How Stress Can Affect Your Eating Habits

How Stress Can Affect Your Eating Habits

If you have heard of the term “Stress eating”, then this will probably come as no surprise to you. Many people have discovered that when they are under a lot of emotional stress, they don’t lose their appetite like some, but actually get a bigger appetite and more cravings. Typically, you aren’t actually hungrier, but you feel like you want to eat to help soothe the stress.

What is Stress Eating?

Stress eating and emotional eating are very closely linked. This is when you are feeling down, sad, upset, stressed, or depressed, and you want instant gratification. Stress hormones can actually make you feel like you are hungry because you know eating something will provide short-term relief. This is the same way emotional eating works. You want a quick fix, so you think about how food will help, and then over time, every time you are stressed, you suddenly feel hungry. Except most of the time, it is not true hunger from not eating enough. It is related to your stress levels.

Increase in Sugar and Junk Food Cravings

There is also a strong correlation between the types of foods you crave when you are stressed. If you are constantly craving sugar, carbs, or fried foods when you are “starving” in between meals, it is probably more from your stress and not actual hunger. Otherwise, eating an apple or salad or healthy dinner would satiate your hunger. When you don’t feel satisfied after eating something healthy, the hunger is more likely from how you feel mentally or emotionally. This can also be true of other foods that are comfort foods for you, even if it’s not necessarily sugar and carbs.

How to Manage Stress and Hunger

Once you figure out that all your extra hunger is from stress and not from your appetite itself, you know it is time to manage your stress levels. This in turn will help to balance out your appetite and give you more realistic hunger cues.

Find the source of your stress first. This can be any combination of things, from financial and works tress, relationship or family stress, or just daily stress from a busy and hectic lifestyle. See if you can switch things up to reduce the main source of your stress. If it’s impossible to avoid, look for ways to relax at the end of the day to reduce some of that stress instead of just continuing to pile it on.

Need more personalized guidance? Reach out at Doc@coloradoFH.com or Subscribe to our email list and receive my 5 day Ketogenic Eating plan and 20 Keto Recipes Free!

Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis

As Americans have added more wheat to their diets, they’ve also gotten bigger.

In past centuries, it was an enviable status symbol to have a big belly, for it meant that you led a life of leisure and had plenty of money for food. Nowadays, however, it’s not just the privileged who have expansive waistlines – it’s people from all walks of life. And rather than envy, those people are often subjected to pity or ridicule with derisive terms like “beer-belly.”

Although this is a popular term for a protruding gut, according to Dr. Davis' research, a more accurate name would be “wheat belly.”

Since the 1980s, there have been ongoing public health campaigns against fatty cholesterol-packed foods such as butter and bacon, since these kinds of foods are believed to contribute to heart disease. But as a result, many people have replaced those foods with ones that are rich in carbohydrates. And out of all the available carbohydrates, one ingredient has risen to the top: wheat.

The American diet in particular is predominantly wheat-based, with this ingredient playing a major role in every meal. The author remembers having four servings of wheat flour a day. For breakfast, it was often a bowl of Lucky Charms. For lunch, a peanut butter sandwich. For dinner there was often cornbread. And to top it all off, some apple pie. That’s a lot of wheat!

Nowadays, Davis stays away from wheat altogether. But for the rest of the world, it remains one of the most popular grains, accounting for 20 percent of our caloric intake. But eating so much of one ingredient doesn’t just make for a mundane diet – it makes for a fattening one, too. 

It’s no coincidence that as our diet has grown to become more wheat-based, our waistlines have also expanded. 

In 1985, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute began to recommend that Americans replace fatty foods with “heart-healthy” whole grains instead. That was the same year average body weights and diabetes rates began to increase sharply. 

Looking for personalized advice on your day to day Health and Wellness and better overall FUNCTION. Email me at doc@coloradofh.com. Or to check out Dr. Davis' book yourself...

