, always.

Eat up grass fed butter and ghee, extra virgin olive oil, coconut butter, avocados, and nuts.  Bonus: these fats have anti-fungal/bacterial/viral properties, immune boosting properties, anti-inflammatory properties, and are even healthy for our brain.

The heart also loves amino acids/protein (it is a muscle after all, and needs to rebuild it’s cells), and vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.

You know how I always say “eat a TON of vegetables”?  Herbs and spices too;  Moms, stay strong when it comes to vegetables and picky kids.  You’ve GOT to win this battle.  Here’s why.

The heart (and the arteries in the penis, the neurotransmitters in the brain, the lining of the gut, bone remodeling, and white blood cell function) heavily depends on Nitric Oxide (NO).  NO is a vasodilator that relaxes the lining of the arteries and increases blood flow.  If there’s any damage to the arteries at all, which is where a lot of that NO is made, then there’s NO deficiency.

Here’s a list of foods high in natural nitrates ( which convert to NO):

*Garlic
*Beets
*Greens
*Walnuts
*Cranberries
*Honey
*Black Tea
*Pistachios
*Salmon
*Animal Organs
*Shrimp
*Onions
*Peanut Butter

Cool fact: chew your food well, because it’s the bacteria in our mouth that convert the nitrates to NO – who knew!!!

We want to leverage all the colors of the vegetable (and fruit) kingdom, because they have nutrients, besides their vitamins and minerals which are vital, called phytonutrients, that scientists are really just beginning to discover.  Nutrients called lycopene, lutein, alpha carotene, and beta carotene.

Studies show that bodies with higher levels of these nutrients have less stroke and heart attack.

What’d we pack to eat this weekend?  Chicken (already cooked), eggs, salad greens, zucchinis, cukes, tomatoes, onion, garlic, sea salt, EVOO and balsamic, roasted potatoes (left over from Wednesday- so I just warmed them) dates, peaches, nuts, Jay Robb protein powder, raw milk, raw cream, and kerry gold butter.  Oh, plus organic chocolate and coffee!  We stay in Residence Inns whenever we can because they have kitchens.

Exercise: almost as critical for the heart as food.  Have I told you I LOVE MY FITBIT??  Even on days like yesterday, where we were in a seminar from 9 to 3:30, we managed to get over 10,000 steps in.  We walked on each break, plus lunch, and again after dinner.  Had I not had the Fitbit, we’d never had taken that many steps. Most phones have counters on them if you don’t have a smart watch yet.  Friday we paddle boarded a few miles, and then walked a battlefield and Civil War Park.  Links are attached if you’re looking for fun in Richmond, Va.  Today:  lifting with Macy at the VCU gym!

5 Love Languages – for heart health?  YES!  Have you ever read the book, The Blue Zones?  It’s about the 4 places on earth with the largest populations of centenarians, or people who live past 100.  I’ve been obsessed with it for years, the same with any story I see of a Centenarian, or studies on Centenarians.

What do these people have in common, is it Kale Smoothies or Cross Fit or Veganism?  NOPE!  The biggest common link is community, usefulness, and purpose.  In other words, they’re fulfilled and happy. They have love in their life.

That’s where the 5 Love Languages comes in.  Mark and I are regular pursuers of both Happy Marriage and Happy Minds.  I say “pursuer” because happiness doesn’t just drop on our heads, it’s something we have to focus on and work for.  That’s really what “stress management” is about, right?  It’s how we handle life that matters, and the 5 Love Languages has great advice for communicating and getting along.

On that note, our heart apparently THRIVES on happy hormones and chemicals, and can be destroyed by destructive hormones (cortisol and insulin) and chemicals.  This is a big deal, and an area of growing research.

Meditation is part of progressive heart disease reversal programs because it’s been proven again and again to work.  There’s too much evidence to ignore: if leading with our negative emotions is our normal go-to, then all the good food and exercise in the world could be negated when it comes to heart health.

I’m leaving you with a few really great heart health resources, please check them out.  What we hear in our doctors offices often doesn’t correlate with the latest in the scientific research.

Most research on reversing heart disease, (not merely managing symptoms) is based on Life Style answers, like food, exercise, stress management, and sleep.

NO ONE’S MAKING MONEY OFF THOSE REMEDIES; the likely hood of a stress management rep, or a Real Whole Food rep, walking into our doctors office to sell him/her on the latest and greatest reasons to use these tools isn’t going to happen.

We’re going to have to do this on our own.

Dr. Mercola/fats/heart health.

Dr. Davis/fats/heart health.

Dr. Wortman/fats/heart health.

Podcast/Dr. Kahn/heart health and testing – FASCINATING & INFORMATIVE.

Will Crunches Give You A Six Pack?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’m away at my annual fitness convention, the DCAC, So Fun! I’m here with my sister Christy, who’s a trainer and pilates instructor; and my daughter Macy, – I love it!  Macy plans on becoming a yoga teacher after graduation, and this place is a great intro to the industry.

I’ve been in this business for 28 years.  Things have changed!  We’re having a greater awareness of why we need to exercise, which I’ve written about in a few recents Posts, here, and here.  We all know we’re in a stressed filled environment, and that exercise helps that, tremendously.

