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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Juicing and Blending:
- I’ll explain why consuming juices and smoothies are important for happiness and health
- I’ll talk about the differences and the pros and cons between juicing and blending vegetables and fruits
- Finally, I’ll share tips on how to turn your juices and smoothies into a healing elixir
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Everyone knows that vegetables and fruits are packed-full of phytonutrients, plant chemicals that have powerful medicinal and healing effects in your body. Plant power fuels and nourishes animal life on this planet. Without the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and immune-boosting benefits you get from consuming plant matter it becomes very difficult, but not impossible, just hard to give your body the nutritional, energetical, and informational support it needs to thrive.
Unless you live in the North and South poles where you’re exposed to cold with its own unique healing powers and are consuming a lot of nutritionally dense rich blubberous animal fats and their offal then plant foods are going to be a necessity in your diet.
Juicing and blending your vegetables and fruits into juices and smoothies are an excellent and simple way to get more plant medicine into your diet.
When you juice you’re making juices and when you blend you’re making smoothies. Juicing is very different to blending, which makes juices very different to smoothies.
Plants are made up of mostly water much like your own body and also a carbohydrate known as fibre. Fibre is indigestible by your body’s digestive system. This fibre though it is the perfect food for the trillions of microorganisms that live in your gut, in your digestive tract and your gut microbiome plays a huge role in your digestion and in keeping your immune system running optimally.
Fibre is the difference between juicing vegetables and fruits into juices verses blending them into smoothies. When you juice, using a juicer obviously, what you’re doing is separating the fibrous plant material from the water and this water contains a majority of the phytonutrients. This leaves you with a very watery drink and a lot of fibre leftover. When you blend, using a blender obviously, what you’re doing here is pulverising, chopping, mashing 100% of the plant material fibre and all leaving you with a thick drink.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both juicing and blending.
The primary benefit to having juices and smoothies is that they are a very simple, nutritious and delicious way to increase your consumption of vegetables. Not everyone can manage to eat 3 to 9 cups of vegetables a day, but you can easily get 3 cups of a variety of vegetables in one juice or smoothie.
For example in my green smoothie that I have for dinner most nights I put in a quarter cup of parsley. You have probably seen a tiny pinch of parsley used mainly as a garnish and sure that tiny amount tastes okay, but can you imagine eating 4 tablespoons worth of chopped parsley? Maybe spread out evenly over a day, but for me I like getting my parsley dose in one hit and it’s so much easier and tastier mixed into a smoothie.
Now the main benefit to juicing and drinking juices is that they are an easily digested and quickly absorbed source of nutrition and energy. For people with digestive issues, energy issues, and for those who are severely malnourished drinking green juices will be easier on your body allowing your body to absorb more of the nutrients in that juice. It takes about 20 minutes for a juice to be fully digested and absorbed compared to a few hours for a full-blown meal.
Also because your body doesn’t need to spend a lot of energy digesting your juice it will have more energy that can be used elsewhere such as for repairing damaged tissues, increasing detoxification processes, and producing more neurotransmitters and sex hormones.
The thing is the main benefit to juicing, easy digestion and quick absorption, is also one of its drawbacks. But this all depends on what you’re actually juicing. Fruit juices are not healing drinks like green juices are. This is because of the high amount of fruit sugars present in fruits. Remember juicing extracts the water and the nutrients and separates them from the fibre and fibre helps slow down the release of sugar from your gut into your bloodstream. Without the fibre in the juice that sugar is going to hit your system very quick and very hard causing a massive insulin response which is something you don’t want to happen on a regular basis. Listen to the previous podcast I did on the blood sugar rollercoaster for more info on that.
Now you may be thinking to yourself, but it’s natural sugar from real food. Whether sugar is found naturally in real food or refined and added by the spoonful once sugar hits your digestive tract your body doesn’t know the difference. Sugar is sugar. Except if there’s fibre present then your body and your gut microorganisms will deal with that sugar differently. Not just fibre, but fats and acids help with this as well, but I’ll talk more about those later. This is why eating fruits in their whole intact form is a lot better for you than fruit juices and it doesn’t matter if the juices are bought from the shop or made fresh at home. Sugar without fibre is processed sugar to your body.
The other downside to drinking juices is that you cannot extract all the water and nutrients bound to the fibre. Even with the slowest spinning masticating juicers you will always be missing out on nutrients when you juice.
Final drawback to juicing I’ll mention is when you’re using a centrifugal juicer, one that spins at high-speed in the thousands of RPMs or revolutions per minute, a centrifugal juicer will suck in more oxygen which creates more oxidation or damage to the nutrients. Not only do high-speed juicers cause damage, but they also do not extract as much juice as slow masticating juicers do. Even if you do use a masticating juicer that can spin as low as 65 RPMs, as I talked about before you will not be able to extract all the water and nutrients from the fibre.
Moving onto smoothies.
The good thing about smoothies, besides being a simple way to increase your vegetable consumption, is that you are eating the whole food, the entire vegetable and fruit meaning you get the fibre, the nutrients, the water, the whole deal. You are not missing out on anything that may be lost when you juice. This means that even if you do add some fruit to your blended smoothies the release of sugar into your bloodstream will be a lot slower than fruit that’s been juiced.
There is a similar drawback to blending just as there is in juicing if your smoothie is made up mostly or 100% of fruit. For people with metabolic disorders meaning they are unable to digest and metabolise sugar properly due to hormonal imbalances, a fruit smoothie will be doing more harm than healing and can be just as bad as a fruit juice.
Last downside to blending again similar to juicing is that these blenders spin at super high speeds that will cause damage both physically by the blades and oxidatively by sucking in more oxygen.
Alright so how do you make healing juices and smoothies?
First things first – you got to reduce the sugar hit. When designing a juice or smoothie for healing, obviously you don’t want to add any additional sweeteners artificial or natural including maple syrup and honey due to sugars ability to upset your hormonal rhythms and to suppress your immune system.
