3 Things You Must Do for Healthy Weight Loss

Beating Weight Loss Resistance:

Weight loss resistance is characterized by the inability to maintain an appropriate weight despite exercise and dieting. This is due to hormones and inflammation.  Weight gain and particularly abdominal fat is a classic sign of insulin resistance and chronic inflammation. This article will cover the best way to maintain healthy weight loss.

Some individuals try to follow the standard advice of low calorie dieting and lots of exercise but they struggle to maintain their healthy weight loss.  This is a classic sign of weight loss resistance.  Chronic inflammation is the culprit and it must be addressed or the individual will not only continue to be overweight but will absolutely build disease in their body.

As a clinician I have helped thousands of people lose tens of thousands of pounds over the last 7 years. I have worked with many individuals who had “tried everything” without success. I have found several very key factors that must be addressed or effective and sustainable healthy weight loss will never be accomplished.

3 Essential Things for Healthy Weight Loss:

Many people will follow low calorie plans that are full of processed foods and see some positive healthy weight loss results.  Unfortunately, because they are consuming foods of little real nutritional value they are not truly improving their health.

We need a diet and lifestyle plan that takes into account what our ancestors would do on a regular basis.  This means we need to focus on real foods, real life movement patterns, good sleep and a natural lifestyle.  Here are the steps and strategies you must do to lose weight in a Healthy Way!

1.  Get Rid of Inflammatory Foods:

The modern American diet is full of grains and sugars. Cereal for breakfast, sandwich for lunch and pasta or potatoes for dinner. These grains are highly inflammatory and cause insulin spikes and cell membrane damage. This leads to poor hormonal signaling and weight gain in many individuals (1, 2, 3) .

Minimize the grains and incorporate healthy fats, antioxidants & trace minerals to de-inflame and improve fat burning mechanisms. Use the Moto: Eat Fat to Burn Fat!

Expert Analysis: A nutrient dense, high fat/low carb diet is extremely powerful anti-inflammatory tool. Load up on good fats like coconut, olive oil, grass-fed butter/ghee, avocados, nuts/seeds, cacao, wild-caught fish, pasture-raised eggs and grass-fed meats.

Vital Tips: Drink a protein shake for breakfast with frozen berries, coconut milk & coconut oil & healthy protein powder. Have a salad with avocado or nuts/seeds for lunch and have steamed veggies with grass-fed butter or olive oil, herbs and fresh squeezed lemon along with grass-fed beef, bison, lamb pasture-raised chicken or wild-caught salmon for dinner.

2.  Heal Your Gut & Soak up the Sun

Individuals with weight loss resistance are known to have dysbiosis or abnormal bacterial balance in their guts. This problematic microflora creates inflammatory changes in the body and leads to cellular inflammation and weight gain (3, 4).

Expert Analysis: Optimal Vitamin D3 levels are also critical for coordinating immunity and reducing cellular inflammation. Low vitamin D3 levels are associated with cellular inflammation and weight loss resistance (5, 6).

Be sure to get 30 minutes of sun on 75% of your body or supplement with 10,000 IU of Vitamin D3 daily.  I recommend a vitamin D3 supplement with a small amount of vitamin K2 in combination.

Vital Tips: Use fermented foods like sauerkraut, naturally pickled veggies, kimchi, beet kvass, coconut water kefir, coconut milk kefir, raw milk kefir, raw cheese from grass-fed cows, kombucha & apple cider vinegar.

3.  Train Hard & Rest Well

High intensity fitness is extremely critical to boost human growth hormone and testosterone (7, 8, 9) . Short time period, high intensity exercise incorporates full body movements such as squats, lunges, pull-ups, dips, push-ups, etc.

These exercises done in sequence with very little rest periods between sets effectively exhaust the cardiovascular system as well as challenging all the major muscle fibers. This blasts fat burning, anti-aging hormones for the next 36 hours.

Expert Analysis: Be sure to get enough rest. Sleep 7-8 hours each night and try to get as much sleep before midnight as possible. The rest is extremely anti-inflammatory and it regulates gut health and hormonal health (10).

Poor rest will create a physical stress on the body and cause more inflammation and poor healing (11). This will negatively affect weight loss and overall health.

Vital Tips: An ideal training schedule would have challenging workouts every 24-48 hours. The more inflamed the individual – the less exercise they should do.

Try 3-4, 15-20 minute high-intensity workouts each week. The workouts should leave you hot, sweaty and out of breath. Then you rest and continue to move your body with low intensity movement such as walking to de-inflame the body and heal.

Sources For This Article Include:

1. Dam V, Seidell C. Carbohydrate Intake and Obesity Link Here

2. Agius L. High-carbohydrate diets induce hepatic insulin resistance to protect the liver from substrate overload. Biochem Pharmacol. 2013 Feb 1;85(3):306-12. PMID: 23022226

3. Spreadbury I. Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity. Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy. 2012;5:175-189.

4. Ley RE. Obesity and the human microbiome. Curr Opin Gastroenterol. 2010 Jan;26(1):5-11. PMID: 19901833

5. Wamberg L, Kampmann U, Stødkilde-Jørgensen H, Rejnmark L, Pedersen SB, Richelsen B. Effects of vitamin D supplementation on body fat accumulation, inflammation, and metabolic risk factors in obese adults with low vitamin D levels – results from a randomized trial. Eur J Intern Med. 2013 Oct;24(7):644-9. PMID: 23566943

6. Reyman M, Verrijn Stuart AA, van Summeren M, Rakhshandehroo M, Nuboer R, de Boer FK, van den Ham HJ, Kalkhoven E, Prakken B, Schipper HS. Vitamin D deficiency in childhood obesity is associated with high levels of circulating inflammatory mediators, and low insulin sensitivity. Int J Obes (Lond). 2014 Jan;38(1):46-52. PMID: 23736361

7. Boutcher SH. High-Intensity Intermittent Exercise and Fat Loss. Journal of Obesity. 2011;2011:868305.

8. Hackney AC, Hosick KP, Myer A, Rubin DA, Battaglini CL. Testosterone responses to intensive interval versus steady-state endurance exercise. J Endocrinol Invest. 2012 Dec;35(11):947-50. PMID: 23310924

9. Godfrey RJ, Madgwick Z, Whyte GP. The exercise-induced growth hormone response in athletes. Sports Med. 2003;33(8):599-613. PMID: 12797841

11. Prinz P. Sleep, Appetite, and Obesity—What Is the Link? PLoS Medicine. 2004;1(3):e61.

12. Mullington JM, Simpson NS, Meier-Ewert HK, Haack M. Sleep Loss and Inflammation. Best practice & research Clinical endocrinology & metabolism. 2010;24(5):775-784.