(Stressing about our body fat can make us fatter!)

Why do so many still pursue the 6 Pack? Why is weight loss still the number one goal of new gym members?  Smart marketing; promising weight loss hooks people.

It’s a lie, trust me, because weight loss and 6 packs come from the kitchen, not the gym.  It’s FOOD!  Food is so important!  Not just for losing weight or getting lean, but for how we feel day to day.

You know my mantra:  eat clean proteins, good fats, a TON of vegetables, some fruit, some nuts, some beans, good dairy if you tolerate it, and stay far away from flours, sugar, chemicals, and hydrogenated fats.

But about that 6 Pack, and weight loss: what negative goals, honestly!  Exercising to pursue those intents is just so…….. gloomy, and stressful! Delete!  Exercise for your mind. Exercise for your mood.  Exercise for your longevity and immune system and hormones.

It’s the same with eating well; eat Real Whole Foods because you’ll feel so darned good afterwards!

Guess what happens if we eat well and exercise every day? We lose weight. We become healthier, we feel more energetic, we’re happier, we cope with stress better, and we sleep better.  Why would we NOT eat right and exercise everyday?  It’s the consistency of our good habits, the repetition, that make us who we are.

Back to my conference:)  Have any of you ever taken Piloxing Barre?  O.M.G! What fun!

Can You Eat Potatoes ( or other starchy Real Whole Foods) ? Test Your Blood Sugar!

4 girls after walking cere

( I love this pic of my girls! Raise healthy kids!  They’re depending on us!)

Potatoes, corn, carrots, plantains, bananas, beans,…wow, they sure do cause confusion.  Years ago, Dr. Atkins came out with his first book and completely demonized these foods by lumping them in with grains and sugars.

It was a great book, and he had a TON of research behind his initial recommendations, which were that if you’re overweight and want to lose, cut waaay down on the carbs, and consume lots of protein and fat.  He’s right.  Crappy carbs will not only put weight on us – and our kids – but they’re the perfect vehicle for:  inflammation, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurological conditions, ADD, ADHD, skin issues, and just about every disease out there.  Crappy carbs cause an Inflammatory Environment in our body – and our kids bodies.

Crappy Carbs are Evil.

But are those Real Whole Foods I listed above “Crappy Carbs”?  No. But that doesn’t mean you get to eat them.  Sorry.  The real answer is, “It depends.”  What do they do to your blood sugar after you eat them?  There’s an easy way to find out:  buy a blood sugar kit, aka, a Glucometer.

IT’S SO FUN – honest!  You might think Glucometers are just for diabetics, but they’re not.  Anyone can buy a kit in any drugstore or Walmart, or off Amazon, anywhere.

If you’re a weight loss client of mine, you probably already own one.  If you’re not a client, but a blog reader, buy one today.  Here’s why.

When blood sugar rises above “normal”, (normal is between 80 – 100, but some labs have lowered that value to 70 – 90), the pancreas releases the hormone INSULIN.  Insulin is an anabolic, building hormone.  Insulin takes the excess blood sugar, the amount that sends the value over “normal”, and stuffs a little in our muscle cells (the empty ones), a little in the liver-glycogen storage (if it’s low) and then…….turns all the rest of the excess into FAT/triglycerides, and stores them in the fat cells.

How does Blood Sugar get above normal?  EASY.  Every single carbohydrate we eat becomes blood sugar in our gut.  EVERY. SINGLE. CARB. Whether it’s from a grain, pure sugar, fruit, veggies, beans, nuts, whatever.  The carbohydrate in those foods is reduced to Glucose.  That’s the gut’s job:  break food down to chemical molecules so our cells can use it.  All carbs become glucose and fructose, 2 tiny, simple sugars that fit in cells easily.  (Today, we’re just talking about glucose; fructose is evil too! More on that later.)

How much blood sugar is too much?  If we weight 150 pounds, we have about 4.7 liters of blood.  “Normal” blood sugar – a measurement of 85 on the glucometer – equals 4 grams of sugar in the whole body.  4 Grams.  4 Grams. That’s 16 calories of carb (1 gram = 4 calories).  More than that, and the conversion of sugar/glucose to fat/triglycerides happen.

A medium French Fry has 47 g of sugar (all carbs break down to sugar).

A can of coke has 39 g of sugar.

Krave Jerky Lime Chile has 39 g of sugar per package.

1 cup of pasta has 43 g of sugar/carbs.

1 cup of orange juice 27 g of sugar.

Those are all obvious Crappy Carbs; the starches become sugar/glucose very very quickly and go from gut to blood stream fast.  But the real reason they’re Crappy is because they’re highly, highly processed and have no nutritional value at all.  None.  They’re so anti-good for us they’re poison!

Conventional wisdom tries to tell us that pasta has B vitamins, or french fries from McDonalds are vegetables.  Bull Crap. Those B vitamins – added/fortified – back into the pasta, were made in a factory in China from synthetic materials.   And those Mc D’s french fries?  19 ingredients!!  Gross! That’s not real!  Read their ingredient list, and several others, here.  Please, read it.  Our kids eat this stuff, and our kids are getting sicker and fatter and sadder than ever.

