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Low-carb session draws crowd at Certified Diabetes Educators conference

What seemed virtually impossible only five years ago has become a reality: Certified Diabetes Educators (CDEs) are learning that low-carb diets can improve blood sugar control in people with diabetes.

Not one, but two continuing education sessions on carb restriction for diabetes were available to dietitians, nurses, and other diabetes specialists at the recent annual American Association of Diabetes Educators conference. The first session discussed the science supporting carb restriction for diabetes, and the second focused on practical guidance for individualizing low-carb diets in patients.

This comes on the heels of the consensus report from the American Diabetes Association earlier this year stating that very-low-carb diets are an option for managing diabetes.

Canadian registered dietitian Joy Kiddie wrote about the conference, including a detailed overview of the first low-carb session attended by a packed room of about 500 CDEs:

US association of diabetes educators teaches evidence for low-carb diet

We’re very encouraged that sessions like these are available to diabetes professionals, and equally encouraged that so many CDEs are interested in learning how to help patients improve their blood sugar with low carb.

More

Guide for clinicians: How to adjust diabetes medication in low-carb patients

Virta Health publishes two-year data on low-carb diet for type 2 diabetes

American Diabetes Association endorses low-carb diet as option

Source: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb-session-draws-crowd-at-certified-diabetes-educators-conference

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Behind the scenes of LCHF2019 [for members]

The information we provide at DietDoctor.com is not intended to replace consultation with a qualified medical professional. By interacting with this site, you agree to our disclaimer. Read more

Dietdoctor.com uses cookies to ensure that you have the best possible experience. By continuing without changing your settings, you are accepting the use of cookies. Read more

Source: https://www.dietdoctor.com/member/annika-rane-april2019

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New Low-Calorie Halo Top Milkshakes Are Coming to Subway - Thrillist

There are few things more satisfying than an ice-cold milkshake on a hot summer day. Then again, a steady diet of sweet and rich dairy beverages is not necessarily ideal when you're trying to stick to a beach body diet. Luckily, the folks at Subway are making it possible to indulge (somewhat) guilt-free by offering up a trio of new Halo Top milkshakes made with the ever-popular low-calorie ice cream brand.

Adding a fresh offering to its dessert menu, Subway announced on Monday that it will be testing a three "hand-spun" Halo Top milkshakes in select US markets this summer, making it the first chain to ever serve the popular low-calorie ice cream in milkshake form. You'll have your pick from Vanilla Bean, Chocolate, or Strawberry, each of which contains 350 calories or less and is packed with at least 20 grams of protein. 

The lineup will be available in 1,000 locations from July 22 to September 4 in six test markets, including Colorado Springs, Colorado; Hartford, Connecticut; Longview and Tyler, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; Toledo, Ohio; and West Palm Beach, Florida.

"We are passionate about creating delicious new menu items for our guests that can't be found anywhere else. We share Halo Top's values that taste does not need to be sacrificed to create better-for-you options," Subway's Chief Brand and Innovation Officer Len Van Popering said in a press release. "We are excited to bring this popular brand to our guests in a never-before-seen way that we know they will love." 

It's unclear whether Subway has plans to expand availability nationwide at some point, but it's likely they'll only do so if they're selling well in test markets. So, you know, maybe prod your pals in any of those aforementioned locales and tell 'em to buy early and often. 

Source: https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/subway-testing-halo-top-milkshakes

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Is a low-salt diet as unhealthy as having too much? - BBC News

Last year a video of Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe lovingly seasoning a massive steak with a pinch of salt amassed millions of views online and earned him the nickname ‘salt bae’. But it wasn’t just his attention to detail that captured attention.

We’re obsessed with salt – despite warnings we’re consuming too much of it and harming our health in the process. But a counter-argument is gaining ground, casting doubt on decades of research and shedding light on the questions that still remain unanswered about our favourite seasoning. 

Sodium, the key element found in salt, is essential for our bodies to maintain its overall fluid balance, transport oxygen and nutrients, and allow our nerves to pulse with electricity. But most populations have historically eaten more salt than advised, and health officials around the world have had their work cut out for them convincing us to cut down.

You might also like: • We don’t need nearly as much protein as we consume • Is sugar really bad for you? • How cured meats protect us from food poisoning

Guidelines recommend adults have no more than 6g of salt per day. In the UK we consume closer to 8g; in the US, 8.5g.

But only a quarter of our daily intake comes from salt we add into food ourselves – the rest is hidden in the food we buy, including bread, sauces, soups and some cereals.

Adding to the confusion is that on food labels, manufacturers often refer to sodium content rather than salt, which can make us think we’re consuming less salt than we are. Salt is made up of both sodium and chloride ions. In 2.5g of salt, there is about 1g of sodium. “The general public isn’t aware of this, and just think sodium and salt are the same thing. No one tells you this,” says nutritionist May Simpkin.

One meta-analysis found a 17% greater risk of  cardiovascular disease from consuming an extra 5g of salt per day

Research has found that too much salt causes high blood pressure, which can lead to strokes and heart disease, and experts broadly agree that the evidence against salt is compelling. Our bodies retain water when we eat salt, increasing blood pressure until our kidneys flush it out. Too much salt over a long period of time can put strain on our arteries and lead to prolonged high blood pressure, known as hypertension, which causes 62% of all strokes and 49% of coronary heart disease events, according to the World Health Organization.

One meta-analysis of 13 studies published over 35 years found a 17% greater risk of total cardiovascular disease and a 23% greater risk of stroke from consuming an extra 5g of salt per day.

 As you might expect, cutting salt intake can have the reverse effect. In one eight-year data analysis of blood pressure, other cardiovascular disease risk factors and mean salt intake, researchers found that a decline in salt intake by 1.4g per day was likely to have contributed to a fall in blood pressure – which in turn contributed to the 42% decline in fatal strokes and 40% drop in heart disease-related deaths.

But in a common theme in observational studies such as this one, the researchers also concluded that it was difficult to entirely separate the effects of less salt from other diet and lifestyle behaviours. Those who are more conscious of their salt intake are more likely to eat healthier overall, exercise more and smoke and drink less.

Randomised trials showing salt’s effect on the body are almost impossible to carry out. But there are also no randomised trial for obesity, or smoking, which we know kills you – Francesco Cappuccio

Long-term, randomised trials comparing people who eat a lot versus a little salt could establish cause and effect. But very few such studies exist because of the funding requirements and ethical implications. “Randomised trials showing salt’s effect on the body are almost impossible to carry out,” says Francesco Cappuccio, professor of cardiovascular medicine and epidemiology at the University of Warwick’s medical school and author of the eight-year review.

“But there are also no randomised trial for obesity, or smoking, which we know kills you.”

Meanwhile, observational evidence is in abundance. After the Japanese government launched a campaign to persuade people to reduce their salt intake in the late 1960s, intake decreased from 13.5g to 12g per day. Over the same period there were falls in blood pressure and an 80% reduction in stroke mortality. In Finland, daily salt intake dropped from 12g in the late 1970s to as little as 9g by 2002, and there was a 75-80% decrease in deaths from stroke and heart disease in the same period.

Different strokes

But an additional complicating factor is that the effects of salt consumption on blood pressure and heart health differ from one individual to another.

Studies have found that our sensitivity to salt varies from person to person – depending on factors as varied as ethnicity, age, body mass index, health and family history of hypertension. Some studies have found that those with higher salt sensitivity are more at risk of salt-associated high blood pressure.

In fact, some scientists are now arguing that a low-salt diet is just as much of a risk factor for developing high blood pressure as high salt consumption. In other words, there is a J- or U-shaped curve with a threshold at the bottom where risks starts to go back up.

One meta-analysis, for example, found a link between low salt intake and cardiovascular-related events and death. The researchers argued that consuming either less than 5.6g or more than 12.5g a day is associated with negative health outcomes.

A different study involving more than 170,000 people had similar findings: a link between ‘low’ salt intake, defined as less than 7.5g, and increased risk of cardiovascular events and death in people both with and without hypertension, compared to a ‘moderate’ intake of up to 12.5g per day (between 1.5 to 2.5 teaspoons of salt). That moderate intake is up to double the UK recommended daily intake.

The study’s lead author, Andrew Mente, a nutritional epidemiologist at McMaster University in Ontario, concluded that reducing salt intake from high to moderate reduces the risk of high blood pressure, but there are no health benefits beyond that. And increasing salt intake from low to moderate might help too.

An optimal level is always found somewhere in the middle – Andrew Mente

“The finding of a sweet spot in the middle is consistent with what you would expect for any essential nutrient… where at high levels you have toxicity and at low levels you have deficiency,” he says. “An optimal level is always found somewhere in the middle.”

But not everyone agrees.

Cappuccio is unequivocal that a reduction in salt consumption reduces blood pressure in everyone – not just people who eat far too much. He says the wave of studies in recent years concluding contrary findings are small, include participants who are already unwell, and rely on flawed data – including Mente’s study, which used a fasting spot urine test on participants instead of the ‘gold standard’ of spreading several tests over a 24-hour period.

There aren’t many people are consuming levels as low as 3g, the level at which some of this research calls dangerously low

Sara Stanner, science director at the charity the British Nutrition Foundation, agrees that the evidence that reducing salt intake in those with hypertension lowers blood pressure and risk of heart disease is strong. And there aren’t many people are consuming levels as low as 3g, the level at which some of this research calls dangerously low.

This would be difficult to achieve, Stanner says, due to the levels of salt in foods we buy.

“So much of the salt we consume is in everyday foods,” she says. “This is why reformulation across the foods supply is the most successful approach to cut down on national salt levels, as has been the case in the UK.”

Experts also have conflicting views on whether high salt intake can be offset by an otherwise healthy diet and exercise. Some, including Stanner, say that a diet rich in potassium, found in fruit, vegetables, nuts and dairy, can help to offset salt’s adverse effects on blood pressure.

Ceu Mateus, senior lecturer in Health Economics at Lancaster University, advises that we should prioritise being aware of hidden salt in our diets rather than trying to avoid it altogether.

“The problems we have with too much salt could be similar to those linked with too little, but we still need to do more research to understand what goes on here. In the meantime, a healthy person is going to be able to regulate small amounts,” Mateus says.

“We should be aware that too much salt is really bad, but don’t eliminate it completely from your diet.”

Despite recent studies arguing the potential dangers of a low salt diet, and individual differences in salt sensitivity, the most established takeaway from existing research is that too much salt definitely increases blood pressure.

Take the rest with a pinch of… well, you know.

Join 900,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. 

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181029-eating-less-salt-benefits

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November 24th, 2018 Finding Solutions

November 24th, 2018 Finding Solutions

Yesterday: I maintained the integrity of my reduced calorie budget, I remained refined sugar-free, I met my daily water goal, and I stayed well connected with exceptional support.

The visit with family has gone exceptionally well this week. Another big gathering today at a Chinese buffet place in our hometown will bring together even more family. Mom isn't accustomed to being on the go this much, but she's loving it! She's been coming and going so much lately, the nurses' joke with her, "leaving us again, Miss Beverly?"  Today's excursion to Stillwater will be another wonderful opportunity to connect and visit with family we don't see very often.

I can navigate most restaurants. I go in knowing the boundaries of my food plan and knowing, without question, what I need and what is off limits for me in order for it to be an on-plan meal. I'm not afraid to ask specifically for what I need. I don't mind ordering items separately, assembling a meal that works for me, in fact, I did that yesterday at the Mexican restaurant, assembling a fajita chicken salad with only on-plan ingredients--that was fairly simple and I've done it countless times. However, not all restaurants are created equal--and today's restaurant gathering is a completely different story.

I've tried to make this Chinese buffet place work for my food plan. I've scanned the offerings and I've asked detailed questions about the ingredients used. The answers were not in line with my food plan--at all. Now, to be fair, if I were a salad lover, I could certainly make this place work. I'm not. I've never been a salad lover. Yes--the chicken fajita salad thing yesterday worked well and was thoroughly enjoyed--but it's different. That salad used shredded lettuce and contained a nice combination of on-plan ingredients I truly enjoy. A salad bar typically doesn't contain those things--and it typically uses leafy lettuce--and I'm strangely picky about the cut of my lettuce. Those that know me well would laugh at that last sentence because they know my "lettuce issues." I tell ya what--let's not call them "issues." I prefer "preferences." But anyway--I veered off point. My point is...

A Chinese buffet place simply doesn't work for me. Aside from the issues of refined sugar and/or deep fried most everything, there's a psychological element involving my 164-pound relapse/regain period. One of my biggest binge foods involved a dish from a local Chinese restaurant (I'll spare you the glorified food porn description) containing every possible trigger known to me at this point in time: High fat, high refined sugar, refined flour, deep fried, loads of carbs---and somewhere hiding underneath all those trigger ingredients, chicken. I remember ordering that time and time again--and every time, feeling a billion miles away from any semblance of a plan--and truly, feeling scared, hopeless, sad, depressed---and really hoping that this time, the magic trigger dish might take me away from all of those emotions and worry, if not permanently-- maybe for a little while...just let me dive into that illusion of comfort and forget about things. In that pattern, the temporary reprieve became shorter and shorter and I needed more and more to keep on living in the chaos of my addiction.

Why don't you simply request a change in location for the family dinner? Because I'm putting food in its proper place. I will eat before or after the get-together. It's seriously not a big deal. I will focus on visiting (which is the main purpose of the event in the first place), and I'll drink water. The last time (a year ago) we held a family gathering there, I did the same thing and honestly, I don't think very many noticed I wasn't eating. I was engaged and enjoying the conversations. Those that might have noticed know me well enough to know, I'm fine, I've got a food plan, and I'll take care of me.

That's the thing. Maintaining the boundaries of my food plan is my responsibility, not anyone else's. There was a time in my life when I would put that responsibility on other people and circumstances, conveniently playing the victim in an effort to enable my compulsive eating behaviors. "Everyone picked that place, what could I do? I had to eat--I didn't want to offend anybody or be rude! Oh well, I'll do better next time." In that old line of thinking, I made everyone else and the circumstances surrounding every event, responsible for keeping the integrity of my food plan. I could easily rationalize my wildly off-plan choices by pointing to the variables in play and in that, I was off the hook. The bottom line is, when we stop looking for outs we start finding solutions.