5 Tips To Stop Dieting

If you have set a New Year’s resolution of losing weight, you might be a little lost with how to begin. Here are some helpful tips:

SETTING YOUR WEIGHT LOSS GOALS

Before you get started with your weight loss New Year’s resolution, you need to have some goals in mind. It is important that you try to be realistic with your goals, and instead of just saying you want to lose X amount of pounds, you have some actionable goals as well. For each health or weight loss goal you set for yourself as your resolution, list some actions that you should do in order to achieve those goals.

Setting Actionable Goals

An actionable goal is one where you are able to define exactly what needs to be done to achieve it. If you want to fly a plane someday, the actions would be to learn how to fly planes and get your flying license. The same concept works with any type of weight loss goals you have. You need to start by choosing a realistic goal for your New Year’s weight loss, whether that means losing a certain amount of weight in the year, or losing 1-2 pounds a week consistently. You might also decide to choose a goal based on the size of clothing you wear.

Once you have chosen the realistic goal, you will then need to make a list of actionable steps it takes to achieve that larger goal. This might help you choose smaller goals along the way as well. If you want to lose 50 pounds by the end of the year, then you know you need to lose about 4 pounds a month. This is just 1 pound a week, so it falls within the reasonable goal category. Now decide how you can lose a pound a week, from what diet you should follow, to healthy lifestyle changes to make, like following a fitness routine, cutting out sugar, or stopping late-night snacking. This gives you a good place to start with your New Year’s resolution.

FOCUS ON A BALANCE BETWEEN NUTRITION AND FITNESS

Now that you know what your goals are, it is time to delve into those actionable diet and fitness steps. You probably know by now that both diet and exercise are equally important when you are trying to lose weight. If you only change your diet, but continue living a sedentary lifestyle, you might lose a little weight, but it is hard to keep up the same level of weight loss throughout the year. You need a good way to burn off excess calories, which means adding in exercise. Plus, fitness is really important for general health, just like changing your eating habits.

You also don’t want to just workout more, but continue eating whatever you want. There needs to be a balance between the two. You don’t need to exercise 2 hours a day, 7 days a week and follow a 1,000-calorie diet every day either; in fact, these are unhealthy habits to start. Here are some tips for finding a good balance between improving both your nutrition and fitness:

Start exercising slowly – To start with your workout routine, start exercising slowly. This is especially important if you are accustomed to a sedentary lifestyle, but want to begin working out more in the new year. You should not just start with marathon training right away or begin running 10 miles from the very first day. Regardless of the type of exercise routine you intend to begin, do it slowly and gradually. Work up to your ultimate fitness goals.

Choose a fitness routine you will enjoy – It is also important that you choose an exercise you are going to enjoy doing. It might seem great that you can walk every day, but if you hate walking, you won’t keep up with it. One idea is to switch to a more enjoyable form of walking, such as hiking or walking by the beach. On the other hand, you can choose another exercise entirely, such as yoga, kick boxing, swimming, or playing a sport like tennis. There are lots of ways to get in your daily exercise to help you lose weight.

Know how many calories exercises will burn – Speaking of the balance between nutrition and fitness, part of the reason you exercise to lose weight is to burn more calories. This means knowing exactly how many calories to burn, and what exercises burn the most calories. If you are using cardio machines, such as elliptical trainers or treadmills, the machines will let you know how many calories you have burned. For other exercises, you should use a fitness tracker.

Calculate how many calories you need to eat daily – Make sure with your nutrition, you know what you are eating and how many calories you are consuming. Even if you aren’t following a low-calorie diet, this is a good way to know where you are at and track how much you eat each day. Eventually, you won’t keep tracking your food, but it is good in the beginning.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT DIET PLAN FOR YOU

By this point, you are probably thinking about the different diets you can follow. Using the word ‘diet’ has negative connotation, making you feel like you are depriving yourself of something, so it is important to first get into the proper mindset. Look at it as a way to change your dietary habits, not necessarily following a restricting diet.

There are a lot of different diets you can follow, depending on your needs and what your food preferences are. If you are a vegetarian currently, you might not like a diet like Paleo where it relies heavily on meat. You can still be a vegetarian Paleo, but it is difficult and not the best option when you are first starting out. Before the New Year arrives, it is good to decide what you will eat or what diet you will follow. Learn a little about each one until one really strikes you as something you can do.