It’s. The. Food.

So what about YOU, and ME, and potatoes, or corn, or plantains, or all these other starchy fruits and veggies?  How does that affect our blood sugar since we know they’re carbohydrates?

I don’t know how they affect you; I know how they affect me because I’ve pricked my finger and tested a million times in the past 5 years.  Buy the glucometer and test yourself.  They’re cheap and they’re easy to use. Prick your finger 90 minutes after a meal (peak blood sugar), and look at the number.  See how your oatmeal or your pasta or your crackers affected you.

And see how a meal of corn or potatoes or bananas or beans, or any high carb fruit or veggie, affects you.

Five years ago, I had pretty fluctuating blood sugar.  I considered myself “low carb” because I ate a lot of “low carb” foods:  Kashi Go Lean, Low Carb Tortillas, Low Carb Bread, Low Carb Ice Cream, Low Carb Cookies…..  then I bought the glucometer.  Wow.  Did I get a wake up call.  My blood sugars were way too high, and it scared me into action.

No more Low Carb Crap, just Real Whole Foods.  Of course, I worried about the high carb fruits and veggies, and the glucometer showed that yes, they did raise my blood sugar too much.  So I cut way back on them.

In the past 5 years I’ve changed and refined my diet – a lot.   I eat more herbs and spices than ever – every day.  I use essential oils.  I’ve added more fat than I ever thought possible.  I’ve managed to completely delete “cheat days” from my life (thank you God), I’ve become scared of processed foods to the degree that I’m literally afraid of them.  I’ve joined several food co-ops, I go to a couple different farmers markets.

Last summer I went totally ketogenic for a few months.

In other words, I’ve taken several actions, consistently, for several years now, and guess what?  Now when I take my blood sugar ( which I still do all the time – and I take my kids and Mark’s often also), it’s always good.

A few mornings a week I throw a banana into my smoothie – blood sugar stays low.

I eat potatoes or plantains for dinner at least 4 or 5 nights a week.  The other night I measured before dinner, I was 78.  After a dinner of roasted potatoes coated w butter, squash coated with olive oil and parm, a steak, and a piece of dark chocolate, I was 98.

I’VE BECOME SO DARN NORMAL.  It’s awesome!

I believe you can become normal too, with persistence and consistence.

What’s normal?  Normal is when you eat a real whole food, in normal amounts, in a normal diet full of nutrient dense foods loaded with good fats, some protein, and a ton of vegetables, and your body processes it just fine.

Your muscle and liver cells are open to the carbs and the fat both, you sleep well, you don’t feel sick, bloated or brain foggy – ever, and your energy and immune system hum.

By the way, as good as they look, 6 pack abs aren’t totally normal, especially for most women. Having some body fat – is normal.  Being ripped, lean, and shredded, goes against most body types, and the actions needed to get there usually lower thyroid function, lower body fat to unhealthy levels, and mess up our sex and adrenal hormones.

Not normal.

How can you become normal?  There’s only one way: change how your brain things about about your body and food.  No more diet and weight loss focus, it doesn’t work. Focus on your health instead.  Pledge that at least a few times a week you’re going to read something from Dr. Mercola or Suzy Cohen or Dr. Davis/Wheat Belly or if you’re interested in the science behind the Ketogenic Diet (because I really do believe it heals cells and the liver and reverses insulin resistance) check out Dr. Nally here.

Here’s my Cigarette Analogy:  would you ever pick up a cigarette butt off the sidewalk and put it in your mouth? No! That would be disgusting, and there’d be no effort at all in resisting that urge.  I want you to look at a slurpee or a box of cookies or a fast food burger and think:  “I’d never put that in my mouth, that’s disgusting!”.

Here’s something that’s not disgusting, and it’s delicious!  2 Recipes, each I’ve had on here before, but they’re worth repeating.   The first is my Sweet Potato Pizza – Oh My Gosh is it delicious!!

Chipotle Sweet Potato-Zucchini Pizza

20150627_145925

1 large sweet potato
1 large green zuc, ring out water by 20150627_172301twisting in a towel
1 heaping tbsp chipotle powder
3 eggs, beaten
5 tbsp coconut flour
1 tsp salt
Mix all ingredients in a bowl, and pat onto a pizza pan. Bake at 425 for 40 minutes. Top with tomato sauce and cheese ( and whatever else you want, I’ve done corn, cilantro, and peppers). Bake at 425 for 10-15 minutes.

Roasted Potatoes – kids love this and it’s so much better than french fries-

roasted potatoesScrub and dice potatoes
Pour a couple tbsp of melted KerryGold butter and coat them w it
Salt & Pepper
Bake at 425  50-55 minutes, flip w a spatula half way through.

By the way, these things freeze and reheat beautifully, they’re a great Power Cooking food.

Part 2 of Summer Shape Up: Stressing About Our Body Fat Just Makes Us Fatter – Really.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALet me say that again:  Stressing about our body fat just makes us fatter. It’s true; and as woo-woo as that may sound, it’s very grounded in science.