When it comes to juices you want to be drinking healing green juices with little to no fruit added. I like using kale, cucumber, celery, and some ginger as a base for all my green juices. From here you can add whatever else you like. I recommend adding in some herbs as pound for pound herbs are more nutritionally dense than their larger plant cousins.
The only fruits I recommend for juicing are lemons, limes, kiwifruit, and a green apple. The acidity in lemon and lime help with your digestion and blood sugar balance. The gelatinous nature and compounds in kiwi also help with digestion and green apples are a bit of a compromise when it comes to taste. If you find green juices too bitter then adding one green apple including the apple seeds, especially the apple seeds, can help make the juice sweeter without being too heavy in fruit sugars, with the added bonus of having the low dose of cyanide that come from the apple seeds. No this cyanide isn’t going to kill you, but it’s a great cancer regulator. By that I mean cancer cells love sugar. So when you eat your juice (yes I said eat, not drink) a lot of the sugars will be picked up by cancer cells. The cyanide will piggyback on this metabolism and will also be taken up by those cancerous cells causing them to do what mainstream medicine fails to do – the cyanide causes cancerous cells to die.
Okay other vegetables to improve on taste while at the same time improve healing are carrots, beetroot, and orange kumara or orange sweet potato. The cool thing about the sweet potato is not only does it give you a bunch of beta-carotene and a touch of sweetness, but it also gives the juice a creamy texture. If a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, then a bit of lemon juice and sweet potato helps the green juice go down, no doubt about it.
To help lower the glycaemic response, the rate at which sugar gets released into your bloodstream, you can mix in some raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar with the mother. This means apple cider vinegar that hasn’t been pasteurised and that looks murky. The bottle should not be clear looking. You should see the mother, which is a collection of friendly bacteria and other beneficial compounds, you should see the mother at the bottom of the bottle so be sure to shake it up before mixing into your juice.
Another thing you want to do when consuming green juices is to eat some fat with your juice. I recommend eating a spoonful of coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil right before or right after your juice. There are a lot of fat-soluble micronutrients in vegetables and they need fat to be absorbed during digestion. So by eating some fat with your juice you can increase the amount of nutrients your body absorbs and assimilates.
Final tip for designing a very healing juice is that you must use a slow masticating horizontal juicer. A high-speed juicer is destroying a majority of the nutrients wasting a lot of that precious plant medicine. A vertical masticating juicer is much better and does more than just juice. It can make nut milks and sorbets as well. The difference between a vertical and horizontal juicer is that while the vertical is better for getting more juice out of fruits it doesn’t do a good job of extracting water and nutrients from non-starchy vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables. Now a horizontal masticating juicer can also make nut milks and sorbets like the vertical one and it is the best juicer for healing as it gets more medicine out of vegetables. If you have the cash go for a juicer with twin juicing abilities to get more out of your vegetables. Or you can simply put the fibre or leftover pulp back into your juicer a second time to get even more medicine out of the plants.
I do have a tip relating to juicing, but not to do with the juice itself. The pulp, the fibre that’s leftover, don’t toss this in the trash. Use it in your compost for your garden or dehydrate the fibre to make healthy crackers.
Remember the base of the green juice I mentioned earlier and play around and make your own recipes from there.
When it comes to healing green smoothies similar guidelines apply.
I use as a liquid base for all my green smoothies one cup of water, a pinch of sea salt, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, and a tablespoon of extra-virgin coconut oil. You can use any healthful animal or fruit fat you like and any liquid you like so long as there’s no added sweeteners and chemicals.
Coconut milk and unsweetened almond milk are okay substitutes for water, but even better than water (yes better than water if you can tolerate dairy that is) is raw yoghurt, specifically raw milk kefir. This gives your body more beneficial microorganisms or probiotics. But wait there’s more and something even better than water and kefir for healing (if you tolerate monosodium glutamate or MSG that is) and that’s bone broth made from bones from happy and healthy animals free to roam outdoors and eating their natural species appropriate diet.
“A good broth can raise the dead”
Is a South American proverb and by using bone broth in your healing green smoothie you will increase your body’s innate ability to heal exponentially. If you don’t have any bone broth handy you can always add a tablespoon or two of gelatine or collagen which have similar health benefits to bone broth including repairing your gut and improving joint and skin health.
You can add whatever non-starchy green-leafy cruciferous coloured sulphurous vegetables you want to your smoothie, but when it comes to fruit I would stick to berries and the juice of lemons or limes to keep your smoothie a healing drink. Celery I include as a base in all of my green smoothies. Celery helps normalise blood pressure and aids with digestion. Adding in herbs and spices is a must for the best tasting and healing green smoothie. Parsley and cinnamon are my go to herb and spice. Parsley is a great blood purifier and it reduces body odour and cinnamon will improve overall flavour and help stabilise blood sugar levels.
Oh and when I say green here, in terms of green juice or green smoothie, I don’t just mean literally green, I also mean a high vegetable low fruit drink. So even if your juice or smoothie isn’t the colour green it’s green in my book if there’s not high amounts of fruit and sugar in it.
A couple of taste and healing combinations I’ve found too good to be true when it comes to smoothies are avocado, a tiny amount of red onion, and coriander aka cilantro aka Chinese parsley. Think a guacamole drink. Also raw cacao powder with mint leaves. Yep a mint chocolate drink and when you add in an avocado to your mint chocolate you get a mint chocolate mousse. Mmm hmm, tasty!
Another taste enhancer, well really a texture enhancer is to add cacao nibs or coconut flakes to your smoothie near the end of blending to give it some crunch or sprinkle some crushed nuts or seeds on top of your drink after blending. And by the way peanuts are legumes, not nuts.
One final blending tip is to add a quarter to half a teaspoon of powdered vitamin C to your smoothie. This acts as an antioxidant and protects against oxidative damage that happens when you blend at high-speeds. Also it gives a little bit of tang to your smoothie.
