#i’m on that low carb high fat living my best life journey right now

[anoriginalderivative]

i don’t know who needs to hear this, but something being vegan or keto or whatever doesn’t make it healthier for everyone. every person has unique dietary needs that depend on their personal history and their personal goals for their time and body.

[eazy-group]

Tayani lost 80 pounds

New Post has been published on https://eazydiet.net/tayani-lost-80-pounds/

Tayani lost 80 pounds

Transformation of the Day: Tayani shares how she lost 80 pounds. During her three year transformation, she worked with a nutritionist, prioritized exercise, and used trial and error to determine what worked for her. She also took time to become more self-aware and understand her triggers that were leading to emotional eating. 

Social Media: Instagram: @tayanireshae

What was your motivation? What inspired you to keep going, even when you wanted to give up? My biggest motivation to lose weight was to get back to feeling like myself again. Battling with my weight my entire life impacted my self-esteem and took a toll on me mentally and physically. 

What kept me going was knowing that I had a better chance of living longer for my spouse and children. Also, I knew I was bettering myself. Every time I wake up to work out, it makes me feel great like I’m accomplishing something bigger, which I was, but at the time, I didn’t know it.

How did you change your eating habits?  I don’t believe in restrictive eating at all. I’m grateful to have a body where I can eat what I want and still lose weight. However, I did eat things in moderation and tracked my macronutrients (carbs, fat, and protein). I always made sure I got the right amount of protein daily to continue to lose fat/weight. 

I also worked with a nutritionist who helped me calculate my macronutrients for my fitness goals. She said it was best to eat low-carb, high-fat, and moderate protein (not keto, though) for my specific body type and goals. I do drink less than before due to it hindering my goals. 

What is your workout routine? (Cardio, weight training, Zumba, etc.) At the very beginning of my fitness journey, I walked, jumped rope, did bodyweight exercises, and did resistance band training. Now, I weight lift and do cardio immediately after lifting.  

How often did you work out? In the beginning, I worked out three days a week. As time progressed, I weight lifted five days a week, followed by 25-45 mins of cardio afterward. Somedays, I did six days of lifting with one active rest day which is cardio only. 

What was your starting weight? What is your current weight? My highest weight was during pregnancy at 248 in 2019, and I consistently weighed 232 before pregnancy. I began losing weight right before I got pregnant and found out I was pregnant at 221 lbs. Now I’m at 168 lbs. I’m down 80 pounds.

What is your height? 5’3″

Is weight loss surgery part of your journey? No, I didn’t have surgery.

When did you start your journey? How long did your transformation take? I started my journey in January 2020. It took three years to get where I am today. However, that was with trial and error and learning what worked for me.

How have you maintained your weight loss/continued to lose weight? I maintained my weight loss by being self-aware of things that made me overweight in the first place. I was an emotional eater whether I was happy, sad, stressed, or depressed. I would go to food for comfort. Knowing what my triggers are and being mindful of them has helped me tremendously. Another thing that helped me maintain was being accountable for the foods I ate. I always followed the 80% nutritional foods, and the other 20% was whatever I wanted. On the days I didn’t plan out meals, I have a healthy-ish meal option at every fast food restaurant in the area. 

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far? There are so many lessons. However, the biggest one so far is that fat loss and weight loss aren’t the same thing. Most people don’t realize that the appearance they want is through fat loss. I used to wonder why I had a slimmer appearance, but the scale didn’t budge and sometimes would go up. I did A LOT of research and even worked with a food scientist who helped me understand fat loss vs. weight loss. I also learned that being consistent and never ceasing pays off, in the long run, more than people think. 

What advice do you have for women who want to lose weight? Find what works for your body. Do not be afraid to try different workouts. Find something that you love so you can continue this journey. Also, find meals you love and can eat for the rest of your life. Stop viewing weight loss as a temporary thing – just to go back to being overweight. Instead, view this journey as a lifetime journey so you can sustain your results.

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[barryrohm]

11 Keto-Friendly Food Swaps to Ease Your Transition into Ketosis

We all know that change can be difficult. No one likes looking for a new doctor, hairdresser or favorite pair of jeans. Making a drastic change to your diet, such as going from a carb-heavy diet to something low carb and high fat can feel like standing at the base of an unscalable mountain. The key is to realize you don’t have to be an expert right out of the gate and that you’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to slip up and get off track. The key is to not let one bad day turn into a bad week, month or year.

One of the things that helped me a great deal, especially through the first week or so until I had adjusted to this new lifestyle, was swapping out some of my favorite meals for items that would be deemed as “friendlier” to the keto-lifestyle. To help you on your journey whether you just started or you’ve been keto for years but always looking to try something new, I’ve covered 11 of my favorite, easy swaps to take that normally carby beast to a keto treat.

Hamburger Buns = Lettuce leaves. This is a great one, and probably the swap I go to most often. Now, speaking from experience I would not recommend using romaine lettuce, it doesn’t workout so well. The leafy area isn’t very sturdy and the spine of the lettuce leaf isn’t very flexible. Iceberg lettuce is where it’s at. If you are so blessed to live anywhere near a Five Guys (here in the DC area it feels like there’s one on every corner) they have lettuce wrapped burgers on the menu. You can get all of the same great, keto-friendly, toppings you always get, wrapped in a few iceberg lettuce leaves. Beware, ordering your lettuce wrapped burger from Five Guys also means you must show unfathomable discipline to avoid their fresh-cut fries!!!

Wraps = Lettuce leaves….again. I’m not sure about you but I love wraps. They taste great, they’re super convenient and just about anything goes with one. If you don’t want to go full keto-wrap Mission tortillas offer a great low carb option with large burrito style wraps coming in at 8 net carbs. However, if you didn’t stock pile your daily net carbs for that option, you can swap an iceberg or romaine lettuce leaf in to do the job. The biggest thing here is the mindset change. It’s not the wrap itself, its what’s inside the wrap you’re after. The wrap is just a delivery system, and if the only purpose is to deliver the goods, who cares if it’s a bread wrap or a lettuce leaf, am I right? (Cabbage or Kale would also work here).

Spaghetti = Spiral cut zucchini. I saw zucchini because I feel it is the best option. You can also do squash here and it’ll work out fine, spaghetti squash isn’t half bad, but I prefer the spiral cut zucchini, which is why I bought one of the tools to do it. Zucchini tastes great with cheese and tomato sauce, I don’t even notice the difference. Like pasta you can overcook it and end up with mush, so if you’re going to cook it make sure you only boil it for a few minutes at most.

Lasagna = Eggplant. I’m not sure this one should even be on here. I’ve always liked eggplant parm or lasagna more than the carb loaded option. I dunno what it is but baking in the pasta sauce with cheese really brings eggplant to life. Enough said there.

Potato chips = Pepperoni chips. I love this option and was beyond excited when I first tried it out. This can be done in the oven or microwave. Lay them out on a paper plate for the microwave and hit them for 30-45 seconds or toss them in the air fryer for a couple of minutes. I really enjoy dipping these in a homemade ranch dip that I make with a packet of Hidden Valley ranch seasoning and either full fat sour cream or Greek yogurt.

Potato chips = Almonds. I love chips, so one swap isn’t going to be enough to get me over that hump. I keep a ridiculously large bag of almonds at my desk. Anytime I get that salty craving I reach in for a handful (mine works out to be almost exactly ¼ cup or 1 serving of roasted almonds.

Potato chips = Parmesan chips. I told you, I LOVE CHIPS. These ones are self-explanatory though. They’ve become incredibly popular and so are now very easy to find at the store, no need to make yourself at home.

Mashed Potatoes = Mashed Cauliflower. I’m sure you’ve heard a ton about this and yes it is as good as everyone says. It’s become so popular you can find mashed cauliflower in your grocery stores freezer section. It’s just as easy to make at home, you can boil or steam the cauliflower until soft and then blend or mix on high with heavy cream until you get the desired consistency. Add whatever seasoning you like.

Tater tots = Cauli-tots. I don’t attempt to make these at home, they can easily be found in the freezer section at your local grocery chain. 10-15 minutes in the air fryer gets them to crispy golden-brown perfection. This is another one that I’ve found that is very close in deliciousness to its high carb counterpart.

Taco Shells – Cheese shells. These are more delicious than they are easy to make. The first time I tried this was eye opening and I wondered what I had been doing with my life all this time. All you do is take a simple 6” skillet and heat with a touch of oil in the bottom. Once warmed up, sprinkle an even coat of shredded cheese and watch as it melts, and crisps. Once that happens I flip it over and start adding my toppings and then just fold it over on itself, very similar to how you would make an omelet. A word of caution do not try to flip the shell too early as it will stick to the pan if it hasn’t thoroughly crisped up. Just take your time and check it often, you’ll know when it’s ready.

Whipped Cream = Heavy whipping cream made w/ swerve. A great keto dessert is a few of the lower carb berry options such as blueberries, raspberries or strawberries mixed with whipped cream. To make your whipped cream keto-friendly put the whisk on your mix and mix heavy whipping cream and swerve or other sweetener on high until peaks form.

There are literally hundreds of other options out there for you to try, these were just a few of my favorites that I’ve tried and found that it helped me a long the way. If you want to find some more easy options that can help you make it through, download my 100 Keto-Swaps Cheat Sheet and try them all. Leave a comment and let me know what you thought, especially if you end up trying one of these swaps out on your own.

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[dannylaca]

How To Lose 63 Pounds in 5 Months Without Skipping Desserts

Losing weight can take a lot of time, discipline and sometimes a lot of sweat. There are however a lot of simpler ways to see your pounds and inches drop on the scale and in your waist without having to do HITT workouts three times a week, counting calories, or restricting yourself to a water-only diet.

So, if you don’t want to feel like your world’s falling apart just to lose weight, here are 12 little tricks that you should incorporate daily into your routine that will help you lose weight.

If you’re consistent enough, it can even lead you to losing up to 52 pounds in a matter of 6 weeks, just like it did for my 48 year old friend, Margaret. She safely lost 62 pounds in 5 months and shared her top 12 weight loss tips. And the best part of all this is – there is no gym or diet required. Let’s get started.

1. Always start a meal with a glass of water

You’ll stay hydrated and feel fuller instantly, which will help keep you from overeating.

2. Make a few simple swaps at every meal

Going for a vinaigrette dressing instead of a ranch dressing at lunch can save you 80 calories, while opting for fresh fruit instead of dried can save you dozens as well.

3. Have a piece of dark chocolate for dessert

Instead of opting for the cookies in the break room, quiet your sugar cravings with a piece of dark chocolate. It may not feel quite as satisfying the first few times, but as you wean yourself off your sugar addiction, you’ll be glad you’re saving calories while having a healthy yet decadent treat.

4. Be diligent with portion control

If you want to lose weight, sticking to the right portions at every meal is important. Measure out snacks beforehand instead of eating from the bag, use smaller plates to visually signal that your meal will satisfy, and put away leftovers so you’re not tempted to go back for seconds.

5. Move more

Even if you’re not dedicating an entire chunk of time to a workout, you can burn a few extra calories by making an effort to move a little more during the day. Taking breaks to walk around the office, opting for the stairs instead of the escalator, and parking a little farther from the office entrance are all simple ways to up your calorie burn.

6. Don’t drink your calories

It’s a common reason you’re not seeing results — those empty calories from a daily soda, morning juice, or large glass of wine at dinner can really add up. Stick to water or if you really need some flavor, add fresh ingredients like cucumber, lemon, or mint. They’re calorie free and taste amazing!

7. Don’t starve yourself

A little hunger can be good for you, but starving yourself all day in order to “splurge” on dessert at night is both unhealthy and will sabotage even the strictest lean diet. Eat well-timed meals and snacks in order to avoid low blood-sugar levels that cause you to crash and binge eat.

8. Snack on high-protein, high-fiber foods

When it’s time to snack, make your food work for you. Steer clear of the empty, high-calorie options like chips and crackers, and go for protein- and fiber-rich foods that taste good and fill you up too. You’ll be able to eat fewer calories while still feeling satisfied.

9. Steer clear of simple carbohydrates

Simple carbs are the white stuff—white bread, most pastries, refined sugars (the kind in soda and candy). What makes them simple, you ask? These foods provide energy, but lack the same nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and fiber) as complex carbohydrates. The body also breaks down simple carbs quickly—meaning your blood sugar will spike, and your tummy might be rumbling sooner than you imagined. Choose whole grains instead, which your body will break down slower, keeping you feeling fuller longer. They will also reduce dangerous excess abdominal fat buildup. So, make that switch to whole-wheat pasta, whole grain bread, or try grains like brown rice, quinoa, or millet. You will get used to them quickly and the days of simple carbs will be long gone.

10. Eat a light, early dinner

Try to keep your dinner to about 25 percent of your daily food intake, and have it at least two to three hours before going to bed. Eating too much too late can cause digestion and sleep issues that make it hard to stick to a healthy routine.

11. Get longer, more consistent sleep

Lack of sleep can cause you to eat more throughout the day and not have enough energy to stay focus. So aim for seven to nine hours of sleep every night. It’s an easy and effective way to keep your weight-loss goals on the right track.

12. Keep a journal

Keep a log of the your progress along your weight-loss journey. Update it each week—and read it over each morning and night. Allow yourself to feel really proud! Focus on the positive and plan for the negatives. There’s nothing like reflecting on your success, and letting how you’re getting there really sink in!

One last thing… you should try this 2-minute “after-dinner ritual” that burns up to 2 pounds of belly fat per day…

“All this by a 2-minute “after-dinner ritual?” I asked.

I met an old friend for lunch last year and I was super impressed with how she lost 70 pounds in 3 months.

She said, “It’s not so much about the “after-dinner ritual”, but more about how it gives you a regenerative form of deep sleep that is responsible for everything we need to dramatically increase our fat burning metabolism and improve our health and appearance.”

Even though I was skeptical, I’ve been struggling with my weight over the last few years, so I gave it a shot and watched the same video she did.

Well, it’s only a couple weeks later and you know what they say about how “you can’t transform your body overnight”…

They’re right — it actually took me 14 days to lose 20 pounds.

Now it’s my girlfriends asking ME what I’M doing differently

Imagine your body being beach ready before Memorial Day.

Imagine enjoying the foods you love: pasta, wine, or even a dessert — completely guilt-free.

And imagine feeling good and living your life without obsessing about every single calorie you eat…

All while knowing your health is being protected by one of the most powerful natural healing rituals ever discovered.

Click here to see the 2-minute after dinner ritual that helped me melt away 20 pounds in just 14 days

[nadinereiss]

How To Lose 62 Pounds in 5 Months Without Skipping Desserts

Losing weight can take a lot of time, discipline and sometimes a lot of sweat. There are however a lot of simpler ways to see your pounds and inches drop on the scale and in your waist without having to do HITT workouts three times a week, counting calories, or restricting yourself to a water-only diet. 

So, if you don’t want to feel like your world’s falling apart just to lose weight, here are 12 little tricks that you should incorporate daily into your routine that will help you lose weight. 

If you’re consistent enough, it can even lead you to losing up to 52 pounds in a matter of 6 weeks, just like it did for my 48 year old friend, Margaret. She safely lost 62 pounds in 5 months and shared her top 12 weight loss tips. And the best part of all this is – there is no gym or diet required. Let’s get started.

1. Always start a meal with a glass of water

You’ll stay hydrated and feel fuller instantly, which will help keep you from overeating.

2. Make a few simple swaps at every meal

Going for a vinaigrette dressing instead of a ranch dressing at lunch can save you 80 calories, while opting for fresh fruit instead of dried can save you dozens as well.

3. Have a piece of dark chocolate for dessert

Instead of opting for the cookies in the break room, quiet your sugar cravings with a piece of dark chocolate. It may not feel quite as satisfying the first few times, but as you wean yourself off your sugar addiction, you’ll be glad you’re saving calories while having a healthy yet decadent treat.

4. Be diligent with portion control

If you want to lose weight, sticking to the right portions at every meal is important. Measure out snacks beforehand instead of eating from the bag, use smaller plates to visually signal that your meal will satisfy, and put away leftovers so you’re not tempted to go back for seconds.

5. Move more

Even if you’re not dedicating an entire chunk of time to a workout, you can burn a few extra calories by making an effort to move a little more during the day. Taking breaks to walk around the office, opting for the stairs instead of the escalator, and parking a little farther from the office entrance are all simple ways to up your calorie burn.

6. Don’t drink your calories

It’s a common reason you’re not seeing results — those empty calories from a daily soda, morning juice, or large glass of wine at dinner can really add up. Stick to water or if you really need some flavor, add fresh ingredients like cucumber, lemon, or mint. They’re calorie free and taste amazing!

7. Don’t starve yourself

A little hunger can be good for you, but starving yourself all day in order to “splurge” on dessert at night is both unhealthy and will sabotage even the strictest lean diet. Eat well-timed meals and snacks in order to avoid low blood-sugar levels that cause you to crash and binge eat.

8. Snack on high-protein, high-fiber foods

When it’s time to snack, make your food work for you. Steer clear of the empty, high-calorie options like chips and crackers, and go for protein- and fiber-rich foods that taste good and fill you up too. You’ll be able to eat fewer calories while still feeling satisfied.

9. Steer clear of simple carbohydrates

Simple carbs are the white stuff—white bread, most pastries, refined sugars (the kind in soda and candy). What makes them simple, you ask? These foods provide energy, but lack the same nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and fiber) as complex carbohydrates. The body also breaks down simple carbs quickly—meaning your blood sugar will spike, and your tummy might be rumbling sooner than you imagined. Choose whole grains instead, which your body will break down slower, keeping you feeling fuller longer. They will also reduce dangerous excess abdominal fat buildup. So, make that switch to whole-wheat pasta, whole grain bread, or try grains like brown rice, quinoa, or millet. You will get used to them quickly and the days of simple carbs will be long gone.

10. Eat a light, early dinner

Try to keep your dinner to about 25 percent of your daily food intake, and have it at least two to three hours before going to bed. Eating too much too late can cause digestion and sleep issues that make it hard to stick to a healthy routine.

11. Get longer, more consistent sleep

Lack of sleep can cause you to eat more throughout the day and not have enough energy to stay focus. So aim for seven to nine hours of sleep every night. It’s an easy and effective way to keep your weight-loss goals on the right track.

12. Keep a journal

Keep a log of the your progress along your weight-loss journey. Update it each week—and read it over each morning and night. Allow yourself to feel really proud! Focus on the positive and plan for the negatives. There’s nothing like reflecting on your success, and letting how you’re getting there really sink in!

One last thing… you should try this 2-minute “after-dinner ritual” that burns up to 2 pounds of belly fat per day…

“All this by a 2-minute “after-dinner ritual?” I asked.

I met an old friend for lunch last year and I was super impressed with how she lost 70 pounds in 3 months.

She said, “It’s not so much about the “after-dinner ritual”, but more about how it gives you a regenerative form of deep sleep that is responsible for everything we need to dramatically increase our fat burning metabolism and improve our health and appearance.”

Even though I was skeptical, I’ve been struggling with my weight over the last few years, so I gave it a shot and watched the same video she did.

Well, it’s only a couple weeks later and you know what they say about how “you can’t transform your body overnight”…

They’re right — it actually took me 14 days to lose 20 pounds.

Now it’s my girlfriends asking ME what I’M doing differently

Imagine your body being beach ready before Memorial Day.

Imagine enjoying the foods you love: pasta, wine, or even a dessert — completely guilt-free.

And imagine feeling good and living your life without obsessing about every single calorie you eat…

All while knowing your health is being protected by one of the most powerful natural healing rituals ever discovered.

Click here to see the 2-minute after dinner ritual that helped me melt away 20 pounds in just 14 days

[yesyouknow]

Road to Diagnosis

Well, well, well. Hello adult, cystic acne! So painful and making me so self-conscious. And I figured it was just that, adult acne. Around 2018 is when it started and I was constantly getting frustrated; I had started a 10-step Korean skincare routine and it would help, and then I’d get flare ups. So, I decided I’d go see my gynecologist and see if going on birth control would help with breakouts. I was also starting to have irregular periods which I didn’t really think anything of - I convinced myself that birth control would solve that as well. When I met with her she also mentioned that it would help with the hair on my face. Um, ok? (I didn’t even think that was a problem, it was very light and not very noticeable!). Anyway, those should have all been red flags for her to consider that these were all signs of a bigger problem. I went A WHOLE YEAR masking it. It wasn’t until a year later when I went for my yearly exam that I had mentioned on the off chance to my new gyno (my old one was too busy trying to push her fad diet and I felt like I was just a fat girl in her eyes) that my right ovary would expel pain when I wasn’t on my period. Again, didn’t think anything of it - assumed it was totally normal. Nope! Not even close to normal; both my left and right ovaries have tiny little cysts all over them and are inflamed. So that brings my total symptoms to: Acne, facial hair, irregular periods, and cysts on my ovaries (not to mention that my hair had started falling out in masses). ALL CLASSIC SIGNS OF POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME OR PCOS. 

My new gyno scheduled an internal/external ultrasound and then I needed a full panel of bloodwork. At this point I’m hysterical, I had gotten a semi-diagnosis after my ultrasound, but they needed the results of the bloodwork to confirm. Now, you may be wondering why I didn’t catch it earlier. Have you ever heard of PCOS? Didn’t think so. I had no idea that all those things put together equaled PCOS, and wasn’t that something that my first gyno should have put together when I came to her with the first classic signs of it? Also, in the meantime, I had been working with my general practitioner whom I love and trust to start getting healthier. My dad at one point thought maybe I had an auto-immune deficiency so I started getting regular bloodwork. At one point my cholesterol was high but everything else was normal. I got it under control, and then my triglyceride levels skyrocketed. So I started eating more fish and incorporating Omega 3′s into my diet. Turns out that also was a sign of PCOS - but we didn’t have all the pieces in the puzzle then to even consider it. 

One important thing to know about this journey for me is that heart disease runs deep on both sides of my family, all four grandparents had heart attacks in their 50s along with an uncle who had a heart attack in his early 50s and passed away from heart failure. OH YEAH, MY MOM ALSO HAD A MINOR HEART ATTACK IN HER 50s (how the hell I forgot that I have no idea, sorry Mom, I love you!). Needless to say, at 30 I really started to take things seriously. But I just wasn’t there yet. I started doing CrossFit about three years ago and would be conscious of my eating habits; but man do I love Korean BBQ, Katsu, and birthday cake. What PCOS does is just exacerbate all of that. If I didn’t get it under control it would start causing insulin resistance, increase EVEN MORE my risk of heart attack and stroke, and could lead to infertility. 

Now, let’s talk about a ‘cure’. LOSE WEIGHT. But one of the problems with PCOS, is that your hormones are so whacked out that it basically shuts down your metabolism, so losing weight is extremely difficult! After my bloodwork came back and the diagnosis was confirmed, by gyno didn’t seem concerned enough to put me on insulin medication so really, my only choice was to lose weight. She did put me on medication for that and I will talk about that in another post. A low-carb diet is the best for women with PCOS, so she gave me a handout and sent me on my way. The best news possible with my diagnosis is that for me, it’s completely reversible. But I now live with it for the rest of my life, knowing that even if I were to get it under control, it will always be there, waiting to flair up. What a long post, riveting right? I was diagnosed on June 24, 2020 at 276 pounds. Let’s see where this journey leads, shall we? 

[comeonthinkers]

Weight Loss to Wifehood, Pt.2

That’s right, baby: part of this whole weight loss journey and the accompanying goals are weekly installments. And now seems as good a time as any to get back into blogging for me, what with the excitement and fervor of the new year still simmering in my heart. 

So let’s go over the recent changes I initiated in the 4HB, and how I’ve been seeing results.

1. Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent Fasting is the practice of taking long periods of time throughout the day/night NOT eating, and limiting your daily intake of calories to a shorter-than-average time period. This is normally expressed in hours, so an average American eating schedule of 8:00 breakfast through 6:00 dinner means that the average “eating” period of a day is 11 hours (8am-7pm), and the average “fasting” time (7pm-8am, mostly sleeping time) is 13, adding up to a full 24 hours. So 13/11 would be the average fast-to-eating time. Intermittent fasting plays with that ratio, increasing the amount of time your body is using its energy stores instead of replenishing them. While I was operating pretty comfortably in the 13/11 balance in November and December, I found myself getting a little nauseous after breakfast (which 4HB recommends eating within 30 minutes of waking up... a little too early for me). So I’ve adjusted to a 18/6 schedule (usually 12:30 brunch and 5:30 dinner). Some days, especially after binge day, I’ll try to shorten this eating period even more- down to one meal, switching it up to a 22/2 fast (usually just one day a week).