Of course, if it was simply one or two people meeting me for dinner, I might request we pick a different place. But I'm not asking a dozen or more people to change their plans so I can order some chicken tacos!   -------------- I rarely include a guest post of sorts--but today, I want to share some powerful words from Michael Funaro in Las Vegas. He was very gracious and open in approving my share request. Thank you, Michael! I first met Michael in 2014. Along with my friend Jon from Wisconsin, the three of us enjoyed a dinner and visit.

Michael's story and path is similar to many of us along this road--actually, very similar to most of us. The ups and downs, the losing and regaining--the old diet mentality type stuff--he's been there/done that, too. Michael is a member of the support group I facilitate where he stays connected and shares regularly. He practices his plan each day--and he does it amid incredible challenges. He's incredibly humble and has a beautiful respect for the fragility of it all along this road. Michael inspires me. The following is a post he shared exclusively with our group--and now, with his permission, I'm sharing it with you. 

From Michael Funaro:

What a difference a year makes! Happy Black Friday to all of you that will partake. Me, I stay as far away from stores today as possible.

One year ago my life was so different. When I was writing in my journal last night, the entry above it for 2017 on this day stated, "I wonder what the box below will hold on this day next year? I hope and pray that it will be better than today."

I think back to last Black Friday. I had a huge food hangover from probably 10,000 calories of sugar and carbs. I know my blood sugar was well North of 300 on that morning. I was miserable, my attitude sucked and I was at least 120 lbs heavier (probably closer to 150).

I know our ultimate goal is the weight, but the journey can be so rewarding too. We have all those great NSV's along the way. Little ones to big ones. For me, I'm so thankful for the biggest one today. I took my blood sugar this morning and it was 108. So thankful for that. Some of you are either directly or indirectly affected by diabetes and it's such a devastating disease. It affects so much of our body and it's silent for a long time until it strikes. For me, it's so nice to have this NSV this morning that shows me that what I am doing isn't always about just the scale moving. But what happens along that journey to the ultimate goal.

Don't look back next year on this day and think, "IF only I would have started my healthy lifestyle a year ago, where would I be today?" Take it from me. What a difference one year can make. Do it today!

Do you have any NSV's today you are happy about? I'd love to hear them if you do. Mine are too long to list, but the blood sugar is my tops of the day! Have a great day everyone! ----- Thank you, again, Michael! You can email Michael at mfunaro28@gmail.com

Thank you for reading and your continued support, Strength, Sean

Source: http://losingweighteveryday.blogspot.com/2018/11/november-24th-2018-finding-solutions.html

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Thick and Creamy Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate

Rich, thick, and creamy Hot Chocolate prepared in the Slow Cooker. This Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate is super easy to make and it’s great for Christmas parties!

Fill your house with holiday cheer on this Christmas Day with our favorite Hot Chocolate Recipe! Thanks to our Slow Cookers, this Holiday drink is kept warm throughout the day and always ready for the next guest!

I am just going to say it; THIS is the MOST decadent Hot Chocolate recipe on Earth! You can’t change my mind. I’ve never had a hot drink that is richer and thicker than this Hot Chocolate.

Recently, I was in Milan, Italy, and when I ordered a cup of Hot Chocolate, I had no idea what I was actually ordering. I expected a straight up hot water + cocoa sipper in a mug with MAYBE a bit of milk. What I received was a thick gourmet hot chocolate that I couldn’t put down.

Sip after sip, all I was trying to do was figure out how they made it. I gave up on guessing and finally asked the waiter. In his super thick Italian accent, he told me the secret was cornstarch. CORNSTARCH!

Thus, my dear friends, go grab some cornstarch, as well as your best quality dark chocolate, and let’s get on making this awesome chocolatey mess.

HOW TO MAKE SLOW COOKER HOT CHOCOLATE

This is a very simple recipe with combined milk, cocoa powder, good quality dark chocolate (I don’t recommend using chocolate chips) and cornstarch.

We will start with pouring the milk into the slow cooker; whisk in cocoa powder and cook on HIGH for 2 hours.

Next, add in the chocolate and stir until melted. Taste for sweetness and decide if you want to add some sugar to the mixture. If you decide to add sugar, whisk in a tablespoon of sugar at a time. Taste and adjust accordingly.

Prepare a cornstarch slurry and mix it into the slow cooker mixture.

Cover the slow cooker and continue to cook for 1 hour. I suggest whisking it from time to time to prevent lumps.

When finished, ladle the hot chocolate into mugs, and if you like, garnish with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Fun fact: You could also add your favorite liqueur to each mug. 😃

This Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate is an easy way to serve a crowd – think Christmas Parties or New Year’s Eve Parties – but it’s also perfect for a night of Netflix on Valentine’s Day. OR ANY DAY! Just make it and enjoy it!

CAN YOU USE WHITE CHOCOLATE IN HOT CHOCOLATE

Yes you may, but white chocolate is sweeter than regular chocolate. For that reason, I would suggest adding more milk.

CAN YOU FREEZE HOT CHOCOLATE

Yes, you absolutely can. It does become a big bar of chocolate, but it can be done.

Let the hot chocolate cool down completely, then transfer it to a large freezer bag.

Place in the freezer and freeze for up to 2 months.

When ready to serve, remove from freezer and defrost overnight in the fridge.

Pour contents into a large pot and heat over medium heat, stirring frequently, until hot.

HOW TO STORE HOT CHOCOLATE

Leftover hot chocolate can be refrigerated for up to 5 days and reheated in the microwave, or on the stovetop, right before serving.

MORE HOT CHOCOLATE RECIPES

MERRY CHRISTMAS! ENJOY!

Thick and Creamy Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate

Rich, thick, and creamy Hot Chocolate prepared in the Slow Cooker.

Course: Dessert, Drinks, Holiday

Cuisine: American, Italian

Keyword: drinks recipes, hot chocolate, slow cooker recipes

Servings: 4 servings

Calories: 338 kcal

Ingredients

3 cups 2% milk

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 tablespoons good quality cocoa powder

1 cup chopped dark chocolate I used 71% cocoa

FOR THE CORNSTARCH SLURRY

3 tablespoons 2% milk

1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch

whipped cream for serving (optional)

chocolate shavings for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Pour the milk and vanilla into the slow cooker; whisk in cocoa powder and cover.

Cook on HIGH for 2 hours.

Remove lid and stir in chopped chocolate; stir until melted.

Taste for sweetness and decide if you want to add some sugar to the mixture. If you decide to add sugar, whisk in a tablespoon of sugar at a time. Taste and adjust accordingly.

Prepare a cornstarch slurry by combining milk and cornstarch in a small mixing bowl; mix until smooth paste forms.

Whisk the cornstarch slurry into the hot chocolate mixture; whisk until well combined.

Cover with a lid and continue to cook for 1 more hour, or until thickened. I suggest to whisk occasionally so to prevent any lumps.

When ready, remove the lid and ladle the hot chocolate into mugs.

Garnish with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

You can also add in a shot of your favorite liquor.

Serve.

Recipe Notes

CAN YOU USE WHITE CHOCOLATE IN HOT CHOCOLATE

Yes you may, but white chocolate is sweeter than regular chocolate. For that reason, I would suggest adding more milk.

HOW TO STORE HOT CHOCOLATE

Leftover hot chocolate can be refrigerated for up to 5 days and reheated in the microwave, or on the stovetop, right before serving.

WW FREESTYLE POINTS: 11

Nutrition Facts

Thick and Creamy Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate

Amount Per Serving (1 cup)

Calories 338 Calories from Fat 180

% Daily Value*

Total Fat 20g 31%

Saturated Fat 11g 55%

Cholesterol 16mg 5%

Sodium 96mg 4%

Potassium 568mg 16%

Total Carbohydrates 30g 10%

Dietary Fiber 4g 16%

Sugars 18g

Protein 9g 18%

Vitamin A 4.3%

Vitamin C 0.4%

Calcium 25.6%

Iron 26.7%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

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Source: https://diethood.com/slow-cooker-hot-chocolate/

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Healthier Slow Cooker Crack Chicken

Healthier Slow Cooker Crack Chicken – the ultimate family-friendly creamy chicken recipe topped with the yummy smokey flavour of bacon. Oh my!!

Ever browse recipes on Pinterest and constantly be drawn in by something that looks amazingly delicious? only to then be disappointed by the highly calorific ingredients that would bust your syns allowance for the day.

Crack chicken is a popular dish this side of the Atlantic, in the US and Canada and I regularly see it being made on the Instant Pot community on facebook.

So after finally being able to source some lean back bacon (something which is hard to find where I live in Canada), I set myself the task of creating my own low syn healthier version of Slow Cooker Crack Chicken and oh my gosh is this good.

Traditionally this is often served in a bread type bun or roll, very much like a sloppy joe, except of course it’s not tangy tomatoey ground beef, but instead is a creamy calorific shredded chicken in a creamy ranch kind of sauce. Yum!!!

I am not too impressed with most of the ready made ranch seasonings packets you can find in the supermarket, mainly because most contain MSG which is an ingredient that I choose to avoid where possible and therefore homemade ranch seasoning was the best option.

Traditionally ranch dressing or seasoning comes with buttermilk, but as I was using low-fat cream cheese, I figured I would skip that out of my homemade seasoning and keep the syns down. 

Usually, we can count cream cheese as a healthy extra, but with the changes coming to the programme in January, cream cheese of any kind will no longer be a healthy extra A choice, so for this recipe, we are synning the cream cheese. I use low fat Philadelphia which here is 1 syn per 15g (one tablespoon), in the UK if you use the Philadelphia lightest, it is only 1.5 syns per 30g, so a little less than the one I use.

Obviously, the syn calculations on this recipe, are going by the ingredients I use, so adjust and calculator the syns for the ingredients you use if you are using a variation on that. 

You can also use store brand cream cheese, it doesn’t need to be only Philadelphia, just make sure you do not, however, use quark, as it won’t work in this recipe, will split the sauce and will not yield the same taste. 

When it comes to how to serve this Slow Cooker Crack Chicken, you can still serve it in a bread roll if that’s what you fancy, by using a 60g Wholemeal Roll which is a healthy extra B choice. Other than that, this will pair really well with so many different sides from rice, potatoes (mashed, roasted, steamed) or even syn free chips or pasta – yum!!!

The chicken is super tender from being cooked slowly on a low heat. Which is often hard to accomplish with Chicken Breast. I just recommend not leaving on the keep warm setting for a long period of time once it has completed cooking if you can, as the long it sits it will start to dry out the meat. 

Slow cookers or crock pots are such a great kitchen item to have, especially if you live a busy lifestyle.  One like this Morphy Richards Sear and Stew Digital Slow Cooker is a great option because it means the inner dish is safe to use on the hob if you need to brown anything before setting it to slow cook. 

But if you own an Instant Pot you can also use the slow cooker function to cook this Slow Cooker Crack Chicken.

Wondering what an Instant Pot is – It is basically a 7in1 cooker, and it slow cooks, pressure cooks, saute’s, has settings for soup, chilli, rice, porridge and even makes yoghurt (I haven’t tried that yet).

Looking for some other Slow Cooker Chicken Recipes? Check out these:

or head on over to my FULL RECIPE INDEX with over 850+ delicious Slimming World Recipes all fully searchable by meal type, ingredients, syn values, WW Smart Points etc

Looking for some additional support on your weight loss journey? Did you know Slimming Eats has a friendly Slimming World Facebook Support Group where you can get daily meal ideas and recipe ideas? Come and check us out, we’d love to have you join.

tap/click to go directly to the group so you can request to join.

How can I add a 1/3 speed foods to this Slow Cooker Crack Chicken?

I served mine with some roasted asparagus. I just trim a bunch of fresh asparagus, add to an oven proof dish and spray with olive oil cooking oil spray, a pinch of sea salt and black pepper and then roast until slightly browned on edges and tender. So yummy. This will literally serve well with any greens of your choice. 

What Kitchen items do I need to make this Slow Cooker Crack Chicken?

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See the handy Pinterest image below if you wish to pin this for later 😘

Yield: 6

Healthier Slow Cooker Crack Chicken – the ultimate family-friendly creamy chicken recipe topped with the yummy smoky flavour of bacon.

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 5 hours 5 minutes

Total Time 5 hours 20 minutes

Ingredients

800g of chicken breast, sliced into tenders

200g of low fat cream cheese

1 cup (240ml) of chicken stock (hot)

2 small shallots, finely diced

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 tsp of dried parsley​

1/2 tsp of dried dill

1/2 tsp of dried chives

1 tsp of onion powder

1/2 tsp of garlic powder

8 slices of lean back bacon, chopped

fresh chopped parsley

salt and black pepper

cooking oil spray

Instructions

Spray a frying pan over a medium high heat with cooking oil spray (if the slow cooker pot is hob save you can use the inner pot of your slow cooker)

Add the onion and garlic and fry for a minute of so to infused the garlic, add in a little bit of water to prevent sticking and fry until softened.

Add this in the slow cooker, with the cream cheese, stock, dried parsley, dill, chives, onion and garlic powder and whisk until all combined and no lumps of cream cheese remain.

Place in the chicken breasts, set to low for 5 hours, slightly ajar lid for the last hour to help the sauce thicken.

When the chicken has almost finished cooking in the slow cooker, spray a frying pan over a medium high heat with cooking oil spray add the chopped bacon and fry until golden all over.

Once chicken is has finished the time in slow cooker, roughly shred the chicken into the sauce with two forks and stir in the bacon.

Season as needed with salt and black pepper and sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley.

Serve with your choice of sides.

