The mental game of sticking to an eating plan

Sticking to an eating plan can be challenging. It’s often easy to get started, but it may become difficult over time when other distractions present themselves.

One possible obstacle is decision fatigue. In one day’s time, there are only so many decisions that can be made before the quality of those decisions becomes poor. One strategy is to remove certain decisions from your day. For example, eliminate any questions about what foods you are going to eat. Pack a healthy lunch or cook meals in advance. Remove bad food choices from your house if you can. Planning ahead is key.

Another issue could be triggers. A trigger is something that causes you to fall off the wagon, so to speak. One trigger could be stress. Experiencing such stress could cause you to want sugar or comfort food. To avoid derailing your progress as a result of a trigger, It’s important to know what your triggers are. Document your strategies in a journal. Write in that journal about what you experienced and how you reacted. This will help you in dealing with these triggers in the future. Accountability is another great strategy for dealing with triggers. When you see the trigger approaching, reach out to someone who can help keep you on track.

Finally, a slip is another potential obstacle. Recognize that you’re going to slip from time to time. Realize that there’s no value to beating yourself up about it. The important thing to remember is that a slip doesn’t have to be a fall. It’s only failure if you quit.

Sticking to an eating plan starts and ends with commitment. Commit to yourself. Find your “why” as to the real reasons you want to make a change. This will give most people that initial push to move in right direction. When plateaus occur, remind yourself of your vows to stay committed to sticking to your plan, and use that commitment to keep pushing you forward.

Why can't I stop? | Dr. Bruce Odlaug

Health and Fitness Apps

In today’s episode, we explore smart phone apps and their usefulness to support your health and fitness journey.   As background, I found it useful to solicit feedback from a user group in order to get a broader overview into the apps that many people are using concerning health and fitness.

Smart phones are great tools and we can use them to enhance our health and fitness. Many of the apps do continually change and often the functionality in one app is similar to the functionality in another app.

In this episode, we discuss the variety of food and nutrition apps which allow you to track your food intake, calculate and track calories and nutrients.   We also discuss the wide variety of fitness apps, such as those that are specific (running apps), those that provide exercise videos and training guidance.   There are also apps that act as timers for HIIT (high intensity interval training) and Tabata workouts. And let us not forget out mental health, and there are apps designed to guide you through the meditation process or those that provide white noise. While not necessarily apps, we also explore activity trackers that can sync to an app so you can have real time monitoring of your activity levels.

I encourage you to do the research and explore the wide variety of health and fitness apps that are available for your smart phone.

The bone broth diet | Dr. KellyAnn Petrucci

Dr. KellyAnn Petrucci is our guest today for a great discussion concerning bone broth and intermittent fasting. Join us as we explore her new book Dr. Kellyann's Bone Broth Diet: Lose Up to 15 Pounds, 4 Inches–and Your Wrinkles!–in Just 21 Days.

Kellyann Petrucci, MS, ND, is a board-certified naturopathic physician and certified nutrition consultant with a thriving practice in the Philadelphia area. She is also a concierge doctor for celebrities in Los Angeles and New York. She is a regular guest on The Doctors, Dr. Oz, and national news programs, and she is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and MindBodyGreen.

Kellyann uses bone broth and the fasting process to help you burn more body fat, reduce insulin levels and lower inflammation.   She discusses how during a fast with bone broth for nutrition our bodies burn fat faster and experience benefits to the skin.

We discuss how you can set yourself up for success by knowing what to expect when your body experiences changes when adopting a different lifestyle or way of eating, particularly with intermittent fasting.   We explore the concept of building your plate with the right proteins, healthy fats and the right kinds of carbohydrates.   Refueling after a workout with the right foods, eating non-inflammation foods, healthy oils and berries are all factors in building the plate for health and nutrition.

Dr. KellyAnn Petrucci feels that the addition of bone broth to your diet is a healthy addition to your nutrition plan. She discusses the benefits to your energy levels and the positive, beautiful effects on your skin.   You can find out more from her website, Drkellyann.com.

Music: Ben Sound Royalty Free Music

Ayurveda meets western medicine with Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary

Crack the obesity code

The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss is the new book by today’s guest, Dr. Jason Fung.   In this episode we talk about a variety of strategies to break through your body set weight, or what we often refer to as a plateau.

Dr. Jason Fung completed medical school at the University of Toronto and a fellowship in nephrology at the University of California. He founded the Intensive Dietary Management program in Toronto that provides a unique treatment focus for type 2 diabetes and obesity.

We discuss with Dr. Fung the role of hormones – such as insulin — and how they drive weight gain and obesity. He feels that only by understanding the role of insulin and insulin resistance can we achieve lasting weight loss. If excess insulin, not excess calories, is causing obesity, Dr. Fung feels the clear answer is in reducing insulin levels.

To do this, Dr. Jason Fung suggests the use of intermittent fasting to break the cycle of insulin resistance and to reach a healthy weight.   The Obesity Code outlines five basic steps to establish lifelong habits that will improve your health and control your insulin levels.   Additional information about Dr. Fung, The Obesity Code and the Intensive Dietary Management program can be found at intensivedietarymanagement.com.