Here are some options:

• Paleo
• Keto
• Whole30 or Whole Foods Diet
• Low-Fat or Low-Calorie
• Vegetarian or Vegan
• Raw Foods

The diets listed here are not necessarily “fad diets”, but ones that do rely heavily on switching to a healthier lifestyle. Make sure you have done your research and look at what you can or can’t eat in each diet so you can decide on the best one. This can really help you to decide which one is going to be the best option for you. Don’t feel like you need to choose something because it is popular or because your friends are doing it. Also don’t feel restricted to follow all the rules of the diet you choose. You can create your own custom diet as long as you are eating healthier, watching your portion sizes, and trying to consume as many vitamins and minerals as possible.

It is also recommended that you talk to your doctor or a nutritionist before making major changes to your diet.

SCHEDULE EXERCISE INTO YOUR DAILY ROUTINE

One of the problems with starting a new fitness routine isn’t having the motivation to do it in the beginning of the year, but making it a part of your new lifestyle. A New Year’s resolution shouldn’t just be something you do for the first few weeks of January, but encourage you to make a brand new lifestyle change. It is meant to turn you into a stronger, healthier, and fitter person overall. This means choosing a fitness routine, switching it up as needed, and really making it a part of your regular schedule.

By including it in your schedule just like any other appointment, you are going to keep up with it a lot better and treat it just as important as your weekly nail appointment or going to the dentist. Here are some more tips for keeping up with your fitness routine:

Turn it Into a Fun Challenge With Friends

Making new lifestyle changes and doing it all on your own can be a huge bummer. It also keeps you from really answering to someone and motivating yourself to exercise on days when you would really rather skip the gym. A good way to keep up with it on a regular basis is to start a challenge with your friends. Put together a group of friends that will keep each other motivated, where you check in, and maybe even offer a prize to the person who walks the most steps or runs the most miles in a certain period of time. The challenge keeps everyone in the group accountable for the new weight loss goals you have, and you can even get together to workout together if you all live local.

Think About it More as a Healthy Lifestyle Change

Sometimes, weight loss and working out is all about your mindset. Don’t just think about it as a short-term goal, but as a brand new lifestyle change. Think about yourself in a year, 10 years, or 20 years, and see how you will still be working out. You may be leaner and fitter, but you will still be dedicated to being healthy and fit. You want this to be something you do for the good of yourself and for your family. Perhaps you have young kids and you want to be a good role model for them. Working out regularly is something they will see you doing, which can help battle childhood obesity.

Make Sure You Are Doing it For the Right Reasons

One of the things that often leads to failure is losing weight or working out for the wrong reasons. If you are doing it to impress someone or because your significant other has made comments, you are not doing it for the right reasons. This is not going to be enough to see it through and gives you an unhealthy mindset from the very beginning. However, once you have made the decision for yourself because you want to be healthier, then you will notice it is a lot easier to motivate yourself to exercise every day.

Have a Good Workout Area

If you intend to do most of your working out at home, then make sure you have a dedicated area. This keeps you from getting distracted and becomes your quiet space where you focus on your fitness routine. This can be a treadmill in your bedroom, elliptical machine and trampoline in your family room, or an office you are converting to a home gym. Just be consistent and try to exercise in the same place each time.

TOOLS FOR TRACKING YOUOR WEIGHT LOSS

Another thing to get ready before the New Year arrives is to have a tool for tracking your weight loss. You don’t need to spend a lot of money or have a fancy tool either; it can be as simple as using pen and paper. Just decide on the method that will work best for you. Here are some options for tracking your weight loss:

Get a Digital Scale

If you are more concerned about pounds on the scale than your measurements, then getting a digital scale is highly recommended. This keeps you from guessing what pound you are at, such as with a regular weight scale. The numbers are right there, and many newer ones also have some advanced features. Make sure you use the scale at the same time of the day each time, with the same clothing. If you choose to weigh yourself Monday mornings at 6:00am with no clothes on, then try to be consistent each time you weigh yourself on the scale.