Enjoy

Notes

This recipe is gluten free, Slimming World and Weight Watchers friendly

Extra Easy - 2.5 per serving

WW Smart Points - 3 per serving

*Suitable for freezing

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Nutrition Information:

Yield:

6

Serving Size:

1 Amount Per Serving:Calories: 230 Total Fat: 3.6g Saturated Fat: 1.3g Cholesterol: 19mg Sodium: 529mg Carbohydrates: 3.3g Fiber: 0.1g Sugar: 2.7g Protein: 35.7g

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[riceangle4-blog]

[Transcript] – 16 Reasons You’re Not Burning Fat (& How To Lose Weight The Right Way)

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/fat-loss-podcasts/how-to-lose-weight/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:18] The RUNGA Immersion

[00:02:53] Kion Coaches

[00:04:10] Podcast Sponsors

[00:05:33] About this Solosode

[00:06:22] How Fat Actually Gets Burnt

Get The Low Carb Athlete - 100% Free!Eliminate fatigue and unlock the secrets of low-carb success. 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[00:12:23] The 16 Reasons You’re Not Burning Fat the Way You’d Like

[00:12:36] Chronic Inflammation

[00:21:04] Glycemic Variability (GV)

[00:27:31] Podcast Sponsors

[00:30:46] Cortisol and Stress

[00:34:19] Sleep Deprivation

[00:35:27] Snacking and Post-Workout Calories

[00:39:47] You’re Not Moving Enough

[00:41:32] Too Much Exercise

[00:43:34] Chronic Cardio

[00:45:53] The SAID Principle

[00:49:56] Lack of Cold Therapy

[00:52:24] Hormonal imbalance

[00:54:40] Toxin and Chemical Exposure

[00:56:28] Food Allergies and Intolerances

[00:57:42] Micro-Nutrient Deficiencies

[00:59:01] Thyroid

[01:01:02] Disordered Eating

[01:03:25] Final Take

[01:05:36] End of Solosode

Ben:  Your lungs are the primary excretory organs for weight loss. So, unless you’re wanting to gain significant mass, like if you’re a high school or college football player trying to get to the next level, if you’ve eaten at some point prior to working out, there’s no need to drop everything to slug down that post-workout protein drink. The number one thing that you can do if you are resistant to weight loss and you’re already moving more in eating less is–

I have a master’s degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I’ve spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet from SEALFit Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and the world’s toughest mudder, the 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world’s top experts in performance, fat loss, recovery, hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Hey, if you listened in to Thursday’s episode, you know that I am leading a very intimate heavily curated retreat at a private mansion in Napa Valley in September. Not everybody can get in. You got to apply to get accepted. It’s extremely high-end and includes these amazing meals prepared by a world-famous chef named Seamus Mullen, very luxury accommodations. This is like a mansion on 70 acres of forest out in a secret spot in Napa Valley. My wife and I will be there. Your registration includes a one-on-one consultation with me as a podcast listener in just a moment when you go to the URL I tell you to apply. You’ll automatically get $1,000 off if you are accepted to attend this retreat.

We do mobility and breathwork and meditation and yoga every morning. We do things like cold immersion and kettlebell classes in the afternoons. It includes a manual therapy session with this amazing body worker who’s been on my podcast before, name is Scott Dolly. You get to feast on these all organic fresh vibrant meals. And my wife along with Amelia DiStefano, one of the other hosts of the retreat. They teach you how to cook as well. So, it includes cooking classes, a whole bunch of extra goodie bags in your room when you check in. If you feel like you might be a fit for this, it takes play September 12th through the 15th. The only way to get in is to apply. And you apply it, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/runga. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/R-U-N-G-A.

Now, another special announcement for you is that last year, I personally trained and mentored over 100 different health professionals; personal trainers, nutritionists, physicians, everything. It was a 22-week rigorous course in which I taught them everything I know about sleep and hormones, and fat loss, and performance, gut health, spiritual health, everything. Literally dumped my brain and programmed each of these coaches. And now they’re available for you to work with personally to achieve whatever goals you have. They’re spread out all over the globe, all these people I trained. They range from nutritionist to personal trainers to chiropractors to psychologist to MDs.

So, if you want to see if you’ve got somebody in your area you could work with, or you want to work with one of these coaches virtually, you just go to getkion.com, getK-I-O-N.com/kion-coach. Now, I’ll also put that link in the shownotes for today’s show, which you can get over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/fatlosspodcast. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/fatlosspodcast. Or you can also click through the coach directory to the RUNGA retreat to everything else I mentioned in today’s show.

Also, this podcast is brought to you by Organifi. Organifi makes this green juice, and they pack a bunch of different superfoods into their green juice. They’ve got spirulina and alkalizing lemon extract, coconut water extract, a whole bunch of stuff. There’s even a study recently that maintaining a net state of alkalinity assists with your ability to be able to stave off muscle loss. And this was a very cool renal acid load testing protocol. I tweeted it out. But one of the best ways to alkalize your body to be able to put yourself into a state where you can maintain or even gain muscle are with these greenish type of foods. And this stuff has matcha green tea, wheatgrass, mint, spirulina, chlorella, moringa.

You’d think it’d cost like $20 a bottle, but they just send you a powder. You mix it with cold water or almond milk or in a smoothie or whatever you want. Make it yourself, and it’s pennies on the dollar compared to these fancy juice bars, plus you get an extra 20% discount when you use the code in the URL I’m about to give you. You go to organifi.com/ben. That’s Organifi with “I”, organifi.com/ben. And the 20% discount code that you can use is BENG20 at organifi.com/ben.

Hey, that’s me, my trumpet, me and my trumpet here with you today, and that’s all, no guest, zero guest. This is just me on a solosode about fat, about all the different reasons that people have a hard time burning fat. Sixteen reasons, specifically, that I’m going to get into on today’s show with you, and what you can do about it. I haven’t done a solosode in a little while because I just have so many amazing guests that I always want to talk to. But occasionally, I have some things that I want to get off my mind and into yours, and today’s episode is no exception. So, if you’re into burning fat or helping people burn fat, this is the episode for you.

So, before I talk about why people are resistant to weight loss so much, it’s important to understand where fat actually goes, like how fat actually gets burnt, because most fat loss books and so-called weight loss experts and physicians and dietitians and personal trainers, they’ll tell you that fat is converted to energy or is converted to heat. But that actually violates a law called the law of conservation of mass. And all that law states is that mass in an isolated system is neither created nor destroyed by chemical reactions or physical transformations.

So, in other words, you can’t simply take fat and poop it out or turn it in a muscle. Instead, the primary place that fat goes when you lose weight is your breath. You breathe away fat. Your lungs are the primary excretory organs for weight loss. So, any excess calories that you eat, here’s how it works, including carbohydrates, protein, and even that half stick of butter that you put into your green tea or coffee, that gets converted into triglycerides, which is a type of fatty acid. Now, excess carbohydrate or protein is converted to triglyceride and stored in the lipid droplets of fat cells. Fat cells are called adipocytes. And excess dietary fat then undergoes something called lipolysis, or the breakdown of fat followed by another process called reesterification to allow that fat to be stored.

So, people who want to lose weight while maintaining muscle and other important tissue are biochemically speaking, trying to burn through triglycerides that are stored in adipocytes, lipid droplets that are stored in or triglycerides that are stored in the lipid droplets of fat cells. Now, triglycerides are comprised of three types of atoms; carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. And they can only be broken down when these atoms are unlocked through a process called oxidation. And that requires, this is where breath comes in, the inhalation of oxygen.

There was actually a research study that was done. It was called “When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?” Great title for a research study. And what the researchers found was that for 22 pounds of fat to be oxidized, 64 pounds of oxygen must be inhaled. And oxidation results in about 61 pounds of carbon dioxide excreted via the lungs, and about 24 pounds of water excreted via urine and feces and breath and sweat. So, your lungs are the primary excretory organs for fat loss. And stick with me here on the math. So, every breath that you breathe out contains a little over 0.001 ounces of CO2, and about 0.003 ounces or rather 0.0003 ounces of that is carbon. So, an average total of 17,000 breaths during the day is going to get rid of around 0.32 pounds of carbon, and about a third of that fat loss is occurring when you’re doing nothing at all, like when you’re sleeping during the night.

So, how do you replace all that carbon that you breathe off? Well, unless you’re eating charcoal rocks or overdosing on charcoal capsules. The only significant carbon sources that I personally know of are dietary carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. So, from as simplistic a standpoint as possible, losing fat means consuming less carbon than you’ve exhaled. So, if you were to spend a day asleep, at rest, and performing light activities that honestly can nearly double your resting metabolic rate, just walking around and moving, you’d exhale about seven ounces of carbon. By substituting one hour of rest per day with one hour of moderate exercise like going on hike, riding a bike, doing some weight lifting, your metabolic rate is increased by about seven-fold, and that removes an extra ounce and a half of carbon from the body, increasing the amount of carbon you exhale by around 20% from seven ounces up to eight and a half ounces.

Now, the problem is all that carbon loss can, of course, be offset by eating carbon molecules from carbohydrates or protein or fat. A single 100-gram whole wheat muffin, for example, will give you about 20%, 20% of your average daily energy requirement. And that means physical activity as a weight loss strategy is foiled even by relatively small quantities of food. And so the most effective albeit traditional and boring solution to this conundrum that does not sell many supplements, and it doesn’t sell many diet books, and it doesn’t sell many biohacks or anything else, is to simply move more and eat less.

Now, that’s it. You know more about the true mechanisms behind weight loss now than the average biochemistry student. The problem is, let’s say you’re already eating less and moving more, you’re theoretically now engaging in enough physical activity to breathe off more than enough carbon, and the scale still isn’t budging. So, what gives? Well, that’s what I want to dig into this podcast. But I had to lay it out beginning with this explanation of how you breathe away carbon so that you know that from a very simplistic model, the lowest hanging fruit, the bottom of the totem pole, or the top of the totem pole, depending on how you want to think about it is that you must be ruthlessly cognizant of carbons in and carbons out, how much you’re moving and how much you’re eating. Okay? So, that’s the number one thing that you need to pay attention to.

So, let’s say you’ve got that down, you’ve wrapped your head around that. If you’re listening to this podcast, you may already have kind of started on that journey. Now, let’s get into 16 of these reasons that you actually can’t burn fat. Reason number one is inflammation. So, there’s a common belief that fat cells never actually go away, and that simply is not the case. There is something that you can do to annihilate fat cells, and that is to rid yourself of inflammation. Okay. Fat cells don’t just shrink and sit there waiting for more carbon or triglycerides, as you’ve learned earlier. They can go away.

Now, before jumping into the nitty-gritty of inflammation, remember that not all inflammation is bad. Acute inflammation is a natural biological reaction to stressors. So, when you cut yourself, the area surrounding the cut becomes inflamed. As your immune system and regenerative processes react, that prevents infection. It heals the cut. Acute inflammation also happens when your muscle fibers break down and get rebuilt after a hard workout. But when you have chronic inflammation and a constant stream of inflammatory chemicals, that becomes an issue. High levels of what’s called transforming growth factor beta promote inflammation and weight gain by causing irregular appetite and glucose regulation, and that’s something that can be induced from anything from over exercise to inflammatory food.

There are also things called matrix metalloproteinases. Those remodel the matrix outside of your cells. They regulate white blood cell movement. Those can also cause inflammation when their blood plasma activity gets too high. There is vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF is what that’s abbreviated as. And that aids in the growth of new blood vessels, and those are correlated with obesity. Those can feed blood to new fat cells. Nitric oxide synthase. You may have heard that nitric oxide is good, and some is good, but high nitric oxide synthase can lead to excess NO, and that’s also been correlated with obesity.

There’s something called toll-like receptor 4. That’s involved in a phenomenon called meta-inflammation, which is a state of low but chronic inflammation in immune and fat cells. And there are many genetic and epigenetic factors that can contribute to that process. It’s called NOS uncoupling. So, rather than making nitric oxide, NOS uncoupling results in the production of superoxide free radicals, which also contribute to the destructive path of inflammation. The cool part about that is that that can be tested. So, you can test for that via–there’s this company called StrateGene, and I’ll link to all of anything I mentioned, studies and companies in the shownotes. But basically, with StrateGene, you can test for certain dirty genes, so to speak, that could show you whether or not your nitric oxide synthase pathways are effed up, so to speak.

You can also test with StrateGene for a pathway called Nrf2. If Nrf2 isn’t working properly, your body can’t handle iron properly, and it can make excess free radicals, especially if you have too much iron or ferritin. And often, people with variance in their Nrf2 genes suffer from inflammatory conditions that nobody seems to be able to resolve. Again, functional genetic testing can help determine whether you have issues with your Nrf2 genes. And there are some substances like, you may have heard of sulforaphane from broccoli or resveratrol, which is found in the skins of grapes and in certain berries, bacopa, milk thistle, turmeric, all of those can help to support healthy Nrf2 activity.

One of my upcoming podcast guests, Dr. Bob Miller, has some wonderful work on this, if you go to his website, which I’ll link to in the shownotes. I don’t have it on hand right now, but the shownotes for this entire podcast will be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/fatlosspodcast. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/fatlosspodcast. You’ll be able to check out Bob Miller’s website. And there are a lot of other chemicals and enzymes and factors involved in inflammation, but chronic inflammation can be systemic. It can affect the entire body. And probably, the biggest thing that can lead to inflammation is rancid oils, right, oils that have been treated with high temperatures or high pressures because you get a one-two whammy of inflammation and insulin resistance.

We’re talking about the type of polyunsaturated fats you’d find in canola oil and safflower oil and peanut oil and sunflower oil, and most processed and packaged foods because polyunsaturated fats are highly prone to oxidation, and that can promote chronic inflammation, the buildup of toxic substances in the arteries. And so I think one of the number one tactics for turning your body into a fat decimating factory is to cut out most PUFAs and replace them with healthy fat sources, like extra virgin olive oil, and fatty fish, and avocado oil, and macadamia nut oil, and coconut oil, and to a certain extent saturated fats, although many people do even need to limit saturated fats because a lot of folks and studies have shown experienced a deleterious inflammatory response of saturated fats once they comprise about over 10% of your total intake of fats. We’re talking about fats that are solid at room temperature, things like butter or cheeses, for example. So, sugar can be inflammatory, but compared to rancid oils, glucose, and fructose, and sucrose, and other sugars, those are pretty quickly metabolized, especially if you’re very active. So, I think sugar is less of an issue for inflammation, as much as vegetable oil, is the primary issue.