How’s it working? Overall, pretty good. In general, I think allowing yourself to feel hungry before you eat is a good thing. I start to feel hungry around 10 in the morning, so allowing my body to feel that hunger also forces it to use different sources of stored energy. And when I do this while sticking to diet, I do see a significant difference in my weight over the course of the week.

2. Reducing alcohol consumption

4HB technically allows dry wine. Which is awesome! But the weeks in which I had my two allowable glasses each night, I definitely saw the scale stagnate. Though Tim Ferriss may be able to get away with it, alcohol is calories. And considering I’d typically drink it AFTER dinner instead of WITH dinner, it also extended my “eating” period in my intermittent fasting schedule. And it really does make a difference in how much weight I lose. For example, this week I still haven’t lost the weight I gained back during binge day, despite gaining back less weight than usual. And I think I can attribute this mostly to two things: 1, not eating on-diet the day after binge day (I only had one meal, but it did have carbs and sugar) which slowed down the bounce-back; and 2, having a big ol’ glass of Gruner around 9pm on Tuesday- extending both my eating period for the day and having alcohol.

3. Engaging in muscular contractions during the binge.

One of the best parts of this diet is Binge Day (also called “Faturday”). Though it can seem to cause a “3 steps forward, 2 steps back” approach to the diet, when done correctly it allows you to have something to look forward to during the rest of the week and keeps your metabolism used to consuming the foods you haven’t been eating every other day. You can also bounce back more quickly if you do certain things during the bing. This week, I did the recommended exercises before every meal and really committed to the little tricks to prevent fat gain during the binge (citrus juice, PAGG, etc.). On a normal binge day, I think this would have helped a lot- I only gained 4 pounds after binge day this time around (sometimes I can gain as much as 6-8 lbs, mostly water weight though).

However, I think I would have gained much less if I hadn’t grossly overindulged on binge day (eating even when I wasn’t hungry and accidentally making myself sick), and if I hadn’t lost the willpower during next day’s fast to then also cheat during dinner, because Andy and I were too lazy and hungry to cook that night after being out all day. 

4. Cold showers.

Ah, the old 4HB favorite: cold showers. Now, I haven’t completely given up hot showers, especially since it’s winter and I kinda need my hot showers. However, I have stuck to the recommended 30 seconds-1 minute of cold water at the end of each shower spraying on my shoulders, neck, and upper back to encourage “brown fat cell” activation and production. I tried not doing this one week, and then doing it the next, and the difference? 2 lbs. Within a week. It works. 

Pro Tip: It works best if you shower every morning (so if you’re an every-other day showerer, consider using ice packs on your neck and shoulders on non-showering days). 

Now for the mistakes I made last week. Even though only 3 days after my first blog post I had gotten down to 198 lbs- technically reaching my goal early, I may have celebrated a bit prematurely. It’s February 1, and I am... 200.6 lbs. Grr. Not quite the under-200 goal I was hoping for. What do I attribute this to?

First of all, my binge day was bananas. I ate way too much, almost all sugar and wheat, and by the end of the day literally felt like a balloon about to pop. I got sick, and I hadn’t even enjoyed half of the food I ate, which I ordered simply because it was binge day and I felt I had the obligation to go overboard. This was probably because we had been low on groceries for the three days preceding it, and I was craving literally every food under the sun by Saturday. I don’t recommend this. Make sure you have enough diet-friendly food during the week so you’re not actually starving yourself.

Second, the day after binge day Andy and I went out of town for most of the day and didn’t eat until dinner. Not cooking for ourselves meant we went to a restaurant, and we were celebrating his new job, and badabing, badaboom: I convinced myself it was okay to eat off diet. Even though I ate less, I still felt kinda sick after- and now I’m not planning on doing that again. I also felt immediately guilty, cause I was halting my own progress. And I really shouldn’t do that.

Third, I didn’t exercise as much. We lost our wonderful dog Dante last week, and I had a big editing project due, so stress levels were high and I was in the house for most of the week. Though I did go to one of my normal gym classes and tried to do some calisthenics in the living room, I skipped my second Capoeira class of the week and didn’t do any cardio. Such is life, there are hard weeks.

So what’s my plan for this coming week? Well, I didn’t make my under-200 by Feb. 1 goal, which makes me kinda sad, so I’m going to make sure I follow more by-the-book this coming week. Binge Day is Saturday once again, and I will allow myself to eat the foods I want while also stopping when I feel full. I’m not making myself sick again. I’ll also do the binge-day workouts again, cause that felt good, and I believe it helped. I think I’m going to incorporate less soy sauce in my regular meals, because even though it’s “technically” allowed, it’s supposed to be limited, and I’ve been having it on everything (same with cottage cheese). I only had eggs for protein this week, which was okay but kinda boring, and my main veggies were cabbage and bell peppers. I also had the same 1 or 2 meals everyday, instead of my normal rotating 5 meals. I think I can do better.

Takeaways? Next week: less alcohol, soy sauce, and cottage cheese. More chicken or fish, spinach, nuts, and kale. Keep up exercising, don’t kill myself or make myself sick. Stick to 18/6 for eating schedule, and drink LOTS of water throughout the day. Keep up the cold-ended showers, and don’t make yourself sick during the binge.

Positives: My clothes ARE fitting better, and I’m feeling stronger than I was (my main measurement is how I feel after Capoeira class, how many squats and sit-ups I can do in one set, and how I feel during my daily physical therapy exercises). Last week at the 198 mark, I was looking pretty good too- so I’m really excited to keep going. 

Today’s weight: 201 lbs. (still 1 pound less than last week, so better than nothing)

Next week’s goal: 198 lbs. (stretch goal: 195)

End-of-month goal: 190 lbs. (stretch: 185- first time since 2015 I’d be under 190)

Let’s go team!

[highwayytohealthy]

Here I Am...

Hello Tumblrites, 

My name is Kelsey. I’m 21, 5′2 and weighed in on January 3, 2017 at 252 pounds. I’d love to say that I don’t know how I got to be this overweight, but quite honestly, I haven’t been an acceptable weight for my height and age since I was nine years olds, and there’s a progression that upon reflection, makes me realize how I got here. 

My story may not matter to anyone, I don’t even think I have any followers, but if I don’t write it out, I feel like I’ll never achieve what I want. 

I’m an emotional eater. I’m a stress eater. I don’t know how to control myself when it comes to portions, and I don’t have the best eating habits. 

My parents weren’t great at helping me control my portions and teaching me the right things to eat. We would eat out Friday-Sunday night every weekend. I would scoop my own ice cream into a bowl when my father was home with me and hide it from him so he wouldn’t see how much I was putting in. I come from a strong Italian family where anytime your plate was empty, you were encouraged to eat more. So I did. I ate more and more and more and more. 

Junior High School was the worst. Hormones were changing, my parents were getting a divorce, my grandfather was having multiple strokes, and the only comfort I found was in food. I was the heaviest girl in my classes and that in and of itself turned people away from me, and with the emotional stress I was feeling, I didn’t want to be around anyone. My weight was my shield, but it was also the bane of my existence. 

When high school came I was a full on binge eater. I didn’t like to eat breakfast, I didn’t eat lunch at school. I would come home to have a little time for myself and would snack and snack and snack. I was lonely. I had a great core group of friends, but I always felt like the outsider. They were all athletes, they all dated throughout high school, and at graduation I was still the only one in the group who hadn’t dated, who hadn’t been kissed, and who was still uncomfortable in my own skin. 

When I started college I became more confident. I’m not sure if it’s because nobody knew me, but I focused on my schoolwork and my job. I was still the fat girl, but I wasn’t compared immediately to my friends. In Sophomore year I began to date. I meant this guy online and he liked my personality. He lived a state away but it was doable. Most importantly, he said he didn’t care about my weight. 

He was my first everything. He made me feel beautiful for the first time. After years of starting and stopping diets, I felt like I could eat well and make changes. I wanted to make those changes for him. He was a runner, super outdoorsy and active, and with his metabolism he could eat whatever he wanted. He introduced me to hiking and kayaking, and made me appreciate outdoor activity, but I still wanted to lose weight to keep him around. 

When I found out he cheated on me for 4 of the 9 months we were together, I was devastated. We broke up and I turned back to food for support. I slowly moved on, but food was still my crutch. 

Then I met my current boyfriend. He is also overweight. He used to be a wrestler in fantastic shape, and it all went to hell in college. He understands where my stress eating comes from, because he has the same issue. When we don’t know how to handle things, we eat, nothing nutritious, but it tasted good. We’ve been together for over a year now, and about 6 months ago, we decided we wanted to lose weight. I was going to kickboxing classes, low carb, counting my calories, and I lost about 15 pounds and a lot more in inches. As time went on, I started working more, school got even more stressful, and I slowly spiraled back into my self destructive ways, and so did he. 

A few weeks ago my best friend set the date for her wedding. In 9 months I will be standing next to her on the happiest day of her life thus far, and I don’t want to look like this up at that alter. I saw a beautiful photo of my boyfriend and I at a family wedding and despite how lovely we look dancing, all I could focus on is the fat on my arm and how terrible seeing that photo made me feel. 

So I made a decision. I am at the highest weight I have ever been. I have been stressed, lethargic, and just generally feel grotesque and unattractive. I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I want to stop poking at myself in the mirror and hurling mean things at my body. I need to take my health into my own hands, because I am far too young to be on the destructive path that I am on. I want to be strong, I want to be healthy, and I want to love the body I am in. 

Since weighing in on Tuesday, I have lost 4.5 pounds. While that may be all water weight, it’s still a positive change. I am measuring my portions out, recording what I’m eating, and making better food choices. I am not depriving myself of foods and flavors I want, but finding healthier ways to have them. 

I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me.

[holyroxybatman-blog]

My eating disorder...

Ok. Let’s get real. Really real. From the ages of 13-15 I used to binge my brains out, I had a rough childhood and always turned to food for comfort. From as young as I could remember adults thought it was ok to comment on my body + my size + my food, even when I was a normal sized kid. I gained a LOT of weight. I was close to 300lbs. I suffered from self harming, which lasted over 13yrs. At the age of 15, 3 months before my 16th birthday…I had a very emotionally charged screaming match with someone. They used my weight as the target point to hurt me. That day I promised myself that I’d never be *fat* again.

My eating disorder was born. It started out strictly as bulimia. I remember the first day as if it were yesterday. Bulimia turned into bulimia mixed with anorexia. Then it turned into an exercising addiction along with bulimia and anorexia. In one year I lost 139lbs.

I battled my disorders from 16-23, at 20 I met the man…I let go of a lot of my habits…I went from a “normal” weight to gaining and averaging 180lbs…at 22 I got pregnant with my son. Even during my pregnancy, even though I ate, I was terrified to gain a lot of weight. I got just over 200lbs. After he was born my weight was steadily going down.

6 months after my so was born, depression sunk in. Not postpartum, just depression about other things going on in my life. I gained weight. A LOT of weight. Food became comfort again. But then my eating disorder habits started coming back.

I discovered low carb & it worked wonders for my mind, my body and my eating disorder. But...

I started struggling with ups and downs. I can literally gain & lose like nobody’s business. I made my instagram, I was dedicated to doing it *the healthy way* but let’s be honest. Do I even know wtf is truly healthy? I mean it differs for everyone, I still struggle. Daily.

When I vanish from instagram or tumblr, it’s because I’m struggling with old demons still. I can’t help it. Im a Scorpio. I’m a person of extremes. I’m all in or all out, high or low, on the right track or fucking up.

I’m learning balance. Thank god for positive thoughts and thinking.

Now that I’ve put a label on carbs being bad, making me gain weight fast, blah blah blah…I struggle, it’s not something I’m proud of but something I need to call myself out on. Intermittent fasting has helped a lot, it helps me stay focused and when I do eat I make keto/low carb choices, but I’m evaluating the best way to approach this so that I don’t take things to an extreme.

I don’t like talking numbers, I can get obsessive…there was a time in my life I literally weighed myself 60+ times a day. I would obsessively calorie count…no amount was perfect enough. Hence this long winded post. I need to figure out how to stay on track with my goals, eating healthy, losing weight, the healthy way. I’m over being freaked out that a few bites of the wrong thing will end my life. Healthy isn’t obsession. Healthy is living an authentic life, going with the flow and knowing carbs won’t kill you, just like eating fats like coconut oil and avocados won’t kill you either.

Basically what I’m saying is I need to find a way to balance out my life a little better, so not labeling something “off limits” in the brain of someone who has struggled with EDs makes it labeled tempting and bad and creates a vicious cycle of struggles. “Do I eat it? But it’s bad…”

No fucking food is “bad” some choices are just less beneficial than others.

The reason my weight loss hasn’t been a pretty steady stream downward is bingeing over the last few months. Since reactivating my tumblr and instagram, I haven’t had any bad behaviors related to my journey…I’ve been strictly keto, on track, keeping my carbs low, drinking my water…losing weight in a way that works for my body without hurting it…but I slowly find myself obsessing over carb counts, weigh ins, what foods I’ll allow myself to have, etc. I just want balance.

I still struggle daily but I figured I’d call myself out on my struggles rather than hiding them, as if they don’t still exist. The first step is acceptance the second step is letting go.

[iamkellyadams]

Melt Away Up To 40 Pounds in 4 weeks …with ZERO dieting, exercise, or pills

Hi, I’m Carly & on this page you would learn how I, a burn-out, 40 year old mother lost 84 lbs doing NO exercise, using a simple set of Flavor-Pairing Rituals!

I call it my ‘Cinderella Solution‘ a rapid, safe and rewarding weight loss diet plan for women only who wants to lose 10, 20 or even 50 pounds.

Specifically designed to work on women, which guarantees daily weight loss, using an ancient principle of ‘flavor-pairing’, which supercharges female metabolism. But before moving ahead, just take a sneak peak of at 200+ lbs…

I discovered this transformation Cheat-Code that over 93% of people still have no idea exists after my life threatening experience which triggered a flood of what scientists are calling the weight-loss doubling molecule that lay dormant inside even the most stubborn female metabolism!

Which is why my friends, my family and even my doctor were shocked– when this sequence of events not only ended my battle with hypertension, pre-diabetes, endometriosis, and even depression…

…. and compelled my body to initiate a 22-hour-a-day fat burning sequence that grew stronger with each passing day! Click here and watch this video where I explain how you can use this simple solution and trigger a jaw dropping, awe-inspiring transformation beyond your imagination!

Centuries old, proven-to-work weight-loss rituals from the planet’s SLIMMEST, FITTEST and HEALTHIEST countries.

As you’ll learn from my journey, that after a while, the old-school methods like excess cardio, low carb diets and detoxes that most fitness and nutrition “guru’s” advocate don’t really work. Maybe if you’re a guy or if you’re 22-years old with a lightning fast metabolism…. However, if you’re reading this there’s a good chance that you don’t fall into those categories.

The typical female metabolism is anything but typical and it takes more than the latest workout video to make a permanent change. The good news is that permanent change isn’t rocket science, it just takes a little thinking outside the box….

The Cinderella Solution: Weight Loss from Inside-Out

Before I explain the core premise of The Cinderella Solution, I want you to consider how many times you have been here in the past. Whether you are in your 20’s or 50’s, one way or another, I know you must have tried to lose weight at some time of your life. While the motivation for embarking on a diet and/or exercise plan may have differed, the goal is generally the same for all of us – we want to look and feel better – The primary motivation is usually aesthetically driven.

“Secondary” incentives like overall health, energy, vitality and longevity typically take a back seat. This is human nature and we are all guilty – It’s not a bad thing. However, it is actually those benefits perceived as secondary, that if healed correctly and set to optimal levels, will not only allow for rapid, but more importantly, permanent weight loss.

The main take-away here is that this isn’t another ‘quick-fix’ that barks diet demands at you without telling you why you are doing what you are doing. Again, the goal here is to heal your body from the inside-out in order to feel what it’s finally like to achieve fast, safe and permanent weight loss.

I want you to get started as soon as possible but studies show that we are more likely to do something if we are told “why” we are doing it, along with the proof that it works. Watch me explain how this simple 2-step flavor pairing ritual could trigger the best weight loss transformation for you starting today.

At almost 40 years old, I eliminated nearly 84 pounds of confidence-stealing, energy-sucking and potentially life-ending body fat. And finally got to live my ‘happily ever after’ reversing all signs of hypertension, diabetes and depression.

‘This was me on the darkest day of my life’ … having my 208-pounds, disease-saturated and confidence-starved body hit the floor that morning WAS my fate.

All while managing to lose 12 dress sizes and 23 inches of my waist … Shrinking from a whopping 42 inches all the way around – down to only 26″ inches! Watch this video and I promise to reveal my full transformation along with the secret “Flavor Pairing Ritual” I used to melt away all my excess body fat faster than I ever thought possible-without pills or depriving myself on the latest fad keto, calorie counting, satisfaction stripped diet…

(Video plays in a different window)

My Promise To You

I guess my promise to you today, woman to woman, is that I wouldn’t have put in the 100’s of hours it took to create this if I didn’t think it would be of great benefit.

I can’t make some sort of “guarantee”, because we can’t “get time back”. But hey, if a relatively small time investment today could teach you even just one thing that you can take forward to get more healthy, wouldn’t it be worthwhile?

So, if you’re tossing up whether to go and grab your headphones right now and settle in, then I say “GIVE IT A SHOT!”

You’ve got nothing to lose!

Watch how to use this uniquely easy ‘falvor-pairing’ trick for rapid, satisfying and safe weight loss.

3 Fat Hoarding “Evil-Step-Mother-Hormones”

I.C.E hormones (i.e. Insulin, Cortisol, and Estrogen) also known to be 3 fat-hoarding, “Evil-Step-Mother-Hormones” who inevitably “lose their way” in our mid-20’s.

Lets see how you can make these rogue hormones once again become the “fat-burning queens” and starts running like clockwork.

Let me explain…

These 3 hormones play crucial role in a women’s health, metabolism and weight loss.

They do numerous jobs around the body, but let me give you a quick run down…

➢ INSULIN: transports energy to the cells that need it and quite often to the cells that DON’T need it when there is excess sugar floating around in your body.

➢ CORTISOL: released into the body at times of stress. During exercise cortisol can help increase fat burning, but having chronic high levels of cortisol is a recipe for snail pace fat loss and stubborn levels of belly fat.

➢ ESTROGEN: gives the female body it’s womanly characteristics, but if the ratio of estradiol + estrone are out of whack, then losing fat from the hips, butt and thighs is going to be an uphill struggle.

And this is where I hit a jackpot, and found an easy way to fix my I.C.E. hormones. Then, I went on to lose 84 lbs, drop 12 dress-sizes, burned 23 inches of fat off my waist and hips, and finally got my life back using a simple 2-step ritual called ‘flavor-pairing-ritual‘ that got my hormones to play together nicely.

I cannot describe what’s it’s like to actually FEEL, when something begins to work from the moment you start all the way until you lose every last pound…

The Metabolic Time Bomb

I mean, like even before I started gaining all that weight in my mid 20’s…

… that every woman falls victim to the shadowy Metabolic-Villain that forces the 3 hormones that kept you fit, youthful, healthy and happy when you were younger,

To literally funnel floating fat-cells into every single area exposed by your bathing suit…

…all while introducing you to a lifetime struggle with body-image, while locking in your weight-management hormones to ‘storage-mode’.

And even though none of this is our fault because nobody, not even our doctor warns us about this when we’re younger… Unless of course you are one of the lucky 8% blessed with near-perfect-genetics…

As women we are ALL VICTIMS of this fat-hoarding 30-year sentence…

The one that dismembers your metabolism form the end of puberty all the way through menopause.

However if it wasn’t for that fateful day not-so-long ago…

I could have never discovered these kindergarten-simple “Flavor-Pairing” rituals from a tiny island 6000 miles across the ocean…

And transform bodies and lives of over 16787 other women just like you, in the last year alone.

Because the truth is,

You are literally only one unusual step in an unexpected direction away from knocking over the big fat-loss domino that’s standing between you and the body you’ve been dreaming for so long.

Just like Susan did at 53 years old…who used a ‘carb-pairing’ ritual to channel a fat-flushing current…

Forcing 48 pounds of fat from her body while allowing her to recover the youthful glow lost in her 20’s…

Or even ladies with once-silent metabolism, like Kelly who lost 52 pounds.

Using the salty-sweet flavor-pair that revs up fat-burning by over 200%…

THE BEST PART IS,

Sadly, you’ve never heard of their secret because it’s so closely guarded by their top gatekeepers.

It wasn’t until a few highly respected doctors and government officials broke their code of silence that I was able to unleash that flood of age-reversing enzymes,

Allowing me to reclaim my body, my energy, my husband

And as you can see here….My Youth!

Luckily these battles with weight and body image inspired me to open my own special-place devoted to those looking to reclaim the health, happiness and confidence that had abandoned them so long ago.

Pretty soon after opening my first weight loss center a ‘buzz’ began to circle around the city…

➢ It’s Your Turn Now, Get The Transformation Cheat-Code Blueprint Today

The Discovery

It wasn’t until my team and I started examining the world’s healthiest nations that I knew we were on the right track. “Healthy” can mean a lot of different things to different people, however for most of us that means a leaner, more slender body, that operates at peal levels with the capacity to live a longer life.

This prompted us to dig deep into the practices of the world’s healthiest countries to uncover what it was they were doing to stay more slender, feel better and live better and live longer that we do in Westernized World. It turns out the differences were shocking!

The majority of our research proved that it wasn’t so much about what they ate…instead it was more about how they ate it. It’s not that they exercised “more” – in fact these countries placed way less emphasis on the amount of exercise they did. The fittest nations all took a widely different approach to how they exercised in order to maintain their titles as “worlds healthiest countries.”

It’s not about WHAT you’re doing – It’s HOW you do it!

It all came down to the unique, usually unheard of “rituals” the people in these countries used to live longer, stay skinnier and feel better every single day. The good news was, as we dug even deeper, these countries didn’t just become the world’s healthiest nations… most of them had remained in the top-ten in multiple “worlds healthiest” rankers since researchers began rating them. This gave us the peace-of-mind knowing that not only did these rituals work, but they had been working for decades… even centuries.

As you start your journey you’ll have the same peace-of-mind knowing that the easy to follow and simple-to-start rituals like “Flavor-Pairing” & “Nutrient Timing” are the same tactics myself and thousands of other women have used to get our lives and our bodies back.

The Moment Everything Changed

That alone got my attention but what really took my breath away were the statistics that backed up these claims from world’s most respected health authority:

Japanese women live to an astonishing average of 87-years-old,

A record number that has continued to climb since the 1960’s.

That’s over 10 years longer than we get to live here…10 YEARS!

Can you imagine getting an extra decade on this planet with your loved ones?

But the Japanese were also named the most “Disease-Resistant” & “Happiest” country as well. These women had uncommonly low rates of dementia, depression, heart attacks and strokes.

So not only were they living longer,

But for the last half-century, their quality of life was dominating ours as well.

As I’d later find out,

The Japanese had made one simple “alteration” to their eating habits 62 years ago.

And it was this subtle,

Yet profound adjustment that super-charged their immune systems

With the unique hormonal-synergy needed to produce “Warrior-Antibodies”

That actually fought tooth-and-nail against disease and obesity.

It turns out that Shoku-Iku (which translates to Nutrition Architecture) is a set of guidelines, broken down into extremely simple food and flavor-pairing rituals.

The primary goal of each pairing was to create “hormonal and metabolic balance to promote health, well-being, strength and happiness from within”. As I mentioned before, here we do the exact opposite.

The scientists explained that in North America we literally try to “attack” obesity, disease and depression from the outside With what they called “Shotgun-Approaches” like the diets, exercise routines and pills we’re all used to.

Back In 1966, as the fast-food craze hit America…

…The Japanese Government instead passed laws To make their “wellness from within” Flavor-Pairing Rituals and Shoku-Iku, the country’s mandatory Nutritional Platform.