Remember in my last Post  I said that when it comes to weight and our health, our thoughts are more important than a food plan?  If a good food plan was all it took, no one would be fat and sick.

One of my favorite quotes is:  “Our body isn’t a math equation, it’s a chemistry set.”  This is why low calorie, low fat diets don’t work in the long run.  We upset our chemistry when we eat that way.

I’m continuing my series on taking control of our thoughts to get control of our body.  Many of us constantly bemoan our butts, our stomach’s, our thighs, and our batwings. Constantly.

How’s that negative thinking working?

A favorite quote, “What we think about, we bring about.”   More science, more chemistry; our brain LISTENS to our words and creates chemicals and structures in response to those words.  Seriously.

Constantly bemoaning our weight and our shape and our health is called STRESS.  “Stress” is a chemical state in our body that’s really only good if we need to run away from a bad guy or perform a heroic feat.  Other than that, it works against us. (Actually, there’s more to the stress story.  “Temporary” stress can help us solve problems and get out of jams. It’s “Chronic” stress that hurts us – and makes us fat.)

A stressed-out state, for ANY reason (mental, physical, emotional, REAL OR FAKE), causes the same chemical response: an increase in hormones that dump lots of SUGAR into the blood stream.  Nothing is easier and faster for our cells to use in an emergency than sugar.  Not fat, not protein, but SUGAR.

When we feel stressed from a kid or a spouse or a co-worker or traffic or from agonizing over our weight or stressing about food or exercise, our glands squirt FIGHT AND FLIGHT HORMONES (chemicals) into our blood stream.

These hormones do a number on us:

– they inhibit fat burning in cells (never good for healthy body weight!)

– they dump loads of sugar/glucose from the liver into the blood

– they break down muscle tissue to convert to glucose (fitness friends, take note – we want that muscle!)

– they make us hungry and crave more sugar – just in case the stress is chronic (“stress eating”)

– they slow down the thyroid (not a priority), slow down digestion (not a priority), slow down sex hormone production (not a priority)

– they suppress the immune system (not a priority, and this is why stress is associated with being sick more often)

And that’s just the starter list!  The gist:  Stress Makes Us Fat and Sick, not lean and healthy.

I know I already said this, but I’m saying it again:  stressing over our weight or our food or our workouts is EXACTLY the same as stressing over a bad guy or money or a fight.  Stress is stress is stress is stress.  The same chemicals are released into the body.

Action Plan to Combat Stressing About Our Fat:

1) Quit comparing ourselves to any woman on a magazine cover.  I quit buying women’s magazines 15 years ago.  I didn’t want my 4 daughters influenced by those faked and unrealistic images. Woo-hoo! FREEDOM.  Seriously, have you ever googled what they do to those cover images to make them look so perfect?

Having those images around is like having our favorite trigger food in the pantry.  Bad stuff happens.  Set yourself up for success and control your surroundings as much as possible.

Temptations CAUSE stress.  Get rid of them.

2) Quit comparing ourselves to anyone at the gym, or in our circles, who has a better body than us.  STOP IT.  What a waste of a brain space!  And it’s stressful!  We have friends and family who need our help and our prayers.  We have a home and jobs and people who need our attention. There’s turmoil and starvation and war going on, and we’re stressing about our butt and our weight?  Let’s focus on important issues.

The Bible says to focus on Love, Joy, Appreciation, and Gratitude.  Meditation books say the same thing.  What we focus on has a CHEMICAL CONSEQUENCE.  (Hey!  Food also has chemical consequences!)

3) DEEP BREATHING.  Humming.  Singing. Breath Patterns.  Yep, really. For weight loss!  These actions stimulate our Vagus Nerve, the nerve that runs from the brain stem to every organ in our body.  When we stimulate it with deep breath, humming, and singing, it releases Happy Chemicals.

This is the polar opposite of our Fight and Flight/Sympathetic nervous system, which is the system that releases cortisol, adrenalin, and more.

The Vagus Nerve releases chemicals that actually benefit our DNA, and make our brain more creative, problem solving, and powerful.   Fight/flight chemicals (chronically produced) damage our DNA and inhibit problem solving and creativeness.

Fight/fight chemicals also deplete our willpower.

The Vagus Nerve meanders all the way into the belly; spreading fibers to the tongue, pharynx, vocal chords, lungs, heart, stomach, intestines and glands that produce the anti-stress enzymes and hormones: Acetylcholine, Prolactin, Vasopressin, and Oxytocin. These chemicals make digestion, metabolism and relaxation BETTER.

They even make us poop better!

4) Gratitude, appreciation, love for your body. Yes, you need these for weight loss.  Honestly, even a year ago, I wouldn’t have written that.  I’ve read this, been taught this, for years, but it never sunk in.  I’m wired pretty happy, so I never thought I needed this advice.  I was wrong.  We all need this advice.

Again, stressing over our body, picking apart it’s “defects”, is just “stress”.  Stress is a chemical state that inhibits fat loss, and encourages fat deposition.

I really believe this explains the strict diet and exercisers, who are just doing it for weight loss – not health, who never seem to lose weight.  