Now, another major cause of inflammation is simply chronic stress, and that’s just because your limbic system can get stuck in sympathetic fight-and-flight mode. That’s a pretty complex set of nerves and networks in the brain that controls basic emotions like fear and pleasure and anger, but also basic drives, like hunger and sex. So, if the limbic system is overstimulated, not only does your immune system become hyperactive, resulting in this cytokine cascade and systemic inflammation, but you also see a rapid fluctuation in the hormones responsible for controlling hunger.

And also, no discussion of inflammation I think would be complete without mentioning something called cell danger response or CDR. Now, CDR is this evolutionarily conserved metabolic response that protects cells and their hosts, including you, the human host from harm, and it’s triggered by encounters with chemical or physical or biological threats that exceed your cell’s capacity to be able to keep up with that stress. And that could be emotional stress, it could be exercise stress, it could be chemical stress, it could be like mold and environmental stress. But anyways, the resulting metabolic mismatch between available resources and the functional capacity of the cell can actually change things like cellular electron flow, and mitochondrial activity, and oxygen consumption, and cell membrane fluidity, and carbon, and sulfur resource allocation, and a host of other important metabolic mechanisms that also influence fat loss.

Now typically with CDR, there is this first wave of danger that signals the release of metabolic intermediates, like ATP and ADP, and oxygen, and reactive oxygen species from the cells. And then after the danger or the stress is eliminated or neutralized, there’s this sequence of anti-inflammatory and regenerative pathways that are activated to reverse that cell danger response and heal the cell. But when the CDR persists abnormally, what happens is a state of chronic inflammation and a long-term release of inflammatory cytokines.

Now interestingly, CDR, like I mentioned, can be kind of in that stuck state from emotion or past trauma, or from infection, or from toxins. And I think probably the best book to really wrap your head around how to manage cell danger response is a book called “Toxic” by Dr. Neil Nathan. There’s another doctor named Dr. Robert Naviaux. And I’ll link to both these guys’ website. Dr. Robert Naviaux has a lab at UCSD, and they really get into how mold and mycotoxin exposure, major life stressors, chemical stressors, exercise overtraining, et cetera, can leave you in fight-and-flight mode or increase this cell danger response.

So, ultimately, the number one thing that you can do if you are resistant to weight loss and you’re already moving more and eating less is to look for any sources of inflammation. I think the biggest is vegetable oil, but I’d also consider getting a test through StrateGene for any dirty genes. I’d also consider looking into cell danger response and reading that book, “Toxic” by Dr. Neil Nathan.

Now, the second thing, the second biggest thing really, in my opinion, that affects also a host of chronic disease parameters like inflammation does but also fat loss is glycemic variability. Now, glycemic variability refers to your blood glucose fluctuations that occur during the day, how often your blood sugar is rising and falling at any given point during the day. And what can happen is that if glycemic variability gets out of control and your blood sugar gets too high, your body has two choices. It can shovel the sugar in your muscles and liver or store that sugar as body fat, but if your energy expenditure throughout the day isn’t high enough and your muscle sugar levels, your glycogen levels in your muscle, or your glycogen levels in your liver are full, you’re going to gain fat tissue. That’s where the sugar will be partitioned.

Now, there are ways that you can keep that from happening, which I’ll get to in a moment. But ultimately, it’s very simple. You just are ruthlessly cognizant again, to use that term, of how often your blood sugar levels are fluctuating throughout the day. And some of my favorite ways to control the level of glycemic variability are the following six strategies. Number one is strength training because when you strength train your ability to drive glucose, then the muscle cells increases. And strength training also decreases blood glucose levels and increases insulin sensitivity.

I’m a big fan of starting or ending the day with strength training or even doing strength training prior to whatever your largest meal of the day is going to be so that you have a place for storage disposal for many sugars that you eat with the meal. Another one that I like is pre-breakfast fasted cardio. And there are some research studies that have shown this is a really good strategy for controlling glycemic variability. There’s even a really, really good book called, “Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life” that gets into Ayurvedic strategies for fat loss, and it highlights the importance of pre-breakfast fasted cardio, which is also wonderful for sleep and circadian rhythm.

So, strategy number three would be a postprandial walk. There was a Japanese study that took three groups of men and had them do one of three actions immediately following a meal; sitting, standing, or walking. And by the end of that study, they found out that low volume easy walking for 30 minutes after a meal kept serum fat concentrations 18% lower than sitting or standing after a meal. And personally, for me, with testing with my own continuous blood glucose monitor, I found that as little as 10 minutes of walking seems to do a really good job controlling post-exercise–or post-meal glucose spikes.

Standing would be strategy number four. And while that study I just cited did find that walking is more effective than standing after a meal, standing is still more effective than sitting. Like one study on office workers found that standing for 180 minutes after lunch, like at a standing workstation rather than a sitting workstation, reduce the post-lunch blood sugar spikes by 43% compared to sitting for the same amount of time. There was another study that found that alternating between standing and sitting every 30 minutes throughout the workday reduce blood sugar spikes by 11% on average. So, even during a day at the office, you don’t have to feel like you need to work out to control blood sugar, but instead the trick is to not sit down for the entirety of your work day, and preferably to figure out ways, especially post-breakfast and post-lunch, and if you’re still working, post-dinner, to stand to work for the periods of time following a meal.

Next, are our plants and herbs and spices. And there are a host of different plants and herbs and spices that can help out with blood sugar management. Some notable examples are Ceylon cinnamon, like working in two teaspoons of Ceylon cinnamon during the day. The supplement Gymnema sylvestre can control carbohydrate cravings, but also control glycemic variability. Berberine is another one. Apple cider vinegar is another. Then there are rock lotus and bitter melon extract. So, those are really potent natural ingredients. Those are actually a component of a product that I have at Kion called Kion Lean. These were the only two ingredients in it, rock lotus and bitter melon extract.

Now, I’m very, very much, because I carry the genetic factors that predispose me to type 2 diabetes, cognizant of my blood sugar levels. And I realize this might sound spendy and I go through a bottle of this stuff faster than most folks, but I have two before every meal, regardless of the carbohydrate content. And it, for me personally, is as potent as the diabetic drug metformin at controlling my postprandial blood glucose with potentially less of some of the metabolic blowback of using metformin. So, I’m a huge fan of that supplement as an option for controlling glycemic variability along with some of the things like Ceylon cinnamon and apple cider vinegar.

And then finally, the sixth strategy in addition to strength training, pre-breakfast fasted cardio, postprandial walks, standing, and some different plants, herbs, and spices, is fiber. And dietary insoluble fiber through anaerobic bacterial fermentation breaks down into short-chain fatty acids. And about 95% of the short-chain fatty acids in your body are comprised of acetate or propionate or butyrate. And research has shown that acetate inhibits the conversion of glucose to fatty acids in the liver, and that reduces the accumulation of fat and adipose tissue and improves glucose tolerance. Propionate appears to do the same thing, and also increase insulin sensitivity.

And then finally, butyrate has been shown in rodent models to prevent and treat diet-induced insulin resistance. So, you can get your fiber from things like sweet potatoes and yams and dark leafy greens and legumes. Interestingly, for people who get irritable bowel syndrome or who have some type of deleterious response to fiber intake like bloating or gas, it appears that being in a state of ketosis or consuming ketone supplements like beta-hydroxybutyrate, can simulate what fiber does for the effects that I just mentioned without you needing to eat a lot of fiber. So, if you’re saying a carnivore diet or you’re limiting vegetables for other reasons such as your gut, you can actually just use a ketone supplement like a beta-hydroxybutyrate salt or just stay in a relative state of ketosis, and that can do the same thing.

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Okay. As I alluded to earlier with cell danger response in my explanation of that, reason number three that folks can be resistant to weight loss is cortisol and stress. When you’re stressed, your body releases hormones like cortisol that turn on essential functions for your survival, like higher blood pressure and rapid decision-making while inhibiting non-essential functions like immune function or digestion or protein synthesis. And that’s helpful if you need to handle an acute stressor like a looming deadline or say like a race or a competition. But it’s also why chronic stress can restrict your ability to shed extra weight because cortisol can suppress insulin secretion, it can inhibit glucose uptake into your cells, and it can disrupt insulin signaling to muscle tissue.

So, chronic stress directly causes insulin resistance, and that can affect glycemic variability, cause resistance to weight loss, increase inflammation, cause dyslipidemia, which is elevated blood fat and cholesterol levels, and also result in chronic hypertension. So, when it comes to stress, the daily stressors can, not just be say the things you automatically think about, like say, work or family or relationship issues, but it can also include excess exercise, relationship, or personality conflicts that might simply be unresolved, but that you’re not thinking about in the moment. Emotions, like boredom and loneliness, can contribute to stress.

So, toxins and pollutants you might not even be aware of in your air, or your water, or say like EMF and Wi-Fi and electricity that are all around you. Psyching yourself up too frequently, right, like doing Wim Hof fire breathing at the beginning of every decision, from waking up to working out to amping yourself up to an important call can just be constant sympathetic mode. Pressure to perform, constant limelight from social media, lack of encouragement or love from others. There’s a lot of this stuff that has been studied to result in the same type of chronic stress patterns as you might get from just working too much.

So, one of the best ways to know if you’re chronically stressed, in my opinion, is to simply start measuring your heart rate variability. Get an Oura Ring or a WHOOP wristband or use the NatureBeat appropriate. And you can measure heart rate variability to see where your stress is in any given moment. When you can clean up heart rate variability–and sometimes it responds to very interesting things, like for me, when I step into my office, my HRV goes up, there’s electrical stuff all over my office.

It’s odd because I can work just as hard outside of my office in a lower electricity format like out in the guesthouse in the forest back behind my house, and I get nothing so I have things installed in my office; dirty electricity filters like a Somavedic and a Blue Shield and a Himalayan salt lamp, and these things that help to mitigate some of the EMF. And since I started doing those things, my HRV is a lot more stable during a day of work. So, again, even electrical stress can cause this type of stuff. And you can go and listen to my podcast on–with the guy who wrote the Tin Foil Hat book to learn more about that. But just understand there are a lot of variables that can contribute to stress, and you need to be aware of how cortisol could contribute to resistance to weight loss. And as I mentioned in podcast number 397, which you could listen to at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/397, the DUTCH test is probably one of the best tests. It’s a 24-hour urine test. We’re really seeing what’s truly going on with cortisol.

Okay. Number four is sleep deprivation. I don’t need to kick this horse to death. You probably know the research that shows that getting under the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night can lead to appetite cravings, weight gain, diabetes, and what would otherwise be a healthy population. Scarier yet is that all it takes to cause this type of damage is a single night of partial sleep. Of course, sleep deprivation is also known to raise cortisol levels, and reduce glucose tolerance, and increase sympathetic nervous system activities.

So, you can see how a lot of this stuff kind of piles up on each other as I go through these different reasons. And sleep deprivation also produces a neuroendocrine effect by reducing levels of the satiety inducing hormone leptin and increasing levels of the hunger-stimulating hormone ghrelin. So, sleep deprivation reduces your ability to metabolize glucose and also makes you want to consume more sugar or more hedonistic vegetable oil laid in snack food. That’s why it’s so easy to grab a second helping up the buffet or fail to stroll by a vending machine unscathed when you’re sleep-deprived. So, sleep is another very, very important variable.

Number five is snacking and post-workout calories. When I was bodybuilding and doing a lot of personal training, it was well known that one of the best strategies to pile on the pounds was to arrive at work with a container of yogurt and a couple of Tupperware containers of lean chicken with rice and broccoli, a couple of Ziploc bags of almonds, a handful of energy bars and a premade protein shake, and that was a really, really good way to put on size and mass, especially muscle mass if you’re combining that type of frequent eating and grazing with weight training.

But a lot of people caught on to that and thought, “Oh, I’m going to lose fat and look like a bodybuilder if I graze throughout the day.” But the theory behind that is you need to eat, whatever, six to eight small meals throughout the day to keep your metabolism elevated, but that’s a myth. It’s long since been debunked by science. Short digestion does produce a thermic effect that increases your metabolism, but the bump is very slight. Frequent snacking instead increases your glycemic variability and eliminates any of the gut or longevity-boosting benefits of fasting, or compressed feeding windows.

There’s no evidence that eating more than three meals per day boosts your metabolism, helps you to lose weight or aids in appetite control. But if you, on the other hand, eat only two to three meals per day in that compressed feeding window, such as during the period between say 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., your body releases more growth hormone. It burns more fat. It releases more testosterone. And frequent feeding also keeps your blood sugar at levels elevated and shifts your metabolism into more of a sugar burning mode, which doesn’t allow your body to tap into its stored fats for fuel.

So, eating six small meals per day may be worse for your waistline than eating two or three larger meals spread throughout the day. And the belief that you’ll enter into starvation mode if you don’t eat frequently is also false. It takes about three days of complete fasting with no calories, or four weeks of extreme calorie restriction for your body to downregulate metabolism and thyroid activity. Short-term fast like daily overnight 12 to 16-hour fast actually increase your metabolic rate due to an increase in norepinephrine, one of the hormones that signals fat cells to break down. You don’t even have to reduce your calorie intake in a scenario like this. Especially if you’re a very active individual, you just eat less often, not necessarily eat less. And as long as that’s combined with physical activity, it can be a good weight loss strategy.

Another common myth is that you need to shove some protein and carbs in your mouth or grab a Jamba Juice right after a workout from the smoothie outlet at the health club as you’re walking out. The idea behind eating right after finishing a workout is to maximize muscular adaptations and repair damaged tissue and rapidly shuttle glycogen into muscle for ample anabolic growth during that limited window of maximum carbohydrate absorption, which is about 20 minutes to maximum of two hours after training. But in every single study that looks at the benefits of immediate post-workout eating, the participants were fed after exercising usually to exhaustion in a fasted state. And most of us aren’t jumping out of bed to exercise for 90 to 120 minutes with no fuel.

So, unless you’re wanting to gain significant mass, like if you’re a high school or college football player trying to get to the next level by putting on 20 pounds, if you’ve eaten at some point prior to working out, there’s no need to drop everything to slug down that post-workout protein drink. Your blood levels of amino acids and stored carbohydrates are still elevated from any meal you’ve had prior to the workout. So, that means for a 5:00 p.m. visit to the gym, your body can still easily metabolize your breakfast or lunch for a fuel. And in fact, occasionally waiting to eat a couple hours after you exercise may be beneficial for boosting growth hormone and testosterone levels.