So while we quickly became the fattest, sickest and unhealthiest country on the planet, The Japanese just kept losing weight while living longer, happier more fulfilling lives,

All because of a simple, yet metabolically explosive set of Flavor-Pairing rituals they adopted over 50 years ago.

And that’s what really gave me peace of mind that flavor-pairing was the key to unlocking the female fat-loss code…

… This wasn’t some pill being concocted in a lab or “get-skinny-by-yesterday” diet dreamed up by some TV doctor … Without any long term testing to see if it actually worked or more importantly, if it was safe.

This was 50 years of proof combined with 2 billion people living leaner, healthier longer lives.

And did I mention that Japanese women consume more carbohydrates than any other country as well?!?!

In fact,

They eat almost double the carbs we eat here!

From there we began to examine other nations that topped the list for “Healthiest Countries” like Spain, Switzerland and Australia.

The team and I dug deep to uncover their secrets for living these ultra-healthy, lean and long-lasting lives

Focusing specifically on weight loss and how they actually maintain such lean and slender figures.

Pretty soon a shocking pattern began to emerge…

The women who lost weight the fastest and those who were able to maintain such desirable life-long figures

Free from the stress of and guaranteed failure of dieting,

All practiced simple rituals that paired the right foods and flavors throughout their day.

The cutting-edge research proved

We were shocked because even though these simple, zero-cost rituals had been undeniably proven,We had never seen the indisputable evidence until now…

It turns out there’s a despicable reason for hiding the key to unlocking the female fat-loss code…

It’s the same reason you haven’t heard about it from those TV doctors, social media weight-loss gurus, fat-loss infomercials or even your own doctor…The truth is simple…Our government can’t tax easy fat-doubling rituals and pharmaceutical

And supplement companies can’t make money off a simple flavor pairing trick that signals around-the-clock weight loss!

Because these strategies cost only pennies-a-day and are so extremely simple…

…The weight-loss industry wants to keep them locked away and buried. And if you lose the weight extremely fast, like you will this time, they can’t hook you with another fad-approach…

…that kills your dreams and empties you and your families pockets yet again.

And I’ll tell you right now, Once you hit your own weight loss goal, That 20, 30, 40 or even 100 pounds, It Just feels like an “added bonus” compared to knowing that you’ve just bought yourself extra time on this planet with your friends and family.

However, how you feel about that lady you see staring back you in the mirror each morning can be pretty powerful,

(Video plays in a different window)

So I should give you a glimpse of what you too can expect when the weight just starts falling off… Starting tonight!

I’ve got good news for you if you are a woman who refuses to give up and finally start living your own Cinderella Story inside

THE BODY YOU DESERVE

Introducing…

The Cinderella Solution offers an easy to start, simple-to-follow cure using Flavor-Pairing rituals that hit the “reset-swtich” on your metabolisms 3 key fat-burning hormones; Insulin, Cortisol and Estrogen.

THE CINDERELLA SOLUTION

Our research that spans 60 years of proof, Combined with the results from 10’s and 1000’s of women across the globe have already proven that ladies like you are only step away from signalling a supercharged fat-loss doubling effect within your body.

If you want to watch the fat float off your body in the next 3 weeks, you simply need to re-ignite your 3 fat burning hormones to create a fat burning domino effect from the inside out.

➢ Check out the official website of ‘Cinderella Solution’, here.

The post Melt Away Up To 40 Pounds in 4 weeks …with ZERO dieting, exercise, or pills appeared first on Food, Health & You.

[jesseneufeld]

Introducing Keto For Life: Leveraging Metabolic Flexibility To Pursue The Ultimate Goal of Longevity

Today I’m overjoyed to announce the release of my latest, greatest, and certainly broadest attempt at a comprehensive plan to live long and live awesome: Keto For Life. The book’s official on-sale date is December 31, and—as tradition goes on Mark’s Daily Apple—I’m offering an incredible group of free bonus materials as a pre-order gift. Here’s a link where you can access your favorite online retailers to order, but know you can also visit your favorite brick and mortar bookstore to pre-order, too.

Folks, I know many of you have been here with me and the MDA community for enough years to remember how this all began with the Primal Blueprint. It’s been such an awesome journey—and one that keeps evolving in incredible ways. I genuinely feel like it’s all been leading toward this one. I’ve poured my personal experimentation and hard-gained insight into every book I’ve written, but this one feels, well, like a whole new level of inquiry and practice. Keto has kicked off not just a dietary trend the last few years but truly a whole new realm of scientific research. I’ve been knee-deep in it in writing this book, and I’ve not only delved into these revolutionary findings but have also taken the integration of keto science and Primal lifestyle principles to an entire new level. Let me tell you about it….

With ground-breaking connections for how keto and Primal principles can literally reset your biological clock, Keto For Life is a revolutionary gateway into eating and living for increased longevity and resilient vitality. With endless how-tos in every chapter, a 21-Day Biological Reset plan with multiple holistic lifestyle prompts for each and every day, and more than 80 delicious keto recipes, it’s a deeply comprehensive and fully actionable resource for living Keto For Life—and all it’s meant to be.

Longevity is about much more than just healthy eating. However, oftentimes when you’re stuck in the disease state of carbohydrate dependency, you might as well forget about other lifestyle strategies until you can escape that certain destiny of pain, suffering, accelerated aging and disease. If you’re an ancestral health enthusiast, you likely realize the amazing health awakening that comes when you upregulate your fat burning genes and get off the carb dependency train. Favorable blood test values, dropping excess body fat, and escaping the common problems of energy, mood and appetite swings are indications that your metabolic flexibility is robust. While Keto For Life dutifully cleans up some of the misconceptions, hype, and misinformation that have come with the explosive popularity of keto, I’m expanding the entire picture into “Four Pillars of Longevity.”

I’ll give you a little teaser today about each section so you’ll be eager to dive right in when your book arrives! In the Introduction, you’ll learn how hectic, high-tech modern life is becoming more and more at odds with longevity, especially the hidden costs of hyperconnectivity, destruction of meaningful social connections, and forces like consumerism, flawed and manipulative marketing messages relating to diet and medical care, and even the fitness industry’s obsession with struggle and suffer instead of a more sensible approach to exercise. You’ll learn perspective-altering insights about our actual healthspan as well as intriguing multi-plane views of aging that will revamp the way you look at your later decades—and the journey leading to them.

A new perspective shows us that aging as we know it isn’t a normal and inevitable result of chronology but actually what Dr. Art DeVany describes as “the unrepaired accumulation of routine cellular damage… a loss of cell function, loss of cell integrity, loss of the ability of stem cells to renew tissues.” Embracing this truth, you can take tremendous control over the rate at which you experience decline, instead appreciating and optimizing the variety of human “peaks” we can achieve and harness throughout our lifespans. Chronology has far less to say than we’ve given it credit for.

Pillar #1: Metabolic Flexibility

This is the best catch-all term to convey the magnificent journey of escaping carbohydrate dependency and becoming a fat-burning beast. Literally, metabolic flexibility describes the ability to burn a variety of fuel sources—not just external ingested calories, but also internal sources such as stored fat, stored glycogen and ketones manufactured in the liver as a byproduct of fat metabolism—when carb intake is low. At the highest level of sophistication, you become a “closed loop system” that can survive and even thrive without needing the constant intake of external calories and certainly without needing to adhere to any regimented macronutrient eating patterns.

In this pillar, you’ll reacquaint with the importance of a comfortable, minimally stressful step-by-step process to escape carb dependency and progress toward metabolic flexibility. As detailed in the Keto Reset Diet, you’ll execute a 21-Day Metabolism Reset, a fine-tuning period, and a 6-week nutritional ketosis period. We’ll discuss some advanced strategies for fasting and eating in a compressed time window, particularly the importance of limiting your digestive function to 12 hours. You’ll get guidance on integrating the hottest longevity superfoods and supplements, as well as help sorting through the weight loss hype around them and pinpointing the best ways to use these products.

You’ll learn some of the best long-term keto strategies, including living in what I call the “Keto Zone,” where you eat in a general keto-aligned pattern without stressing about macros, as well as incorporating days or periods where carb intake might increase beyond keto limits without you stressing about it. You’ll also learn what NOT to do with various popular keto strategies that are ill advised or overhyped, including (but not limited to) the ridiculousness of dirty keto, obsessive weekend refeeds, and cheat days.

Pillar #2: Movement and Physical Fitness

Movement and physical fitness are two distinct concepts. Together, along with preserving sharp cognition, they represent the essence of aging gracefully. In contrast, when we lose cognition and mobility, our life expectancy and quality of life plummet as we are relegated to wheelchairs, beds, and medications that limit our physical freedoms and compromise our mental well-being.

The desperate obligation to increase all forms of general everyday movement can be best handled by JFW—Just F—ing Walk! Today, many fitness and health experts assert that simply moving around more (especially avoiding the prolonged periods of stillness that are so common in the digital age) has surpassed the importance of following a structured workout routine as the top priority to be fit for life. How can this be? Because moving around all day is one of our fundamental genetic expectations for health. Our genes crave movement and are averse to stillness. In as little as 20 minutes of sitting still, we can experience impaired glucose tolerance and acute insulin resistance, along with diminished cognitive function. When prolonged periods of stillness dominate your daily routine, it can cause chemical changes in the brain that promote further inactivity. This is quantified by a lower measurement of Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)—you burn fat less efficiently at rest and consequently crave more carbohydrates for energy.

Now, because modern life is so comfortable, we also have a desperate need for ambitious fitness endeavors like Spinning, CrossFit, or even completing a half-marathon, but these goals must be only contemplated after you have established a foundation of basic everyday movement, which I detail in the book.

Once your movement looks good, you can get into the genetically optimal workout pattern ala Primal Blueprint with a strategic blend of comfortably paced cardio, regular short duration, high intensity resistance workouts (weights, machines, or just bodyweight exercises like pushups), and occasional brief, all-out sprints (the ultimate Primal exercise to delay aging under the “use it or lose it” natural law.) Let’s also add what I call “play” endeavors that can feature each of the aforementioned. As you know from being a Primal enthusiast, there are massive hormonal and physiological benefits to be gained from putting your body under resistance load regularly, and opening up the throttle occasionally with all out efforts.

These activities, which have been almost completely neglected by most modern humans, give us a boost of adaptive, anti-aging hormones like human growth hormone and testosterone. Brief, intense efforts also help preserve muscle mass as you age, improving the critical longevity component of organ reserve. This is the functional capacity of your organs to perform above baseline level, one of the most fundamental ways to assess your state of health and longevity potential. This Primal approach to fitness is simple, time efficient, and within reach of everyone. It also gives you awesome protection against the accelerated demise associated with inactivity.

Unfortunately, many fitness enthusiasts follow an overly stressful approach that leads to breakdown, burnout, illness and injury. Chronic exercise leads to hormonal and immune dysfunction, and compromises metabolic flexibility—instead pushing you back in the direction of carbohydrate dependency. You’ll learn how to schedule and conduct the various workouts correctly, avoid chronic patterns, and apply an intuitive approach instead of a regimented approach to your fitness goals.

Pillar #3: Mental Flexibility

Mental flexibility makes you resilient for life in the same manner that metabolic flexibility makes you resilient enough to skip meals and maintain energy and focus. While looking after the physical vessel is essential, we must acknowledge the strength of the mind/body connection as previously discussed with the insights from Dr. Chopra and Dr. Lipton.

This section details numerous strategies to hone mental flexibility, starting with pivoting: going with the flow when facing life change. Pivoting entails knowing both when to persevere when your peak performance goals are aligned with your deep beliefs and calling to make the world a better place, and also recognizing when it’s time tone down the influence of your ego and quit when things don’t feel right in your gut.

You’ll learn how to avoid the disease state of ruminating, that is, the act of engaging in obsessive or destructive thoughts about the past or the future that cause you feel anxious, depressed, irritable, overwhelmed and downright sad. Instead, we can cultivate the esteemed skill of mindfulness—accessing a state of calm, present awareness through repetition and endurance. 

Next, you’ll learn the importance of journaling, actually taking pen to paper and recording your thoughts, hopes, dreams and worries. Journaling can help you identify and correct self-limiting beliefs and behavior patterns. The specific practice of gratitude journaling, for example, has been scientifically validated to reduce stress levels, dissipate negative emotions, boost levels of the love hormone oxytocin, and activate calming parasympathetic nervous system function.

You’ll also read about learn to nurture meaningful, reciprocative interpersonal relationships—which might very well be the most powerful and important way to improve your longevity prospects in the entire book. Our genes are wired for connection, and the digital connections that are dominating modern life and coming at an extreme cost to our physical and psychological health. You’ll learn to cultivate a thriving social network, a smaller cluster of your closest family and friends, and place particular importance on the make or break health element of a loving partnership.

Pillar #4: Rest and Recovery

Optimizing your sleeping habits and environment will be the prominent focus here, but we must also consider a broad-based approach to chilling out amidst the hectic pace and constant stimulation of modern life. Strategies include disciplining your use of technology, taking frequent breaks from peak cognitive function to refresh depleted brain neurons, conducting recovery-centric workouts designed to promote relaxation and rejuvenation, and becoming competent at napping when cognitive function declines from afternoon blues. You’ll learn to pair mellow evening habits with a high energy morning routine (plenty of ideas included).

You’ll also turn your attention to proper recovery, both from fitness regimen and workplace overstimulation. You’ll learn about specially designed “Rebound Workouts” that can actually speed recovery in comparison to total rest by stimulating parasympathetic activity. And you’ll learn how to get better about focusing and prioritizing during the workday to avoid the dreaded cognitive middle gear, where you’re busy but ineffective. Finally, you’ll learn the importance of disconnecting on multiple levels to deliver profound hormonal and psychological benefits, stuff we have overlooked and disrespected with our warp speed technological progress.

21-Day Biological Clock Reset

After a comprehensive education and practical instruction about the 4 Pillars, it’s time for a transformative challenge: The 21-Day Biological Clock Reset. The reset features daily action items representing each of the Four Pillars. The journey, while short in duration, is designed to be highly focused and demanding. This is the only way to stimulate lasting lifestyle transformation and release you from the powerful pull of decades-old ingrained habits and powerful cultural forces pushing your out of a balance and stuck in carbohydrate dependency.

You’ll be exposed to a variety of strategies and concepts over the 21 days, and the idea is that you will pick and choose your favorites to integrate permanently into your lifestyle. You’ll be challenged to perform breakthrough workouts, increase daily activity, actually sit down and do stuff like a gratitude journal and create dark, mellow evenings instead of maximum screen time. It’s going to be fun, but it’s also going to be intensive, not to mention life-changing. Completing the Biological Clock Reset once a year is an excellent way to fine-tune your longevity muscles and clarify your focus amidst the constant distractions of modern life.

Recipes

But the food… Folks always want to know about the recipes. The 80+ Keto For Life recipes are a collaborative effort among numerous authors, coaches, chefs and well-known keto experts, including Dr. Cate Shanahan, Keris Marsden and Matt Whitmore of The Paleo Primer series, William Shewfelt of the carnivore diet movement, Dr. Lindsay Taylor and Layla McGowan, my co-authors on the Keto Reset Instant Pot Cookbook, Tania Teschke, author of The Bordeaux Kitchen, and more.

You’ll find everything you need for beginning, recommitting or reinvigorating your keto eating enjoyment with this diverse selection of dishes, from gourmet to quick and easy, from breakfast to beverages, snacks to side dishes and everything in between.

Let me share one today that might appeal….

Sneak Peek Recipe: Keto Cheesecake

Prep Time: 40 minutes (plus refrigeration time)

Cook Time: 60 minutes

Servings: 8

Ingredients:

FOR THE FILLING

16 ounces (453.59 g) organic cream cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 large egg

¼ cup powdered stevia or 1-2 tablespoons honey

FOR THE CRUST (OVEN METHOD ONLY)

1 cup (96 g) almond flour or 1 cup (128 g) coconut flour

4 tablespoons (60 g) butter, at room temperature

1–2 tablespoons powdered stevia

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

FOR THE CHOCOLATE CRUNCH TOPPING

¼ cup (34 g) macadamia nuts or assorted nuts

1 bar (3.5 ounces/100 g) dark chocolate (85% cacao or greater), broken into pieces

1 tablespoon coconut oil 2–3 tablespoons fine coconut flakes

Instructions:

Make the filling: In a large bowl, combine the cream cheese, vanilla, lemon juice, sea salt, eggs, and sweetener. Mix thoroughly with an electric mixer on low speed.

Choose between the Instant Pot Method and Oven Method and proceed as directed.

Instant Pot Method: Pour the filling into a round glass bowl or springform pan that can fit inside the Instant Pot. Cover the bowl carefully with foil. Pour 2 cups water into the Instant Pot. Place the cheesecake on the handled steam rack (or in a steamer basket accessory if you have one), and lower the cheesecake into the pot. Cook on High pressure for 25 minutes. When the Instant Pot beeps, allow the pressure to release naturally, about 15 minutes, then lift out the cheesecake.

Oven Method: Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Make the crust: In a bowl, combine the almond flour, butter, stevia, and vanilla until well blended. Press the mixture into the bottom of an 8-inch springform pan or round glass or ceramic baking dish.

Bake until the crust darkens slightly, about 10 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes (leave the oven on). Pour the cheesecake filling mixture into the pan and smooth out the top with your hand (just kidding, use a spatula). Bake until the middle is almost firm, but not quite, about 50 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.

While the cheesecake is cooling, make the chocolate crunch topping (use for either version): In a small food processor, blend the macadamia nuts until they resemble a crumbly flour. In a double boiler or a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate and coconut oil. Mix the nuts and coconut flakes into the melted chocolate.

Drizzle the topping carefully across the top of the cooked and cooled cheesecake. Refrigerate the cheesecake until the crust feels hard, 30 minutes to 1 hour. Slice and serve.

Macronutrients Per Serving:

Instant Pot Method: 323 calories; 29 grams fat; 8 grams carbohydrate; 7 grams protein

Oven Method: 459 calories; 42 grams fat; 12 grams carbohydrate; 10 grams protein

Final Thoughts

I realize that there is an overwhelming amount of content hitting us today from books, magazine articles, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and streaming media, and it’s easy for a new book to get lost in the shuffle or buried on a “read later” list. That’s why I want to reiterate what a hugely expansive and life-changing this book Keto For Life represents. My longtime writing/publishing partner Brad Kearns and I joke that we always underestimate the difficulty and duration of a book project by half, and this was no exception. Keto For Life represents an intensive project that took an entire year to complete, with devoted efforts from a sizeable team of researchers, editors, agents, publicists and publisher. It’s designed to stand proudly for years to come as an owner’s manual for longevity. I hope it can help you claim your fullest and longest life.

Now For the Keto For Life Pre-Order Bonus Gifts…

This is always my favorite part. For those who order the book early, I have a few gifts for you (available right away even though the book itself comes out 12/31/19).

Bonus Audio Summary

Enjoy a detailed overview of every section of the book to get you excited and prepared to begin your Keto For Life journey. My co-author, Brad Kearns, describes the 4 Pillars in detail.

Sneak Peek Excerpt Booklet

Read some choice excerpts to give you a feel for the comprehensive nature of the book, where you obtain a deep education and scientific rationale for the 4 Pillars, as well as get practical, step-by-step guidance to implement, and (finally) enjoy a few of the delicious 80+ recipes from the book.

$10 Discount at Primal Kitchen®

Grab some of your favorite keto-friendly products to add variety and ease to your keto cooking ventures.

That’s what I got today, and I’m thrilled to offer it up to the community where it all began and where it’s still evolving. Folks, I hope you enjoy reading the book and putting it into practice as much as Brad and I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for being here.

Reprinted from KETO FOR LIFE by Mark Sisson with Brad Kearns. Copyright @ 2019 by Mark Sisson. Photos copyright @ 2019 Jennifer May. Published by Harmony Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

The post Introducing Keto For Life: Leveraging Metabolic Flexibility To Pursue The Ultimate Goal of Longevity appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Introducing Keto For Life: Leveraging Metabolic Flexibility To Pursue The Ultimate Goal of Longevity published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

[lauramalchowblog]

Introducing Keto For Life: Leveraging Metabolic Flexibility To Pursue The Ultimate Goal of Longevity

Today I’m overjoyed to announce the release of my latest, greatest, and certainly broadest attempt at a comprehensive plan to live long and live awesome: Keto For Life. The book’s official on-sale date is December 31, and—as tradition goes on Mark’s Daily Apple—I’m offering an incredible group of free bonus materials as a pre-order gift. Here’s a link where you can access your favorite online retailers to order, but know you can also visit your favorite brick and mortar bookstore to pre-order, too.

Folks, I know many of you have been here with me and the MDA community for enough years to remember how this all began with the Primal Blueprint. It’s been such an awesome journey—and one that keeps evolving in incredible ways. I genuinely feel like it’s all been leading toward this one. I’ve poured my personal experimentation and hard-gained insight into every book I’ve written, but this one feels, well, like a whole new level of inquiry and practice. Keto has kicked off not just a dietary trend the last few years but truly a whole new realm of scientific research. I’ve been knee-deep in it in writing this book, and I’ve not only delved into these revolutionary findings but have also taken the integration of keto science and Primal lifestyle principles to an entire new level. Let me tell you about it….

With ground-breaking connections for how keto and Primal principles can literally reset your biological clock, Keto For Life is a revolutionary gateway into eating and living for increased longevity and resilient vitality. With endless how-tos in every chapter, a 21-Day Biological Reset plan with multiple holistic lifestyle prompts for each and every day, and more than 80 delicious keto recipes, it’s a deeply comprehensive and fully actionable resource for living Keto For Life—and all it’s meant to be.

Longevity is about much more than just healthy eating. However, oftentimes when you’re stuck in the disease state of carbohydrate dependency, you might as well forget about other lifestyle strategies until you can escape that certain destiny of pain, suffering, accelerated aging and disease. If you’re an ancestral health enthusiast, you likely realize the amazing health awakening that comes when you upregulate your fat burning genes and get off the carb dependency train. Favorable blood test values, dropping excess body fat, and escaping the common problems of energy, mood and appetite swings are indications that your metabolic flexibility is robust. While Keto For Life dutifully cleans up some of the misconceptions, hype, and misinformation that have come with the explosive popularity of keto, I’m expanding the entire picture into “Four Pillars of Longevity.”

I’ll give you a little teaser today about each section so you’ll be eager to dive right in when your book arrives! In the Introduction, you’ll learn how hectic, high-tech modern life is becoming more and more at odds with longevity, especially the hidden costs of hyperconnectivity, destruction of meaningful social connections, and forces like consumerism, flawed and manipulative marketing messages relating to diet and medical care, and even the fitness industry’s obsession with struggle and suffer instead of a more sensible approach to exercise. You’ll learn perspective-altering insights about our actual healthspan as well as intriguing multi-plane views of aging that will revamp the way you look at your later decades—and the journey leading to them.

A new perspective shows us that aging as we know it isn’t a normal and inevitable result of chronology but actually what Dr. Art DeVany describes as “the unrepaired accumulation of routine cellular damage… a loss of cell function, loss of cell integrity, loss of the ability of stem cells to renew tissues.” Embracing this truth, you can take tremendous control over the rate at which you experience decline, instead appreciating and optimizing the variety of human “peaks” we can achieve and harness throughout our lifespans. Chronology has far less to say than we’ve given it credit for.

Pillar #1: Metabolic Flexibility

This is the best catch-all term to convey the magnificent journey of escaping carbohydrate dependency and becoming a fat-burning beast. Literally, metabolic flexibility describes the ability to burn a variety of fuel sources—not just external ingested calories, but also internal sources such as stored fat, stored glycogen and ketones manufactured in the liver as a byproduct of fat metabolism—when carb intake is low. At the highest level of sophistication, you become a “closed loop system” that can survive and even thrive without needing the constant intake of external calories and certainly without needing to adhere to any regimented macronutrient eating patterns.

In this pillar, you’ll reacquaint with the importance of a comfortable, minimally stressful step-by-step process to escape carb dependency and progress toward metabolic flexibility. As detailed in the Keto Reset Diet, you’ll execute a 21-Day Metabolism Reset, a fine-tuning period, and a 6-week nutritional ketosis period. We’ll discuss some advanced strategies for fasting and eating in a compressed time window, particularly the importance of limiting your digestive function to 12 hours. You’ll get guidance on integrating the hottest longevity superfoods and supplements, as well as help sorting through the weight loss hype around them and pinpointing the best ways to use these products.