If you really cannot do without fruits or starchy vegetables in your green drinks then you can still make these healing drinks by consuming them post workout. Your muscle cells are more sensitive to insulin after intense exercise so by timing the intake of your sweet green drink after a workout you reduce the impact the sugar will have on your body.
Final overall tip and this is an absolute requirement when it comes to turning a typical green drink into a healing elixir and I mentioned this earlier and that is you must eat your juice or smoothie, not drink it. Meaning you must chew the watery or thick liquid in your mouth for a few seconds, get your digestive enzyme containing saliva all up in that drink before you swallow. Chewing is one of the early stages of digestion, which I talked about back in episode 9, and without this crucial step you’re literally wasting most of the beneficial plant medicine in your drink as your body will quickly eliminate whatever isn’t covered in your digestive enzymes when it hits your digestive tract. Chewing your green drink will turn it into a more potent healing elixir. So no straws please. Drink it straight from the mug or cup.
I’ll put a couple of links to a juicer and blender I recommend in the blog post for this episode.
Look there’s no limits to how you make your juice or smoothie really. It’s up to you. Whatever floats your boat and makes your taste buds sing. However, there are limits to making your green drink a healing drink.
So remember keep the sugar low, add in some animal or fruit fats, move before you eat, and above all else listen to your body.
“If your green drink makes you feel stink or look green or pink, it’s time to rethink your green drink.”
Okay so which is better for healing? Juicing or blending? Well it depends on what you put in your drink, and also how and when you eat it.
Links and Resources
- WGP 040: Riding the Blood Sugar Roller Coaster to Hormone Hell
- WGP 009: Digestion – How to Eat Real Food
- Optimum Slow Juicer
- Optimum High Speed Vortex Blender
- Omega Horizontal Masticating Juicer
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring how Blood Sugar Affects Your Hormones:
- I’ll explain how hormones control your health
- I’ll talk about how blood sugar levels affect your health and control your hormones
- Finally, I’ll share a few holistic lifestyle tips on how to control your blood sugar levels and hormones naturally
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
There is so much information old and new about health and wellness that it can be extremely frustrating sorting through what he said and what she said and what science says just to find yourself back where you began – confused. If you ever find your head spinning and your ears smoking and your brain melting and your bodymind just about to explode because of all the contradictory information out there I suggest you keep it simple by focusing on one thing and this one thing to focus on would be your hormones.
Now do you know how to make a hormone? Okay that’s a setup for a bad joke so I won’t go there, but do you know what a hormone is?
Hormones are signalling molecules that traverse and tell different areas of your bodymind what’s happening in your environment both internal and external and how to respond and behave to environmental changes. Your hormones are affected by your lifestyle, by what and how you think, feel, do, sleep, breathe, move, drink and eat. All these things affect your hormones and your hormones affect all these things. I’ve spoken about hormones before and how they affect your health back in episode 23.
I’ll focus on three major hormones in this episode with regards to the effects of blood glucose levels. Insulin, cortisol, and melatonin.
Insulin is a very critical and important hormone needed for growth and repair as its job is to help get nutrients out of your bloodstream and into your cells. Keep in mind that when insulin is high your body’s ability to mobilise and burn fat for fuel comes to a standstill. Insulin does not have a circadian or daily rhythm like cortisol and melatonin do. Insulin’s release is determined by what, when, and how you eat. The insulin receptor sites on your cells, which is the place where insulin docks when it connects to your cells, these insulin receptors do have a circadian rhythm of their own where in the morning these sites are insulin-sensitive, screaming out to insulin to come and give some nutrients. Whereas in the evening these receptor sites are insulin-resistant where they play it cool and ignore insulin most of the time even when insulin is trying to dock on and deliver nutrients.
Cortisol is known as the stress hormone and when you perceive stress or when your body is physically under stress this is when cortisol gets released and is free to roam around your bloodstream where it will suppress your immune system, digestion, and your ability to burn fat, because if you’re stressed the last thing your body is worried about is healing and breaking down your last meal as it wants to move as fast as it can to get away from the stressor. In order to do this cortisol increases blood glucose levels and metabolism to provide more energy to your muscles. Cortisol has a circadian rhythm where it rises sharply in the morning to get you up and moving and then its levels begin to fall throughout the day where in the evening there’s only a tiny amount of cortisol in your bloodstream allowing you to relax and to get to sleep.
Melatonin is known as the sleep hormone, but it’s also a potent powerful antioxidant and it plays a major role in reducing cancer risk. Melatonin has a circadian rhythm, but opposite to cortisol where it’s low in the morning and then rises in the evening making you want to go to sleep as it helps in the repair process of your bodymind while you sleep.
Everything in life ebbs and flows goes up and down in rhythms and waves and this constant flow back and forth keeps everything in harmony and balance. However, when this flow is blocked, disrupted, disturbed, destroyed, taken to extremes even, if this flow is out of time and beat with its usual rhythm then you get disharmony and life that is out of balance.
When these 3 hormones and remember you do have many many more, when these 3 hormones alone get out of rhythm, out of balance, out of their hormonal bliss point or range of proper function this causes illness, sickness, disease, chronic symptoms, and I swear I must say this almost every episode about malfunction and being out of balance, but when these hormones are out of rhythm it can lead to the full-blown expression of cancer.
Now there are many lifestyle factors that can cause your hormones to go haywire, but I’m going to stick to talking about blood sugar levels in this episode.
There is about 4-5 grams or about a teaspoon of glucose, a sugar molecule, running through your entire bloodstream at any one time. This amount of glucose is the optimum amount required to keep your bodymind moving. If your blood glucose level gets too low you become hypoglycaemic causing dizziness, light-headedness, confusion, hunger, anger, sleep issues, and the shakes. If your blood glucose level gets too high you become hyperglycaemic causing headaches, blurry vision, frequent urination, a jumpy mind where you can’t focus, and making you wired, but tired.