So, the only exception of this would be if you’re performing two a day workouts within an eight-hour window each day because you are–if you’re going to hit the gym twice, you do need to eat carbohydrates and protein within that 20-minute window preferably if you’re planning on hitting it hard again later on in the day within eight hours. But otherwise, there’s absolutely no need to try to replenish all your stores after the workout. And that may actually fly in the face of hormonal adaptations that would be conducive to more fat loss.

So, strategy number six is–or reason number six, you might be resistant to weight loss, is you’re not moving enough, duh. I’m always at a day of work standing and lunging and kneeling and sitting and leaning, and I try to take 15,000 steps a day. I stop every 25 to 50 minutes for a Pomodoro break that includes kettlebell swings or a quick stroll up the stairs or jumping jacks or a handful of burpees. I’ve stopped 25 minutes into this podcast and I sat down and stood up 15 times, right? Just sit down on the floor, stand up 15 times, very functional move. I do 20 air squats every time I use the bathroom on an airplane. I do 40 air squats every time I use the bathroom in a restaurant.

And I don’t do this because I’m a hyperactive freak who’s addicted to exercise, rather, I simply know the metabolic benefits of twitching and constantly moving and really kind of fooling your body into thinking you’re in this hunter-gatherer ancestral mode of just getting stuff done during the day rather than staying sedentary for extended periods of time. And when you’re sedentary, you see changes in insulin signaling and glucose transport and lower levels of lipoprotein lipase, which is the primary enzyme responsible for breaking down fat. So, the trick is to just figure out ways to move more.

Most people who are pretty successful at weight loss, they’re taking anywhere from 10 to 15,000 steps a day, and they rarely–and a ring like the Oura ring, for example, or self-quantification device can tell you this, they rarely have a one-hour period of time during the day where they’re inactive, right, even one hour. Meaning that if you have a one-hour work project to do, you stop at the 25-minute mark. You do some jumping jacks and you keep going. I mean, it’s that simple.

Now, reason number seven is just the opposite, too much exercise. This is the hardcore CrossFit are trying to stay in the whiteboard or the housewife who’s been inspired by the Navy SEAL on social media to get up at 4:00 a.m. to go crush the day and go to the pain cave. And the physical cults are all about zero days off and no pain no gain, and balls to the wall, and going hard as a mother effort. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to going to the pain cave, if you’re trying to climb your own Mount Everest like training for a triathlon or a Spartan Race or the CrossFit games, but sometimes it’s not conducive to weight loss.

Excessive exercise, especially in the presence of other lifestyle stressors, can lead to elevated levels of cortisol and inflammation. And we now live in an era of overtrained, over-inflamed folks with hormonal dysregulation and cortisol bleeding out their ears. That’s what my entire last book, “Beyond Training” is all about. It’s about how athletes run into all these different health issues with overtraining or what’s called non-functional overreaching, just training in a state that leaves you unfunctional.

So, the idea is that in many cases if you’re resistant to weight loss, typically, what I see is it’s too much of the same exercise over and over again, too much hard exercise, not enough variability and activity, and not enough just easier days where you’re walking in the sunshine or doing yoga or gardening. I think the sweet spot is two to three days of the week, you’re lifting heavy stuff, you’re doing a brief spurt of high-intensity interval training, again two to three days a week. You have a couple of days where you’re out going on a longer walk or a longer hike.

And aside from that, you just have low-level physical activity spread throughout the day. The only exception to that is I am a huge fan of most folks going on like an easy aerobic walk before breakfast when they’re in a fasted state in the morning. But that’s something that can easily be woven into a routine, and you don’t need a lot more than that. So, over-exercising can lead a lot of people into kind of that skinny fat syndrome.

Similarly, reason number eight is chronic cardio, not the chronic heavy weight training or high-intensity interval training, but just this idea of long marathon training death marches, or multi-hour cycling sessions, or the excessive draining slog on the line up of cardio machines at the gym. Not only can chronic cardio lead to some cardiomyopathy issues like dilation of the right atrium and ventricle of the heart, and elevation of cardiac troponin and other things called natriuretic peptides and little patches of cardiac fibrosis. And I’m not talking about like walking or gardening or mowing the lawn; I’m talking about like pounding the pavement in training for an Ironman triathlon or marathon in a traditional voluminous sense.

And again, like you do need to train with volume in many cases for those type of events, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s a good way to lose weight or to maximize longevity or health. The idea is that excessive chronic cardio will catabolize muscle. And a wonderful stored usable energy for cardio is body fat. And so your body essentially gets rid of muscle and learns how to store fat pretty easily to prepare for each bout of cardio while simultaneously downregulating anabolic hormones, like testosterone and growth hormone. And so that’s one of the issues is that you simply put your body into a state where you’re catabolizing muscle and getting very good at storing fat.

So, if you’re already training a better but is short high-intensity interval cardio sessions, again two to three days of the week. And there was one study that found that after 20 weeks of training, participants that performed high-intensity interval training had a greater reduction in subcutaneous adipose of your body fat than those that engaged in a far more voluminous amount of endurance training, like long, slow treadmill runs. And, of course, hit is also effective at the management of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. And most hit sessions last like 20 to 30 minutes at the most. So, you’re getting a lot more bang for your buck from a time standpoint. Again, if you’re having difficulty with losing weight and you’re spending a lot of time on the gym cardio machines or doing Ironman-esque training sessions, you may want to reconsider or lower the cardio and replace it with high-intensity interval training and weight training.

Next is the SAID principle, reason number nine. The SAID principle stands for specific adaptation to impose demands, meaning, your body will eventually adapt to the demands that you place on it. Like if you’re only running for your cardio or if you’re only doing push-ups and overhead presses and pull-ups as your only form of upper-body training, your body gets very efficient at those movements and it adapts to those demands by burning fewer calories in response to those exercises. It’s just a cool element of the human body. We learn how to move very efficiently with things that we do quite often, but it also means that we burn a lower number of calories. And this means that sometimes the best workout plan is the one you’re not currently doing.

Most of my clients who I coach and I write out their training plans and workouts, they know at least every four weeks, there are some pretty serious curveballs thrown into their weight training routine, their high-intensity interval training routine, their cardio routine. Some days they’re on the rowing machine, some days they’re outside on the bike, some days they’re using the kettlebell, some days they’re using dumbbells and barbells, some days they’re doing 10 reps, some days they’re doing 20 reps. It varies widely, especially for those folks whose primary goal is aesthetics because I am keeping their body constantly kind of guessing.

The idea behind this is that I would say there are five different modifications that can help out quite a bit. One is to combine exercise, like, do a lot of complex movements. You can look up a whole bunch of complex lifts. I have a whole article at BenGreenfieldFitness.com that’ll link to in the shownotes at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/fatlosspodcast on complex exercises like squats to overhead presses, lunges with curls, vertical jumps, push-ups with a burpee, medicine ball lifts and throws, a lot of things that combine different exercises. Those can be very difficult for your body to metabolically adapt to.

Next, are active rest periods. So, if you’re doing a routine and it says, “Rest 30 seconds, rest 60 seconds, rest 90 seconds,” use that time to do mobility work like foam rolling or opposite arm, opposite leg extensions or light and easy walking. I see so many people slumped over on the bench at the gym reading their cell phones or magazine, and I think that time could be much better used to keep the metabolic rate elevated and squeeze more volume into training session.

Training outside can also be good. If you’re used to training indoors, the unpredictability and undulating terrain that you’ll experience outside, and of course there’s a host of other reasons that it’s beneficial to train outside, can really, really help. I have a formal gym at my home, but I also have a garage gym, and also a trail through the forest. So, I’ve got like three different locales, and I can tell you right now, running outside down the trail is far different than running on the treadmill in terms of metabolic cost.

Next is to change the center of gravity. Meaning, if you usually use a barbell for lunges, switch it up, use dumbbells, use a medicine ball, use a kettlebell in a goblet squat position. Add on a weighted vest or a weighted backpack when you’re walking. For cable exercises, move the cable up or down a few notches and come at the movement from a new angle because altered weight positions and angles force your body into an entirely new metabolic situation. You can also work out at a different time of day. So, if you’ve been working on the morning for the past few years, you can throw your body for a loop and hit the gym an hour before dinner and it’ll feel far different.

The only folks for whom kind of like changing up the scenario by working at a different time of day or people who have poor sleep or disrupted circadian rhythms, exercising in a regular time during the day has been shown to be beneficial for sleep. But if your primary goal is weight loss, just try to keep throwing curveballs at your body. That’s the big message. Don’t go for more than four weeks without significantly changing some specific staple of your exercise program.

Next is cold. So, most of the people I trained for fat loss–and I stay pretty lean year-round. I average about 4% to 7% body fat year-round every single day without fail. Not only do I do an easy fasted cardio session before breakfast, like a 20-minute walk in the sunshine or 30 minutes in the sauna, but I also get in two to five minutes of cold, because cold can be such a potent metabolic stimulus, it converts white adipose tissue into metabolically active brown fat. And brown adipose tissue is brown fat. It’s primarily located on your sternum and your clavicle and your rib cage. It generates heat by mobilizing the energy that’s stored in white fat. That’s known as non-shivering thermogenesis or cold thermogenesis, and it occurs in brown adipose tissue mitochondria when protons are forced across the inner membrane to be turned into heat instead of ATP.

Now, when this occurs, you can see a significant increase in metabolic rate and a conversion of a lot of adipose tissue. There’s another type of fat called beige fat. Beige adipose tissue is very similar to brown adipose tissue. And what happens is it doesn’t get moved into the clavicle area or the rib cage or the sternal area; it stays in the same general area, but it’s far more metabolically active and far less inflammatory. So, again, most of the folks I coach and myself every single day without fail, there’s at least two to five minutes of cold exposure via a cold shower or a cold soak.

Usually, once a week, there’s a longer cold training session where I’ll have people be doing like three minutes in a cold bath or cold river or cold lake or cold shower followed by three minutes of breathwork. I call this the three by three cold, back into the cold for three minutes, back into the breathwork for three minutes three times through. And in the people who can handle it from a–because I track everyone’s HRV, but the people who don’t respond deleteriously to this from a nervous system standpoint, every week, I’ll have them do a longer session that leaves them shivering for a considerable period of time, like a 10 to 20-minute cold bath.

Now, another option, if that’s uncomfortable for you, is there’s a company called cool fat burner. You can check them out at coolfatburner.com, and I’ll put links in the shownotes that sell vests and waist packs that just pack your body with cold. And those can be really effective if you just–you got to be at your computer working during the day, you can’t be sitting in an ice bath, and it allows you to stay cold. So, get cold.

Number eleven is hormone. And there are a lot of hormonal imbalances that can occur as young as your early 20s caused by everything from stress to pesticides, to plasticizers, to phytoestrogens, to dietary contaminants, to lack of sleep, to poor digestive health. And when it comes to hormones, I really like that DUTCH steroid profile that I mentioned earlier because it’ll tell you what’s going with your testosterone, with your estrogen, with your cortisol, with your cortisone, with your metabolites. It’s something that you can order online. I’ll be sure to add links to it for you in the shownotes.

But women, for example, naturally produce progesterone, and that protects against excess fat growth. And progesterone production declines much faster with age than estrogen. So, by the time a woman reaches 30 to 50 years old, she can develop estrogen dominance. And at that point, fat rapidly accumulates and becomes much harder to lose. Men can experience similar age-related issues as their testosterone falls and their estrogen rises. But you may simply be a candidate if you get tested for either adjustments to the diet or to the environment that would be influencing your hormonal panel or even bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

I did a whole podcast with Jay Campbell on this and we talked a lot about testosterone replacement, and hormone replacement, and the safety profile of it, and some of the myths about it. If you’re not competing in a sport like Ironman or something like that that would cause this to be banned, it can be a potent strategy. But before you even jump into something like that, I mean, you can eat more cruciferous vegetables, which contain indole-3-carbinol, which is an antioxidant that metabolizes excess estrogen in the body. You can filter your water of things like fluoride and chlorine. You can use glass or stainless steel products instead of plastic.

Go read a book that my friend, Anthony Jay wrote called, “Estrogeneration” that specifically addresses all of these hormonal disruptors in our environment and minimize them in your environment. I think that hormones are another really, really important thing, especially when people are eating less and moving more and still resistant to weight loss, especially if they’re about 35 to 40 years old or higher.

Now, related to that would be number 12, which is toxin and chemical exposure. Three-letter acronyms like PCBs and DDT and DDE and BPA, those have been found in extremely high concentrations in human fat tissue and can cause significant metabolic damage and hormone imbalances and propensity to fat storage because toxins can be shoveled into adipose tissue to protect other functional tissue and internal organs. That’s why a rapid fat loss regimen can often result in skin rashes and zits and diarrhea because as you mobilize fat, you also mobilize many of the toxins that that fat contains. And those can cause other symptoms if they’re not dealt with via a wise detoxification protocol.

So, the part about balancing your hormones can really help out with minimizing or sopping up toxin and chemical damage, some of those tips that I gave earlier, but you must be, again I’m going to use this term for a third time, ruthlessly cognizant of any sources of toxins and chemicals in your environment. And it just drives me nuts when I see some woman at the gym exercising her ass off, dieting like hell, and then walking in the locker room. I’m not watching her in the locker room. You can smell the women when you walk past them just wearing these endocrine disrupting perfumes and non-organic or non-natural makeup. I mean, all these things that are just seeping into their bodies, getting their house cleaned with normal household cleaning chemicals and driving on a car with that toxic little green tree freshener. There are just so many things that sounds silly, but if you’re constantly bombarding your body with that stuff, it really can cause your body to want to create new fat cells to store those toxins.