You’ll learn some of the best long-term keto strategies, including living in what I call the “Keto Zone,” where you eat in a general keto-aligned pattern without stressing about macros, as well as incorporating days or periods where carb intake might increase beyond keto limits without you stressing about it. You’ll also learn what NOT to do with various popular keto strategies that are ill advised or overhyped, including (but not limited to) the ridiculousness of dirty keto, obsessive weekend refeeds, and cheat days.

Pillar #2: Movement and Physical Fitness

Movement and physical fitness are two distinct concepts. Together, along with preserving sharp cognition, they represent the essence of aging gracefully. In contrast, when we lose cognition and mobility, our life expectancy and quality of life plummet as we are relegated to wheelchairs, beds, and medications that limit our physical freedoms and compromise our mental well-being.

The desperate obligation to increase all forms of general everyday movement can be best handled by JFW—Just F—ing Walk! Today, many fitness and health experts assert that simply moving around more (especially avoiding the prolonged periods of stillness that are so common in the digital age) has surpassed the importance of following a structured workout routine as the top priority to be fit for life. How can this be? Because moving around all day is one of our fundamental genetic expectations for health. Our genes crave movement and are averse to stillness. In as little as 20 minutes of sitting still, we can experience impaired glucose tolerance and acute insulin resistance, along with diminished cognitive function. When prolonged periods of stillness dominate your daily routine, it can cause chemical changes in the brain that promote further inactivity. This is quantified by a lower measurement of Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)—you burn fat less efficiently at rest and consequently crave more carbohydrates for energy.

Now, because modern life is so comfortable, we also have a desperate need for ambitious fitness endeavors like Spinning, CrossFit, or even completing a half-marathon, but these goals must be only contemplated after you have established a foundation of basic everyday movement, which I detail in the book.

Once your movement looks good, you can get into the genetically optimal workout pattern ala Primal Blueprint with a strategic blend of comfortably paced cardio, regular short duration, high intensity resistance workouts (weights, machines, or just bodyweight exercises like pushups), and occasional brief, all-out sprints (the ultimate Primal exercise to delay aging under the “use it or lose it” natural law.) Let’s also add what I call “play” endeavors that can feature each of the aforementioned. As you know from being a Primal enthusiast, there are massive hormonal and physiological benefits to be gained from putting your body under resistance load regularly, and opening up the throttle occasionally with all out efforts.

These activities, which have been almost completely neglected by most modern humans, give us a boost of adaptive, anti-aging hormones like human growth hormone and testosterone. Brief, intense efforts also help preserve muscle mass as you age, improving the critical longevity component of organ reserve. This is the functional capacity of your organs to perform above baseline level, one of the most fundamental ways to assess your state of health and longevity potential. This Primal approach to fitness is simple, time efficient, and within reach of everyone. It also gives you awesome protection against the accelerated demise associated with inactivity.

Unfortunately, many fitness enthusiasts follow an overly stressful approach that leads to breakdown, burnout, illness and injury. Chronic exercise leads to hormonal and immune dysfunction, and compromises metabolic flexibility—instead pushing you back in the direction of carbohydrate dependency. You’ll learn how to schedule and conduct the various workouts correctly, avoid chronic patterns, and apply an intuitive approach instead of a regimented approach to your fitness goals.

Pillar #3: Mental Flexibility

Mental flexibility makes you resilient for life in the same manner that metabolic flexibility makes you resilient enough to skip meals and maintain energy and focus. While looking after the physical vessel is essential, we must acknowledge the strength of the mind/body connection as previously discussed with the insights from Dr. Chopra and Dr. Lipton.

This section details numerous strategies to hone mental flexibility, starting with pivoting: going with the flow when facing life change. Pivoting entails knowing both when to persevere when your peak performance goals are aligned with your deep beliefs and calling to make the world a better place, and also recognizing when it’s time tone down the influence of your ego and quit when things don’t feel right in your gut.

You’ll learn how to avoid the disease state of ruminating, that is, the act of engaging in obsessive or destructive thoughts about the past or the future that cause you feel anxious, depressed, irritable, overwhelmed and downright sad. Instead, we can cultivate the esteemed skill of mindfulness—accessing a state of calm, present awareness through repetition and endurance. 

Next, you’ll learn the importance of journaling, actually taking pen to paper and recording your thoughts, hopes, dreams and worries. Journaling can help you identify and correct self-limiting beliefs and behavior patterns. The specific practice of gratitude journaling, for example, has been scientifically validated to reduce stress levels, dissipate negative emotions, boost levels of the love hormone oxytocin, and activate calming parasympathetic nervous system function.

You’ll also read about learn to nurture meaningful, reciprocative interpersonal relationships—which might very well be the most powerful and important way to improve your longevity prospects in the entire book. Our genes are wired for connection, and the digital connections that are dominating modern life and coming at an extreme cost to our physical and psychological health. You’ll learn to cultivate a thriving social network, a smaller cluster of your closest family and friends, and place particular importance on the make or break health element of a loving partnership.

Pillar #4: Rest and Recovery

Optimizing your sleeping habits and environment will be the prominent focus here, but we must also consider a broad-based approach to chilling out amidst the hectic pace and constant stimulation of modern life. Strategies include disciplining your use of technology, taking frequent breaks from peak cognitive function to refresh depleted brain neurons, conducting recovery-centric workouts designed to promote relaxation and rejuvenation, and becoming competent at napping when cognitive function declines from afternoon blues. You’ll learn to pair mellow evening habits with a high energy morning routine (plenty of ideas included).

You’ll also turn your attention to proper recovery, both from fitness regimen and workplace overstimulation. You’ll learn about specially designed “Rebound Workouts” that can actually speed recovery in comparison to total rest by stimulating parasympathetic activity. And you’ll learn how to get better about focusing and prioritizing during the workday to avoid the dreaded cognitive middle gear, where you’re busy but ineffective. Finally, you’ll learn the importance of disconnecting on multiple levels to deliver profound hormonal and psychological benefits, stuff we have overlooked and disrespected with our warp speed technological progress.

21-Day Biological Clock Reset

After a comprehensive education and practical instruction about the 4 Pillars, it’s time for a transformative challenge: The 21-Day Biological Clock Reset. The reset features daily action items representing each of the Four Pillars. The journey, while short in duration, is designed to be highly focused and demanding. This is the only way to stimulate lasting lifestyle transformation and release you from the powerful pull of decades-old ingrained habits and powerful cultural forces pushing your out of a balance and stuck in carbohydrate dependency.

You’ll be exposed to a variety of strategies and concepts over the 21 days, and the idea is that you will pick and choose your favorites to integrate permanently into your lifestyle. You’ll be challenged to perform breakthrough workouts, increase daily activity, actually sit down and do stuff like a gratitude journal and create dark, mellow evenings instead of maximum screen time. It’s going to be fun, but it’s also going to be intensive, not to mention life-changing. Completing the Biological Clock Reset once a year is an excellent way to fine-tune your longevity muscles and clarify your focus amidst the constant distractions of modern life.

Recipes

But the food… Folks always want to know about the recipes. The 80+ Keto For Life recipes are a collaborative effort among numerous authors, coaches, chefs and well-known keto experts, including Dr. Cate Shanahan, Keris Marsden and Matt Whitmore of The Paleo Primer series, William Shewfelt of the carnivore diet movement, Dr. Lindsay Taylor and Layla McGowan, my co-authors on the Keto Reset Instant Pot Cookbook, Tania Teschke, author of The Bordeaux Kitchen, and more.

You’ll find everything you need for beginning, recommitting or reinvigorating your keto eating enjoyment with this diverse selection of dishes, from gourmet to quick and easy, from breakfast to beverages, snacks to side dishes and everything in between.

Let me share one today that might appeal….

Sneak Peek Recipe: Keto Cheesecake

Prep Time: 40 minutes (plus refrigeration time)

Cook Time: 60 minutes

Servings: 8

Ingredients:

FOR THE FILLING

16 ounces (453.59 g) organic cream cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 large egg

¼ cup powdered stevia or 1-2 tablespoons honey

FOR THE CRUST (OVEN METHOD ONLY)

1 cup (96 g) almond flour or 1 cup (128 g) coconut flour

4 tablespoons (60 g) butter, at room temperature

1–2 tablespoons powdered stevia

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

FOR THE CHOCOLATE CRUNCH TOPPING

¼ cup (34 g) macadamia nuts or assorted nuts

1 bar (3.5 ounces/100 g) dark chocolate (85% cacao or greater), broken into pieces

1 tablespoon coconut oil 2–3 tablespoons fine coconut flakes

Instructions:

Make the filling: In a large bowl, combine the cream cheese, vanilla, lemon juice, sea salt, eggs, and sweetener. Mix thoroughly with an electric mixer on low speed.

Choose between the Instant Pot Method and Oven Method and proceed as directed.

Instant Pot Method: Pour the filling into a round glass bowl or springform pan that can fit inside the Instant Pot. Cover the bowl carefully with foil. Pour 2 cups water into the Instant Pot. Place the cheesecake on the handled steam rack (or in a steamer basket accessory if you have one), and lower the cheesecake into the pot. Cook on High pressure for 25 minutes. When the Instant Pot beeps, allow the pressure to release naturally, about 15 minutes, then lift out the cheesecake.

Oven Method: Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Make the crust: In a bowl, combine the almond flour, butter, stevia, and vanilla until well blended. Press the mixture into the bottom of an 8-inch springform pan or round glass or ceramic baking dish.

Bake until the crust darkens slightly, about 10 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes (leave the oven on). Pour the cheesecake filling mixture into the pan and smooth out the top with your hand (just kidding, use a spatula). Bake until the middle is almost firm, but not quite, about 50 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.

While the cheesecake is cooling, make the chocolate crunch topping (use for either version): In a small food processor, blend the macadamia nuts until they resemble a crumbly flour. In a double boiler or a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate and coconut oil. Mix the nuts and coconut flakes into the melted chocolate.

Drizzle the topping carefully across the top of the cooked and cooled cheesecake. Refrigerate the cheesecake until the crust feels hard, 30 minutes to 1 hour. Slice and serve.

Macronutrients Per Serving:

Instant Pot Method: 323 calories; 29 grams fat; 8 grams carbohydrate; 7 grams protein

Oven Method: 459 calories; 42 grams fat; 12 grams carbohydrate; 10 grams protein

Final Thoughts

I realize that there is an overwhelming amount of content hitting us today from books, magazine articles, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and streaming media, and it’s easy for a new book to get lost in the shuffle or buried on a “read later” list. That’s why I want to reiterate what a hugely expansive and life-changing this book Keto For Life represents. My longtime writing/publishing partner Brad Kearns and I joke that we always underestimate the difficulty and duration of a book project by half, and this was no exception. Keto For Life represents an intensive project that took an entire year to complete, with devoted efforts from a sizeable team of researchers, editors, agents, publicists and publisher. It’s designed to stand proudly for years to come as an owner’s manual for longevity. I hope it can help you claim your fullest and longest life.

Now For the Keto For Life Pre-Order Bonus Gifts…

This is always my favorite part. For those who order the book early, I have a few gifts for you (available right away even though the book itself comes out 12/31/19).

Bonus Audio Summary

Enjoy a detailed overview of every section of the book to get you excited and prepared to begin your Keto For Life journey. My co-author, Brad Kearns, describes the 4 Pillars in detail.

Sneak Peek Excerpt Booklet

Read some choice excerpts to give you a feel for the comprehensive nature of the book, where you obtain a deep education and scientific rationale for the 4 Pillars, as well as get practical, step-by-step guidance to implement, and (finally) enjoy a few of the delicious 80+ recipes from the book.

$10 Discount at Primal Kitchen®

Grab some of your favorite keto-friendly products to add variety and ease to your keto cooking ventures.

That’s what I got today, and I’m thrilled to offer it up to the community where it all began and where it’s still evolving. Folks, I hope you enjoy reading the book and putting it into practice as much as Brad and I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for being here.

Reprinted from KETO FOR LIFE by Mark Sisson with Brad Kearns. Copyright @ 2019 by Mark Sisson. Photos copyright @ 2019 Jennifer May. Published by Harmony Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

The post Introducing Keto For Life: Leveraging Metabolic Flexibility To Pursue The Ultimate Goal of Longevity appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Introducing Keto For Life: Leveraging Metabolic Flexibility To Pursue The Ultimate Goal of Longevity published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

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hCGChica’s hCG Diet Journal – Round 5 – Final round

Read/Watch my own hCG Diet Journey As It Unfolded:

September 23, 2012

I considered loading for 3 days since I’m a “smaller” person now, but after 2 days I felt I loaded extremely well- I consumed 4000 calories and 300 grams of fat EACH loading day. I think that’s sufficient. My stomach and intestines seemed to let me know that anyway, so I called it good.

My net loading gain for Round 5 of HCG Injections was a 1.6lb gain. I gained 2.2 lbs after the first loading day, and lost .6lbs the following day. Here are my stats for the 2 days (compiled into 1 list) of what I ate and their nutritional values. The total breakdown for both days combined was 7938 calories over the course of the two days, 600 grams of fat, 452 grams protein, 168 grams carbs.

HCG DOSAGE FOR THIS ROUND

I am injecting 125iu’s this round and this dose seems to work best for me in general these days. I feel very not hungry on 125ius.

NO EXERCISE (FOR ME) WHILE ON THE HCG DIET AND WHY

I have seen a lot of people manage to exercise while on the weight loss protocol with no problems or side-effects. If you are an average healthy person, just overweight (ie. You don’t have any obvious autoimmune, thyroid or other chronic illness problems) when you embark on the protocol, and you have already been pursuing an exercise protocol prior to starting the protocol, you very likely may be able to continue that exercise while on this diet plan.

I don’t fit into that “average healthy person” category- even though I’m actually very healthy- I’m not average. I have a couple of autoimmune conditions- hashimoto’s for one (where your body attacks your thyroid) and while I have gotten the point where most of my conditions are non-existent in that they don’t give me symptoms, I still seem to find that I simply cannot tolerate exercise while on the diet- it just appears to be too much for my delicate system- to lose so much fat AND exercise at the same time appears to be too much “stress” for my body to handle.

When I personally try to exercise while on the diet plan, I find myself having enormous uncontrollable cravings to eat, the diet feels mentally and emotionally very difficult, and I’m extremely exhausted. All things I simply can’t handle on the protocol if I want to be successful on it! So I forego exercise while on Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, even though I’m an avid Crossfitter (check out this video to see what Crossfit is all about- it’s THE best training program I’ve ever seen and my own results prove it!) in normal day to day life. Taking a simple 3 or 6 week break is worth it to me to lose several pounds of fat (Round 5 I lost 10 lbs of fat!) that I can’t otherwise lose in regular life.

My pre-hcg diet:- 7-10 days before starting the hCG Diet protocol

I’ve done this before and it’s worked well for me to break sugar cravings and to get into Ketosis right away. I take about 7-10 days before loading for the diet, and I eat very low carb, high fat diet. No fruit, no grain, no starchy veggies, no sugars at all. I keep the fats very high- this creates a feeling of satiety and makes the switch over from a diet higher in sugars and carbs much easier, for me at least.

I am very sensitive to sugar and before Round 5, I found myself feeling a little out of control with my eating habits for about a week while we were moving and things in life were a bit stressful. Doing the pre-hcg “diet” cuts the sugar/carb cravings almost immediately and really gets my body and my mind in the right place for starting the weight loss protocol in the best possible way.

September 24, 2012

2 lb loss for my first vlcd day. That puts me at 132.2 this day. Body fat monitor showed a drop in 1 lb of fat. There is always some water weight loss at the beginning of any diet- you can’t expect all fat loss right from the beginning, so I’m ecstatic for the 1 lb fat loss.

I think I fat loaded well enough because I haven’t experienced almost any hunger on the first vlcd day of the diet which is great because even though on the majority of the weight loss protocol one should experience almost no hunger if they are on the right dose of the hormone, the first few days of being on the very low calorie portion of the diet DOES often include feeling some hunger that is a little hard to deal with as your body adjusts to the new diet and the hormone circulating in your system.

While I wasn’t hungry this first day, once I again I did experience a small bout of low blood sugar in the later part of the afternoon- for me that’s anything under 80 on a blood glucose meter, and I was at 75 when I tested it about 5:30pm. This often occurs for me during the first few vlcd’s because I don’t eat the fruits on p2 and I never include the grissini/melba, which makes the diet extremely low carb- thus getting low blood sugar is more likely at the beginning. The low blood sugar always does go away on it’s own however after the first few days, despite the fact that I continue to not eat the fruits and grissini/melba.  If you decide to try this please do be careful- if you are prone to low blood sugar I would full research trying this first as I’m not sure just anyone could do this and feel well.

To fix my low blood sugar I ate a chopped cucumber salad and yogurt with salt and that brought my blood sugar up to a normal level for me which is about 90 on a blood glucose meter.  Nice that I didn’t have to eat a spoonful of sugar huh!

As usual, I was ketosis right away after the first vlcd day- I am always able to achieve this when I eat low carb for about 7-10 days prior to starting Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, then load clean aka low carb. I like the idea of getting the most accomplished as possible when I’m on HCG Injections round and I feel by clearing excess carbs out of my system in advance, my body is able to get into fat burning mode more quickly since there are very few carbs to burn first.

September 26, 2012

XNJKHGQWBQHU – A little more about HCGChica- HCG TAG on YouTube

My real name?

My name is Rayzel Lam here on YouTube and the web

RX or Homeopathic HCG?

I have always done prescription hCG and in fact, I’ve used a total of I think 6 different brands of RX hCG now as well- I feel in general like they all worked equally well. The only difference I noticed was that depending on the brand, I might need a slightly higher or lower dose of the hormone to get that “no hunger” effect.

hCG Injection or sublingual HCG?

I have always done injections- the reason is 2 fold- one, I’m cheap and injections are cheaper because you only need the half amount of the hormone as for sublingual, and two, and most importantly, hCG injections ensure 100% delivery of the right amount of hormone to the right place (your fat, not your stomach and gastric juices!) I generally don’t like to take chances with my body when there’s a way to be sure I get the best result.

The first two rounds of HCG Injections I injected the hormone into my stomach, but about the time of Round 3 I found it actually causing me some paint to try to inject in my stomach which causes me to think I either didn’t have enough fat there anymore or possibly I had built up some scar tissue or had some excess skin- whatever the case, starting with Round 3 of the diet I began injecting in other places- outer and inner thigh, buttocks, arm- pretty much wherever I could find a nice meaty patch of fat!

What do I do for a living?

For the most part, I’m a mom. I have a 3 year old son, and a husband I’ve been married to for 12 years and I take my role of caring for my family pretty seriously. I treasure that I can raise my son the majority of the time. That said, I also work part-time on this website and diet “things”- responding to emails and writing quality helpful content on my website and recording YouTube videos to help you guys get the best out of your weight loss journey. It’s changed my life enough that I find a lot of joy in helping you guys get similar results.

What was your most interesting job?

I used to teach singing and rhythm classes to children at park and recreation centers in my area. The age ranged from 18 months to 7 years old. I really enjoyed seeing especially the little ones learn basic singing and rhythm- I find little kids in general to be pretty darn cute. The other kind of interesting job I used to have was a painting business that involved faux finishing- things like painting clouds on ceilings and distressed/aged plaster finishes on walls. The part that makes me feel all “cool” and proud of myself is that a couple times I used some 3 tier scaffolding that put me up about 20 feet in the air to reach the top of some taller homes. Scaffolding is not rigid- it has movement to it which feels very scary and unsettling at first, but after a little bit you get used to the movement of it and pretty soon I was swinging up and down and around that thing like a little monkey! I think my painting business was one of the things that contributed to my developing my chronic illness though as I was young and stupid and never took the proper precautions when handling all the different chemicals and fumes involved with painting.

Are you the only one in your family who has struggled with weight?

No- I wish. My mom and her entire side of her paternal family have all dealt with weight struggles. Almost all of them were pretty big people and most of them died from complications of diabetes. I think there’s a genetic component involved as I naturally have a very big appetite for such a little person. I can out eat my 6′ husband any day no problem, and I know my grandfather was quite the eater as well. Thankfully since I’m not aware of how sensitive I am to sugar and avoid it like the plague and have lost so much fat with the diet, I can say with 100% confidence I’m nowhere near being even pre-diabetic anymore. It seems likely to me that many of my ancestors were also very sensitive to sugar which pre-disposed them to all getting diabetes later in life, but of course at that time it was an unknown. I’m very thankful for all the knowledge and research that can now be done with the advent of the internet to discover what to do best for my personal body.

Have you tried any other weightloss program and what were the results?

I have tried WeightWatchers about 3 times. I never experienced much success with this program at all, although I know many have. I don’t think I ever lost more than 5-7 lb with it. It’s sad that I was so misinformed at the time- the 2nd time I tried weight watchers, I wasn’t really “overweight”. I had a few excess pounds I could shed, but was in good shape otherwise. I remember we went backpacking into the wilderness for 9 days. During that time I hiked many many miles up and down steep grades with about 40 lbs or so on my back and of course we didn’t eat a whole lot- just the notorious freeze dried backpacking meals “just add hot water” stuff. When we got back I went into my weight watchers meeting and was dismayed to see I had gained 2 lbs. I got so discouraged I quit after that. If I’d known then what I know now, that wouldn’t have happened. NOW I know that anyone who spends 9 days doing exteme physical activities is going to have some water retention going on, as well as some muscle building. That 2 lb gain was nothing to be ashamed of! At the time I couldn’t figure out how I could possibly do all I did for 9 days and then “gain weight”- what I thought was fat. Thankfully I’ve educated myself enough now to know that when I know I’m doing the right thing for my body- eating clean and working out- I don’t have to worry about a scale change like that- it’s my body doing something good. It’s sad that I wasted so much of my younger years getting discouraged by instances like this that would then cause to give up in some way and start doing real damage to my body like stopping the workouts or eating sugar because “I was fat anyway” or because “I already gained weight and failed, might as well finish it off.” That’s one of the reasons that I touch on the topic of body composition and muscle vs. fat more than lightly on this website. I’m trying to bring an awareness to us women that my mother’s mother didn’t have and thus wasn’t able to pass on to my mother or to me. I still wouldn’t choose to weight watchers again even with my current knowledge, as my personality just doesn’t work well with a daily “counting” of anything like calories or other numbers- it just feels too limiting to have to do that on a daily basis for extensive lengths of time. However, I do feel the meetings that weight watcher groups have and I like to think that the hCG community on YouTube is able to achieve the essence of these “group meetings” to support and help each other stay motivated.

Funniest or Worst Weightloss Program You’ve Ever Tried

This is a weight loss “program” of my own making. One time in order to lose weight for a fast approaching recital that I was dancing in, I walked 8 miles a day, every day, for like a week. I would walk 4 miles in the morning, then come back and walk 4 miles in the evening. It’s possible that I combined that with the master cleanse where you drink just water and lemon with a little maple syrup. Needless to say I got some pretty major shin-splits doing that much of just one activity. I did lose about 6 lbs or so and felt “thin” for the show, but of course it came right back on afterwards. The things that we’ll do to look good in front of people right?

Do you have any chronic health issues, do you believe they are a result of abnormal fat?

I do have chronic health issues- thankfully I can now say that despite still having the autoimmune “condition” known as hashimoto’s thyroiditis, I am now symptom free so I don’t really consider myself chronically ill anymore. However, since about the age of 21 for about 6 or 7 years, I did deal with varying degrees of chronic symptoms without knowing the cause. Some of my symptoms were extreme fatigue, inability to exercise without getting extremely depressed afterwards, not being able to handle even the excitement of family and friends around because it would make my fatigue too profound and debilitating. Originally my illness was not caused by abnormal fat as I wasn’t overweight to start with. I think I have a predisposition to autoimmune disorders and there are few things like the chemicals and fumes I was exposed to without protection in my painting business that may have been a trigger for them. However, as I got sicker, I did start putting on weight and toxins are stored in fat- its very plausible to me that my body getting fatter and storing toxins that I was exposed to like mercury (I had a blood testing showing dangerously high levels of mercury in my body which I had to detox from) increased and made my symptoms worse. Losing all that fat that no doubt had a lot of toxins bound up in it I have no doubt has contributed to better health for me.