Use Pen and Paper

While many people like to use apps on their phone for tracking weight loss, you can just use a pen and paper. If you are using a journal to log your food and exercise, that same journal can be a wonderful tool for tracking your weight as well. Every time you weigh yourself or take measurements, jot it down in your journal to keep track of your progress.

Download an App

Apps are good for convenience and to easily enter your weight or measurements. They are also good because you get graphs of how much you have lost over a certain period of time. Some apps, such as MyFitnessPal, will also provide other resources, such as tracking your fitness, food, and water intake each day.

Keep a Spreadsheet

If you like to use your computer for tracking weight loss, consider starting an Excel spreadsheet or use whatever spreadsheet program you prefer. Enter the date and the weight or measurements in whatever increments you prefer, then leave a space for any notes you find relevant.

Take Your Measurements

Taking your measurements is another good way to keep track of your weight loss. Before the New Year begins, get a flexible measuring tape like the ones fabric stores and craft supply stores have for sewing. Measure around your upper arms, thighs, waist, hips, breasts, and buttocks for accurate measuring. Write down or record the measurements in whatever tool you have decided to use. This is often good because muscle weighs more than fat, so if you are doing a lot of weight training, you can better see your body changing through measurements.

Consider Your Clothing Size

Another way to see how much weight you have been losing is to consider your clothing size. You might notice that even if the scale doesn’t reflect your weight loss, your jeans are suddenly loose, or you can fit into your ‘skinny clothes’. Put on some of your smaller sized clothes throughout the year to track your progress.

Looking for some more personalized guidance? Feel free to email me at doc@coloradoFH. 

Is This The Future of Weight Loss and Nutrition?

"Precision Nutrition" is all the rage right now when it comes to health and weight loss. What is precision nutrition you ask. Precision nutrition is a term coined to describe the specific interaction of MC4R, that causes you to be predisposed to metabolic syndrome if you follow a more Western Style Diet wouldn't you want to know? Or if you are a slow or fast caffeine or fatty acid metabolizer?  Or have a more likely genetic predisposition for hypertension or Type II diabetes with certain diets? Would you like to know how your unique genetic makeup responds to certain foods and nutrients, and then be able to design an individualized diet/lifestyle that is going to work just for you?
foods and precise diet categories on a persons own genetic makeup. For instance if you have a certain gene,

This is the future of nutrition, no Atkin's or Mediterranean or Paleo or food pyramids, just Brandon's or Courtney's or Jennifer's diet. You might think that this is way down the road but there are several tests available now that can give us a very good idea of how a person will react to certain nutrients and lifestyles. We are just beginning to scratch the surface on what is possible, but why wait? Why not put off months and years of struggle and trial and error and get started now.

For more information contact me and find out more. As always let me know what you think.

In Health

Doc

Fighting Inflammation

5 Ways To Reduce Inflammation Naturally

Inflammation is a common disease that often leads to other diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. It is very common in 21st-century life due to increased consumption of processed foods, reduction in natural whole food intake, reduced levels of exercise and exposure to toxins from substances such as alcohol, additives etc.

In order to lead a happy, healthy and pain-free life, it is essential to try to minimize inflammation in the body, especially if you are overweight which can often cause elevated inflammation levels.

In this article, I’ll provide some of the most powerful, research-proven strategies you can apply to reduce inflammation, disease risk and even lose body fat.

1. Start Exercising More To reduce Inflammation

Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce inflammation and prevent it from reaching dangerous levels. Multiple studies have revealed that beginning an exercise program, whether aerobic/cardio or resistance/weight training based, may help improve inflammatory response and reduce pain. Additionally, some evidence suggests that combining the two, (weight training and cardio), might be the best way to fight off inflammation. Interestingly, exercise such as resistance training actually increases substances called cytokines in the body that increase inflammation.  

While that may sound like the opposite of what you want, it’s actually something you need. Small and localized inflammation brought on by exercise is a normal healthy response to the stress of exercising. Exercise is actually seen by the body as a stressor or a threat, which in turn requires the body to respond and adapt. 