Chronically low blood glucose levels can lead to seizures and nervous system damage. Chronically high blood glucose levels have far worse damaging effects. Remember sugar can be very sticky and when you have too much glucose in your blood for too long this causes those glucose molecules to start sticking to cells that they come into contact with. This process is called glycation and these newly created molecules are called Advanced Glycated End products or AGEs and the name is so appropriate because when these AGEs build up your cells are no longer able to function and do their jobs so your bodymind begins to breakdown from the inside out causing you to age rapidly. Depending on your genetics and environmental factors that affect your epigenetics these AGEs may cause excessive damage to your skin, to your nervous system, your gut, your brain, your sight, your heart, your joints, to any organ in your body.
This is why it’s very important that your insulin hormone is working in sync with other hormones and is functioning as it should. Remember insulin takes the glucose out of your bloodstream to the insulin receptor sites on your cells.
Okay so how does blood glucose levels affect insulin, cortisol, and melatonin?
Insulin and cortisol maintain proper levels of glucose in your blood. After you’ve eaten a well balanced meal insulin levels will rise slowly and eventually it will move that small amount of sugar into your cells. Many hours after the meal your blood glucose levels should still be steady and if they do become low a little bit of cortisol will be released to help raise your blood glucose back to where it should be. Not too bad a situation.
Imagine the ocean with a massive big wave coming in and after that initial big wave it’s all smaller waves from thereon out and you’ll have a good idea on what this looks like and how it affects your body. The initial big rush and then a nice calming effect hours after.
Now let’s say you eat an unbalanced meal high in sugar and carbohydrates, and maybe even high in protein as well, with varying amounts of fat. This meal would cause a massive rise, a sudden surge in insulin as there is now excessive amounts of glucose running around in your bloodstream. This huge spike in insulin will rapidly remove the glucose from your bloodstream and move it to your cells. Now this sudden shunt of glucose into your cells will cause a huge rebound effect where now you don’t have enough glucose in your blood. In fact it’s far too low because you had a lot of insulin doing what was supposed to do.
So with this low blood sugar you begin to feel hungry and angry also known as hangry and you have to eat, but what do you eat? More sugars in the form of snack foods, maybe crackers, chips, dried fruit, chocolate, cookies, but this just causes another huge rise in blood glucose levels causing another spike in insulin and here you are riding the blood sugar roller coaster up and down throughout the day.
Using the ocean analogy again imagine massive waves crashing into the shore followed by the sea being sucked out just like you get when a tsunami’s about to hit. And then what do you know another big wave comes crashing in again and then the sea gets sucked out again. And those crashes are causing damage to your bodymind.
Now even if you didn’t eat and managed to stop yourself from reaching for food your bodymind would then turn to cortisol and release cortisol to help get more glucose in your blood. This spike in cortisol causes too much glucose to circulate so guess what happens next? Insulin has to come out to play and get that blood glucose level down again. So you’ve just bought without even realising it another ticket on the BS roller coaster – the blood sugar roller coaster that is.
With regards to melatonin this hormone is affected by cortisol and cortisol is affected by both blood sugar levels and perceived stress. If cortisol is chronically high due to constant low blood glucose levels and persistent perceived stress then this will disrupt the circadian rhythms of both cortisol and melatonin, meaning you won’t get enough cortisol to get you out of bed in the morning. You feel sluggish and tired causing you to reach for a sugary carb-loaded breakfast like cereal, bagels, muffins, toast, fruit juice, or even coffee. And guess where this high carb meal is going to take you. Back on the BS roller coaster.
Cortisol which should be low in the evening will now rise slightly in the evening making it very difficult for you to relax, to calm down and to fall asleep. Now that melatonin’s circadian rhythm has been disrupted by the disrupted circadian rhythm of cortisol you won’t get that rise in the evening and this will lead to poor quality sleep, less repair and growth while you sleep, and above all else this gives you an increased risk of expressing cancer as there won’t be enough melatonin released at night to suppress the growth of tumours and to cause cancerous cells to self-destruct.
As you can see blood glucose levels have a major impact on your hormones and I’ve only talked about 3 of your hormones. There are other hormones that your blood glucose levels can affect. Hormones that control your immune system, your inflammatory response, your growth and repair, your sexual and reproductive functions, and even your appetite.
So how do you control your blood glucose, your blood sugar level to remain steady and stable and to not spike too high or to drop too low? How do you get off the BS roller coaster?
Well the first thing you gotta’ do is to stop eating processed and refined carbohydrates. Insulin release is mostly determined by glucose levels in the blood, sugar levels, carbohydrate levels. Now it’s not about eating less carbs, it’s about eating the right kinds of carbs more of the fibrous carbs like non-starchy vegetables and less of the starchy refined foods like chips, milk chocolate, candy, pastries, and for some people even mashed potatoes and starchy vegetables can be an issue, but the worst refined food, fake pretend food-like product is carbonated sugar water also known as fizzy and soda drinks.
“Lower your intake of carbs and you’ll lower your insulin levels and the subsequent cortisol release as well.”
Thing is when you do lower one fuel source you need to replace this with another. The other fuel source being fats. So as you reduce your carb intake look to increase your animal and fruit fat consumption by pouring more fats on your salads and vegetables. Remember vegetables are the perfect vehicles to eat more fat. Stay away from the industrial seed oils. No canola, corn, soya, any of those vegetable fats, they are even worse than soda.
Another way to control blood glucose levels is to move your body. Insulin receptor sites on your cells are more ready to receive insulin in the morning than in the evening, but when you move your body (doesn’t matter if it’s high or low intensity, even a good 30 minute walk will achieve this), by moving your body you increase the sensitivity of the insulin receptors on your muscle cells, but not your fat cells. Meaning movement will allow your muscles to take in more glucose than usual out of your blood. This of course means you have to move your body before you eat. However, walking after eating will also increase the uptake of glucose by your cells reducing blood glucose levels post-meal. So take a nice easy stroll not a jog or a sprint, just a nice walk after you’ve eaten.