When we eat for health, our thought patterns are something like this:  “I haven’t had any fish in a few days and I really need that Omega 3.”  Or, “My throat hurts, I need some garlic.”  Or, “If I eat that, I’ll have bloat and foggy brain the rest of the day. Better stay away.” Eating for health means looking at food as Medicine, and it’s empowering!

Counting calories, measuring, white-knuckling up some willpower – NOT empowering.  At all.  It’s draining.

Try this: next time negative beliefs about your body consume your thoughts, stop them, and replace them with 5 different gratitudes about your body.

If you have difficulty thinking of 5 gratitudes, you’ve got a bigger problem than your weight!

Resource for improving your mind:  Battlefield of the Mind, by Joyce Meyers.

Learn more about the Vagus Nerve here.

Reinforce Food is Medicine here.

Go think about what you’re thinking about!

Ditch The Starchy Carbs and Paleo Indulgences to Get Rid of Winter Fluff

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ve had several questions on “safe starches” and paleo indulgences. Here’s a Post with the 411 on both, and advice at the end for making it easier to get rid of winter weight gain.

If our starch is coming from a grain, as opposed to vegetables or fruit, I don’t think it’s safe – for most people.

If the grains contain the protein “gluten”, we’re ingesting one of the most common allergens out there. If we don’t see typical symptoms, like stomach ache or stuffy nose, that’s because food allergies, or food sensitivities, often manifest in sore joints, headaches, skin problems, fatigue, and auto-immune conditions.

The gluten protein is incredibly difficult to digest; humans don’t even have enzymes for gluten. Gluten goes thru the small intestine IN-completely digested, perforates the intestine wall, and leaks into the blood stream as a large protein. When our immune system sees the big proteins in the blood, it mounts an Immune Attack, and this can manifest as joint pain or an attack on different organs or systems. Pretty serious stuff.

What about gluten-free grains, such as kamult or spelt? They still contain “gliadins”. Gliadins, once digested, become “exorphins”, which are morphine-like compounds that bind to opiate receptors in the brain. Their effect is to cause Addictive Behavior, and Appetite Stimulation. This explains binges and eating way past full.

What about “healthy whole grains”, like buckwheat, quinoa, or millet? Look at their carb counts:

1/2 c oatmeal 29g carb

1/4 c wild rice 34g carb

2 oz wheat pilaf w orzo 40g carb

1/4c barley 32g carb

1/4c quinoa 30g carb

2oz whole wheat pasta 44g

Note that these serving are really, really, small; I mean, who eats a quarter cup?  Have you ever measured 2 oz of pasta?  I have.  It’s miniscule.

4 grams of carbs = 1 tsp of sugar.  2 ounces of pasta is 10 teaspoons of sugar.  Think about that.

Excess blood sugar is ALWAYS repackaged as triglycerides, always.  I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but high blood sugar is tied to every disease out there through the inflammation and glycatation it causes.  It’s also a big cause of Weight Gain.

Next, Paleo Indulgences.  I’m talking treats made with almond or coconut flour, plantains, honey, molasses, Swerve, chocolate, cream, nut butters, etc.  I’m going to call them P.I. for short, and if you need recipes, search Pintrest.

P.I.s are wonderful for kids. They’re practically a necessity when transitioning from a SAD ( standard american diet) to RWF (real whole food).  I LOVE a good paleo cookie or homemade ice cream. But unfortunately, and this is where I am right now, for weight loss, or just leaning out the Junk In The Trunk after a long winter, they need to either go, or be strictly limited.  Sad.

But summer clothes just don’t have the “hide the poochy stomach” ability that winter clothes do!

What to do? Set up your house/office so that temptations don’t trigger you.  Don’t buy anything that tempts you, because tempting food calls to us, loudly.  No lying that we’re buying something “for the kids”.  If it’s a temptation, it’s banned.  Treats need to be “treats”, and the definition of treat is: “an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure.”  Once or twice a week is an out of ordinary event.  EVERY DAY IS NOT OUT OF THE ORDINARY.

Girlfriends, thanks to estrogen, a propensity for slow thyroid, very little testosterone, and high cortisol, we just don’t have tons of leeway for jumping off the path of a RWF, fairly low carb diet, if we want to be a healthy weight and feel great.  It’s the price of being a woman.

It doesn’t mean we have to starve or exercise a ton – as a matter of fact, that plan slows down thyroid hormones and raises cortisol – exactly what we don’t want.  But we do need to pay attention to the details:  TONS of vegetables, plenty of good meats and eggs, healthy fats, some fruit, some nuts and seeds, and some real dairy if we tolerate it.

Hours need to go by between meals so that Sugar Burning stops and Fat Burning happens.  Avoidance of foods that cause headaches, stomachaches, and skin problems is important; those symptoms are signs of inflammation, which raises cortisol, which inhibits fat burning.

So there’s my Sunday take on grainy carbs and paleo treats.  Have a wonderful Mother’s Day, and eat smart!

 

Want To Lose Weight? Ditch the Dumb Mini Meal!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s Spring and I have several clients who want to lose weight by summer.  Many of them have been eating 5 to 6 times a day, as suggested by their doctor, their weight loss center, or some book they’ve read.