Now, number 13 is food allergies or food intolerances. And the problem with this is it can result in a lot of times that same sympathetic inflammatory response I was describing earlier that can result in either cell danger response or resistance to fat loss. Now in many cases, this is very simply elucidated with a good food allergy test. I’m a huge fan of Cyrex Laboratories because they test for reactivity to cooked and modified and raw foods. They test for over 180 different food antigens. They test different protein structures of the food. They test, again like I mentioned, raw chicken versus cooked chicken, and the white blood cell response is going to be far different to raw versus cooked. So, you’re going to get fewer false positives in response to common foods.

It’s one that a doctor would need to order for you, but I’ll link to some helpful resources for Cyrex Laboratories in the shownotes because that’s one that I think can really, really elucidate anything in your diet that you really should eliminate. And it varies widely from person to person. One person can be green beans, another person can be cashews. But what you don’t get is a huge laundry list of false positives in most cases from a Cyrex food allergy panel.

Number 14 is micronutrient deficiencies. So, there are studies that have shown that specific micronutrient deficiencies are associated with weight gain and obesity. The most significant of these micronutrients are vitamin D, chromium, biotin, thiamine, and antioxidants. And deficiencies in these specific nutrients can prevent fat loss via mechanisms that include altered insulin gene transcription, amplification of intracellular insulin signaling and changes to glucose, and amino acid metabolism. A few others that are less common but still related to resistance to weight loss are magnesium, and boron, and vitamin A, vitamin K2, and choline.

Now, there are tests like the Genova ION panel or the Genova NutrEval, and both of those can identify these micronutrient deficiencies that can be causing resistance to weight loss. And a lot of these aren’t tested for on an average common blood panel. So, that’s another one that I would consider is your micronutrient status. I’m not saying everybody needs to go out and take a multivitamin. I don’t think that’s wise, but I do think it’s wise to test and see if there are specific vitamins and micronutrients and minerals you’re deficient in that you need to replace.

Number 15 is your thyroid. Now, the thyroid gland, as you’re no doubt aware, produces hormones that regulate metabolism. It secretes thyroxine or T3 and triiodothyronine or–thyroxine is actually T4, triiodothyronine is T3, but those influence the metabolic rate of lipids and cholesterol and glucose and protein. And when the thyroid becomes underactive and results in hypothyroidism, that can result in weight gain, so can any type of autoimmune issues that could inhibit the conversion of T4 to the more active T3, as can gut issues.

And so there are a lot of things that can influence thyroid activity. If you’re going to test for thyroid, I would get a comprehensive blood test for thyroid activity that includes things like TSH, T3, T4, free T3, free T4, reverse T3. Don’t just look at TSH because even if TSH is high, and I would consider high to be anything above about two, especially if you’re looking less for absence of disease and more for variables that might contribute to resistance to weight loss, you don’t know why the TSH is high unless you test some of these other variables too, and that will lie to figure out, “Okay, whatever.”

“I’m making more than enough T4, but it’s not getting futher into T3. Maybe I’m not eating enough carbohydrates, or maybe I’m too stressed, or maybe I have some gut dysfunction, or I’m making adequate T4 and T3 but I’ve got a bunch of thyroid antibodies. And so I have some thyroid autoimmune conditions, or I need to analyze my diet for anything that could be causing food allergies or food intolerances.” And you can also consume plenty of seaweed and sea vegetables and Dulce and Brazil nuts and shellfish and oysters, and even coconut oil, because a lot of those are the type of foods that can allow for proper thyroid conversion and metabolism in the gut. So, thyroid would be number 15.

And then we get to number 16, which is disordered eating. And for a lot of people, and research suggests this, maintaining a regular eating schedule can improve significantly the metabolic response to meals. So, if you’re having trouble losing weight rather than haphazardly skipping breakfast some days and eating it on others, having dinner late some nights and early the other nights, or shifting from restaurant to restaurant for your lunch choices, you should simply establish far more consistent meal patterns. I’ve had some clients shed significant number of pounds by not changing anything except just having the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A smoothie for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and then meat or fish and vegetables for dinner at the same time day in, day out for a few months.

Women, interestingly, seem to benefit most from this type of regularity. They did a study of healthy lean women and they found that an irregular meal pattern resulted in lower postprandial energy expenditure than a regular meal pattern. There’s another study where lean women who ate meals on a regular schedule had much better insulin sensitivity and improved blood fat levels. And there was another study of obese women in that they found that regular meal times increased postprandial thermogenesis, and insulin sensitivity, and blood lipids which put the women into a state that was more receptive to weight loss.

Now, some folks, especially very active folks, can thrive on an erratic eating schedule. But for many people, irregular meal times depress metabolism because their bodies expect food at specific times, and the result can be dysregulated appetite and altered metabolism. And I just think if you’re eating the same thing at similar times a day, it’s far easier to just be cognizant of how many calories you’re consuming. Once you begin to mix things up a whole lot, it can get really difficult.

And I personally have nearly the same thing for breakfast, the same thing for lunch, and the same thing for dinner, granted there are some benefits to seasonal eating. Like sometimes my smoothie is more of like a hot bowl in the winter, or my lunchtime salad is more of a stir-fry in the winter, and dinner might be a little bit more of a heftier, heavier meat in for dinner in the winter. But it’s kind of the same general composition year in and year out, month in and month out. So, disordered eating is the 16th.

The last thing I want to finish with today is–well, first of all, everything I’ve mentioned, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/fatlosspodcast and I’ll have plenty of helpful links and resources for everything I’ve been talking about. But you’ve learned about different factors that can prevent you from losing weight today. You’ve learned how to reverse a lot of those negative effects to get the body that you desire, but please also understand that everybody is different, and so is every body.

So, if you aren’t satisfied with your physique according to what societally subjective beauty standards thrown at you in grocery store magazines and from pop culture are, it may be the case that your body has reached its ideal weight. You may not like to hear that and it may not seem fair, but you can reach a state of healthy homeostasis even if you have higher than desired body fat percentage if you’re doing everything right. If you nailed every element in this podcast and you still can’t seem to lose more weight, you might need to accept the fact that you’ve reached healthy homeostasis and you weren’t just designed out veins in your abs or striated lats or skinny calves. And that’s okay. Own your thick calves. Own the extra little bit of fat up around your neck that you don’t like because that’s how you were built.

Excessive exercising and dieting with an orthorexic approach to life while beating your body’s smithereens with fat loss biohacks, it’s not going to shift you into maximum fat-burning zone or shrink your waistline, and it’s more likely to downregulate vital components of life, like fertility and satisfaction and happiness. So, accept the fact that you have a unique body. Inject light levels of physical activity or mild discomfort throughout the day, and stand while you work, and take cold showers, and avoid sitting for long periods of time, and engage in deep breathing to control stress, and implement intermittent fasting, and use all the other techniques that I’ve talked about, and then simply be satisfied and happy with the body that you’ve been blessed with.

So, I hope this has been helpful for you. And if you have questions, if you have comments, if you have feedback, just go over to the shownotes at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/fatlosspodcast, and I’ll be happy to help. And in the meantime, have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today’s show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I’ve ever recommended for hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes, that I mentioned during this and every episode, helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. When you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

Several months ago, I filled you in on “The 2 Best Ways To Burn Fat Fast (Without Destroying Your Hormones Or Metabolism)“.

But what you learned in that article only scratched the surface of the multiple mechanisms underlying why the human body can be resistant to fat loss, and how to achieve truly sustainable, long-lasting weight loss in a safe and efficient manner.

So during today’s solosode, you’ll discover…

-How fat actually gets burnt…6:20

Law of conservation of mass: Mass, in an isolated system, is neither created nor destroyed by chemical reactions or physical transformations

Fat is primarily disposed of via the breath

Calories, as well as excess carbs and proteins, are converted into triglycerides and stored in lipid droplets of adipocytes

Excess dietary fat undergoes lipolysis, and then reesterification

Triglycerides are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen

Oxidation: requires inhalation of oxygen

Study: When someone loses weight, where does the fat go?

For 22 pounds of fat to be oxidized, 64 pounds of oxygen must be inhaled

Results in 61 pounds of carbon dioxide excreted via the lungs and 24 pounds of water excreted via urine, sweat, feces, and breath

Average of 17,000 breaths per day will excrete .32 lbs of carbon

Sources of carbon (other than eating coal) are: dietary carbs, proteins, and fats

If you didn’t get all that, get this: Losing fat means consuming less carbon than you’ve exhaled. Even small quantities of food can foil your efforts at weight loss. The simple solution is to move more and eat less.

The 16 reasons you’re not burning fat the way you’d like

– Chronic Inflammation…12:35

High levels of transforming growth actor beta cause irregular appetite and glucose regulation

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP): calcium-dependent zinc-containing endopeptidases

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF): Aids in the growth of new blood vessels; correlated with obesity

Nitric oxide synthase

Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) = meta inflammation

Nos uncoupling (genetic factors)

StrateGene

Tree of Life, Bob Miller’s site

Sugar can be inflammatory but is more quickly metabolized than things like vegetable oil

Chronic stress is a factor: overstimulation of the limbic system

Cell Danger Response (CDR)

– Glycemic variability (GV)…21:05

Refers to the blood glucose variations during the day

If GV gets out of control, the body does one of two things: transfers sugar into muscles, or stores as body fat

It will become fat tissue if you’re not active enough throughout the day

Be “ruthlessly” cognizant of blood sugar fluctuations

6 Strategies to control GV

Strength training

Pre-breakfast fasted cardio

Post-prandial walk

Standing

Plants, herbs, spices

Fiber

– Cortisol and stress…30:45

– Sleep deprivation…34:20

A single night of partial sleep can be deleterious

Neuro endocrine effect: reduces levels of leptin; increases levels of ghrelin

– Snacking and post-workout calories…35:25

“Grazing” or 6-8 small meals per day is a myth

Snacking increases your GV and eliminates benefits of fasting

Your body releases more growth hormone during intermittent fasting

Grazing throws metabolism into sugar burning mode

It takes 3 days, or 4 weeks of extreme calorie restriction for the body to down regulate metabolism

The need for protein and carbs right after a workout is a myth

The exception: two a day workouts

– You’re not moving enough…39:47

Fool your body into thinking it’s in the “hunter gatherer” mode

– Too much exercise…41:30

Excessive exercise, along with other stressors can lead to increased levels of cortisol and inflammation

Beyond Trainingby Ben Greenfield

Too much of the same exercise

Not enough recovery days

Sweet spot:

2-3 days per week, lift heavy stuff

2-3 days high-intensity interval training

– Chronic cardio…43:35

Your body will catabolize muscle and store fat

High-intensity cardio 2-3 days per week

Reduced subcutaneous adiposity of body fat among people who follow these guidelines

– The SAID Principle…46:00

Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands

Sometimes the best workout plan is the one you’re not currently doing

Keep the body guessing

5 modifications:

Combine exercises

Active rest periods

Train outside

Change the center of gravity

Workout at a different time of day

– Lack of cold therapy…50:00

Cold is a strong metabolic stimulus

Cold thermogenesis occurs when protons are forced across the inner membrane and turned into heat

Beige adipose tissue

Every day, 2-5 minutes cold exposure (cold shower, cold river or lake)

3×3 cold

com(Use code: BEN10CFB to save 10%)

– Hormonal imbalance…52:25

– Toxin and chemical exposure…54:40

– Food allergies and intolerances…56:30

– Micro-nutrient deficiencies…

– Thyroid…59:00

– Disordered eating…1:01:01

Your body expects food at a certain time of day

Results in irregular metabolism

Easier to track calorie consumption when you eat the same thing, at the same time of day

– Final comments…1:03:25

Everybody and every bodyis different

It could be possible your body has reached its desired weight

– And much more!

Resources mentioned:

– Article: When someone loses weight, where does the fat go?

– StrateGene

– Tree of Life, Bob Miller’s site

– Book: Toxic by Neil Nathan

– Dr. Robert Naviaux, UCSD

– Book: Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life 

– Ceylon cinnamon

– Gymnema Sylvestre

– Berberine

– Apple cider vinegar

– Kion Lean

– Oura Ring (Save $50 with code: GREENFIELDOURA)

– Podcast with building biologist Brian Hoyer

– Podcast Ep. 397

– Beyond Training by Ben Greenfield

– coolfatburner.com (Use code: BEN10CFB to save 10%)

– Dutch Test

– Podcast w/ Jay Campbell

– Estrogeneration by Anthony Jay

Episode sponsors:

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Ask Ben a Podcast Question

Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/transcripts/transcript-how-to-lose-weight/

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Der große „Frauentausch“: Strache warnt vor linkslinker RTL-II-Sendung

FPÖ-Chef Heinz Christian Strache warnt vor einem angeblich großen „Frauentausch“. Schon seit Jahren werden laut Strache gezielt deutsche Frauen aus ihren Familien gerissen. Dann werden sie einer neuen Familie zugeteilt, der sie sich unterordnen müssen. Strache wittert eine „islamistisch-jüdische Verschwörung rund um den UN-Propagandasender RTL II“.

WIEN/KÖLN – „Der Bevölkerungsaustausch ist Realität und bereits viel weiter fortgeschritten, als wir befürchtet haben“, sagt Strache und rollt einen Fernsehkasten auf das Podium.

Er startet das Video. „Da sieht man, wie vor laufenden Kameras eine deutsche Frau plötzlich durch eine, sagen wir, nicht deutsch aussehende Frau ersetzt wird. Da fragt man sich als anständiger Mensch: Warum greift da niemand ein? Wo wart ihr Silvester?“ Mehrere Krone-Journalisten stehen auf und skandieren „Wo, wo, wo wart ihr Silvester?“

Beweise für gezielte Steuerung

„Wir kennen inzwischen auch die Drahtzieher der Sendung“, erklärt Strache. „Mehrere 12-jähriger Redakteure von InfoDirekt haben gestern geträumt, dass RTL eine Abkürzung ist für ‚Rebellische Titojünger Lenins‘.“ Kanzler Kurz habe dies auf Twitter bereits bestätigt.