Final tip is to manage how you perceive stress in your life. Cortisol should only be used in case of emergency as in when your life is on the line. Not just because your spouse put your cup in the wrong cupboard or because someone called you a poopy-head. Meditate, breathe, go outside for a walk anytime you feel anxious or tense. Remember cortisol is there to get you moving. If you’re sitting down being stressed out at work, or at home, or in the car your blood glucose levels are going to spike and you won’t be moving your body to deal with it. So learn what makes you feel relaxed. Listen to episode 3 for more details about how to manage yourself when it comes to perceiving stress.
Some additional resources. I recommend reading The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living this is by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney and also Primal Body, Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas. These two books delve more deeply into hormones, sugars, and how fats are your new friend in getting off the BS roller coaster.
Look I get it. Sugar is sweet and sugary foods taste oh so good, but these foods are not doing your bodymind, your hormones, and your health any favours.
“If you really feel the need to eat more sugar just stop for a second and remember that you are already sweet enough as it is.”
Links and Resources
- WGP 023: The Calorie Myth and Hormonal Harmony — The Truth to Reducing Body Fat
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
- The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living — Jeff Volek, Stephen Phinney
- Primal Body, Primal Mind — Nora Gedgaudas
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring the Best Ways to Measure Your Health:
- I’ll explain why tracking your health progress is crucial to reaching your health goals
- I’ll talk about how your body weight is really a poor measure of health
- Finally, I’ll give you 5 different health tracking techniques you can use to better manage your health
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Many people set health goals and fail to reach them, why? Two big reasons come to mind. First one is you need to know why you are doing what it is you are doing. Many people fail to reach health goals because they don’t have a big enough why, a big enough reason to push through plateaus and obstacles that will most definitely show up. Having a dream gives you that why; it gives you direction and inspiration to push through right to the end.
Second big reason people fail to meet health goals is that they do not track their health progress. Just as having a dream and setting a health goal is important in that it gives you direction and something to move toward and gives you that drive and that push, tracking your health progress is like signs and indicators that keep you on the best path toward your dream. Tracking and measuring your health is really important in that it gives you clear signs when things are working for you and when things are not.
If you suffer from chronic weight issues, whether you’re overweight or underweight, than the bathroom scale is probably your most prized and most despised earthly possession and why wouldn’t it be. You have been told that body weight is a very important indicator for health. Let explain how this is not 100% accurate.
Your body weight is made up of muscle, bone, fat, cartilage, bodily fluids of several types, and of course water. Whenever you stand on a scale and measure your weight you are weighing the totality of all of these things. This is where the Body Mass Index or BMI fails as a health measurement. The BMI is a measure of body fat (supposedly) based on your weight in relation to your height. If your BMI comes out at 18.5-24.9 you are labelled as having a normal weight. If its 25-29.9 you are labelled overweight. Over 30 and you’re obese.
Now I want you to think of the Terminator himself Arnold Schwarzenegger. During his bodybuilding days his body weight was around 107 kg or 235 lbs and he’s 6’2”. Arnold’s BMI in his prime works out to be 30.2. Meaning according to body weight and BMI that Conan, the Commando himself who helped Red Sonja save the world and who single-handedly took out the Predator is an obese fat hunk of human flesh! Remember over 30 is obese. Well of course that’s not true as Arnold’s body fat percentage when he was competing was only about 5-7% and he was in reality a mass of lean muscle and a chiselled piece of human art.
The bathroom scale is not giving you an accurate number for health. It’s giving you a number, but that number depends on so many things. Is that scale number made up of mostly muscle which is a lot more dense and heavier and healthier than fat? Or is it bone mass? Is that scale number mostly fat?
Imagine you spend a whole month off the sugars and junk food, you’ve quit smoking, and you’re now walking more and doing some resistance training. You start out at 70 kg and after 4 weeks you see on the scale the same 70 kg. Your initial reaction may be shock, horror, and confusion, but if you understand that getting off the sugars means you’re not holding onto as much water as before and that eating more real food and not smoking and doing some weight training can actually build muscle and bone and cause fat cells to empty out and die then maybe that number is a really good indication of how you’ve been doing that month. You’ve burnt off the fat and you’ve built up some bone and muscle.
This is why body weight is not a good measurement to track and using a scale is a waste of time really. It’s difficult to get a real sense of what’s happening with your body and with your health overall when you rely solely on that number you get from the scale.
Let me share 5 more effective ways to track your health progress. These techniques do not need any fancy equipment and are simple and easy to do and they will give you a more accurate measure of your health than a body weight number on a scale ever could.
First technique is measuring your waist-to-hip ratio. This gives you a better measurement of your body composition. All you need is a tape measure and a calculator. Note down your waist circumference (by putting the tape around your waist over your belly button) and your hips circumference (by measuring at the widest part of your hips). Divide your waist measurement by your hips and you will have your waist-to-hip ratio. An ideal number for men is 0.8 and for women is 0.7. Less than 0.95 for men and less than 0.8 for women puts you in the low risk disease group. Above these numbers, .95 and above for men, .8 and above for women and you move into the moderate and high risk disease groups.
Along this body composition line of thinking clothes are a great way to track progress. Are your pants or dresses starting to feel more loose or tight? If it’s tight is it due to more fat or more muscle tone? How to tell? Use a mirror and a camera. Your memory tends to be a bit biased and flaky when it comes to your body image so taking photos of your half-naked body in the mirror is a great objective assessment of your body composition over time. I suggest keeping the snaps to once a week. You can overdo tracking your health progress. We want to keep it nice and balanced so once a week taking your measurements will keep you from getting too neurotic.