Do I have my Vitamin D levels tested/checked?

I have had it checked a few times and it’s always been abnormally low- my last test I think was around 20 or 25. I have supplemented with high dose vitamin D drops in the past. However, the nature of my body is that it’s just very….autoimmune. I have discovered that my body is so sensitive that I cannot take supplements in general without having bad health symptoms. I have to be careful about being in the sun as well- the sun makes my symptoms surface and get worse. So even though I have low Vitamin D levels, I feel much better not supplementing as of now. Perhaps that will change in the future.

What does hCG mean to you, how did you learn about?

This diet plan has changed my life. Originally I learned about it quite by accident while researching the topic of Candida on a health and wellness site. While on the site I happened to notice a forum that with a thread titled something like, “does the hCG diet really work?” or something to that effect. I was curious because I had never heard of that diet before, and of course I was overweight, so naturally I was curious. I started reading and the whole idea was so foreign- I had never heard anything remotely like it which really piqued my curiosity. It sounded too good to be true, but I came across the youtube vlogs of real people doing the diet, showing their actual results that I knew wasn’t some fake, manufactured advertisement. The clincher for me was that I could really tell when looking at the before and after photos of hCG dieters that these individuals were really losing fat because their bodies just looked so well balanced and well formed when they were done. There was none of that skinny on top fat on bottom look. They looked toned and smooth. So I made the jump and the rest is history- size 16/18 to size 2 now. HCG helped me to get in control of other areas of my life as well. While Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) is the not the sole reason that I’ve recovered my health, it’s an important component. For instance, removing gluten from my diet forever was something that has made a difference in my health as well, but I never had the willpower to full remove gluten until I did the hCG diet. Since I didn’t eat the melba/grissini while on p2, I inadvertently ended up being off of gluten for close to the 3 month mark between phase 2 and phase 3, which is the amount of time doctors say you need to remove gluten for in order for your gut lining to heal before reintroducing it to see if you are really allergic to it or not. Losing a lot of weight quickly was motivating enough that as a side benefit I was off gluten long enough to see that I really was allergic to it.

September 28, 2012

After 5 days on the hCG Diet, I’m down 5.6 lbs for Round 5 of HCG Injections. Pretty snazzy! Keep in mind I did have my loading weight to lose, so my net loss so far is about 4 lbs- which is still super snazzy!

HUNGER SCALE AND HCG DOSE

I’ve really been trying to use the hunger scale from Robin Woodall’s Weightloss Apocalypse and I’ve been finding myself not even eating the entire 500 calories most days so far. Which, by the way, is okay, as long as you’re not hungry and you eat your 2 proteins for the day. Dr. Simeons did state in his original protocol for the diet that you may omit anything you wish from the diet on a given day, except for the 2 protein portions which you must always have. I’ve pretty much only been eating 350-400 calories the first portion of this round when I eat based on hunger. Which brings me to being very glad I started my dose at 125iu this time because I really have not been hungry at all pretty much from day of this round of hCG.

FINDING THE RIGHT PLACE FOR AN HCG INJECTION

I’ve been observing that it’s best to find a place to inject that is nice and fatty, wherever this may be, because my belly area has lost a lot of fat so I’ve been searching for other places to inject. My arms actually have quite a bit of “padding” so I injected the hCG in my arm and I found myself having some of the least hunger I’ve had when I did that. Throughout the rest of round 5 I also injected in my inner and outer thigh and my bottom- as long as the place had plenty of fat, my hunger was nil.

INVESTIGATE AND MAKE ADJUSTMENTS WHEN NEEDED

Now that I’m seeing myself lose fat a bit more quickly this round as opposed to last round, it’s helping me come to some more conclusions. Round 4 of the protocol I lost very little weight and it’s the only round that I have experienced this- 7 lbs in 23 days on this diet plan is considered super slow. Now as I see this round go so much faster, I feel perhaps the cause of my slow losses in Round 4 is due to trying to keep exercise in the picture while on the vlcd. Round 4 is the only round that I continued trying to go to crossfit while on this protocol- the first week on the vlcd I went to crossfit 2 days and kind of “gave it my all” in class. Also that first week, I lost about 2 lbs net in the first couple vlcd days and then my weightloss pretty much grinded to a screeching halt entirely for the next 9 days. This is pretty abnormal on the diet. Typically weightloss on the diet is fastest during the first week, while it gradually gets a little less with each passing week (although of course it’s still a lot more weight than one would lose on any other diet!) What I think now is that trying to exercise so intensely while on the protocol was not something my body could handle. My body either needed to be losing fat or building muscle- I was asking too much of my body to focus on both at the same time. I have noticed that some on this protocol have been able to exercise while being on the diet with no problem, and to you guys- great! But if you are anything like me and have any autoimmune disorders or other chronic health issues (like adrenal fatigue or low/hypothyroid), you may want to think twice before lifting that barbell or jogging 5 miles while on Human Chorionic Gonadotropin.

Listen to Your Body On hCG

Even on the diet, as straightforward and strict as the protocol is, it still shouldn’t be viewed as a one size fits all plan.  It really is important to listen to your body when you’re going through this weight loss journey- if I tried to copy what others were doing over and over even though it kept not working for me, I would never get anywhere. Take all the information you find of people’s experiences on the diet, see what seems most similar to how your body would react, and try it. If it doesn’t seem to work well, investigate and adjust.

Below you can see a comparison of how much weight I lost in the first week of the hCG Diet on each of my 5 rounds:

Round 1 of hCG:  lost 8 pounds the 1st week- starting weight 172 pounds, 34.5% bodyfat Round 2 of hCG:  lost 7.8 pounds the 1st week Round 3 of hCG:  lost 8.2 pounds the 1st week Round 4 of hCG:  lost 4.4 pounds the 1st week (this was a weird round where I hardly lost anything) Round 5 of hCG:  lost 5.6 pounds 1st week (this is with starting weight of 134.8 pounds, 23.2% bodyfat) As you can see Round 4’s 1st week of weightloss on the diet was rather pitiful.  I can’t be sure it was the exercise, but it could be one factor.

The point is to keep track of events and numbers throughout your hCG journey so that you can get the best results in the long term.

This time I left the exercise out, even though I missed it dearly, and I lost a lot more fat this time. Now I’m right back Crossfit, swinging those barbells and working on the next phase of building a health new me.

hCG Diet: Avoiding Food Allergies on the hCG Diet- R5P2VLCD6-10 from hcgchica on Vimeo.

October 3, 2012

Update on my 5th round of HCG Injections. As a reminder, I am taking prescription hCG, as i have with every prior round.  I always test my hCG to make sure it’s potent.  This particular round is my first round using ushcginjections hCG, which hCG comes from a compounding pharmacy right here in the United States.  As of VLCD 11, I am down 7.4 lbs in 10 days. I’ve been eating to hunger and thus finding myself eating even less than 500 calories most days- probably more in the 400 calorie range. 125Iu has been my sweet spot dose for no hunger the past 2 rounds. I have great energy and no cravings. So I’m very happy with the way this round has been going. 127.4 this morning. I started my round at 134.2 after loading. I actually lost .6 after my first loading day.

This round has been pretty easy except for this past weekend, which brings me to talking about the importance of pacing yourself while on this diet. If there’s something that you know really tires you out or drains out, it would behoove you to try to avoid that situation. I let myself get into one of those situations over that weekend and found myself so spent and exhausted that the diet felt almost unbearable for a couple days. It’s much better to spare yourself for the short period of time you are on the diet and save stressful/draining situations for after the protocol. I know this isn’t always possible, but whatever you DO have control over, put those types of things off till later.

If it’s too late and you already find yourself feeling horrible on the diet because of getting too tired or something similar, drinking tea with stevia is kind of my fall back to get through it. Drink tea and more tea. And more tea.

Everyone may not be like me, but when I don’t feel well, I find myself really wanting to eat something. Since I can’t do that on the diet, drinking lots of hot tea sweetened with stevia makes things manageable.

There’s something else I’ve done very differently this round. I recently had a comprehensive food allergy test through a company called ALCAT. They test hundreds of foods, spices, dyes, supplements, herbs, etc. Since I have a couple autoimmune conditions (Hashimoto’s is the main one) I really felt that it was appropriate for me to investigate this aspect of addressing my health. I have already been fairly symptom free for some time now when it comes to my Hashimoto’s due to a variety of other things I’ve done. There are a few posts on this here. I have found the testing results to be pretty accurate- there were a number of foods that I was already suspicious of before taking the test and the test confirmed my intolerance to all of these very foods. Of course, there were also a number of foods on the test that I was unaware that I was unaware of having a sensitivity to.

What’s interesting to note regarding my test results and how that has to do with the diet is that I discovered I apparently have an intolerance to many of the foods listed on Dr. Simeon’s original protocol for the diet. Many of the foods. Like literally, most seafood and at least 3/4’s of the vegetable list that Dr. Simeon’s left for us. And as we all know, the list of foods that’s okay to eat on the diet is already strikingly small- am I right or am I right? You can pretty much count the veggie option on 2 hands and the meat choices on 1 hand.

So I had to really think about how I was going to do this round. I already knew that I didn’t want to eat the foods that I’m allergic or intolerant to while on the protocol this time. Allergies = inflammation = less weight loss. I felt that avoiding these allergen foods could cause me to have a better round on Human Chorionic Gonadotropin because of not causing inflammation in my body.

I chose a number of alternative vegetables to eat instead of the ones I’m allergic to (hint: this is off protocol- proceed with caution- don’t do this unless you have good reason as I did). I was still careful with my choices- I checked the nutritional content of the veggies to make sure their calorie and carb content was still in line with the other vegetables on Dr. Simeon’s original list. The vegetables I ended up including almost daily on my 5th round of the protocol are mushrooms, broccoli, red bell pepper, zucchini and crooked neck squash.

Since I don’t eat the grissini or fruit on p2, the diet is very low in carbohydrates the way I’m doing it, so I feel that I have a little more leeway with my vegetables without causing harm to my fat losses, and I’m careful to eat reasonable amounts of these protocol vegetables to make sure calories and carbs don’t get out of hand. So far this has been working great for me this round. Regarding meats I have been having the chicken breast, but also have included Trader Joe’s nitrate and nitrite free Ham lunch meat. Again, this is off protocol, but my test said I was allergic to many of the protocol meats, so I had to come up with some other alternatives.

So far so good!

Remember, eating off protocol foods on this diet plan is not something that you would do needlessly.  However, it’s good to be open to alternatives should you find, like myself, that your body doesn’t tolerate certain foods or supplements.

October 4, 2012

Drumroll please…..2 lb drop on VLCD 12 of Round 5 of HCG Injections. 125.4 down from 127.4 yesterday. That’s 9.4 lbs in 11 days now. Yup. Pretty happy if I do say so myself.

Also wanted to give you a bodyshot in my size 2 jeans (you’ll have to watch the vlog for that)!

This pair is actually comfortable now- I did manage to squeeze into them before this round started, but they certainly didn’t fit well enough to leave the house in.

I have been quite surprised to be honest to be 125 lbs and to be both losing so quickly still and to have so much non-hunger. Keep in mind I’m just over 5′ tall so I certainly have room to go lower still, but honestly, it’s still surprisingly that the fat is coming off so easily at this point in the game.

This round I have been using a new hCG source- ushcginjections – they dispense hCG that is actually made in the U.S. At a compounding pharmacy right in Florida. I’ve been very impressed at how I feel on this Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, so I can happily recommend them to others.

The other difference about this round is that I’m avoiding foods I’m allergic to. You can see my post on this here.

The last thing thing that is different about this round of the diet is that I’m injecting in a variety of other places than usual- I’ve injected in my upper arm and my inner and outer thigh. I find that when I find a nice fatty place to inject, my hunger is the least.

That’s it for this day’s update on my own personal weight loss journey.  Now I’m going to go find something to help you guys with….

October 5, 2012

Occasionally I get requests to see some of my Crossfit skills in action. I’m still a total beginner at Crossfit, but I am proud to say that certain things like my pushup capability has increased astronomically since I first started.

Had a .8 weight loss this morning, putting me at 124.6 on VLCD 12, so in honor of that I thought I’d do 8 pushups (watch the video for that!)

I have had excellent energy on this round of HCG Injections, which I’m loving. That has not been the case of every round on the diet- some rounds my energy has been horrible and I’ve been very fatigued, and other rounds, like this one, I feel great.

I could be wrong, but I think part of it could have to do with the fact that toxins are stored in fat and at different points on the HCG Diet journey, one may feel yucky as their body is releasing fat that may have higher amounts of toxins stored in it- thinks like heavy metals (mercury), and other chemicals. I must be to the point of losing fat that didn’t contain anything too nasty since I’ve been feeling so good. Don’t take my word for it on this topic- I’m just ruminating on this thought- I still need to research this idea more myself.

October 12, 2012

I’ve been very happy with what I’ve accomplished with this round of HCG Injections.  At this point I had intended on ending my round, but ended up extending it to a full 6 week round.

I may not always have a factual answer for your hCG questions, but I’ll give you the from-my-experience-and-what-I’ve observed-in-others answer. To be honest, sometimes it’s these types of answers that I find to be the most valuable anyway.

That’s how I learned the most about this weight loss protocol to begin with. Just doing my research on the forums and on youtube and just seeing what people were experiencing in real life.

Sometimes I find that supposed “facts” about the diet– for instance those “studies” that hCG haters like to mention that have been done on th e protocol are pretty useless to me (and to you) because they didn’t do any hydrostatic body fat testing in those studies, so there was no comparison done between how much fat and muscle loss there was in the two groups- the hCG takers vs. the placebo takers. “Weight” is deceiving. That’s why I think seeing what actually happens to people in real life is what is most useful and most reliable when it comes to information.

October 13, 2012

I was down to 123 lbs today! That’s a 1.4 loss on the scale since the previous day. Pretty cool ya?

INCREASE IN CALORIE INTAKE HALFWAY THROUGH HCG ROUND

Earlier in this HCG Injections round I found I didn’t even need the full 500 calories when I ate to hunger and felt good. As this round continues I find myself eating the full 500 and even a little bit more and that is what my body wants right now.

I’ve started incorporating the miracle (shirataki) noodles again this round.   I had decided to wait to use them this round until I really needed them, and that time has come! Incorporating them made me feel more satisfied and even more relaxed and less stressed as a result.  I have used the shirataki noodles now on almost a daily basis for 4 out of my 5 rounds with success.

Update on Off-Protocol (Rogue) hCG Eating of Foods

I’ve done quite a bit of experimentation on myself this round because of my food allergy test that I had done a couple months ago telling me that I was actually allergic (or I should more accurately say had a food intolerance) to many of the foods on Dr. Simeon’s original protocol list of foods.   For more info on that see my post here.

As a result I’ve been eating many off protocol veggies this round as a trial- foods that i’m not intolerant too. So far this seems to be doing well with my body. An example of my off protocol meal yesterday was a soup of mushrooms and chicken breast simmered in water with salt, then add the miracle noodles at the end. It’s super yummy and very satisfying.

If you decide to make any changes to the original weight loss protocol as I have, just do it in an informed way. It’s probably not a good idea to just randomly start eating different stuff, because you can hurt the outcome of your results on the diet, but certainly there are times when changes may be necessary.

People are pretty in tune with their bodies sometimes. For instance, I’ve heard a number of hCGer’s mention on their youtube vlogs “oh I can’t eat cabbage on p2, it makes me gainl”. To an outsider this might sound totally silly. But you know what? Don’t knock it. Very likely what they are saying is true- probably they have a food intolerance to cabbage that causes inflammation when they eat it thus causing problems with weightloss. So it’s worth it to trust your body a bit and to realize that no one size can fit all people. Sometimes adjustments do have to be made.

I have lost more fat this round eating off protocol vegetables than the last round eating the designated p2 foods. Again, the foods I choose was done strategically though- I’m very careful with the carb count of the veggies, etc. and since I don’t eat the fruits or melba on the diet, I feel that enables me to have a little more freedom when it comes to my vegetables.

One other thing I do incorporate while on the diet is 2-3 teaspoons of half and half each day in my black tea.

Getting Back to Family Life Soon

There’s a time and place for everything. I’ve been feeling like I need to get back to my family life now as this round of protocol concludes. I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes on this diet planI tend to be not nearly as useful to my family members. I don’t cook nearly as much and my husband has to kind of fend for himself and I find myself making a lot more sunbutter and jelly sandwiches for my son than usual. Breakfast? How about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Dinner? How about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. My guilt gradually increases until I think to myself it’s time to start cooking real food again before my son’s muscles fill up with jelly.

I know some of you guys can identify with this. But you know what? It’s okay for a period of 3-6 weeks to be focused on you while you get yourself to a healthier place- that will give you many years of good health to then share with your husband and children after your done with Human Chorionic Gonadotropin right? You sometimes have to look at the long range scope of things in order to put yourself first temporarily without guilt. But there comes a time when you feel you’ve achieved enough to accomplish this and you’re ready to get back to being the hero of the family.

October 17, 2012

I had planned on ending Round 5 of HCG Injections at the 3 week point, but after TOM (time of month) came and went, I felt much better (after feeling really crabby and yucky pre-period), so I decided to continue on Human Chorionic Gonadotropin.

As long as I can feel fairly well while on the protocol I have no problem continuing. It’s when I start feeling to unwell or too grumpy for too many days in a row that I start thinking that it’s time to get off the protocol for the time being.

RESULTS FROM PAST FEW VLCD DAYS:

VLCD 20 results: -1.4 lbs

VLCD 21 results: + 1.4 lbs (TOM- always gain water weight from TOM coming)

VLCD 22 results: – 1.6 lbs to 122.8 lbs

VLCD 23 results: +.2 lbs to 123 lbs

VLCD 24 results: -1.8 lbs to 121.2 lbs

So far I’ve lost 13.6 lbs total in 24 days, which includes the fact that I lost ground for a few days due to the 1 day I cheated on the diet this round (it happens you know?)

In the video I mention the weird observation that it seemed as if the hormone injections was affecting where I lost fat- almost like spot reducing.  In retrospect, I don’t think that was occurring and I think it was just a fluke- so please ignore that part of the video will ya?  Hey, a girl can dream can’t she? :)-

Lastly, my average weight loss for this round has been .5lb/day which is excellent considering that is the normal average weightloss for any woman on the Diet, and to still be losing this average when I’m getting quite tiny is great.  I’ve lost so much in my hip and thigh area this round that previously somewhat large skirts (in the size 8 and 10 range) that I could still wear, just lower on my body, no longer can be worn at all- they just fall off they’re that huge.

October 23, 2012

I am 120.2 lbs on Day 35 of the VLCD of Round 5 of the HCG Injections.  My video has a bodyshot of what I currently look like at this weight.  Since I started at 172 pounds and a size 16/18 and in this video you’ll see me wearing a size 2 pair of jeans, I think that speaks volumes for what Human Chorionic Gonadotropin can do if you follow the protocol properly from start to finish.

I didn’t really mean for this to turn into a long round, but since I was feeling better this last week and I won’t be doing another round of the protocol for quite some time, I felt it might be nice to make the most of this current round.

I’ve lost 14.6 lbs in 30 days and so far 9 lbs is fat. I’m very happy with this ratio

My omron monitor is showing that I’m at 19.8% bodyfat which equals out to 24 lbs of fat on my body out of the 120 lbs that I currently weigh and what’s interesting is that I just had a hydrostatic body fat test done a couple days ago and it actually lined up perfectly with what my Omron handheld body fat monitor said. This was my first time having a hydro body fat test being done while still on phase 2 of the Diet. Usually I wait until I am in Phase 3 to have the test done. I have discovered as I’ve gotten leaner that when I’m NOT on the Diet, the omron body fat monitor is not as accurate as when I am on the diet. I think the extra food, fluids, and glycogen etc, that my body has when I’m in my normal living state change the monitor’s readings a bit, although just as a reference I still find it useful.

What Shirataki Noodles Package Looks Like

Shirataki noodles are also called Miracle Noodles- the miracle noodles can be purchased online and are a bit pricier purchased under that name brand. The Shirataki noodles as you see here in this video can be purchased as most local asian markets or ethnic markets- you will find them in the refrigerated section. It will often say “yam noodle” or “yam flour” in paranthesis on the package. There has been some confusion over people seeing this and then thinking the shirataki noodles contained actual yams as we americans think of them and thus starch but this is not the case. The asian shirataki noodles are actually made purely from soluble fiber (fiber meaning our body does not digest it as any calories to us) from what’s called the Konjac Root in Japan- whoever translated this onto the package from chinese put it as “yam” but it’s really this Konjact root that it’s made from.

MAKING USE OF THE HCG YOUTUBE COMMUNITY

I have found the hCG community on youtube to be a wonderful place to both get and give support on the Diet.  It seems like many useful and successful protocols for things like losing weight, getting fit, or getting away from an addiction involve a group of some sort.  There’s cycling groups, jogging groups, AA for alcoholics and weight watchers meetings to name a few.  People do well with a support system in place- especially people who are in a similar situation to you.  That is why if you are doing the protocol, the youtube community of vloggers and commentors is what I think of as an irreplaceable resource.  I address how to go about getting and giving support on the protocol on my FAQ page here:  Where to Find Support and Help on the hCG Diet

Since the Diet is somewhat controversial (ie phrases sometimes heard: you are INJECTING? or….you are injecting WHAT???  or…..you are eating HOW MANY CALORIES???  Oh my goodness you are going to STARVE YOURSELF!!!) many find they don’t care to tell too many in their immediate network of friends or family they are doing this diet because they don’t feel like dealing with all the questions and/or well-meaning warnings that come across as put-downs since they have not full researched the protocol.  So many us like to wait to let the results speak for themselves, at which point sometimes the minds of those around us become a little more open.  Before this happens though, you need a support network- the protocol is NOT easy as some might say.  It’s FAST but not easy.  I treasure and hope you will too, the Human Chorionic Gonadotropin youtube community.

OCTOBER 23, 2012

Let me put your minds to rest- I am not re-losing weight, but let me explain my unique hCG journey.

I got a question from someone on youtube who was a little confused by my weight loss journey at first (after all I have 175+ videos!) so I wanted to make a video and blog post that gives you a synopsis of just what I’ve personally been doing with the hCG Diet protocol and why it could appear at first that I am re-losing weight (ie losing weight with the protocol, then re-gaining weight, then re-losing that same weight again with the protocol, and so on), when in reality, I’m losing new fat with each subsequent round of the protocol. I’d like to show to you here the unique way I’ve been using this weight loss protocol.

If you were to watch every single one of my 175+ videos it probably would all make sense, but let’s face it, I’m not that egotistical to think that most of you will have time or even want to do that!

So it can appear on the surface as if I can’t keep the weight loss off as I keep re-visiting similar numbers on the scale- ie. 127 lbs, 124 lbs, 122 lbs, etc. So let’s get started.

I Have Maintained Almost 100% Of All My Fat Loss from the hCG Diet…

aside from Round 2. I have done 5 rounds of the diet plan now, and 4 of them I have done well and maintained almost all the fat loss from them, without having to go back on the protocol to “re-lose” weight. So I have not gained back fat after doing the diet. Here’s a chart that shows everything in a nutshell. As you can see, how many lbs of fat I have has continued to drop with each successive round, despite re-visiting similar scale weights.

Comparison Chart of hCGChica Body Composition on each hCG Round:

(Round 2 was a wash so it’s left out)

April ’11/End of Round 1:       144.8lbs   34.5% bodyfat    49 lbs fat       95.8 lbs lean mass

Dec ’11/End of Round 3:      124.8 lbs     27.5% bodyfat     34 lbs fat       90.8 lbs lean mass

May ’12/End of Round 4:      127.5 lbs    23.91%bodyfat   30.5 lbs fat    97 lbs lean mass

No ’12/End of Round 5:      118.8 lbs      17.9% bodyfat     21.3 lbs fat      97.48 lbs lean mass

Dec ’12/Currently off hCG:   124.5 lbs   18.8% bodyfat     23.49 lbs fat   101 lbs lean mass

My 1st round of the weight loss protocol started in February of 2011 and it’s now December 2012. I take really long breaks between rounds of this protocol as well, and during that time I eat really healthy but I eat a pretty good amount of food quantity-wise, I don’t count calories, and I maintain my fat loss- I don’t gain back fat while on the protocol. I know this because I have period hydrostatic body fat tests done to show how much fat and muscle I have on my body (as shown above).  I’m getting close to my 2 year anniversary since starting the weight loss protocol, and I’m happy to show you how far I’ve come, while spending the majority of the past 2 years NOT on a diet at all, hCG or otherwise.