I hate the Mini Meal Plan! If you want to lose weight, the constant grazing just has to stop.

Years of Diet and Supplement companies advising us to eat 5 or 6 times a day to “speed up our metabolism” has been disproven -scientifically – over and over.  Unfortunately, the “eat all day long” idea has taken hold; that’s an exciting thought for Foodies! But how’s that working out for health and weight loss? Not so well, and no wonder.

Mini meals don’t speed up metabolism. If you eat 2000 calories in a day, divided by 3 meals or 6, it takes the same amount of energy (thermogenesis) to digest that food. Sadly, thermogenesis doesn’t actually account for much of our calorie burn at all, so as a weight loss tool, it’s ineffectual. As a weight GAIN tool, multiple meals are perfect! The habit of eating all day is pleasurable for our brain to establish. For everyone who’s tried this form of eating, you know that dependency and excitement about the next meal becomes a happy mental focal point.

Mini-meals cause eating to happen whether there’s hunger or not. Eating happens because “it’s time to eat”.

I recently heard an interesting study on Flight Attendants who smoked.  They were questioned as to when their desire for a cigarette started to well up while on their flights.  The answer:  the duration of the flight had nothing to do with wanting a cigarette, but how close they were to landing, and actually being able to smoke, was what triggered the wanting.

Apply that to food, and constant mini-meals:  the schedule, or thought that your next meal is right around the corner, produces a desire and excitement for eating.  So does plummeting blood sugar.  Join mini-meals with high carb “snacks” ( like most diet bars or shakes ), and you’ve got a problem: constant glucose/sugar in the blood stream, going up up up, and then crashing down down down.

By the way, who does benefit from Mini Meals?  The Diet, Supplement, and Food Industry.  Snacking is a multi-BILLION dollar business.

Snacking was pretty much unheard of for Adult Americans until the early 1970s.  Hmm, that’s about the same time Weight Gain started to ramp up!  Until then, snacking was considered something only for young and growing children.

Quick Review:  Carbs are digested to blood sugar/glucose.  When glucose is present in amounts over 100mg/dcl, that’s considered TOO MUCH GLUCOSE in the blood (remember: excess glucose is TOXIC to the body). Your pancreas releases the hormone Insulin, which takes the excess glucose and (1) puts it in needy muscle cells, or (2) puts in empty liver cells, or (3) takes all the leftovers and remakes the glucose into TRIGLYCERIDES.  Triglycerides are FATTY ACIDS.

Say out loud to yourself:  “Excess sugar and carbs are turned into body fat.”

Wonder if this is happening to you? Look down at your stomach. The body deposits most of these homemade triglycerides in the abdominal area. In addition to belly fat, excess glucose and excess insulin dramatically create/cause inflammation in the body. Inflammation is linked to absolutely every single chronic disease and condition out there, including weight gain.

Here’s my approach: we only eat 3 meals a day; we eat mostly healthy fats and proteins, tons of vegetables, some fruits, some nuts and seeds, some whole fat dairy, our blood sugar/glucose stays under 100, we go hours WITHOUT insulin in our blood.

****Then our pancreas releases the hormone GLUCAGON. Glucagon “taps” the fat cells holding those triglycerides, takes them to the liver, which remakes them into glucose for the body to burn. Now we’ve literally “burned fat”.

What about “crashing”?  Please don’t worry that you’ll “crash your metabolism” if you don’t eat every couple of hours. That’s ridiculous. Your metabolism is at the mercy of your HORMONES; the hormone Insulin BUILDS, the hormone glucagon TEARS DOWN. Anabolic and Catabolic. ( We’re a Chemistry Set, not a math equation. )

Worried because you can’t seem to go more than a few hours without STARVING?

Two reasons.  1) You’re a sugar burner. Sugar burners have created systems for digesting and storing sugar/glucose, and because that system runs so fast, you’re genuinely hungry all the time. Fat Burners can go HOURS without feeling hungry, even through hard workouts. IT FEELS GREAT TO BE A FAT BURNER. Honestly! For years I was a 5/6 mini-meal a dayer. What a pain in the butt.

2) You’re addicted to either food or eating, or both.  🙁

Either way, get in touch with me.

Anyone and everyone can break the patterns and habits that have led to weight gain, fatigue, and inflammation.  Everyone.  It’s Mid April, you could be a rock star in a few months if you start now.  You could be a whole new person by Christmas!  

Food is Medicine or Food Is Poison.  Let me teach you how to make Food your Friend.

I’m 50! Here’s my Diet and Body Image Story, See If You Relate.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATomorrow I turn 50, woo-hoo!  Big day, and I thank God for all my blessings.  One of those blessings is that I’m healthier at 50 than I was at 40, and even 35.  Are my abs leaner? No. But that’s about the only health marker that hasn’t improved in the past several years since I gave up Dieting and switched to Real Whole Food.

Confession:  I used to be a food addict; and I had an obsession with wanting to be thinner and leaner. Now, after 28 years in the fitness and nutrition business, I can definitely say that way too many women feel the same way, and those thoughts rule the mind, and ruin the body.