Why am I always hungry? | Dr. David Ludwig

Caught in the dorito effect | Mark Schatzker

Today we talk to Mark Schatzker, the author of The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor.   Mark is a field reporter for The Dr. Oz Show as well as a radio columnist for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail, Conde Nast Traveler, and Bloomberg Pursuits.

We discuss with Mark how food has become complicated. That is because human biology and nutrition are such a complex sciences with many different variables.   Rather than focus on specific nutrients, Mark focuses on flavor in his book The Dorito Effect.

When it comes to our food, we all want flavor. Flavor in our food, however, is undergoing two trends. Whole foods, such as foods we get from farms, do not always have the flavor that they used to, as the heirloom quality has often been removed through generations of breeding and the industrialized nature of our food industry.

We also discuss with Mark how the food industry has mastered flavor technology. Flavor chemicals have changed what we call delicious and drive sales of product, as was the case with Doritos. The food industry is not in the business of making us healthy, it is a business of selling food.   This is where the desire to produce more and the desire to get us to eat more have crossed.

You can learn more about Mark Schatzker, author of The Dorito Effect and Steak through Mark’s website (markschatzker.com). Also, his award-winning journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Best American Travel Writing.

Contact Mark Schatzker at:

• MarkSchatzker.com
• Facebook
• Twitter

Ayurveda meets western medicine with Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary

Why am I always hungry? | Dr. David Ludwig

Dr. David Ludwig is an endocrinologist, researcher, professor. He’s been called an “obesity warrior” by Time Magazine and has been featured on several networks including ABC and NBC. He is also the author of Always Hungry.

It has been said many times that the key to losing weight is to eat less and move more. However, Always Hungry considers another factor at play. There are some people who eat less and move more, yet they still have problems with losing weight. While many can lose weight by cutting calories, the body will begin to fight back by becoming hungrier.

The premise of Always Hungry is to examine the source of this problem—why are our bodies storing extra fat? The underlying problem for most is that fat cells are driven into calorie storage overdrive due to insulin levels. When our bodies make too much insulin, this drives fat cells to hoard too many calories. Then there are too few for the rest of the body, and hunger increases.

The key is to lower insulin by adopting a rich, high fat diet and take out simple carbohydrates, processed foods, and sweeteners. The calories will stay in the blood stream longer and increase the metabolism. This will also be beneficial for physical performance.

The Always Hungry Solution is a three-phase plan. Phase 1 includes a two-week period of eating a diet of rich, high fat foods and eliminating grains, potatoes, and added sugars. This will turn off the starvation response. Phase 2 includes adding back whole kernel grains and a touch of added sugar. Here, the body will determine its optimal weight. Phase 3 follows by reintroducing more processed carbs according to how well the body can adapt.

Dr. Ludwig advises those following this plan to find foods that work for them and eliminate ones that do not. Always Hungry is available on Amazon. To connect with Dr. David Ludwig, visit his website at www.drdavidludwig.com or follow him on Facebook or Twitter via @davidludwigmd.

Crack the obesity code

Music: Ben Sound Royalty Free Music

Why didn’t I lose weight with crossfit?

Today we’re discussing a listener question from Kelley. Kelley has done Crossfit for four years, but didn’t experience much weight loss. She finally decided to stop once her back started hurting. Today, she is swimming and walking every day. She wants to get back into weight lifting but needs guidance on what types of lifting to incorporate and how much to do.

Some important notes about Kelley include that she has metabolic syndrome. This means she is insensitive to insulin, and this overproduction can cause her body to store the excess as fat. Kelley is also maintaining a low carb, high protein diet.

Crossfit is a metabolically challenging program. It includes metabolic conditioning, where one will be moving significantly—running, jumping, lifting. It’s a very dynamic that puts a strong demand on the body to have the endurance to get through. Because of this, one may experience much hunger after a workout, which can lead to eating more. Once again, the body fat loss will typically plateau. This may explain why Kelley did not lose much weight with Crossfit.

Kelley should consider lifting again, as lifting does slightly increase your metabolism over time and can lead to weight loss. However, she should also continue walking and swimming. Also, she may not need as much protein as she’s taking in. If she consumes too much, that excess will be stored as fat. This may be why she is seeing spikes in her blood sugar. If Kelley reduces her protein intake and adds in healthy fats such as fish, grass fed beef, and nuts, this will also help with regulating her hormone cycle.

When Kelley lifts weights again, she should incorporate one full body lifting session in place of one of her other exercises. She should work in the low to moderate rep range and use moderate to heavy weights. Taking these steps will be a great alternative to Crossfit and will assist in attaining the weight loss Kelley is trying to achieve.

You can get the guide on how to manage your hormones at older.fitness/glands.

If you’d like your questions answered, you can contact me on speakpipe and I may include your question on the show.

Nelson finds crossfit

Music: Ben Sound Royalty Free Music