My Journey with the hCG Diet Is Unique

My hCG Diet journey is a little bit unique I guess you could say because I have certain goals in mind that don’t necessarily have to do with being a certain scale weight or a certain size in clothing. I have in my nature that I love to do things that require being fit like hiking and doing pushups. I’ve always enjoyed sporty type activities, even as a little girl. I was a daddy’s girl all the way and I spent many a good hour biking, fishing, jet skiing and hiking with my dad. I was definitely the ultimate tomboy down to hating lace and the color pink.  In high school I was 1 of 3 girls in the weight training class, and 1 of only 2 girls actually lifting weights (ie not just sitting around flirting).

So once I realized what this protocol could do now as an overweight adult in her 30’s with a chronic autoimmune illness, I’ve been trying to see how far it will take me.  I’ve basically been trying to cycle my way down to a lower and lower body fat percent, not to a lower weight necessarily. This means I’m trying to achieve a high amount of muscle mass compared to fat mass on my body, which in turn makes doing things that require being strong and fit much easier.

When my husband and I were dating he used to call me a deer because of the way I would bound down the hiking trails on the way back- my quads were nice and firm and strong and my body fat was low enough that I didn’t feel heavy to myself so I could easily almost run along the steep downward trails. As I got overweight and out of shape, I could no longer do this and just walking carefully on a downward slopping trail would often feel scary as if my thighs weren’t strong enough to hold me up and that I might actually collapse under the weight of my own body.

hCGChica’s hCG Rounds Timeline- Sort Of

Round 1 of the hCG Diet

My 1st round of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin I lost about 27 lbs in about 42 days and I had no problem keeping this weight off for the next 3 months while I was off the protocol. I ate pretty much low carb during that time, went to Zumba a few times a week, and did not count calories.

Round 2 of the hCG Diet

Round 2- that is what I would call a failed round because after losing weight on round 2 I re-gained most of that weight in the following 9 weeks after that because I did not adhere to phase 3 nor did I eat healthy (ie. I was living on sugar again for that entire 9 weeks). So I did have to re-lose this weight. What can I say? I messed up that round, I think most of us mess up at one point or another on our weightloss journey. I think that just means I’m human like the rest of you.

So I re-lost this weight plus more with Round 3 of the diet.

Round 3 of the hCG Diet

December 2011 I finished Round 3 of the diet and lost about 21-ish pounds during this round. At that point I ended up at about 124.8 lbs when I went in to have my bodyfat tested hydrostatically. My results showed I was 27% bodyfat with 34 lbs of fat and 90.8 lbs of lean mass adding up to the 124.8 lbs total that I weighed.

4 Month Break

I took a 4 month break from the protocol after this. During that time, I spent 3 months trying out a new fitness thing called Crossfit, a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and heavy weightlifting type program. Which I love and still do regularly to this day. You can look for a Crossfit gym in you area by googling it. During my 4 month break and going to Crossfit regularly, I gained “weight.” However, almost all of this “weight gain” was muscle, not fat. AHA!!! The light is coming on now right?

When I went in to have my hydrostatic body fat test at the end of March, I weighed 132.5 lbs, a gain of 7.7 lbs in 4 months. Out of that 7.7 lbs, 7 lbs was muscle, so only about a half lb of my weight gain was fat. This put me at 25.91% bodyfat, which if you’ll notice is actually now a smaller bodyfat percent than at the124.8 lbs I was 4 months prior because of the high amount of muscle gain with almost no fat gain. So I actually maintained 99% of my fat loss from the diet plan during that 4 months, despite “gaining” almost 8 lbs, not to mention all the fat I lost from round 1 as well.

So during that whole 4 months, I was not counting calories, I wasn’t even eating low carb anymore- I was eating a healthy amount of fruit and some rice products, going to Crossfit 3-4 times a week for 1 hour each time, and I kept off almost all of the fat loss, no problem.

Round 4 of the hCG Diet

April 2012 I did Round 4 of the protocol. This was my first “short” round of just 3 weeks long on the diet. I only lost a little over 5 lbs this round, down to 127.4, but I actually have LESS fat now at this higher weight, than I did at 124.8 lbs at the end of Round 3. Let me show you the comparison here.

End of Round 3:      124.8 lbs         34 lbs fat

  End of Round 4:      127.4 lbs          30.5 lbs fat

So here I weigh 2.6 lbs more but have 3.5 lbs less fat after doing Round 4. Since muscle is pretty much always a good thing, you can look solely at my pounds of fat to see if I was now in a better place with my body or not, and the answer if you look is decidedly yes! After Round 4 I was now 23.91% bodyfat, a loss of 3.1% bodyfat during that 3 weeks of the diet.

5 Month Break

I took a 5 month break this time from the protocol. During the next 5 months from all May through the end of September I again was going to Crossfit 3-4 days a week, not counting calories, eating healthy but a lot. I don’t eat no 1200 calories okay? I eat very liberally, and I eat a lot of fruit as well (after phase 3 of course). I eat a lot of fat, meat, veggies, fruit, nuts, and dairy. I probably take in at least 2000 calories if not 2500. I’m not saying anyone can do this, but I believe because since I was going to crossfit, my body was funneling this into muscle growth. During that 5 months I once again “gained weight” and went from 127.4 to 133 lbs. That’s a 5.6 lb “gain.” Out of that 5.6 lbs however, 5 lbs was muscle.

End of Round 4:  127.4 lbs     23.91% bodyfat      30.5 lbs fat        97 lbs lean mass

5 months later:    133 lbs         23.2% bodyfat       31 lbs fat           102 lbs lean mass

So once again almost all the weight gain was muscle, and I had kept off ALL but a half pound of fat that I lost with the hCG Diet. Keep in mind that not only am I keeping off the fat from the latest round of the diet, but pretty much all the fat from the previous rounds as well.

So hopefully you can see so far throughout this whole weight loss journey, except for Round 2- that one’s a wash- we’re tossing that one out of the window- I’ve maintained almost 100% of my fat loss with the Diet.

Round 5 of the hCG Diet

October 2012 I started Round 5 of the diet and finished it in November 2012. I’m writing this blog post some time after making the video so I can give you the full stats for Round 5. I lost over 9 lbs of new fat during Round 5, putting me at 118.8 lbs and 17.9% bodyfat with 21 pounds of fat at the time my hydrostatic body fat test which was a few days into phase 3.

End of Round 4:      127.4 lbs        23.91% bodyfat     30.5 lbs fat           97 lbs lean mass

5 months later:        133 lbs           23.2% bodyfat        31 lbs fat               102 lbs lean mass

End of Round 5:      118.8 lbs        17.9% bodyfat        21.3 lbs fat            97.48 lbs lean mass

1 month later:          124.5 lbs       18.8% bodyfat        23.49 lbs of fat      101 lbs lean mass

Now it is the middle of December 2012 and I “gained weight” again, but as you can see above, 2/3rds  of it was muscle when tested hydrostatically.  I did gain a couple pounds of fat at this point, but at 18.8% bodyfat which is getting fairly low for a woman, I’m very happy to be stable where I’m at and am very happy with the fat loss that I am keeping off, which is the large majority for it.

I’m basically maintaining a fat loss of 35.5 lbs out 37.7 lbs of fat lost. And this is all actual FAT my friends. Not water weight, not muscle, not glycogen, not just weighing less because I haven’t eaten yet and my stomach is empty.

Is 124 lbs the same as 124 lbs?  Not Necessarily…..

The last thing I’d like to leave you with which is pretty exciting to me because I couldn’t have achieved this without hCG Injections is the following stats:

Dec 2011/End of R3:          124.8 lbs      27.5% bf   34 lbs fat       90.8 lbs lean mass Size 6

Dec 2012/ 1 mo. after R5:  124.5 lbs   18.8% bf   23.49 lbs fat  101 lbs lean mass   Size 2

If you compare these two stats, you’ll see that my weight is almost EXACTLY THE SAME, about 124 lbs, yet now I have 10.5 lbs less fat and 10.2 lbs more muscle at the same weight!!!! Okay, sorry, I should kick the enthusiasm down a notch I guess, but this is huge!

Let’s break down just this past years’ results from December 2011-December 2012

Lost 10% bodyfat and stabilized at 8.7% bodyfat lost- from 27.5% to 18.8% bodyfat

Gained 12 lbs of muscle

Lost over 10 lbs of fat

Was on a “diet” for only 9 weeks of the entire year

10 months- the rest of the year- eating 2000-2500 calories (my guesstimate) NOT on a diet.

Went to Crossfit just 3-4 hours a week

Enjoyed my life

Walked around in size 4 jeans all year long

Almost all fat loss with protocol kept off with ease

This is not to say that after the diet plan you can go back to eating cartons of ice-cream and extra large fries 3x’s a week and expect to maintain your weight. But you won’t be able to maintain you fat loss if you do that after any diet. You must seek and find healthy replacements to your old comfort foods- that is what I have done and that is what the rest of those who are maintaining their hCG weightloss have done as well. It’s not as hard as you might think. Pinterest is a great way to find sugar free, gluten free, grain free recipes, and you will be more motivated to do this once you are happy in your thinner, fitter body.

Summary of This Mouthful of A Story

Anyway- this is a really long story to share a very short point which is that the weight I’ve “gained” this past year after doing the diet has been muscle, not fat. So even though I’m about the same weight that I was a year ago, I’m much smaller visually. I was a size 6 at this weight a year ago, and now I’m a size 2 at this same weight. Not to mention much stronger and healthier.

It was important to me to share this with you out there researching this diet, because the protocol has proven SO effective for me (as my results and statistics show) and I really want everyone out there to know what can be achieved with it’s proper use.

Of course, I cannot attribute my strength and increase in muscle to the Diet, and going to Crossfit has been a huge part in re-shaping my body- the definition and solidness I have to my body now has a lot to do with Crossfit. But let me point out that not 1 single solitary ounce of my fat loss came from Crossfit. 100% of my fat loss was due to Diet alone. That is why I have really enjoyed cycling Crossfit and the Diet because they go hand in hand- crossfit is great for building muscle, at least for me, and Human Chorionic Gonadotropin is great for losing fat.

I’m all about using the most effective technique to reach my goal. How about you?

October 24, 2012

LOST ANOTHER 1 LB OVERNIGHT ON HCG INJECTIONS

I was down 1 whole lb on both the scale and my Omron handheld body fat monitor. That puts me at 119.2 which is CRAY-ZY. I haven’t been under 120 lbs in many years. I think I was about 120 lbs when I got married, and that was 12 years ago when I was 19 years old. So being 119 lbs is a distant memory from my late teens.

I have discovered with the way that I usually do the protocol (replacing the fruits with 0% Fage greek yogurt which makes the diet very low carb- I don’t recommend this for just anyone), that the body fat monitor is very accurate for my body while I’m actually on the protocol when compared to hydrostatic body fat testing- when I had a hydro done while on Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, my Omron monitor actually matched up exactly to the hydrostatic body fat test results which was surprising. When I’m off the protocol it’s not as accurate- somehow having a higher amount of perhaps carbs, glycogen, food in instestines, etc. makes it so that the body fat monitor is off by 2-3%, but that’s still not bad and overall is still a useful little tool and it’s consistency is fantastic- for me anyways.

CHEATING MY WAY TO A PULL-UP

I have something exciting to report today! Pull-ups are typically not easy for women to do. Even when I was thin and fit back in my teens I remember trying to do pull-ups for a long time and eventually I managed to do 1 pull-up once, and then I could never do it again! Obviously once I was out of shape and overweight I couldn’t even begin to pull my body up on a pull-up bar, much less actually do one.

As I’ve been attending Crossfit now for close to a year, I’ve been gradually getting stronger but still couldn’t do a full pull-up. Not even half a pull-up. When I took a break from Crossfit to do my 5th round of the diet in October 2012 I left with enough strength to pull myself up maybe about 1/3rd of the way to the bar.

So I was totally dumbfounded when the other day, a few weeks into being on the protocol, I walked up to my pull-up bar at home, and proceeded to do an entire pull-up, all by myself! I really had meant to just check where my strength was and make sure I hadn’t gotten a lot weaker from being away from exercise and from losing weight with the diet for a few weeks (ie. I know there is very little muscle loss with this protocol but it’s something I am always “watching out” for). There’s a little video clip of my “re-enacting” my first pull-up. I actually did almost 2 in a row.

I feel like I’ve totally cheated and it’s awesome! Who can not workout and go from a 1/3rd pull-up to a full pull-up almost overnight? An HCG Dieter I guess! I guess what has happened is that I’ve lost enough body fat and my body fat percent had sufficiently lowered quickly enough to then allow my upper body strength to suddenly be strong enough to pull my whole body up, whereas before I still had too much body fat compare to strength to do so.

WHY CAN’T WOMEN DO PULL-UPS?

I could be wrong, but I think perhaps one of the reasons that it’s so difficult for women to do pull-ups is that we are all fairly bottom heavy, compared to men. We carry a higher percentage of fat on our hips and thighs, and typically our upper body is also not naturally as strong as men, so this creates a situation where it’s rather impossible to do a pull-up without first changing your entire body composition. Thankfully, with the diet, this is totally possible.

As an example of how fat and body fat percent plays a role in pull-ups, there is a woman trainer at my crossfit gym who does Oly Lifting (olympic weightlifting). She is getting super strong and can lift really heavy weights, even overhead. She is not super stocky either- she looks very good, but looks like your average woman, with a good amount of fat on her hips and thighs that is not unattractive. She recently told me that she gave up trying to do a pull-up. She’s very strong, but apparently her body fat percent and the amount of fat she has on her lower half is too much for her upper body to be able to pull herself up to do a full pull-up.

Fat Loss Is Not Easy or Not Possible for Many Women without the hCG Diet

That’s why I say I feel like I totally cheated my way into doing a full pull-up. And I’m proud of it! It seems that for some women, it is easy to gain strength, but losing fat is another story. For all those women who cannot lose fat by other means, this diet is in my opinion the answer. This lady has been living on almost a zero carb diet in order to try to shed a few pounds of fat, and I don’t think it’s gotten her very far in that department.

I have discovered I am like her. Going to Crossfit, I find I build muscle and get strong VERY easily. But I do not lose fat easily. I haven’t lost a single ounce of fat going to Crossfit for the past year. Now of course, I wasn’t eating to lose fat which is really where fat loss will occur- with changes to diet- but this female crossfit trainer HAS made those dietary changes with very little to show for it.

Fit the Tool to the Job

It makes more sense to me to match the tool to the job doesn’t it? That is why I use Crossfit for getting strong and building muscle, because Crossfit is what does that best for my body, and why I use the Diet and HCG Injections for losing fat, because that is what accomplishes this most efficiently (or as it appears, it’s the only thing that will help me lose fat at all, not just most efficiently).

October 27, 2012

I had no intention of this turning into a long round of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, but that’s what’s happened. I’ve been feeling great and continuing to lose fat and have no hunger, so there really wasn’t any reason to stop under those circumstances.

I have about 5-7 VLCD days left with the HCG Injections, and then the 72 hours of VLCD without the hormone.

I was down 1.4 lbs on the scale today, but 1 lb down overall as I had a .4 gain yesterday. That puts me at 118.2 lbs! I’m just over 5′ tall so for anyone who is feeling that weight seems awfully low, it’s not awfully low for a shortie like me.

As of today, I’m 54 lbs lighter than when I first started the weight loss protocol, and technically I’ve actually lost quite a bit more than that if you add in the 1 round of this protocol that I didn’t do too well and gained back that weight and the had to re-lose it, and also the loading weight I had to of course lose with each round- all things considered I’ve probably lost more like 70 lbs. But who’s counting?

Transcript:

Hey guys! HCGchica! I’m just checking in. Today is VLCD 35 of round 5. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far. I had no intention of doing a long round this time but I ended up feeling so good and I’ve been continuing to lose fat so I figured you know what I’m just gonna go ahead and go as long as I’m feeling good so technically I’ve got about maybe 5 to 7 VLCD days left with the shots and then I’ll probably be going into P3 after that.

I was actually down 1.4 this morning so that was really good. I was actually up .4 yesterday so technically I’m down another pound which puts me at 118.2. Oh my goodness! I just, I can’t believe that. I haven’t been that small since before I got married actually. I think I was about 120 when I got married so again I’m just over 5 feet you guys not even 5’1 apparently. I thought I was 5’1 then I went to have my Dexa scan and they measured me and she said. Well you’re actually not 5’1 so I don’t know. I’m either already shrinking or I’ve just been wrong all this years.

Anyway my body fat, pounds of fat, is down to 22.5 pounds of fat. Hopefully I’ll continue to see that go down even a little bit more for the weight that I’ve lost. And my ketones where actually a little higher today at 10 and I think it’s just cause didn’t drink quite as many liquids yesterday. I still drink enough but just a little less than usual. So anyway I’m really happy about that I’m still feeling so energetic and so good. 3 new people to sub to I wanna mention real quick. The first 2 I think are on their first round just started blogging recently- I’m sorry if you hear planes on private airport like right next to our house and on Fridays everyone is flying maybe out to their vacations homes or something, I don’t know. So anyway the 2 ones are msnomojo and Pinskygirl and I will have the link to their actual channel below in the description box and then the 3rd one is HCGbeautyvlog she’s not new to this protocol but she’s somewhat new to blogging but I really would like you guys to check her out because she is both a make-up artist and a skin care specialist and so she is doing a lot of work to discover the different types of products that are safe to use on the protocol and she’s checking in to all the different brands. The drugstore brands, the high-end brands and she’s putting a lot of work into it so she’s gonna be doing some of that information on her blogs and she’s just a wealth of information on that topic and I know she’s gonna be posting a lot of information about that. You know I have got a lot of questions from some of you guys about what products to use and that’s just something that I just don’t know the answer to so she’s gonna have a lot of good answers for that and I’m actually going to be having a wonderful comprehensive report of all of her different brands that she’s checked out and the different products that are okay to use on my website in the near future, so I’m really excited about that.

Anyway, so that’s my update. Again my website is HCGchica.com if you guys needs to just answer questions about the diet there is a link on there to email me privately if you want. For anyone who has emailed me you know that I take quite a bit of time and respond to each of your emails in a very lengthy in depth ways so I really do care that you guys get the best out of this protocol. So anyway, as of today I’ve lost 54 pounds lighter than when I first started the weight loss protocol and technically I’ve actually lost quite a bit more than that because I had 1 round that I had to re-lose that way and of course there is loading weight and all that kind of stuff so all and all I’ve technically probably lost closer to 60 or 65 pounds or maybe even 70 but as it stands today I’m 54 pounds lighter on the scale I’m somewhere around 19% body fat which is totally phenomenal that actually puts me into the athlete category which is really cool. I never expected this weight loss journey to be able to get me that far but it has so I’ll just keep it short and sweet today and I’ll talk to you guys soon. Take care. Bye.

October 31, 2012

Today’s vlcd 39, which I just can’t believe! I was down 1.8 lbs on the scale today. I have only really been checking in on my “good weight loss” days, which is usually every few days. On the days in between I often will lose nothing or even have small gains- for instance the last 3 days in a row I was up on the scale .2 each day, but then today had a huge 1.8 lbs loss. That’s just how my body rolls it appears. A quick explanation on partially why this occurs is that, TMI, I don’t have a bowel movement everyday while on this protocol. There is simply so little food and my digestion is rather slow anyway, that on this protocol it slows down to once every 2 or 3 days. So there is some build-up on my non- elimination days that will contributed to my zero or small weight loss days. Additionally I eat miracle noodles (shirataki noodles) on the diet, and depending on what time of time I have them or how much of them I eat, that can affect my scale weight temporarily as that bulk is in my stomach and intestines processing. Sorry I know this is kind of gross, but when it comes to this weight loss protocol, it’s best to divulge everything you possibly can because you just never know when it may help someone else.

Anyway, my big loss of this morning puts me at 117 lbs today!

I am undecided if I will stop the diet tomorrow or go a couple more days.

See, I am getting very close to having 20 lbs of fat on my body, which is kind of a bit of a special marker to shoot for. You see, the hydrostatic body fat test technician I spoke with told me that no person, no matter their size or height, needs more than 20 lbs of fat on their body. It’s okay to have less than 20lbs of fat too, but you don’t need any more than 20lbs. Since I’m getting so close to that number it would just be really neat to reach that major goal.

However, in the end, it’s important to me to make my decisions like this based on how my body is feeling, not on a number.

My total losses to date from Round 5 of HCG Injections alone so far is about 17.4 lbs. I’m very happy with this at my smaller size. If you are just starting out on the diet and have 40-50lbs+ to lose you will lose weight much more quickly than I on hCG.

Novermber 2, 2012

Today is  R5P2D41 (round 5, phase 2, Day 41) which is technically my LDW (last day weight) for the hCG Diet with HCG Injections. I’m a comfy size 2. I seriously NEVER thought I’d see the day I was this small again- I’d written that off forever a few years, especially after being pregnant and giving birth. But crazier things have happened I guess.  I’m thankful just about every day to have so much of my health back, in part due to this weightloss journey.

I had a huge 2lb weight loss on the scale this morning putting me at 115.6 lbs (I’m just over 5′ remember? S’all good). BUT as I realized later, I was coming down with a nasty cold and I believe the large drop was just dehydration, as my weight went right back up to 117.6 lbs the following day.  So I did end up making my adjusted LDW weight 117.6lbs.

While I’m not happy to be coming down with son’s cold, I’m glad that I managed to stay well till the end of my round. For any of those of you who’ve experienced it, being sick while on the protocol is neither fun nor advisable. Usually if you continue to stay on the protocol while sick, you’ll find that you stay sick a lot longer AND you don’t lose as much weight. So it’s just bad on all accounts.

If I get really sick while on hCG I would get off the hCG Injections and start again later once I was better.  Yes, it can suck to have to put a pause on losing weight, but I have found that I have much better long term weight loss results when I stick to logic and leave my feelings out of it (ie. I want to hurry up and lose all this weight now! Today!)  Being more methodical about it has proved to create more lasting results for my body.

Because I was feeling so yucky yesterday (sore throat, very bad headache, etc) I found myself eating more than usual- it just felt like my body needed it. I tried to be smart about the extra calories though (no momemts of madness where I run through Mcdonalds or anything) and ate extra 0% fage greek yogurt and extra meat protein. I’m guessing my calorie count for yesterdays’ VLCD was probably more like 800-900 calories.

I didn’t take any before and after measurements from this particular round- just felt lazy I guess! But I am so much smaller from the start to end of this round. Some of the pants that were quite snug when I started Round 5 using human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) shots are now literally almost falling off they are so big in the waist, hips and thighs.

I did take many measurements of course before and throughout my hCG Diet journey, and I highly recommend measuring many different places on your body that you might not naturally think of. That’s because I found I lost inches in many places I would have just skipped over entirely had I not seen someone else on youtube suggest it. My neck for instance. From the start of the hCG Diet until now I’ve actually had my neck circumference drop 1.25 inches! Who knew? It was 13” around at the start at 172lbs and now it’s 11.75” at 115lbs.

Now that I am a comfy size 2, I found myself a pair of $1.99 Calvin Klein jeans in a size 2 at the thriftstore- yay me! Great find.

That’s all for my update today- happy losing hCGer’s!

November 16, 2012

FINAL BODY FAT TESTING RESULTS FROM ROUND 5 OF HCG

A few days after the end of Round 5 of HCG Injections, I went for hydrostatic body fat testing once again. That day I was 118.8 lbs (about 1.2 lbs over my ldw), and my hydro results were as follows: 17.9% bodyfat, 21.3 lbs fat. Woot woot! Better results than I would ever have expected.