Second way to track your health progress is by keeping a food and poop log. This is seriously important data you need to manage to keep on top of your health. By logging your meals, snacks, and drinks you will be able to see how well you’re keeping to your lifestyle eating plan. Remember diets are great, but healthy eating is part of your life not separate from it so healthy eating shouldn’t be something you feel forced into doing, but something that’s as natural as breathing or brushing your teeth every day. So you can use this food log data to help track down root causes of any health issues that come up.
By logging your, logs, poop that is, and using the Bristol Stool Chart as your tool to compare your stool you can get an overall picture of your lifestyle and how healthy it really is. Your body rarely lies and if your poops are in the constipated or diarrhoea ends of the Bristol Stool Chart that means some part of your lifestyle is not working for your body and needs to be isolated and changed. Luckily you’ve been tracking your food intake so you can use this as a tool during your stool analysis.
Okay third way to track your health is to see if you can hold a 60 second plank. A plank is a position you hold horizontally on the ground where you raise your body and rest on your toes and your forearms and elbows. If you can hold a plank using good form and I’ll put a link to a video in the blog post for this episode so you can see what that looks like, if you can hold a plank for 1 minute your core strength isn’t that bad.
This fourth technique may seem easy for you young’uns out there, but it’s still a valid test and may even show up some faulty movement patterns or stiff areas of your body that you didn’t even know existed. It’s called the Sitting-Rising Test or SRT for short. This test involves sitting and rising, duh, but using only your legs. You start off with 10 points, 5 points for sitting and 5 points for rising and each time you use another body part for support like your arms or knees you lose 1 point. The SRT is measuring many things including muscle strength, bone integrity, mobility, balance, and motor coordination, but ultimately it highlights your longevity. The goal is to keep the 10 points and sit and rise without assistance. This indicates a reduced risk of death from all causes, but don’t worry if you can’t get a perfect 10. Just note down your number today and once a week or month retest and see how well your lifestyle changes are working for you.
Fifth and final tracking technique is probably the most important – logging (journaling, writing down) your thoughts, feelings, and the results you’re getting in other areas of your life. So has your thinking and your ability to focus improved? Have your moods improved or are they more stable? Has your outlook on life improved or gotten worse. How are your family and work relationships? How are your career and financial goals coming along? Have these all improved?
The first four techniques that I mentioned even if they are all showing improvements in your health in the right direction this doesn’t mean all is well in your life. Your body composition and fitness is one part of your health and your health is one part of your life.
This final way of tracking your health progress, logging how you think and feel and how you’re performing in the world really shows whether looking good in the mirror and planking yourself for days on end is really working for you or not. I mean what’s the point of having 10% body fat and being able to deadlift a car if you are secretly depressed, broke, and you have no-one else to share your health with. Health is one key to a happy life, don’t forget that and this last tracking technique brings all aspects of your life together.
Millions and I mean millions of kilos and pounds of human tissue have been lost and found over the years due to people not having a dream and not having the ability to follow that dream the simplest way possible. By using these 5 health measurements you will steer yourself toward your health goals a whole lot easier and happier than if you were to use a single number you get from a scale as your only measurement.
Archimedes, an ancient Greek mathematician, he said:
“Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.”
Well the scale definitely isn’t the place to stand if you want to make effective long lasting change happen. So here’s to tossing out the scale and thinking that your health is tied to a single number. Your health is dependent on so much more and then some.
Links and Resources
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Food Anti-Nutrients:
- I’ll explain what anti-nutrients are
- I’ll talk about how anti-nutrients affect your body and how they affect the absorption of other nutrients
- I’ll list foods that are thought to be extremely nutritious, but really are extremely anti-nutritious
- Finally, I’ll share how to best prepare foods to lower their anti-nutrient content
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Everyone knows what a nutrient is – a substance that nourishes the mind, body, and soul. But have you heard of anti-nutrients? Anti-nutrients are plant compounds that prevent you, the plant predator, from stealing or absorbing nutrients from the plant.
Believe it or not plants and other living creatures were not put on this planet for the sole purpose of feeding the human race. Plants are sentient life forms, like you and me. They have their own life purpose with the dream of the continuation of their own species and since they don’t have legs to run away or claws to fight off predators they use chemicals to protect themselves. By using biological phytochemical warfare in the form of these anti-nutrients plants increase the chances of their own survival and the survival of their offspring. While at the same time causing a lot of health issues for their predators. So anti-nutrients are a plants innate defence mechanism. These anti-nutrients can negatively affect your health.
Examples of anti-nutrients used by plants include:
- Lectins
- Saponins
- Gluten
- Phytic acid or phytates and
- Enzyme inhibitors
Lectins have been shown to bind to insulin receptors on the walls of your cells. Insulin is the hormone responsible for putting nutrients into your cells and if you’ve had a carb rich meal high in lectins then all that sugar that’s now flowing in your bloodstream cannot be absorbed into your cells because lectin is blocking insulin from attaching to the cell. When sugar is blocked from getting into your cells it’s left to roam in your bloodstream and when it lingers there for far too long this causes damage and inflammation to your cells. Think of your arteries, think of your brain neurons, think of any part of your body where sugar attaches itself to the cells, it becomes glycated, glued to the cell and it causes malfunction and damage. We’ve all heard of diabetes and this is what happens when sugar is left to linger in your bloodstream.
Gluten, saponins and lectins can also cause irritation to your gut, to your intestines. Remember your gut is where most of your nutrient absorption takes place, but if your gut is stressed, inflamed, or compromised then you don’t absorb as much nutrition as you should. Your gut wall is like a net, like a mosquito net where it keeps the pesky bugs out, while letting the proper nutrients in. The problem is lectins, saponins and gluten they’re like mosquitos with little katana blades that cut through the net creating tiny little holes that allow them and other molecules such as undigested food particles and disease causing microorganisms, pathogens, to get into your body.