It doesn’t have to be like that!

Here’s my story of dieting and negative body image, see if you relate.

I was a typical female teenager. I’d read Teen Magazine and Seventeen, stare at the models, and dream of looking like them. My first diet started when I was 15. I’d busted through the 114 pound weight limit I set for myself in 9th grade, which compelled me to sneak home a pack of Dexatrim – it worked, for a while. Til it didn’t. Next, I tried the Fruit Only diet; which worked less well than Dexatrim. In 12th grade I bought a pair of special pants that – for real here – attached to our vacuum cleaner, and I had to wear them while exercising – while the vacuum was running. I believed in those pants, but they didn’t work either. I still just looked like me.

Reality Check: at 5’6 and 128 pounds, I wasn’t overweight; I just didn’t look like the girls in the magazines, or on TV. And it bugged me.

Fast forward to 1987, I’d graduated from college and married Mark. My 4 years of college had me totally committed to the world of fitness,  I loved exercising!  Not only did I get a serious endorphin rush from workouts, (and still do) but I fully, deeply believed that exercise would keep me slim; the whole “calories in – calories out” theory. I took a full time job managing the Aerobics Department at a local gym, and my career was born. Through the rest of the 80’s, and the 90’s, my desire to be fit – and weigh less – never waned.

Well, actually, after my first baby, Megan, in 1990, between heavy nursing and working out, I got down to 114, my 9th grade goal weight! Let me tell you all: Happy. Days. But then she quit nursing and I got pregnant again (Amanda), and again (Macy), and again (Shelby).

Through constant diet efforts, I managed to stay around 128, but I never looked like Cindy Crawford. It bugged me. I wanted that thigh gap.

Sometime in the mid 90s, I switched from reading regular women’s magazines, to body builder women’s magazine. This did so much for my self esteem! Now my dream shape wasn’t just thin; it was ripped, lean, and muscular. (Strong is the new skinny.) Since I was a group ex instructor, and personal trainer, I had the opportunity to workout hours a day. I fueled myself with frozen diet meals, diet desserts, diet drinks, cereals that had more fiber than hay, and (thank you mom! ) vegetables. Meat was a rarity, and fat was an absolute no-way. I ate 5 to 6 “mini-meals” a day, carried my protein bars with me everywhere (I was scared I’d get hungry), and counted the hours to the recommended “cheat meals”, which sometimes consisted of a whole pizza and a pint of ice cream. No, actually, and honestly, that was just starter food; because I was never full from crap like that; I was just triggered to eat more.

Anyway, I thought it was such a great Diet Plan! Just like the women in the magazines! Except for when I fell off the wagon, which happened all the time. And not for a meal, but for a day, or two, or more. I lived on what I call the Diet Roller Coaster: Starve – Feast – Starve – Feast, for years. My weight actually averaged out, but it was all so consuming that I started to worry about myself. I didn’t want my 4 daughters disliking their body, or obsessing about food, like me.

I began to see the insanity of this cycle, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted to stop, badly, but I literally couldn’t. I went to a counselor sometime in my late 30s to describe what I guessed was bulimia, or food addiction. He told me I was probably either depressed or anxious, and did I want a prescription. I was neither, and I was pissed he’d even suggested that.

(Ever notice how often a doctors default with a woman’s health issues is, “do you want an anti-depressant?” )

This is when my health started to take a nose dive. Really, it started to go downhill at 30, when I developed asthma, but it took 10 years for me to see what was happening. (Inflammation from the crap I ate) The asthma came on quick and strong, and I was put on 3 separate daily drugs to “manage” it.

Then, after my 4th baby at 31, severe IBS began. Severe. Like, sometime starting in my mid 30s, my stomach would bloat every afternoon to the point of me looking 5 months pregnant.  And.. I had bad gas. It was awful. I thought it was a side effect of eating so healthfully….

Right around then my period stopped, for the first of many times. My GYN ran a blood test which determined I was so low in estrogen that the lab listed me as “post-menopausal”. I was 34. The solution? Put me on The Pill to force a period, and make me “normal” again. I did it, but it kept happening, for years. (Today I know that low estrogen isn’t normal, and it’s fixable.)

At 36, fatigue and low energy set in; a test showed my thyroid hormones were low, which meant daily thyroid meds. At this point, our medicine cabinet was loaded with drugs to deal with all the symptoms I considered completely normal: Gas X, Beano, Tums, Seravent, Advar, Fast Acting Inhalers, Armor, the Pill, Midol, and Advil. I popped these things in my mouth every day without a thought. I carried them in my car…. Now I carry systemic enzymes and “bitters”.

The final straw, my Ah-Ha moment, came at 40. I got my second blood clot. My doctor told me that since this was my second one, I needed to go on Coumadin, a blood thinner. OMG. Grandmas take that stuff! Thank you God for the clot, because THAT was my wake up call. Instead of Coumadin, I went to a Functional MD, and was put on systemic enzymes and big doses of fish oil, (actually, those were my starter supplements). Every blood test I’ve had since then has shown zero “sticky blood”, just normal blood.