„Außerdem“, so Strache, „steht das II nicht für die Zahl 2, sondern für die zwei Türme des World Trade Centers. Dieses wiederum stand in New York, der Zentrale der George Soros GmbH & Österreich KG.“

FPÖ fordert Konsequenzen

„Dafür, dass RTL II solche linksversifften TV-Sendungen produziert, zahl ich die GIS?“, ärgert sich auch FPÖ-Frauensprecher und Kinderschreck-Beauftragter Harald Vilimsky. Um die von UNO, EU und Armin Wolf gesteuerte Umvolkung zu stoppen, fordert die FPÖ eine europaweite Ausgangssperre für Frauen. „Frauen gehören nicht ausgetauscht, sondern hinter den Herd. Da kommen sie her und das ist ihre Identität“, so Strache.

Source: https://dietagespresse.com/der-grosse-frauentausch-strache-warnt-vor-linkslinker-rtl-ii-sendung/

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Weight cycling is associated with a higher risk of death

Weight cycling is associated with a higher risk of death, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Weight cycling, or the constant losing and gaining of weight (usually from diet), leads to adverse health outcomes. By some estimates, 80 percent of people who lose weight will gradually regain it to end up at the same weight or even heavier than they were before they went on a diet. The Endocrine Society's Scientific Statement on the causes of obesity found this was because once an individual loses weight, the body typically reduces the amount of energy expended at rest, during exercise and daily activities while increasing hunger. This combination of lower energy expenditure and hunger creates a "perfect metabolic storm" of conditions for weight gain.

"This study shows that weight cycling can heighten a person's risk of death," said lead study author Hak C. Jang, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Seoul National University (SNU) College of Medicine and Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in Seongnam, Korea. "However, we also concluded that weight loss as a result of weight cycling can ultimately reduce the risk of developing diabetes in people with obesity."

In the 16-year prospective cohort study, researchers examined 3,678 men and women from the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study and found weight cycling was associated with a higher risk of death. Interestingly, people with obesity who experienced more weight cycling were less likely to develop diabetes than other study participants. The health benefits of weight loss overshadowed the adverse effects of weight cycling for individuals with obesity looking to lower their diabetes risk.

Story Source:

Materials provided by The Endocrine Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181129153837.htm

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US researchers explore link between sugar, insulin, keto, and cancer

The groundbreaking work of US cancer researcher Lewis Cantley, PhD, linking the ketogenic diet to an anti-cancer drug, is receiving prominent coverage in the medical media.

Dr. Cantley, who is based at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, is leading a research program in which a powerful anti-cancer drug is paired with the ketogenic diet in effort to starve cancer cells of the glucose and insulin they need to grow and spread. His work, now in clinical trials with women with endometrial cancer, was detailed in a new feature in The Medical Express this week.

Medical Express: Increasing evidence of a strong connection between sugar and cancer

A number of years ago, Cantley discovered a special enzyme, called PI3 kinase, which some are calling “the master switch for cancer.” As the article notes:

It turned out that the gene that encodes PI3K is the most frequently mutated cancer-promoting gene in humans — and in the years since Dr. Cantley’s revolutionary discovery, it has been implicated in as many as 80 percent of cancers, including those of the breast, brain and bladder.

Cantley is touted to be in contention for the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery. But now Cantley and his team have created drugs that inhibit PI3K. However, their research also found that despite the new drug’s ability to inhibit PI3K, the continuing presence of high insulin drives further cancer growth. How to get the insulin levels down? The ketogenic diet! 

His groundbreaking work, in which PI3K inhibitors plus the ketogenic diet shrank cancers in mice, received prominent coverage in pre-eminent journal Nature in July 2018. Now the work has moved into clinical trials in humans.

In December, Dr. Bret Scher wrote about this promising avenue of research in a column for Diet Doctor. Dr. Scher’s post was a summary of a larger piece written by famous oncologist and author Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee in The New York Times Magazine, which also describes Dr. Cantley’s ground-breaking work. Mukherjee was a co-author with Cantley on the Nature publication and a leading clinical researcher involved in the clinical trials of keto plus the PI3K inhibitor.

Diet Doctor: Prominent oncologist to study potential of “keto+ drugs” to fight cancer  

The New York Times Magazine: It’s time to study whether eating particular diets can help heal us

Said Dr. Scher of the work, and Mukherjee’s involvement: 

How wonderful that this mainstream trial is about to get underway, especially with a curious and open-minded researcher at the helm. Knowledge is power, and shining the bright light of mainstream attention and resources on the potential of keto diets as an adjuvant cancer therapy is very good news indeed.

In a second story in the medical news this past week, a team of researchers, including post-doctoral fellows who had been working in Cantley’s lab at Weill Cornell Medicine, has discovered that high-fructose corn-syrup increases intestinal tumor growth in mouse models of colon cancer. The cancer growth was independent of obesity in the mice. 

The study was published in the leading journal Science this past week. While the team of authors conclude the results are too early to translate into human cancer growth “these mouse studies support the hypothesis that the combination of dietary glucose and fructose, even at a moderate dose, can enhance tumorigenesis [tumor growth].”

Science Daily News: High-fructose corn syrup boosts intestinal tumor growth in mice.

Science: High-fructose corn syrup enhances intestinal tumor growth in mice

In short, while much more research needs to be done, these are exciting times for novel cancer research, helping us better understand the role of glucose and insulin in cancer growth and using the ketogenic diet as a potentially powerful addition to new cancer therapies.

A ketogenic diet for beginners

Guide Here you’ll learn how to eat a keto diet based on real foods. You’ll find visual guides, recipes, meal plans and a simple 2-week get started program, all you need to succeed on keto.

Earlier

Swapping sugars may improve cancer outcomes

Cancer incorporation

Chemicals that cause cancer

Prominent oncologist to study potential of “keto + drugs” to fight cancer

Source: https://www.dietdoctor.com/us-researchers-explore-link-between-sugar-insulin-keto-and-cancer

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“Can intermittent fasting help with amenorrhea?”

Is the “Dutch test” a good marker to use in peri and menopause? Is fasting a good approach to amenorrhea? Snack options between meals? And, do you recommend zero carbs?

Get the answer to these questions in this week’s Q&A with fertility specialist Dr. Fox:

Dutch test

I am a 52-year-old perimenopausal woman. Had a hysterectomy a year and a half ago. Also hypothyroid. I have been trying to research about peri and menopause and how I should approach it. Is the “ Dutch test” a good marker to use?

I have been doing the keto for a month now, do I check my thyroid more often? I hear that it changes when you implement this diet. I did IVF at 40 and was hyperstimulated. Does this put you into menopause sooner?

Thank you, Tania

  Dr. Fox:

Hello Tania,

I don’t know about the “Dutch test.” It is sad to me that people are having to resort to such home testing modalities as this Dutch test in order to guide their doctors. I would tell you not to waste your money. If your ovaries were removed with surgery and 98% chance even if they were not removed, you will need estrogen supplementation/replacement. It is my opinion that all women in menopause and even a little before the need to start estrogen. For average ovarian function women, I am starting estrogen supplementation in the 43/44 age range on average. Find a hormone friendly physician to discuss it further.

It is actually good that the uterus is gone because now you do not need progesterone supplementation. Progesterone is a negative metabolic hormone. Without added estrogen, your metabolic system will suffer and you will gain weight and be less healthy. Yes if you have hashimotos type hypothyroidism, the antibody load may dramatically decrease on ketogenic approach and you may need less supplemental thyroid hormone.

Lastly, no – IVF with hyperstimulation only utilizes eggs that were going to disappear anyway during that particular cycle and does not reduce your egg count faster than normal. Best of luck…

Fasting with amenorrhea

My daughter has not had a regular period for five years. She tried BCP three times and was not successful and now we have no interest in going that route. She has seen gynecologists and endocrinologist and everything looks ok. She is 22 now. Her health history has involved a lot of antibiotic/laxatives and stress. She has a few autoimmune disorders (psoriasis and possibly thyroid). She has tried to go the natural path with Dr. Jolene Brighton as well. My question to you is: Do you think fasting is ok for her? She has a very normal weight. Normal BMI. She has been intermittent fasting with bulletproof coffee but we have been discussing a cleaner fast. What is your opinion?

Thank you for your time, Michelle

  Dr. Fox:

Michelle,

It is hard to comment on the amenorrhea. All things cannot be “OK” if amenorrhea or severely irregular cycles are the norm? If her weight is normal, my guess is that she suffers from physiologic stress-induced ovulation dysfunction. Stresses, we have alluded to in other answers but primarily center around, over exercise (aerobic), nutritional stress (hypoglycemic spells, or anorexia, bulimia, starvation weight loss, fasting), sleep disturbance or sleep apnea, to name a few. So as you can see, fasting would fit the category of stress, thus making the cycles worse. One other very significant stress signal comes from caffeine. There are no other people on the anti-caffeine bandwagon with me, but this is a huge problem for our population. Caffeine and amphetamine/cocaine have very similar effects. She probably needs estrogen as well but this is hard to sort out without more extensive interaction through history and labs. I am not a huge fan of intermittent fasting for females. Only in those that are dramatically overweight who are primarily seeking big weight loss. Hope this helps…

Snacks options?

If im hungry between meals what are my options to snack on? And im only eating two meals a day?

Gloria

  Dr. Fox:

You need to be eating every three hours at least 150 calories. Two meals a day creates stress and works against you. Snacks have been covered elsewhere on the website but should be absolutely no carb and high fat. Bacon, cheese, boiled eggs, meats, unflavored pork rinds are all good snacks. Look further on our low-carb snacks guide. Thanks…

Do you recommend zero carb?

In some of your videos, I’ve heard you say “as close to zero carb as possible”. I did an all meat (ribeye, ground beef, and eggs) diet for six weeks and loved it, and was wondering if that’s something you’d recommend for someone trying to get pregnant (after failed IVF).

Guinnevere

  Dr. Fox:

Maybe I should qualify that. Our recommendation is high fat, modest protein (correct amount for weight, 1-1.5 g/kg ideal body wt) and non-starchy vegetables. If you eat vegetables, you will get some carbs. In my experience, unless you are in a severe insulin function category, you can tolerate nonstarchy vegetables. The further north of BMI 40 you get, the fewer vegetable carbs you could tolerate. So if you don’t fit the worst case scenario, we tell patients for normal servings of one or two vegetables per meal, they can ignore those carbs. The zero would apply to all other foods. In reality, this sets the threshold under 20 g per day that everyone agrees produces solid ketosis. Hope that helps.

More questions and answers

Questions and answers about low carb

Read all earlier questions and answers to Dr. Fox – and ask your own! – here:

Ask Dr. Fox about nutrition, low carb and fertility – for members (free trial available)

Source: https://www.dietdoctor.com/can-intermittent-fasting-help-with-amenorrhea

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Your weight history may predict your heart failure risk

In a medical records analysis of information gathered on more than 6,000 people, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers conclude that simply asking older adult patients about their weight history at ages 20 and 40 could provide real value to clinicians in their efforts to predict patients' future risk of heart failure, heart attacks or strokes.

In a report published Nov. 14 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the investigators say the younger-weight question is potentially a cost-efficient, high-value "ask" likely to help physicians decide how to advise and treat their older patients, particularly now that many people change primary care physicians throughout their lives, and lifelong health records may not transfer. Asking this simple question about prior lifetime weights provided prognostic information about a person's heart failure risk that was incremental to their measured weights at older ages and other measured traditional heart disease risk factors.

"We've known that the longer a person is obese, the more it becomes problematic by increasing their heart failure risk," says Erin Michos, M.D., M.H.S., associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "That is why measuring a person's weight at older ages may not tell the whole story about their risk. There's now more evidence that newly obese people are in overall less danger. Our findings emphasize the importance of lifelong maintenance of a healthy weight, as greater cumulative weight from young adulthood is more risky to heart health."

"We already routinely measure weights during a patient's clinic visit to make health recommendations, but we think adding this low-tech question about their prior weight histories can further help direct clinical care," she adds. "While we acknowledge that self-reported weight history is imperfect, at the very least, asking the question sparks patient reflection and self-motivation to get back to healthier weights from their younger ages."

Heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases remain the No. 1 killers of Americans. Heart failure, also known as congestive heart failure, is a condition marked by a gradual weakening and stiffening of the heart muscle, diminishing its ability to pump blood. Physicians routinely attempt to assess risks for heart disease and heart failure as patients age with measures of blood pressure, cholesterol, exercise levels, family history, diet and weight, Michos noted. Although a single weight measurement in an older adult is helpful, she says, weight history is even more informative, and the new study was in part designed to identify a practical way of getting it that would be considered informative enough to add to clinical care.

For the study, the researchers used data already gathered on 6,437 participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) recruited between 2000 and 2002 who were age 45 to 84 at time of enrollment into the study. Participants were followed an average of 13 years, and lived in six U.S. communities: Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Forsyth County, North Carolina; New York City, New York; Los Angeles County, California; and St. Paul, Minnesota. On average, they were 62 years old at the study's start. Almost 53 percent of the participants were women. About 39 percent of participants were white, more than 26 percent were African-American, 22 percent were Hispanic and a little more than 12 percent were Chinese-American.

Each participant filled out a survey that reported their weight history at age 20 and 40. Their weights were further tracked during the study period using measurements from a standardized scale over five different in-person visits. All weights were converted to body mass indexes (BMI) by dividing the weight by the square of height. A BMI less than 25 kilograms per meter squared was considered normal, while a BMI between 25 and 30 was considered overweight, and 30 and above was considered obese.

By the end of all participants' last visit, 290 people had experienced heart failure, and 828 experienced cardiovascular disease events such as heart attacks, stroke and or death as determined by participant and family interviews and patient medical records.

As expected, Michos says, the standard measured weights taken at clinic visits during the 13-year study period were associated with later heart failure risk, with a 34 percent increased likelihood of heart failure for every 5 kilograms per meters squared increase in BMI, after accounting for other established heart disease risk factors such as age, smoking, physical activity, blood pressure and diabetes. But then her team found that even after taking into account these current measured weights at older ages, that having a self-reported history of obesity at age 20 (144 participants) was associated with a more than threefold risk of heart failure, and having a history of being obese at age 40 (716 participants) doubled the risk compared with people who had a BMI in the normal range at those ages.

"Our study confirms that maintaining a normal weight over the lifespan is the most ideal, and that when and for how long a person becomes obese are highly informative in assessing heart disease risk in older adults," says Michos.