Adjusted LDW

While I found myself at 115.6 lbs on the day of my LDW (last day weight) of the diet, it so happened that this was a special 1 day dip into the 115 territory, before my weight went right back up to 117.6 lbs the next day and stayed there. In retrospect, I had come down with a nasty cold, taken some aspirin, didn’t eat much all evening, and was dehydrated which lead to that 115 number the following day. So it wasn’t a real number to go by, although it was fun to see such a small number on the scale, if only for a day. So my adjusted LDW is 117.6 lbs.

Current Weight in P3

As of now, I’m 123.2 lbs, a couple weeks into P3. I’ve been eating super clean and I’m pretty sure that most of that weight is muscle and glycogen stores. Since I wasn’t eating any fruit on Phase 2, that made the diet extremely low carb and now that I’m eating a little more carbs, my muscles are filling back up with water.

Navigating Successfully through P3 on the hCG Diet

After my 3rd round of this protocol I had this same experience where my weight seemed to want to fly up several pounds right away, and at that time, I kept fighting it by doing steak days and fast days, etc. Of course my weight would temporarily drop from these days, but then shoot right back up. I had started going to Crossfit by then, and at one point my wise husband told me that maybe I should just trust my body- I was eating clean and working out, probably my body was just gaining muscle. After that I tried to relax a little instead of forcing my body to stay at one number on the scale so much. A few months later when I went to have my body fat tested I found that my husband was right- out of a whopping 7.5 lbs gained during 3 months after the 3rd round of the protocol, 7 lbs of it was actually muscle! Only a miniscule half pound was fat.

Since I experienced this back then, when I found my weight doing the same thing this time after Round 5 I decided to work with it and not try so hard to force it to stay at 117 lbs. I knew I had lost about 5 lbs of muscle (turns out I didn’t actually lose 5 lbs of MUSCLE as in the actual muscle fibers- a 2 week follow up hydrostatic body fat test showed I had already re-gained almost ALL of that “muscle”- it must just be glyocen stores as there’s no way that I could really gain 4 pounds of solid muscle in just 2 weeks, working out just 3 times), so I was expecting that my body was just wanting to gather this back quickly, which again is what proved to be the case.

I’ve also had some other crazy factors to consider- having a cold and TOM (time of month) approaching.

Thanks for reading you guys!

My entire hCG Diet journey has occurred with the use of hCG Injections only.

November 22, 2012

This is one blog post where you really MUST watch the video. I can’t write for you here how big my big pants are on me just after 1 round of hCG. The pants I’m wearing were snug both in the hips, thighs, and waist right before I started Round 5 of human chorionic gonadotropin at 132.5 lbs. The day I have these pants on in the video I’m about 124 lbs and you can see they are pretty much falling off they’re so big. There’s at least 3 inches of space in both the thigh and waist area.  This is a good example to show that we don’t want to shoot just for weight loss but rather size loss.  That’s why this protocol is so great, because you are actually losing a high percentage of actual FAT on the diet.  You can see my before and after weight loss journey photos here.

I just want you guys to see how much can be accomplished with this weight loss protocol in just one round of 40 days (I used HCG Injections myself) even if you are technically not “overweight” or already what you might consider “small.” Ie. you look normal to everyone, but still have fat on your body you could safely and healthfully lose.

Sometimes we think of losing weight as being more difficult the smaller we get, but that has not been my experience on this weight loss protocol this round. I did not expect to lose as much fat as I did- almost a full 10lbs of actual fat this time in fact.

December 4, 2012

I apologize, this particular blog post is sorely late- for the record, the date of this video is actually December 3, 2012, close to 2 months old.  But I really want to have my whole HCG Diet story on my blog for any small benefit others may get from it.

I had a follow up hydrostatic body fat test about 1 month after the end of R5 on the protocol.  I wasn’t sure that my LIW which was 117.6 was something that I could really stabilize or maintain- as it turns out I did end up reaching 124.4 lbs before my weight became more stable, and at that time my hydrostatic bodyfat test said that I was 18.8% bodyfat fat, with 101.2 lbs of lean mass, and 23.2 lbs of fat, 124.4 lbs total.

In the first two weeks of Phase 3 (p3) I gained 7 lbs.  It’s nice to know that out of this 7 lbs, 5 lbs was muscle and/or glycogen stores and just 2 lbs was fat.  Not that a 2lb fat gain is great, but I think I probably ate too much right out of the gate in P3 (I tend to get carried away sometimes) and also, I wasn’t sure if 17.9% bodyfat would be easy for me to maintain long term or not.  So I’m currently 18.8% bodyfat which is still fantastic.  Honestly pretty much anything sub-20% bodyfat is just icing on the cake.

I’ve been in the 124 territory for about 2 weeks, so I feel like it’s fairly stable at this point (lets hope!).

Weight doesn’t fly up on the scale for most once P3 of HCG Injections comes, but for me I kind of knew it would at least to some extent, mostly because since I usually don’t eat the fruits on P2, that makes the diet extremely low carb and I knew my glycogen stores in my muscles would be depleted- as soon as P3 comes and there is an increase in calories and a small amount of carbs in vegetables, nuts and dairy, that glycogen would come back, and that weighs something.  So I know that 5 lbs of muscle I gained in 2 weeks isn’t just actual muscle fibers- I just don’t think that would be possible- but I do think it makes sense that it could be a large percentage glycogen.

January 2, 2013

SYMPTOMS OF LOW THYROID AND ADRENAL FATIGUE

Well, it’s officially two months since the end of Round 5 of HCG Injections on the HCG Diet for me.  I’m in Phase 4 (P4)- which is basically just normal, healthy, everyday eating.

I want to discuss my own personal health today because I think it could help others reading it to possibly recognize if they have any hidden health issues themselves. Sometimes we get used to what we might think of as certain little “quirks” to ourselves, that in actuality, are simply health symptoms, that if addressed, could let us lead a happier more full life.

If you have some of the symptoms that I mention below, but your doctor says your thyroid lab tests are normal, please don’t leave it at that. I have discovered many many people go untreated because they really DO have thyroid or adrenal issues- the standard tests that are done are woefully inadequate- the following are some resources to research this important topic. In fact, my own lab tests came back “normal” for a long time, until my condition finally got SO bad that it finally did show up the generic testing- but you shouldn’t have to wait several years to get treated as I did.  The following are what I consider to be the best information out there on hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia.

Dr. Mercola’s Interview with Dr. Lowe regarding Low Thyroid

 Stop the Thyroid Madness Website- a wealth of information on thyroid and adrenal fatigue and all the things “they” never tell you.

 Natural Thyroid Solutions – check the latest updates and news section and Q&A

I have been dealing with some chronic health issues for several years now and went untreated for most of it because I didn’t know what was wrong with me for many years (this was not for lack of diligent searching for a cause). But I’ve been pretty much symptom free and off all thyroid medication and adrenal support for over 9 months this past year. I never actually expected to be off my thyroid meds as usually the condition I have (hashimoto’s) and the resulting low or hypothyroid condition isn’t curable.

HOW I GOT OFF THYROID MEDICATION

My improved health happened over a number of months as I lost weight with this weight loss protocol, attended Crossfit and got more fit, completely eliminated gluten 100% from my diet, and saw a holistic “dude” (he’s not actually a “doc”) who helped me to address some chronic infections he discovered through muscle testing and treated with homeopathy and rife machine frequencies (google that one).

The only reason I even considered getting off my thyroid medication at all was because I was suddenly feeling very sick and yucky, in a way I’d never felt before, and the holistic guy I was seeing confirmed that my body was functioning very well on it’s own and that I no longer needed the thyroid meds technically. It made me very nervous to wean off it as I visualized what I used to feel like pre-medication, but as soon as I did, I felt much better, and spent the next 9 months living like a normal person- having normal energy, working out, all without medication, which was shocking to me considering how I used to feel without my thyroid medication (couldn’t work secularly, had to sleep many hours each day, had chronic fatigue and some fibromyalgia symptoms- extreme pain in my feet after standing in my kitchen to cook a simple dinner, etc.).  That entire 9 months of 2012 I spent most of it feeling great with great energy and none of my old symptoms.

THE 3 AMIGOS: STRESS – LOW THYROID – ADRENAL FATIGUE

But stress is a killer isn’t it? Or maybe we should say stress is a life-sucker.  You’ve probably heard that adage “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” right?  I have yet to see this happen in my case.  My chronic health issues started at just 21 years of age, when autoimmune triggers were turned on in my body from different stressful situations in my life.   Stress and difficulties in life have always seemed to wreak a havoc on my body that have permanently changed how my body operates.  My husband and I both came to the realization recently that I have not been myself the past couple months.  Back in September we lost our house to foreclosure and the process of that, along with the stress of finding a new home and moving our whole home ourselves with a small 2 year old in tow wasn’t exactly stress free.  I got through the actual process very well and was pretty proud of myself- almost felt like a small version of a female super hero, but I believe my body is now experiencing the delayed stress response to that period of time.  Along with the fact that I now work secularly again- something I haven’t done in years.

I didn’t notice it at first because the symptoms were a bit subtle and infrequent, but after considering the past couple months, we realized that many of my old familiar symptoms that I used to experience when untreated were there again.

Uncommon Reaction to Social Interaction

For anyone who doesn’t know, one symptom of low thyroid function, which I experience in full force when my condition is not being managed well, is the inability to handle social interaction and feel good still. Even though it’s what you might call a “good stress”, social interaction is a stress on the body. If you’re a normal person, you might spend some time with family or friends and come home feeling happy and refreshed at the good time you just had. Or even if you didn’t have a good time, you might come home kind of irritated, go to sleep and wake up and go about your normal business just fine the following day.

What happens to me specifically is that after hanging out with people, whether I had a good time or not, I will later become very depressed for seemingly no reason. It will last for a couple days, before the depression cloud lifts and I feel normal again. The depression is bad enough that it’s pretty debilitating and something that makes you want to avoid scenarios that cause that. I want to mention this because it’s one of those things that is very difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it and even harder for them to understand. If you are reading this and realize that you experience this, please consider that you may have some unresolved health issues, that if addressed, could enable you to enjoy people’s company again.

I haven’t experienced this in quite some time, but lately noticed it was starting to happen again.

Uncommon Reaction to Physical Activity

Another symptom of low thyroid and or adrenal fatigue that I would experience is the same resulting depression after taking a walk on concrete for any length of time. I haven’t put my finger on it completely yet, but I have discovered a slow walk on the sidewalk for a half hour or more will cause me to feel very bad later- debilitating fatigue and depression. This seems especially silly to me now considering I still attend Crossfit 3-4 times a week, for an hour each time where I sweat like nobody’s business and my whole body get’s worked super hard, and I feel good after these sessions, yet a slow walk will cause me fatigue later. It’s a strange anomaly that I still don’t understand why it happens, but it does. Years ago before being treated this symptom was bad enough that any physical activity caused the chronic fatigue and depression reaction, no matter what it was. There could even be an endorphin rush initially, but within a matter of a couple hours, this dark cloud of depression would descend.  We are not talking a mild case of the blues- we are talking an I-don’t-know-how-I-can-go-on-living hopeless kind of feeling.

More Cold Than Those Around You

Thirdly, I’ve been extremely cold again lately, and I don’t live in a snow state. I’ve been so cold that I’ve actually found myself googling “warmest coat” and considering specialized jacket options that only researchers in the antarctic usually wear because I can’t seem to find a coat that keeps me warm enough to enjoy the outdoors this winter.

There are many more symptoms that I won’t detail here today. These are the main ones that I’ve been experiencing again.

Treatment of Low Thyroid and Adrenal Fatigue

So what this means is that I’m trying myself back on a small dose of thyroid medication. I take Cytomel– also called T3 or active thyroid hormone.  This is very different from what the majority of thyroid patients are put on by their doctors- most take T4 medication like Synthroid, Levoxyl, Levothroid or Unithroid.  If you haven’t researched this yet, please look into the differences between T3 and T4 thyroid medications– it can mean the difference between feeling symptom free and feeling like crap.

I have yet to know if my current symptoms are mostly thyroid or mostly adrenal or a combination of both, or maybe it’s something entirely new or different.  It’s a bit of a guessing game sometimes at this moment and takes time to figure out.  I have experimented with taking small doses of cortisol again too in the form of Isocort. The results are mixed. Sometimes I feel better, sometimes I feel worse, so I don’t know all the answers yet. The important thing though is to do something.  If I do nothing, I definitely won’t figure it out.  By trying different things I hope to find the solution and the right balance for best wellness again.

What I will tell you is that, even though I’m once again experiencing a blip in my health, between taking Cytomel thyroid medication for 2 years and then somehow recovering my health and not needing it for almost a year, I have spent the last 3 years of my life feeling REALLY GOODcompared to the previous 6-8 years before that.  If you can get proper treatment, you CAN feel good again.  Don’t give up on yourself and finding wellness.  Make the above links in this post a start to your research on this.

February 22, 2013

Hello everyone!

So it’s February 21, 2013, and it’s been about 112 days since the end of my 5th round of HCG Injections – so almost 4 months now.  And actually, my 2 year anniversary since I started my weight loss journey is tomorrow I think.  I can’t believe it’s been that long.

I have been extremely stable in the 126-127 lb weight range for over 2 months now.  I’m not eating low carb now- I’m eating very healthy but it definitely doesn’t classify as low carb.  I just think that’s important to mention because sometimes I hear people claim that you have to eat low carb the rest of your life to maintain weightloss from the diet plan which is totally not true.

Every person’s body is different, and I don’t doubt that some individuals may need to eat low carb long term, but not everyone since I don’t have to.  I get 3-4 hours of intense exercise a week, in the form of Crossfit, and I eat baked potatoes, rice, and rice milk, corn tortillas, refried beans (from the can), and fruit as carbs.  Sometimes I even have 2 baked potatoes (with butter and full fat sour cream) in one day.

Some days I eat quite a bit of food, and some days I don’t feel as hungry and I eat far less.  It has really varied, but overall, it seems to be working for me as my weight is extremely stable right now.

I am not counting calories, so I have no idea how many calories I’m taking in, but on the days I more, I’m positive my calorie range is somewhere between 2200-2700 I bet.  I’m not a bird eater.

However, I do eat very healthy- even though it’s not low carb, I don’t eat any kind of refined sugar at all, and I’ve been 100% gluten free for 2 years now.

I like to make these updates now and then so that you can see the living proof of long term maintenance of a healthy body after Human Chorionic Gonadotropin  is totally feasible, and not difficult.

Have a nice evening!

Rayzel

April 9, 2014

This is the first of a series of quarterly updates now on how life is going in maintenance mode since ending my last round 16 months ago (actually I just realized it was 17 months- sorry guys- some of these posts I’m working on for 2 months at a time so the timeline gets skewed). Mainly because there is not enough information out there for AFTER hCG. You know, that decades long part of life?  Seems kinda important given the time period it spans.

While I have maintained my weight loss, it’s not like every single day of the last 16 months I’ve been the exact same weight. So I’m hoping that perhaps by sharing my triumphs, my struggles, and how I work at keep things in balance without gaining large amounts of weight back and bringing things back to level on my own when needed, this might aid you in doing the same.

I’ve been pretty much between 123-125 lbs for the most part.  A few highs and a few lows here and there.

So what I have been up to, aside from taking….

80 photos of asparagus

48 photos of yogurt

166 photos of spinach

92 pics of fennel

91 photos of lemons

114 photos of cucumber

and 168 photos of onions?

168 pics of ONIONS??  Yup, true story.  For an up and coming gallery of P2 protocol foods! Now you’re thanking me.

I reached 15% bodyfat.  Man oh man.  I completed hCG 16 months ago at 17.9% bodyfat with 21.3 lbs of fat, and really my goal the majority of this past 16 months has simply been to maintain my level of fat but to gain additional muscle and get stronger at crossfit.

This was after a not so pleasant body fat test done on February 15th, showing a 1lb fat gain and 1lbs LOSS of Muscle – WHAT???

I sat down to analyze what went wrong.  The 1lb fat gain was not such a big deal to me- it’s easy to overeat and the 1lb fat gain was over a period of 4 months since my previous body fat test in October 2013 – that’s easily fixable and understandable.  What didn’t make sense was the muscle loss.  There should have been a muscle increase with 4 additional months of crossfit, a couple which were 4 days a week, and not only did it stay the same, it dropped.

I narrowed down the 3 things I felt may be contributing to this odd outcome:

I was still on a low dose of thyroid medication and realized I probably no longer needed it.

I had gotten lazy about eating protein after workouts – sometimes not getting around to eating a meal till 2-3 hours after crossfit, on a regular basis.

Was fasting intermittently about 1x a week.  Once I bumped up my crossfit to 4 days a week I thought perhaps it was too much for me?

I got off my thyroid medication (that day in fact).  Since the medication I took was active thyroid hormone, T3, also called cytomel, it is a known muscle stripper if taken in excess of what the body needs and can definitely cause muscle loss.  I had other indicators that I no longer needed the additional thyroid hormone, but I had been nervous to actually get off of it.  In fact, I had tried several times in the past several months, but always got nervous that my weight would go up so I would resume taking it.  This time, I felt this was enough proof that I really didn’t need it anymore and that now it was actually making things worse for my body, not better.

Warning!  I was only on a tiny dose so it was okay for me to get off overnight like this.  Had I been on a higher dose I would have had to wean off slowly over time.  Obviously, most people do this with the aid of a doctor.  I have come to find for myself that dosing by symptoms has been better for me, and I got my t3 from Mexico.

I decided to be more responsible about eating soon after my workout – the last 6 weeks I have made sure to come home and cook up some chicken or ground beef right away and eat it, along with either kale salad or some clementines.

I only fasted twice in the past 6 weeks.  However, I actually AM still kind of fasting on a regular basis in the sense that I still don’t eat breakfast and I still often don’t eat before 2pm.  But as far as an actual all day fast where I don’t eat until dinner, which I was doing about 1 day a week prior, I am rarely doing at the moment.  Since I’m crossfitting 4 days a week and then of course on recovery days I feel the need for some fuel, I’m finding there just aren’t as many good opportunities to fast – a day where I’m recovered from a workout and not working out that day are few and far between.  So I made that adjustment to fast less often.

These changes obviously were the right choice for me since I dropped an entire almost 5lbs of fat in the last six weeks and had a gain of 2lbs of muscle.  VERY PLEASED.

The only other thing that changed in the past 6 weeks between these two tests is I had some follow-up lyme disease treatment, and it’s possible that it may have allowed my body to do better.

First I want to make it clear that I have NO testing to prove I have lyme disease.  The testing for this disease is notoriously poor with frequent false negatives.  I came to this conclusion myself after researching the various symptoms and seeing my health decline in a similar fashion over the past 10 years.  I strongly feel that’s what I’ve had all this time.  Back in November, I spent a whole month out of town getting an alternative lyme disease treatment involving cold laser and rife frequencies.  I can only tell you I came home a changed person.  I’ve been so much better since then that it’s like night and day.  But in the last month, I had started to feel like I might be regressing just a tad.  I went in for some follow-up and there did seem to be indication through the muscle testing that I did have some residual lyme going on in the “hatch stage” of the lyme organisms’ life cycle, which I’ve been getting treated for the last 4 weeks.  Once again, I feel improvement in my symptoms.  Whether or not this contributed to such a great body fat test this time around I don’t know.  I’m including it because it’s another “different” thing that was going on during this time.

Dairy free Nut free Gluten free

What I do eat (examples further down): Veggies Meat Occasional grain- usually white rice (when I eat Thai- yum) and organic corn (tortillas and popcorn mostly) Fruit

Eating more raw veggies.

I am eating whole heads of kale for a salad- stuff like that.  Warning though!  This is not something you can just jump into- you need to gradually increase raw veggies you’ll experience some major painful indigestion (don’t ask me how I know).

Getting to Crossfit 4 times a week.

I have been a solid 2-3 time a week crossfit gal for 2 years, but as I’ve gotten stronger and my body has changed I have found I can easily handle going more often without too much soreness.  That being the case, I got in a pretty solid 4 day a week crossfit routine this month- it just feels good and really is something that keeps me grounded.

Occasionally I buy packages of dried fruit- the unsulphured kind- dried mango is a favorite of mine- however I can only do this now and then because invariably I eat way too much it in one sitting and have this sensation that my stomach is fully of a bunch of gummy stuff.  So yes, I do not have completed control over something so sweet at this time, so most of the time, I simply don’t buy it.

I’m a total wuss when it comes to confrontation- no need to explain the details, but in short our landlady got very confrontational with me over a misunderstanding and it was hard for me- I’m a sensitive soul- always have been and I’ve learned to except it.  Since I live a pretty sheltered life- husband treats me great, I work from home so I don’t frequently come into contact with rude strangers etc, it’s rare for me.  I was an emotional mess- the kind where you wander around the house crying and aimlessly cleaning up at the same time while trying to process how you feel.  It was challenging for 2 reasons- first, the fact that I could turn to food to comfort myself, which would have been super bad timing for my body and my emotional health as I had just resolved that day to do some super clean eating for the next week, and 2ndly it happened about an hour before I was supposed to leave for crossfit.  I contemplated not going- I felt horrible and really didn’t want to leave and go work out.  I wanted to sit with my pillow and watch tv with a big bowl of popcorn and one or two P3 smoothies to top it off.

I triumphed on both accounts in the end- my son and I both headed to crossfit (he has his own kids crossfit class once a week as well now and I hated to disappoint him).  I told myself I should at least get myself there and I could always choose to not work out once I was there.  I worked out.  It felt good.  Didn’t take the sadness away but what’s important is that I took care of myself  instead of harming myself because of being hurt by someone else.  I stuck to my commitment to eating clean that day as well- now tears in popcorn bowls that day.

As you can see, I’ve been to crossfit 4 days a week steadily most of the past 3 months.  And it’s felt great!!  Many new accomplishments and PR’s during this time.

Here’s a fairly large meal I had about 4:30pm after coming home from crossfit around 2pm.  It’s leftover pasture raised chicken, sweet potatoes, and hummus for the chicken, with several pats of butter strategically placed all over the dish.  I was full when I finished it.

I thought it would be fun to record my weight before and right after this meal.  Just because we ladies take scale weight a little too much to heart sometimes and forget how much our food weighs when we eat it.

And this is literally at 4:52pm, less than half an hour later after I finished that meal:

Amazing huh! 2lbs worth of food was in that plate.

Here’s some more examples of meals and snacks I eat:

Read/Watch my own hCG Diet Journey As It Unfolded:

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Related posts:

Source: https://hcgchica.com/hcgchicas-hcg-diet-journal-round-5/

[marjorieclarkcom]

Is Bread Bad for You? Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong

Is Bread Bad for You (Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong)

I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when lunches involved a sandwich most of the time.

The general public didn’t believe bread was a terrible thing back then.

Our breakfasts also involved a lot of toast.

I’m guessing the average person had 2-4 pieces of bread per day.

Obesity wasn’t a huge issue back then. Maybe we were so active back then that we overcame the negatives of our high-bread diet.

I guess that could be the case. But…

The healthy people who live in the countries along Mediterranean, typically eat a lot of bread.

Possibly their active lifestyle makes up for the “unhealthy” bread habit?

My grandpa ate 2-4 pieces of toast each morning with coffee and lived into his late 90’s.

Maybe he just had great genetics?

There are a lot of examples of societies that thrive with a decent amount of bread in their diet.

And…

Various types of bread, affect the body differently.

I want to dig deeper into that in this article.

I also want to look into studies that examine health, obesity and bread consumption.

I will do that in a sec…

Right after a short music break.

The music theme for this post is very specific.

I call this the “Early 80’s Pizza Parlor Rock” mix.

If you were playing Centipede, Joust or Dig-Dug while waiting for your pepperoni pizza in 1982-1983?

These were the tunes that were always rocking in the background.

This same playlist was cranking at amusement parks around the U.S. during the same time period.

Maybe I should call this Roller Coaster Rock

I have a selfish reason for writing this blog post.

I’m fighting for bakeries.

I stay lean and healthy with a diet that includes bread at least a few times per week.

The keto movement is growing at a rapid rate.

It does work for fat loss but does NOT allow for rice, bread or beer… so a “No Go” for me.

Next time I travel to Europe I want to visit bakeries and cafes.