When you get undigested and unprocessed food particles, pathogens, and other foreign materials in your bloodstream your body mounts an immune response and this leads to inflammation and stress. Now if this stress is chronic and goes on for a long time, if your body has to fight off these pathogens and foreign material that shouldn’t be there day after day because your gut has become leaky this is how you get really sick and get diagnosed with autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Hashimoto’s, psoriasis, diabetes, and coeliac disease, just to name a few.
When it comes to phytic acid this will bind to minerals meaning that if a food is high in say zinc like pumpkin seeds, but that food is also high in phytic acid then when you eat pumpkin seeds for example you only absorb a small amount of zinc or a small amount of that mineral. This is due to most of the mineral being bound to the phytic acid creating a phytate molecule. So it doesn’t matter the nutrient content of a food if it has high phytic acid content, because that high phytic acid will reduce the amount of minerals you actually get to absorb.
Enzyme inhibitors are substances that stop digestive enzymes from doing their job of breaking down the food you eat. In the case of a trypsin inhibitor it is a protease inhibitor meaning it prevents the breakdown of protein. So if you were to eat a nice chicken salad with green leafy vegetables and pumpkin seeds you may be thinking you’re getting a lot of protein from the chicken and vitamins and minerals from the vegetables. But the trypsin inhibitors and phytates that come from the plant foods will actually bind up a lot of those minerals and they will prevent you from fully digesting and breaking down that protein. Plus the saponins, lectins, and gluten, if it had croutons in the salad, will be tearing up your gut making even less nutrition available for absorption while allowing bad stuff to get directly into your bloodstream. You are getting less nutrition than you think because of these anti-nutrients.
But can you blame plants for these anti-nutrients? If I was a plant I’d make sure predators suffered the consequences too.
I’ll list the main types of foods that are full of nutrients so are thought to be very nutritious and good for you, but actually are also jammed packed and full of anti-nutrients and so turn out to be not that healthy at all. This includes:
- Grains (both gluten-free like rice and corn and gluten containing grains)
- Legumes (beans including soy and peanuts)
- Nuts and
- Seeds
What do all of these have in common, these 4 food groups? Technically these are all seeds of plants. They are the next generation and they will not go down without a fight hence the high anti-nutrient content of these foods. Yes you can still find anti-nutrients in whole vegetables and fruits, but seeds have the highest amounts.
It is true that seeds are full of nutrients and they need to be because within this one seed is an entire plant, but these nutrients are not highly available or absorbable, another way to say it is bioavailable due to the high anti-nutrient content. Remember theses seeds need a way to protect themselves. So even though for 100 g of pumpkin seeds you will see 7.5 mg of zinc in the nutrition profile, you may only get 50% or even less of that zinc because it’s bound to the phytic acid in the pumpkin seed. Same with whole grains and legumes which are full of vitamins and minerals. But they’re also full of gluten, saponins, and lectins and a lot of sugar and starch and excessive intake of all of these will cause gut irritation leading to low vitamin and mineral uptake.
So these nutritious seeds turn out to be more unhealthy than healthy and not just because you absorb less, but also because they cause gut inflammation and stress throughout your entire body.
So how do you make the nutrients in these seeds more bioavailable and also reduce the anti-nutrients and the stress and the inflammation they cause? By using ancestral traditional food preparation methods, that’s how. Yes you have to go back in time in order to improve your future.
Our human ancestors through trial and error figured out that by soaking and sprouting and fermenting grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds they could reduce the anti-nutrient content while at the same time increase the bioavailability of other nutrients. Not only that, but soaking and sprouting and fermenting seeds reduces gut stress by making them a lot more digestible and easier on your stomach.
General soaking and fermenting guidelines are to use filtered water with some natural salt or whey depending on what you’re soaking and letting grains and legumes soak or ferment for 12 to 24 hours and nuts and seeds to soak from 4-144 hours. After soaking you can then dehydrate, lightly roast dry, or cook the seeds. Seeds left to soak for a long time will eventually begin to sprout releasing all that stored up nutrition to feed the growing embryo. Each seed (grains, legumes, nuts) has a different preparation method, so I’m not going to explain every single method in this podcast, but I will put a bunch of links to more information on how to soak and sprout seeds and ferment seeds in the blog post for this episode.
A very awesome book about real food nutrition and traditional cooking methods is Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. Here’s a passage from that book:
“Traditional societies usually soak or ferment their grains before eating them, processes that neutralize phytates and enzyme inhibitors and, in effect, predigest grains so that all their nutrients are more available. Sprouting, overnight soaking and old-fashioned sour leavening can accomplish this important predigestion process in our own kitchen.”
So you can buy sprouted and fermented breads in the store by looking for sprouted or sourdough breads. Nuts and seeds that have been soaked or sprouted are also called activated nuts and seeds, because this process activates the germination process for growth so look for soaked, sprouted, or activated nuts and seeds on labels. Of course the best grains, legumes, nuts and seeds are raw seeds that you’ve activated at home yourself.
Yes anti-nutrients have their bad side, but they do have a few benefits as well. So the goal isn’t to eat an anti-nutrient ever. The goal is to eat more nutrients compared to anti-nutrients and you do this by properly preparing seeds before you eat them.
Here’s to seed activation.
Links and Resources
- SPROUTING VS SOURING VS SOAKING OF GRAINS — CulturesForHealth.com
- YOUR GUIDE TO SOAKING & SPROUTING WHOLE GRAINS, BEANS, NUTS, & SEEDS — WeedEmAndReap.com
- Nourishing Traditions — Sally Fallon and Mary Enig
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Mindsight – Daniel J. Siegel MD
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This groundbreaking book, from one of the global innovators in the integration of brain science with psychotherapy, offers an extraordinary guide to the practice of “mindsight,” the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence. From anxiety to depression and feelings of shame and inadequacy, from mood swings to addictions, OCD, and traumatic memories, most of us have a mental “trap” that causes recurring conflict in our lives and relationships. Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, shows us how to use mindsight to escape these traps. Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients free themselves from obstacles blocking their happiness. By cultivating mindsight, all of us can effect positive, lasting changes in our brains—and our lives. A book as inspiring as it is profound, Mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.