In response to the low amount of inflammation that occurs as a result of exercise, a myriad of different processes become up-regulated to help repair and increase the body’s resilience to inflammation in the future. In doing so, this provides a two-fold effect:

1. The body has now grown stronger and become more resilient to pro-inflammatory threats.

2. The process itself, that responds to pro-inflammatory threats, is now stronger and better able to deal with stressors, helping to prevent further inflammation.

In essence, by exercising you’ll increase the strength and efficiency of your immune system to help reduce and even prevent future inflammation.

2. Try Intermittent Fasting To Reduce Inflammation

Intermittent fasting is a fairly new dieting trend that is great for fat loss and helps reduce inflammation. For athletic individuals, intermittent fasting typically consists of 12-18 hours of fasting (through the night and next morning) followed by a period of 6-8 hours of nutrient consumption.

However, if your goal is simply to combat inflammation, you may also want to consider alternate day fasting. This approach consists of one day where you eat as you normally would be followed by the next day where you do a full fasting, consuming roughly 25% of your normal calories.

With normal eating patterns (no fasting), you expose your body to continued food and calorie intake throughout the day. In doing so, you up-regulate processes associated with growth, which may also result in inflammation.

When you fast, virtually the opposite happens, via a process called autophagy, where the body uses a significant portion of the up-regulating processes to aid in cellular repair and recycling of damaged cellular components.

Additionally, this fasting period allows the body to spend time to reduce inflammation, rather than working on digestion and growth.

3. Try a Ketogenic Diet to Reduce Inflammation

The ketogenic diet is also another popular diet that can accelerate fat loss, reduce inflammation and potentially provide anti-

cancer benefits

.

The ketogenic diet consists of consuming a large amount of your calories from healthy fats. Additionally, this is combined with a low to moderate amount of protein and a very low amount of carbohydrates to decrease insulin and boost ketone levels. The typical macro ratio is 75% fat, 20% protein and 5% carbs. Here’s an overview of the food groups:

Interestingly, a few studies have indicated that consuming refined carbohydrates in large amounts (especially combined with excess total calories) is strongly associated with increased inflammation.

Another explanation behind the ketogenic diet and its benefits for inflammation is that increasing ketones in the blood may actually be associated with a reduced inflammatory response. In essence, you are reducing pro-inflammatory foods while increasing intake of foods that help prevent inflammation.

4. Choose The Right Foods To Fight Inflammation

While a number of different lifestyle factors and even genetics can affect inflammation, one of the key causes of inflammation is your diet.

In contrast to how many people eat nowadays, a diet lower in processed carbs and high in antioxidants such as fruits/vegetables is possibly the number one best way to combat and even prevent inflammation.

Foods to combat and prevent inflammation include:

• Some Berries

• Avocados

• Mushrooms

• Green Tea

• Turmeric

• Dark Cocoa

Foods that cause inflammation and should be avoided:

• Foods high in added sugar

• Trans fats

• Refined Carbohydrates

• Extensively processed meat

By increasing anti-inflammatory foods while avoiding pro-inflammatory ones, you’ll be able to reduce potential inflammation just by altering daily food you are consuming.

5. Use Fish Oil / Omega-3 To Lower Inflammation

In addition to changing your diet and implementing an exercise program, I also suggest that you use one of the healthiest supplements and fats around, Omega-3 fish oil.

Omega-3 fatty acids are anti-inflammatory whereas Omega-6 fatty acids are pro-inflammatory. If we were to go back 100 years, the ratio of omega 3 to 6 fatty acids was pretty equal and managed to keep inflammatory levels in check. However, we now consume far too many omega 6 fatty acids and only a small amount of omega 3s.

By regularly consuming an Omega-3 fatty acid supplement such as fish oil, you might be able to offset this ratio and decrease the amount of inflammation in your body. Combined with reducing the processed foods listed above and adding in extra omega 3 via supplements you can improve your omega 3 to 6 ratios.

Other food sources include oily fish, walnuts and flaxseeds. Aim to consume around 3 – 5g of omega 3 per day; this can be from a combination of foods and supplements.   Click to Order

The Calcium Myth

Calcium may well be the world's most popular nutritional supplement.