For the first time, I started to look and connect what I ate, with the health problems I was having. Up til then, I’d just Dieted, which I thought was supposed to make me healthy, but it hadn’t. The big shocker: I realized that the majority of what I put in my mouth wasn’t actual food, it was Pretend Food that looked real and tasted great, or at least I thought it did at the time. But except for pretty big daily serving of vegetables, I lived on processed foods high in carbs, chemicals, and bad oils; in other words, pure crap.

I served COMPANY frozen diet dinners with vegetables added, topped with slices of fat free cheese! I thought I was a smart Gourmet! I wasn’t.  Those “foods” slowly made me sick, and kept me constantly hungry.

Over the next few years, I morphed from a “Diet” based paradigm, to a Real Whole Foods paradigm, eating (seriously) copious amounts of healthy fats, healthy meats, and absolute loads of vegetables.

I quit eating grains, then sugar. That was hard because I was addicted, but I preserved, and thank goodness! Today I use ZERO effort or will power to stay away from that stuff.

The “no grain/no sugar” scares people, but consider this. Imagine what it’s like to never have gas, bloat, or constipation. I said my stomach’s not as lean, but it’s flattish! Or to not constantly think about food.  Or to have more energy at 50 than at 40? My asthma’s gone. My thyroid labs are normal. My estrogen’s still low, but I made it through menopause, fully, without one hot flash or night sweat.

Best part? My weight’s not an issue. Not because I weigh 114 or 128, but because the obsession is over. The Diet Roller Coaster, which was caused by dieting, is over. I don’t gain every weekend and lose every week. I don’t promise myself every Monday morning that “this will be the week I lose weight.” I’m just…. stable, and normal. There’s still no thigh gap. I don’t for a moment look 20, but, I look fine.

I’ve stopped being so ridiculously hard on myself.

I feel like I used to live “Under The Dome”, but now I see how I was manipulated into wanting someone else’s unattainable ideal body image. Those images are just Temptations, trying to entice us to spend our money on products!

This brings me to the point of my piece: Women, I think many (most?) of us are the victims of slick marketing created to make us feel bad about our looks.

I think said marketing conspires to convince us that we’re too fat, too busy, too depressed, too stressed, and too inadequate to handle life with out special diet food, diet pills, diet aids and diet groups. Science Daily reports a study that says 75% of American women surveyed report unhealthy thoughts, feelings or behaviors related to food or their bodies.

Really? 75% of us feel badly about ourselves and/or food? Is this what we’re teaching our daughters? Talking about with girlfriends? We’re being duped into wasting most of our lives stressing and obsessing about our weight! This is criminal, and the efforts aren’t just making companies money (billions!) while we continue to gain weight; they’re making us sick, which leads to pharmaceutical drugs, which have side effects, which leads to more drugs.

Yes, I’m a conspiracy theorist. Here’s a few statistics that I base my conspiracy theories on: In 1960, about 10% of Americans were obese and an overweight child was a rarity. Today, we have 68% of our adult population either overweight or obese, and 1 out of 3 kids. In the 1970s, new Federal policy stated that Americans needed to lower their intake of fat and cholesterol from animal or tropical sources, which they did. Butter decreased and margarine and vegetable oils increased. Weight, Heart Disease, and Cancer rose.

In the 1970s, the same policy recommended that Grains comprise a majority of our diet, up to 12 servings a day, which we did; consumption of grains – and sugar – skyrocketed. Weight, Heart Disease, and Cancer rose. As weight and heart disease and cancer continued to rise, our doctors medicated us for the ills, and told us to eat less and exercise more. We have. Weight and disease continue to rise.

In the 1980s, weight loss centers, diet foods, and diet drugs, as a business, were booming. Today, Dieting is a multi billion dollar industry. We’re all dieting, and yet weight and disease continue to rise. This makes us feel pretty badly about ourselves.

Meanwhile, in 2015, 1 out of 4 American women are on a psychiatric drug. Read that sentence again. It doesn’t have to be like this. Women, we don’t have to be fat, bloated, tired, and unhappy. We’ve fallen prey to companies and foods that cause addictive behavior, that lead to weight ups and downs which cause depression, and Moms, if we don’t stop the cycle, our kids won’t just be on the same boat we are, they’ll be on a worse boat.

The Surgeon General says that there’s a strong possibility that todays children might be there first generation of American children to have a shorter life span than their parents.

I started by opening up to you about a decades long body issue and food battle. I put myself through some crazy crap, which I know from my work with other women is not unique. I don’t do crazy anymore, I changed. You can change. Anyone can change. Everyone can break cycles and habits.

If you’re ready to change, evaluate what you’ve been doing. Get in touch with me. The definition of insanity is doing the same old thing and expecting a different outcome, right? Change your belief system from Calories In Calories Out, Low Fat blah blah blah, to Food Is Medicine, or Food Is Poison.

Understand that good fat is good for us; starving ourselves backfires; our hormones always rule; and small plates and baby forks for weight control are Dumb. Come on! We can be positive examples for our kids; we can be the one in our circle to stop the cycle and start a trend; and let’s not waste another minute lamenting our stomach, thighs, butt, or weight. There’s so much more to life than that.