When I visit Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, I need my fix of fresh Boudin sourdough bread.

Bread is unfairly criticized and blamed for a lot of modern health problems.

I’m hoping this article will make you consider a different point of view than what is currently popular right now.

I realize that bread-phobia is at an all-time high.

But…

I knead bread in my life (sorry).

We must rise above the anti-bread message (sorry again).

Let’s look into a bit of science.

Bread, Obesity and Longevity Research

This section of the post is inspired by an excellent article by Markham Heid, titled:

The Scientific Case for Eating Bread

His article links to a lot of compelling research to increase daily bread consumption.

I will cover many of the same studies cited in his article, but with my own opinions on these findings.

A large-scale study was published in June of 2016, by Dagfinn Aune.

This research is a meta-analysis looking at a total of 45 studies.

This meta-analysis provides further evidence that whole grain intake is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer, and mortality from all causes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes. These findings support dietary guidelines that recommend increased intake of whole grain to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature mortality.

This study looked at whole grains in particular, so whole grain bread is what would give these health benefits.

What about white and other refined bread?

The countries along the Mediterranean are some of the healthiest in the world… they eat a decent amount of bread and not all of it is whole grain.

Whole grain has added benefits that are missing from bread made with refined white flower.

Although people along the Mediterranean do fine with some refined bread, a better health choice is to mainly eat whole grain bread.

Look for whole grain as the first ingredient is one way to find healthy bread.

But…

There may be another approach of choosing bread that will allow you a larger variety of bread to choose from.

The 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Bread Ratio Rule

I like easy to follow and easy to remember rules.

This is a great one you can use next time you are buying bread at the grocery store. A recent study found that you are looking for breads with a carb-to-fiber ratio of 10:1 (or more fiber if possible).

Among proposed WG (Whole Grain) criteria, the 10:1-ratio identified the most healthful WG products. Other criteria performed less well, including the industry-supported WG-Stamp which identified products with higher fiber and lower trans-fats, but also higher sugars and energy.

If a slice of bread has 20 grams of total carbs, you would want it to have AT LEAST 2 grams of dietary fiber.

Luckily a 10:1 ratio is easy math.

I don’t think it always has to have enough fiber to hit 10:1, but the closer the better.

There is a specific type of bread where this rule doesn’t apply.

Sourdough bread.

Here’s Why Real Sourdough Bread is Beneficial Even if it Doesn’t Meet the 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Ratio

You must understand…

I am originally from the Bay Area.

Sourdough is a way of life there.

I have fond memories of walking the San Francisco Wharf as a kid with my family and eating fresh sourdough bread.

Freshly baked sourdough with apricot jam is one of the best culinary experiences on the planet.

I’d eat it even if it was found to be unhealthy.

Luckily, sourdough has magical properties beyond just the delicious flavor.

Healthline has an extensive article about sourdough bread:

Why Sourdough Bread is One of the Healthiest Breads

Here’s what I found to be the most interesting part of this article:

Sourdough bread may have a better effect on blood sugar and insulin levels than other types of bread, though the reason for this isn’t yet fully understood. Researchers believe that sourdough fermentation may modify the structure of carb molecules. This reduces the bread’s glycemic index (GI) and slows down the speed at which sugars enter the bloodstream (12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

So it provides stable energy while tasting delicious.

You need to buy real sourdough to have these benefits… a lot of the stuff you pick up from the grocery store is simply sourdough flavored.

Real sourdough bread is made from a starter.

A starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water, containing a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli.

These starters are unique depending upon the ratio of water to flour and each started makes for a different tasting sourdough bread.

The microorganisms in these starters can be kept alive as long as water and flour are periodically added to the starter.

Here’s something crazy.

Some of these sourdough starters have been kept alive for over 100 years.

I can’t remember where I read this, but the saying was something along these lines.

“When you eat a piece of real sourdough bread you are eating a piece of history”.

In Seattle, we have a sourdough bread from the Essential Baking Company that is made from a starter that has been kept alive since the late 1800’s.

After the California Gold Rush a large group of prospectors traveled from California to Alaska in search of gold.

Seattle was a stop on the way to Alaska.

Many would bring sourdough bread to fuel them on their journey.

Quite a few wound up living in Seattle.

Their sourdough starters stayed as well.

These sourdough starters will be making tasty loaves of delicious bread long after low carb mania has died out.

Long live the sourdough starter!

Fiber in Whole Grain Bread Can Protect Your DNA?

We are just beginning to find out how important fiber is to our health.

We have known for decades some of the health benefits, but recent studies have shown it to be even more important for health than we first thought.

Are you familiar with the telomere?

Telomeres are the caps at each end of strand of your DNA… and as we age they shorten.

Preventing the telomeres from shortening is a way to have a younger biological age.

You can’t stop time.

But…

You can change the rate at which you age by doing things that slow down the shortening of your telomeres.

A recent study (Mar 2018) found that adults with high fiber intake had longer telomeres than their counterparts.

Dietary Fiber and Telomere Length in 5674 U.S. Adults: An NHANES Study of Biological Aging

“A difference of 4.8 to 6.0 years in cell aging was found between those in the lowest compared with the highest quartiles of fiber intake. Overall, the present study highlights the risk of accelerated aging among U.S. women and men who do not consume adequate amounts of dietary fiber.”

People eating a high fiber diet in this study were at a biological age that was 5 years younger than those who didn’t.

We have known for a long time that fiber helped in preventing colon cancer and lowering cholesterol levels.

The anti-aging benefits go way beyond that.

Longer telomere length slows aging and reduces the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.

It’s a big deal.

We didn’t have the technology to measure telomere length until recently.

How much fiber do we need to eat per day?

The ratio that this study found beneficial was 10 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories.

A person eating 2,000 calories per day would want to eat 20 grams of fiber.

Easy math.

* The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2015–2020) recommends 14 grams per 1,000 calories, but it seems that even 10 grams make a big impact.

In my opinion, any diet that limits fiber is a big-time health mistake.

I follow and recommend a high carb high fiber diet.

I know that this isn’t trendy right now.

Here’s a partial list of foods rich in fiber:

Whole wheat spaghetti Whole wheat bread Oatmeal Green peas Corn Potatoes Lentils Beans Berries

If you want to maximize health and longevity, I highly recommend a diet that has a strong focus on fiber.

If you do decide to follow a low carb or keto diet, you can still get fiber.

Here are a few low carb friendly sources of fiber:

Leafy Greens Flaxseeds Cabbage Coconut Chia Seeds Avocado Cauliflower Broccoli Nuts

If you want to avoid bread…

If you are fine with not having tasty sourdough in your life…

If you are are a keto dieter who isn’t scared of angering the sourdough gods?

Make sure you get other sources of fiber (about 10 grams per 1000 calories consumed each day).

Doesn’t Bread Cause Spikes in Insulin Which Lead to Obesity and Diabetes?

I used to think type 2 diabetes was mainly caused by repeated insulin spikes from carbs.

Then I dug a bit deeper into the research.

The traditional Okinawan diet is a high carb diet (85%) and very low fat.

The Okinawanas have been one of the longest living populations on the planet… they eat a high carb diet and type 2 diabetes is virtually non-existent.

They eat high carb and low fat, but the carb source isn’t bread.

What about bread and longevity? Are you familiar with the term “blue zones”?

These are communities where people live much longer lives with much less disease than the rest of the population on the planet.

There are 5 places on the planet that are considered blue zones.

The Italian island of Sardinia Okinawa, Japan Loma Linda, California Costa Rica’s isolated Nicoya Peninsula Ikaria, an isolated Greek island

Out of the 5 blue zones both Ikaria and Sardinia eat bread daily.

All 5 blue zones eat a diet high in carbs.

I’m not saying you HAVE to eat bread to stay healthy, but you can include bread if you choose the right type.

Why do a lot of people consider bread unhealthy?

As mentioned above, it is because of the belief that bread and other carbs spike insulin and create a state that can lead to type 2 diabetes over time.

The problem isn’t insulin.

It’s insulin resistance.

Research shows that excess fat inside the muscle cells is what causes insulin resistance.

The fat inside the cell is called Intramyocellular Lipid.

Studies show this is one of the root causes of insulin resistance.

When you eat carbs, insulin is released and acts as a key to allow glucose the enter the cell.

Excess fat in the diet can gum up the lock over time.

Here’s a Tedx Talk explaining this in detail:

Here’s a summary:

Insulin acts as a key to allow glucose to enter the cell.

A high fat diet gums up this lock over time.

The insulin key stops working properly… so your body has to release more to get the job done.

This is what is meant by Insulin Resistance.

So there are two choices.

Reduce CARBS to limit glucose and have less need for the insulin key to work properly.

Reduce FATS to clear out the lock and get the glucose metabolism working properly.

I prefer to go the high carb low fat route, but a lot of people (keto and low carb dieters) choose option #1.

Again…

If you do decide to go the low carb or keto route, make sure you get enough daily fiber.

It’s looking like fiber is an extremely important part of a healthy diet.

How Many Grams of Fiber Does a Slice of Bread Have?

The amount of fiber obviously depends on the brand and type of bread.

I thought it would be cool to do a bit of bread research and find brands that meet or exceed the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

Here are 4 brands that are somewhat easy to find.

1. Dave’s Killer Bread

Dave’s Killer Bread is a brand you can find pretty much everywhere in the U.S. I know they sell this brand at Target, Costco, and Whole Foods. All of their sliced bread hits or beats the 10:1 ratio you are aiming for. The only one what is just barely short is the white bread (but close enough). This is all organic and non-GMO verified, etc. A great choice.

I am especially impressed with their Epic Everything Bagel which meets the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio and also has 12 grams of protein and 560mg of omega-3. I’m going to buy these next time I go grocery shopping.

2. Rudi’s Organic Bakery

Rudi’s Organic Bakery is a brand out of Boulder, Colorado. You can buy at Whole Foods and looks like Walmart as well. This company also makes a line of gluten-free bread for those who like to avoid the tastiest part of the bread. I love the smell of gluten in the morning.

3. Alpine Valley

Alpine Valley Organic Bakery bread is found at Costco, Sam’s Club, and many other grocery stores nationwide. It looks like most of their bread has a good carb-to-fiber ratio, except for their white bread. The English muffins meet the 10:1 ratio as well. I need to pick up some of those. This is all non-GMO and organic as well.

4. Arnold Organic Bread

Arnold Organic Bread is another great choice and is also a commonly available bread in the U.S. This brand is available in most grocery stores and Target and Walmart. This bread is also certified organic and non-GMO. This brand goes by three names: Arnold (in the East), Brownberry (in the Midwest) and Oroweat (in the West).

There are countless other brands available, I just wanted to list the brands with the widest distribution.

Also…

If you are outside of the U.S. simply look for 1 gram of fiber (or more) for every 10 grams of carbs.

Summary: Is Bread Bad for You?

I certainly don’t think you HAVE to eat bread to be healthy.

The Okinawans don’t include bread in their diet.

But…

You CAN eat bread and be extremely healthy.

Like the people in Ikaria and Sardinia.

Make sure you either eat real sourdough bread or bread that falls in line with the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

And…

If you do eat a lot of carbs, it is probably best to not eat tons of fat.

Hopefully, these guidelines help you.

Cheers,

-Rusty Moore

The post Is Bread Bad for You? Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong appeared first on Visual Impact Fitness.

source https://visualimpactfitness.com/is-bread-bad-for-you/

[anthonystopscom]

Is Bread Bad for You? Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong

Is Bread Bad for You (Why Popular Opinion on Bread Is Wrong)

I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when lunches involved a sandwich most of the time.

The general public didn’t believe bread was a terrible thing back then.

Our breakfasts also involved a lot of toast.

I’m guessing the average person had 2-4 pieces of bread per day.

Obesity wasn’t a huge issue back then. Maybe we were so active back then that we overcame the negatives of our high-bread diet.

I guess that could be the case. But…

The healthy people who live in the countries along Mediterranean, typically eat a lot of bread.

Possibly their active lifestyle makes up for the “unhealthy” bread habit?

My grandpa ate 2-4 pieces of toast each morning with coffee and lived into his late 90’s.

Maybe he just had great genetics?

There are a lot of examples of societies that thrive with a decent amount of bread in their diet.

And…

Various types of bread, affect the body differently.

I want to dig deeper into that in this article.

I also want to look into studies that examine health, obesity and bread consumption.

I will do that in a sec…

Right after a short music break.

The music theme for this post is very specific.

I call this the “Early 80’s Pizza Parlor Rock” mix.

If you were playing Centipede, Joust or Dig-Dug while waiting for your pepperoni pizza in 1982-1983?

These were the tunes that were always rocking in the background.

This same playlist was cranking at amusement parks around the U.S. during the same time period.

Maybe I should call this Roller Coaster Rock

I have a selfish reason for writing this blog post.

I’m fighting for bakeries.

I stay lean and healthy with a diet that includes bread at least a few times per week.

The keto movement is growing at a rapid rate.

It does work for fat loss but does NOT allow for rice, bread or beer… so a “No Go” for me.

Next time I travel to Europe I want to visit bakeries and cafes.

When I visit Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, I need my fix of fresh Boudin sourdough bread.

Bread is unfairly criticized and blamed for a lot of modern health problems.

I’m hoping this article will make you consider a different point of view than what is currently popular right now.

I realize that bread-phobia is at an all-time high.

But…

I knead bread in my life (sorry).

We must rise above the anti-bread message (sorry again).

Let’s look into a bit of science.

Bread, Obesity and Longevity Research

This section of the post is inspired by an excellent article by Markham Heid, titled:

The Scientific Case for Eating Bread

His article links to a lot of compelling research to increase daily bread consumption.

I will cover many of the same studies cited in his article, but with my own opinions on these findings.

A large-scale study was published in June of 2016, by Dagfinn Aune.

This research is a meta-analysis looking at a total of 45 studies.

This meta-analysis provides further evidence that whole grain intake is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer, and mortality from all causes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes. These findings support dietary guidelines that recommend increased intake of whole grain to reduce the risk of chronic diseases and premature mortality.

This study looked at whole grains in particular, so whole grain bread is what would give these health benefits.

What about white and other refined bread?

The countries along the Mediterranean are some of the healthiest in the world… they eat a decent amount of bread and not all of it is whole grain.

Whole grain has added benefits that are missing from bread made with refined white flower.

Although people along the Mediterranean do fine with some refined bread, a better health choice is to mainly eat whole grain bread.

Look for whole grain as the first ingredient is one way to find healthy bread.

But…

There may be another approach of choosing bread that will allow you a larger variety of bread to choose from.

The 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Bread Ratio Rule

I like easy to follow and easy to remember rules.

This is a great one you can use next time you are buying bread at the grocery store. A recent study found that you are looking for breads with a carb-to-fiber ratio of 10:1 (or more fiber if possible).

Among proposed WG (Whole Grain) criteria, the 10:1-ratio identified the most healthful WG products. Other criteria performed less well, including the industry-supported WG-Stamp which identified products with higher fiber and lower trans-fats, but also higher sugars and energy.

If a slice of bread has 20 grams of total carbs, you would want it to have AT LEAST 2 grams of dietary fiber.

Luckily a 10:1 ratio is easy math.

I don’t think it always has to have enough fiber to hit 10:1, but the closer the better.

There is a specific type of bread where this rule doesn’t apply.

Sourdough bread.

Here’s Why Real Sourdough Bread is Beneficial Even if it Doesn’t Meet the 10:1 Carb-to-Fiber Ratio

You must understand…

I am originally from the Bay Area.

Sourdough is a way of life there.

I have fond memories of walking the San Francisco Wharf as a kid with my family and eating fresh sourdough bread.

Freshly baked sourdough with apricot jam is one of the best culinary experiences on the planet.

I’d eat it even if it was found to be unhealthy.

Luckily, sourdough has magical properties beyond just the delicious flavor.

Healthline has an extensive article about sourdough bread:

Why Sourdough Bread is One of the Healthiest Breads

Here’s what I found to be the most interesting part of this article:

Sourdough bread may have a better effect on blood sugar and insulin levels than other types of bread, though the reason for this isn’t yet fully understood. Researchers believe that sourdough fermentation may modify the structure of carb molecules. This reduces the bread’s glycemic index (GI) and slows down the speed at which sugars enter the bloodstream (12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

So it provides stable energy while tasting delicious.

You need to buy real sourdough to have these benefits… a lot of the stuff you pick up from the grocery store is simply sourdough flavored.

Real sourdough bread is made from a starter.

A starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water, containing a colony of microorganisms including wild yeast and lactobacilli.

These starters are unique depending upon the ratio of water to flour and each started makes for a different tasting sourdough bread.

The microorganisms in these starters can be kept alive as long as water and flour are periodically added to the starter.

Here’s something crazy.

Some of these sourdough starters have been kept alive for over 100 years.

I can’t remember where I read this, but the saying was something along these lines.

“When you eat a piece of real sourdough bread you are eating a piece of history”.

In Seattle, we have a sourdough bread from the Essential Baking Company that is made from a starter that has been kept alive since the late 1800’s.

After the California Gold Rush a large group of prospectors traveled from California to Alaska in search of gold.

Seattle was a stop on the way to Alaska.

Many would bring sourdough bread to fuel them on their journey.

Quite a few wound up living in Seattle.

Their sourdough starters stayed as well.

These sourdough starters will be making tasty loaves of delicious bread long after low carb mania has died out.

Long live the sourdough starter!

Fiber in Whole Grain Bread Can Protect Your DNA?

We are just beginning to find out how important fiber is to our health.

We have known for decades some of the health benefits, but recent studies have shown it to be even more important for health than we first thought.

Are you familiar with the telomere?

Telomeres are the caps at each end of strand of your DNA… and as we age they shorten.

Preventing the telomeres from shortening is a way to have a younger biological age.

You can’t stop time.

But…

You can change the rate at which you age by doing things that slow down the shortening of your telomeres.

A recent study (Mar 2018) found that adults with high fiber intake had longer telomeres than their counterparts.

Dietary Fiber and Telomere Length in 5674 U.S. Adults: An NHANES Study of Biological Aging

“A difference of 4.8 to 6.0 years in cell aging was found between those in the lowest compared with the highest quartiles of fiber intake. Overall, the present study highlights the risk of accelerated aging among U.S. women and men who do not consume adequate amounts of dietary fiber.”

People eating a high fiber diet in this study were at a biological age that was 5 years younger than those who didn’t.

We have known for a long time that fiber helped in preventing colon cancer and lowering cholesterol levels.

The anti-aging benefits go way beyond that.

Longer telomere length slows aging and reduces the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.

It’s a big deal.

We didn’t have the technology to measure telomere length until recently.

How much fiber do we need to eat per day?

The ratio that this study found beneficial was 10 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories.

A person eating 2,000 calories per day would want to eat 20 grams of fiber.

Easy math.

* The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2015–2020) recommends 14 grams per 1,000 calories, but it seems that even 10 grams make a big impact.

In my opinion, any diet that limits fiber is a big-time health mistake.

I follow and recommend a high carb high fiber diet.

I know that this isn’t trendy right now.

Here’s a partial list of foods rich in fiber:

Whole wheat spaghetti Whole wheat bread Oatmeal Green peas Corn Potatoes Lentils Beans Berries

If you want to maximize health and longevity, I highly recommend a diet that has a strong focus on fiber.

If you do decide to follow a low carb or keto diet, you can still get fiber.

Here are a few low carb friendly sources of fiber:

Leafy Greens Flaxseeds Cabbage Coconut Chia Seeds Avocado Cauliflower Broccoli Nuts

If you want to avoid bread…

If you are fine with not having tasty sourdough in your life…

If you are are a keto dieter who isn’t scared of angering the sourdough gods?

Make sure you get other sources of fiber (about 10 grams per 1000 calories consumed each day).

Doesn’t Bread Cause Spikes in Insulin Which Lead to Obesity and Diabetes?

I used to think type 2 diabetes was mainly caused by repeated insulin spikes from carbs.

Then I dug a bit deeper into the research.

The traditional Okinawan diet is a high carb diet (85%) and very low fat.

The Okinawanas have been one of the longest living populations on the planet… they eat a high carb diet and type 2 diabetes is virtually non-existent.

They eat high carb and low fat, but the carb source isn’t bread.

What about bread and longevity? Are you familiar with the term “blue zones”?

These are communities where people live much longer lives with much less disease than the rest of the population on the planet.

There are 5 places on the planet that are considered blue zones.

The Italian island of Sardinia Okinawa, Japan Loma Linda, California Costa Rica’s isolated Nicoya Peninsula Ikaria, an isolated Greek island

Out of the 5 blue zones both Ikaria and Sardinia eat bread daily.

All 5 blue zones eat a diet high in carbs.

I’m not saying you HAVE to eat bread to stay healthy, but you can include bread if you choose the right type.

Why do a lot of people consider bread unhealthy?

As mentioned above, it is because of the belief that bread and other carbs spike insulin and create a state that can lead to type 2 diabetes over time.

The problem isn’t insulin.

It’s insulin resistance.

Research shows that excess fat inside the muscle cells is what causes insulin resistance.

The fat inside the cell is called Intramyocellular Lipid.

Studies show this is one of the root causes of insulin resistance.

When you eat carbs, insulin is released and acts as a key to allow glucose the enter the cell.

Excess fat in the diet can gum up the lock over time.

Here’s a Tedx Talk explaining this in detail:

Here’s a summary:

Insulin acts as a key to allow glucose to enter the cell.

A high fat diet gums up this lock over time.

The insulin key stops working properly… so your body has to release more to get the job done.

This is what is meant by Insulin Resistance.

So there are two choices.

Reduce CARBS to limit glucose and have less need for the insulin key to work properly.

Reduce FATS to clear out the lock and get the glucose metabolism working properly.

I prefer to go the high carb low fat route, but a lot of people (keto and low carb dieters) choose option #1.

Again…

If you do decide to go the low carb or keto route, make sure you get enough daily fiber.

It’s looking like fiber is an extremely important part of a healthy diet.

How Many Grams of Fiber Does a Slice of Bread Have?

The amount of fiber obviously depends on the brand and type of bread.

I thought it would be cool to do a bit of bread research and find brands that meet or exceed the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

Here are 4 brands that are somewhat easy to find.

1. Dave’s Killer Bread

Dave’s Killer Bread is a brand you can find pretty much everywhere in the U.S. I know they sell this brand at Target, Costco, and Whole Foods. All of their sliced bread hits or beats the 10:1 ratio you are aiming for. The only one what is just barely short is the white bread (but close enough). This is all organic and non-GMO verified, etc. A great choice.

I am especially impressed with their Epic Everything Bagel which meets the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio and also has 12 grams of protein and 560mg of omega-3. I’m going to buy these next time I go grocery shopping.

2. Rudi’s Organic Bakery

Rudi’s Organic Bakery is a brand out of Boulder, Colorado. You can buy at Whole Foods and looks like Walmart as well. This company also makes a line of gluten-free bread for those who like to avoid the tastiest part of the bread. I love the smell of gluten in the morning.

3. Alpine Valley

Alpine Valley Organic Bakery bread is found at Costco, Sam’s Club, and many other grocery stores nationwide. It looks like most of their bread has a good carb-to-fiber ratio, except for their white bread. The English muffins meet the 10:1 ratio as well. I need to pick up some of those. This is all non-GMO and organic as well.

4. Arnold Organic Bread

Arnold Organic Bread is another great choice and is also a commonly available bread in the U.S. This brand is available in most grocery stores and Target and Walmart. This bread is also certified organic and non-GMO. This brand goes by three names: Arnold (in the East), Brownberry (in the Midwest) and Oroweat (in the West).

There are countless other brands available, I just wanted to list the brands with the widest distribution.

Also…

If you are outside of the U.S. simply look for 1 gram of fiber (or more) for every 10 grams of carbs.

Summary: Is Bread Bad for You?

I certainly don’t think you HAVE to eat bread to be healthy.

The Okinawans don’t include bread in their diet.

But…

You CAN eat bread and be extremely healthy.

Like the people in Ikaria and Sardinia.

Make sure you either eat real sourdough bread or bread that falls in line with the 10:1 carb-to-fiber ratio.

And…

If you do eat a lot of carbs, it is probably best to not eat tons of fat.

Hopefully, these guidelines help you.

Cheers,

-Rusty Moore

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