Michos cautioned that the new study was designed to look at associations between self-reported lifetime weights and heart disease risk over time, and not determine cause and effect or attempt to determine the accuracy of patients' recall of their weight at young ages. Patient self-reporting can result in bias or imperfect memory, but the researchers believe most older adults have reasonably accurate recall of their younger adult weight. Their study findings suggest that even with these known limitations of weight recall, that simply asking about weight history was helpful in risk assessment. Right now, clinicians just don't routinely ask about a person's weights at key life points such as young- and mid-adulthood, Michos says, but it is so easy to do.

Michos says that we need to investigate how we can incorporate this ask (about lifetime weight recall) into electronic health records and into clinical practice.

About 1 in 3 deaths in the U.S. are due to heart disease, according to the American Heart Association. About 92 million American adults are living with some form of cardiovascular disease. About 5.7 million people in the U.S. live with heart failure, and more than half a million are diagnosed each year. More than half of people with heart failure will die within five years of diagnosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212093327.htm

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Nach Waffendeal mit irrem US-Diktator: Prinz Salman in Saudi-Arabien unter Druck

Geht der Thronfolger zu weit? Nach seinem Festhalten am Waffendeal mit dem verbrecherischen Regime von US-Herrscher Donald Trump steht Kronprinz Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi-Arabien unter Druck. Viele Familienmitglieder bezichtigen ihn, für moderne Waffen saudi-arabische Werte zu verraten.

RIAD – „Prinz Salman zerschneidet moralische Prinzipien mit einer Knochensäge und löst sie in Säure auf“, kritisiert ein Cousin des Prinzen im staatlichen TV-Sender. „Die USA unterdrücken die freie Presse, stürzen Regierungen und mischen sich in Kriege ein. Mit diesem autoritären Polizeistaat dürfen wir keinen Handel treiben.“

Alle Artikel jeden Morgen in Ihr Postfach.

Die Nerven scheinen blank zu liegen. „Ich hätte nie gedacht, zu erleben, dass Saudi Arabien im Nebenjob als PR-Firma für den imperialistischen Kriegstreiber USA arbeitet“, schreibt ein empörter Politiker aus Saudi Arabien auf Twitter.

Rechtfertigungen

Trotz aller Kritik rechtfertigt Prinz Salman den Deal: „Wir brauchen die Waffen, um unser humanitäres Engagement im Jemen fortzusetzen. Hat Trump Frauen in den Schritt gefasst? Vielleicht, vielleicht auch nicht. Ich weiß es nicht.“ Damit widerspricht Salman jedoch seinem eigenen Geheimdienst, der sogar über eine Tonband-Aufnahme verfügen soll, in der Trump mit seinen sexuellen Übergriffen prahlt.

Hinter den Kulissen sieht Saudi Arabien die Machtübernahme durch Trump allerdings schon länger mit Sorge. Bei einem Treffen mit seinen engsten Regierungsmitarbeitern und Verwandten erklärte Prinz Salman unlängst: „Ein reicher Familienclan an der Staatsspitze, der sich die Macht nach Belieben aufteilt? So etwas könnte den Westen destabilisieren!“

Source: https://dietagespresse.com/waffendeal-irrem-diktator-prinz-salman-saudi-arabien/

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All day I dream about food – introducing Carolyn Ketchum

We’re so excited to announce our latest recipe collaboration with Carolyn Ketchum! Carolyn runs the very popular blog All Day I Dream About Food where she shares delicious low-carb and keto recipes. She’s also an author of four successful keto cookbooks.

Read our interview with Carolyn below to find out more about our new favorite recipe creator.

Check out Carolyn’s low-carb and keto recipes

Interview with Carolyn Ketchum

Diet Doctor: Please tell us a bit about the birth of your fantastic blog ‘All Day I Dream About Food’. We would love to know how you came up with the name but it is quite self-explanatory! 😉

Carolyn Ketchum: Well, I didn’t start out for it to be low carb and I certainly didn’t intend for it to become a full-time business. My sister had started a mommy blog and I thought it looked like fun. And since I’ve always been good at changing and adapting recipes to suit my needs and my tastes, I just started playing around. And the name came to me as a play on the old Adidas joke, “All Day I Dream About Soccer”. But in my case, food is much more interesting than soccer!

But then I was diagnosed with prediabetes and it took a turn for the more serious. I started experimenting with low-carb ingredients like almond flour and various sweeteners, since I really didn’t want to give up my passion for baking. It took some time but I started to get a sense of how these new ingredients behaved and how I could manipulate them to get results that tasted just like my old higher carb favorites. When I managed to create low-carb Nanaimo Bars, a favorite treat when I was growing up in Canada, I knew I was on to something.

DD: You love cooking and baking, where is this passion of yours coming from?

Carolyn: It’s something I grew up with, I think. My mum loved to cook and bake and I guess it’s just in my blood. I can’t not bake; it’s a bit of an obsession for me. When I’ve been away from my kitchen for a while, I itch to get back into it and create something spectacular.

The thing is, it’s less about actually eating the sweets than people think. Baking is a form of creative expression and oftentimes, it’s the creation of the the goodies that brings me so much joy. That and sharing them with friends and family and seeing their faces light up when they bite into it. Knowing that it’s a healthier version makes it all that much more delicious.

DD: You were diagnosed with gestational diabetes during your third pregnancy. In your own words: you didn’t choose low carb – low carb chose you. Could you tell us how it impacted your life in the beginning and how did you get started with the battle against carbs?

Carolyn: I will admit, being slender and healthy all my life, the gestational diabetes diagnosis came as quite a surprise. To me and to my doctor! At that time, I tried to follow the standard guidelines and it was a struggle every day. I had to walk after every meal, just to keep my blood sugar under control. It was an eye opener to see how hard it was to maintain normal glucose when following a standard American diet, and also to see the power of exercise and how even a short walk could bring my blood sugar down considerably.

After I had my baby and realized that I still had some blood sugar issues, I know I needed to go low carb, because following ADA guidelines wasn’t working. It was pretty upsetting and I thought that was the end of my passion cooking and baking. Thankfully, I couldn’t have been more wrong!

I first started out on simply a low-carb diet but as I noticed better blood sugar control, I dropped my carbs further and further until I realized I was essentially following the ketogenic diet.

DD: What was the most challenging thing about going low carb?

Carolyn: I think at first you miss things, all of those foods you think are now off limits, and it can seem frustrating. But the longer you stay on a low-carb, high-fat diet, the less you miss things. You come to appreciate the food for itself, and how much better you feel. I don’t miss bread at all anymore, I can easily ignore pizza and pastries. And then I go home and find my own ways of making these foods so that I can enjoy them without a blood sugar spike.

Travel can be tough, though. There aren’t too many truly good keto convenience foods and many airports and restaurants aren’t really that accommodating for a low-carb diet. You eat a lot of salad and bacon and eggs! But I always try to pack some of my own homemade keto snacks with me, plus things like macadamia nuts and beef jerky, and I find that I manage to stick to the diet and come home feeling great.

And when it comes to going out to eat, I always read the online menu beforehand and stick to meats and veggies.

DD: Currently, you’re working from home while you take care of your three children. This sounds pretty challenging! How does a regular day look like at the Ketchums?

Carolyn: Life with kids is always challenging, whether you work at home or outside the home! A regular week day starts with me waking my kids up and getting them started on breakfast while I head out the door for a run or to CrossFit. Then I come home and bake or cook something for the blog or for one of my cookbooks.

Mid-day, I am usually taking photos, typing up recipes, and getting ready to publish a blog post or get a manuscript in shape for my publisher. And there are dishes to be done and a kitchen to clean. I have two assistants who sometimes come over and help me work on recipes and on those days, I try to get through at least three recipes.

Then the kids come home and I start working on dinner and getting kids to various practices and activities. It can be overwhelming at times but I am incredibly blessed to have found a calling I love passionately and one that also helps me live a healthier life.

DD: If you would have to pick, which three dishes would you take with yourself to a deserted island?

Carolyn: This is always so hard to choose because I love food and I love variety. My favorites change with the season and sometimes when I’ve nailed a really great new recipe. But let’s just say that at this point in time, I would choose:

Garlic Parmesan Wings – because I am obsessed with crispy chicken wings and think that they should be their own food group. These are oven baked but so delicious. They also have a secret ingredient that helps them crisp up.

Keto Butter Pecan Cookies – these crispy shortbread like cookies are a fan favorite and with good reason. They are so easy and they hold up really well.

Cauliflower Risotto – because you need some vegetables and this really does taste like traditional risotto!

Source: https://www.dietdoctor.com/all-day-i-dream-about-food-introducing-carolyn-ketchum

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Carnival Cruise Line Expands Hub App with Drinks Delivery Option - Cruise Hive

Carnival Cruise Line has started rolling out a new beverage delivery option on its popular Carnival Hub App starting with four ships.

The Miami-based cruise line has now started rolling out a new beverage delivery service as part of its popular Carnival Hub App. The new options can be added when guests use the Pizza delivery feature on the app.

The new drinks option can only be used when ordering pizza. Guests will be given a choice of drink to add to their order including beer, soda or water. For now, the drinks option is available on Carnival Conquest, Carnival Liberty, Carnival Gory, and Carnival Sensation. The cruise line is planning on rolling the service out to Carnival Victory and Carnival Elation in June.

The full drink availability includes domestic and imported beers Peroni, Miller Lite and Blue Moon; Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Diet Sprite; and bottled water. The pizza options include Margherita, Funghi, prosciutto, pepperoni, and Quattro Formaggi.

if you heading out to one of the Carnival cruise ships with the newly expanded service all you have to do is make sure you have the Carnival Hub app. Once downloaded simply choose the “Pizza Anywhere” feature then select your location on the map, take a selfie for identification and then choose the order.

Related: 18 Must Know Things About The Carnival Hub App

The Carnival Hub app has become an essential part of the cruise experience after launching in 2015.

It has become the leading app in the cruise industry and it offers a wide range of service before and during the voyage such as reservations, access to the Sail & Sign account, chat, daily activities and more. The app will be constantly improved and expanded moving forward.

Source: https://www.cruisehive.com/carnival-cruise-line-expands-hub-app-with-drinks-delivery-option/32106

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Does a low-fat diet reduce breast cancer deaths?

Press briefings on an unpublished Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) report suggest that eating less fat improves a woman’s chance of surviving breast cancer. A more critical evaluation of the study, however, suggests we need to question the significance of the findings.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trial initially started in 1993, randomly assigning 48,000 women to a standard diet with at least 32% of calories coming from fat, or a “dietary intervention” group encouraged to reduce fat to 20% of calories (they actually reduced it to 25% on average) and to increase fruits and vegetables to at least 5 servings per day and whole grains to at least 6 servings per day.

The initial publication of this massive trial, in 2006, showed no difference in the primary outcome of breast cancer rates at 8.5 years.

The new report of the WHI study, which has yet to be published, is reported as showing a reduction in breast cancer deaths by 20%. Importantly, this is a relative risk reduction, and the absolute reduction is not provided. This details matters in how we interpret the data, yet we will have to wait to see the report, once issued.

As an example of the reason this matters, consider the results published from the same WHI study at 11.5 years of follow up; investigators reported a 22% reduction in mortality after breast cancer diagnosis. This equated to a mortality difference, in absolute terms of 1.1% vs. 0.9%.

That’s right. The 22% relative reduction was an absolute reduction of just 0.2% over 11.5 years. Furthermore, the risk of dying specifically from breast cancer was 0.4% vs 0.3%. As you can see, putting things into perspective with absolute risk reduction is crucial to understanding the true impact of an intervention, especially when the study leaves many other questions unanswered.

For instance, a crucial (and problematic) element of the WHI trial design was described in the 2006 publication.

The intervention group received an intensive behavioral modification program that consisted of 18 group sessions in the first year and quarterly maintenance sessions thereafter. Each group had 8 to 15 women and was led by a specially trained and certified nutritionist…Comparison group participants received a copy of Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans

In other words, the intervention group had regular group support and coaching while the control group got a book. If that isn’t a set up for introducing an intervention bias, I don’t know what is. Unfortunately, this design flaw clouds any result from the trial as we can’t be sure whether any outcome difference was due to the dietary intervention or simply due to the increased personalized attention to health.

The authors promote the study as “the first randomized clinical trial evidence that a dietary change can reduce a postmenopausal woman’s risk of dying from breast cancer.” While on the surface that may be true, we are still left wondering, how did the two diets differ during the 20 years of follow up? Did the quality of fats and carbohydrates differ? For instance, did the higher fat group rely on industrial seed oils to add extra fat? Or were they eating more natural fats? Did the higher fat group eat more refined grains and carbohydrates since they were not encouraged to eat fruits and vegetables? Since the lower fat group had counselling sessions, did they also improve other healthy behaviors? Any of these examples could potentially explain a very small difference in cancer mortality.

In addition, the study group reportedly lost 3% more body weight than the control group. That small reduction may also explain the small difference in mortality. For instance, one report stated that the mortality benefit was more pronounced in those who were metabolically unhealthy to begin with. Thus, the difference in weight loss could potentially account for the difference in outcomes.

Some of the quotes in response to the report are “Patients are eager for things they can do” to improve their outcomes with breast cancer. And “What we eat matters.” While these quotes are true, it remains to be seen that this study adequately addresses them with a specific recommendation.

It should not be a surprise that reducing refined grains and sugars and focusing on whole foods should improve overall health, metabolic disease and probably even cancer outcomes. However, this report appears to have too many holes to impact our specific dietary recommendations. Once again, we have to be sure the strength of the recommendation is matched by the strength of the evidence. To learn more about what we know and what we don’t know about diet and its impact on cancer, see our detailed guide on this subject below.

Thanks for reading, Bret Scher, MD, FACC

Diet and cancer: What we know and what we don’t

Guide In this guide, we’ll look at what we know — and what we don’t know — about food and cancer.

Earlier

Red meat and colon cancer: The evidence remains weak

US researchers explore link between sugar, insulin, keto, and cancer

The low-fat house of cards

Source: https://www.dietdoctor.com/does-a-low-fat-diet-reduce-breast-cancer-deaths