 

Why is that?

 

The main reason for calcium's popularity is just good-old-fashioned Madison Avenue propaganda.

 

For four decades Americans have been the beneficiaries of major advertising campaigns from the dairy industry promoting milk as the ideal food, especially for growing children. And milk's calcium content has been its major selling point. Everyone has just come to accept "on good authority" that calcium is in a class by itself as a nutrient. In reality, despite its high profile, calcium is no more important, or any more likely to be deficient, than many other mineral nutrients.

 

In the last several years, much media hype has been directed to osteoporosis and calcium supplementation.

 

According to an article in Barrons, billions of calcium tablets were swallowed by a misguided American public in 1986 and 1987 in the name of strong bones. Scarcely a few grams is likely to have ever found its way into osseous tissue, as tons of chalk were flushed down millions of toilets.

 

Some nutrition "authority" came up with the notion that a person is in "calcium balance" if they swallow calcium at a rate faster than their bowels and kidneys can dump the stuff. That the gullible public bought it is no surprise. But that health care professionals are as easily duped is a sad state of affairs.

 

My Doctor said I need 1200 mgs of Calcium to prevent Osteoporosis!

 

There are a few little-known facts about osteoporosis that you must understand. The truth is physicians are not helping their osteoporosis patients at all -- even while throwing tons of calcium at their bones. The sad reality is that millions of patients are swallowing billions of calcium tablets, the calcium from which largely ends up being flushed down the toilet.

 

Precious little of this calcium ever finds its way into osteoporotic bone. If you want to really prevent osteoporosis then you must rid yourself of the misconceptions held by all the mass media and mis-informed physicians.

 

Learn these facts:

• Osteoporosis has almost nothing to do with a deficiency of calcium.
• There are several other minerals and trace minerals that are far more important than calcium in reversing osteoporosis.

 

You need to get a clear mental picture of what osteoporosis is -- and what it is not.

 

Osteoporosis is NOT a deficiency of calcium in the bone. There is a condition in which the bone structure is intact but there is just a deficiency of calcium -- this condition is called osteomalacia. Osteoporosis, on the other hand, is a breakdown in the matrix of the bone. The matrix is the fibrous protein backbone upon which mineralization occurs in osseous tissue.

 

Have you ever been on a construction site when they were pouring a concrete slab for a floor or a sidewalk? Do you remember seeing the metal rods or mesh onto which they poured the concrete? Well, if we make an analogy between a sidewalk and bone, you can think of the concrete as the minerals of the bone and the reinforcing rods as the bone matrix. What would happen to that sidewalk if they poured the concrete without reinforcing rods? In no time the concrete would crumble and fall apart.

 

What happens to an osteoporotic bone? With the deterioration of the fibrous protein matrix the minerals cannot be held. The bone gradually loses mineral density over time.

 

What happens when you take calcium supplement? Mostly nothing.

 

If the fibrous tissue of the bone couldn't hold the calcium it already had, neither can it hold the calcium supplement. The truth is that osteoporosis does involve calcium but no more than it involves any of the other minerals and trace minerals required for bone formation -- including silica, magnesium, manganese, copper, selenium, iodine, and phosphorus.

 

Each of these minerals is, qualitatively speaking, every bit as important as calcium in bone formation. One very interesting study showed that supplementing with trace minerals with no additional calcium cut the amount of bone loss in half in osteoporosis patients.

 

Are you beginning to realize that you need a little more than a calcium supplement to help your osteoporosis patients? 

 

Don't be fooled by the notion that you will develop osteoporosis without taking a truck-load of calcium. Remember, it takes having a healthy balance of all your essential mineral to prevent osteoporosis.

 

If you want to be confident that you are taking adequate amounts of the essential minerals and more important "absorbing" your minerals, then I encourage you to have an essential mineral blood test Essential Mineral Blood Test.

 

Having the knowledge that you are obtaining all the essential minerals will go a long way in preventing mineral-induced osteoporosis.

 

Reprinted with permission of Dr. Ron Grisanti and the Functional Medicine University