The Fourfold Path to Healing – Thomas S. Cowan MD, Sally Fallon, Jaimen McMillan
(Buy from Amazon; Buy from The Book Depository)
The Fourfold Path to Healing merges the wisdom of traditional societies, the most modern findings of western medicine and the esoteric teaching of the ancients. The fourfold approach includes: Nutrition using nutrient-dense traditional foods; therapeutics through a wide range of nontoxic remedies; Movement to heal and strengthen the emotions; and meditation to develop your powers of objective thought.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Diet:
- I’ll explain why dieting doesn’t always equal health
- I’ll talk about the two main types of diets that all other diets can be grouped under
- I’ll talk about the one true diet that I believe everybody should be on
- Finally I’ll highlight a few techniques that you can use to fine tune your real food nutrition
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Diet; dieting; to diet; to be on a diet; and for some people don’t even mention the ‘D’ word. For anyone who has dealt with body weight issues hearing the word diet brings up a lot of other words:
- Restrictive
- Tasteless
- Boring
- Struggle
- Willpower
- Low energy
- Anger
- Frustration
- Pain
Notice how there’s no mention here of an improvement in health.
Diets are mainly used to reduce your weight and yes all diets will change your weight and modify your body composition, short-term. It doesn’t matter what diet you go on you will lose both muscle and fat in the first few weeks.
The problem with any diet when used for far too long, way past its due by date, is that you may end up losing a lot more healthy muscle than non-healthy fat and even more importantly you will eventually create havoc, chaos, and a huge imbalance in your hunger, satiety, stress, growth, and reproductive hormones. Meaning that if you follow a diet purely to reduce your weight and to change how you look that diet will work in the here and now, but in 6 months or 6 years this same diet will cause a cascade of health problems making you a very sick, sad, and surly person to be around.
The reason for this is because the main type of diet people use to reduce their weight and to look good in the mirror is a limiting diet. Anytime you limit the foods you eat you run the risk of missing out on vital nutrients. That is nutrition your body and mind need for vitality. Long-term deficiencies in nutrients may make you look good in the mirror, but it’s the hormonal havoc that these nutritional deficiencies cause that is at the root cause of many diseases including cancer.
It’s not just food you limit in these body image diets, but anytime you limit your way of thinking and feelings toward food and your relationship with food you limit your entire human experience. Your mindset, which was once open to the many possibilities in life, is now closed off to a collection of experiences that life has to offer. Limiting your way of being can cause a lot of distress and this emotional and mental stress will change your physiology creating real physical stress in your body. Remember the body and mind are one and the same, the bodymind.
I’ve mentioned one type of diet already, a limited diet where you limit your eating and your way of being to achieve a body image goal. There is a different type of diet and what differentiates this diet from a limited diet is that it doesn’t restrict foods in the same sense because it’s not based on looking good, but based on thinking, feeling, and doing good and this other type of diet accomplishes this goal through healing. This healing diet I call a limitless diet.
A limitless diet is followed for health and life reasons and not for body image reasons alone. The reason this type of diet is limitless and not limiting is because your why is much bigger than just looking good in the mirror. Your why could be to overcome a disease like cancer, to have more energy to play with your family and to get work done, or to be able to think clearly in order to start and finish a personal, a professional, or a community project you’ve been thinking about for a long time.
When your why for following a diet is bigger than just how you look in the mirror than the foods you restrict yourself to eating no longer seem so, restrictive. Whereas a limiting diet is about scarcity where you feel like you lose and miss out on foods in order to lose the weight, a limitless diet is all about abundance and where you feel awesome dropping the foods that will stop you from realising and sharing that abundance.
What I’m saying here is that no matter the diet whether you go on a medical or detox or paleo or vegan or vegetarian or low calorie or low carb or low fat or a crash diet or even a religious diet if it’s to look good naked and nothing else you will feel limited, restricted, and neglected in every ounce of your being. However, if you use this diet to improve your health, to improve your life and the health and life of other people you will never feel like you’re missing out and you will be nothing but thankful for having a way of eating that is helping you make a difference in the world.
Now that’s not to say that wanting to look a certain way is wrong. Far from it. Being a vein person is a great motivator and inspirer for change.
What I’m saying is that dieting purely for looks is a lot more difficult and harder to stick to than when you’re dieting for other reasons. Hence the statistic that 95% of dieters regain all of their lost weight and then some. So unless you’re one of the 5% who can live through a limited period of your life thinking in a limited mindset you may want to rethink why you’re following a particular diet.
A limited diet is very difficult to integrate into your life, a limitless diet on the other hand doesn’t need integration as it becomes a part of your life and following it becomes a part of who you are and your lifestyle.
Now there is actually one diet that trumps every single other diet out there. This diet is one diet that I believe every person should be following and the cool part about this diet is even if you’re on it just to look good naked you won’t feel limited in any way, shape, or form. This one diet for all is a limitless lifestyle diet no matter your reasons for choosing it.
There’s not really a name for this diet because there’s no one-size-fits-all approach with it. There’s no prescribed food list of restricted and allowed foods. There’s no specific end to this diet either. Like I said it’s a limitless lifestyle diet so it only ends when you end.
This diet is many other things. It’s:
- Original
- Individual
- Adaptable
- Flexible
- Customisable
- Attainable
- Relatable
- Educational
- Delectable
- Flavourful
- Nutritional
- Healthful and
- Spiritual
You will definitely find out who you are on this diet.
This diet is unique to your physical, sexual, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs and no other person on this planet will be eating the same foods, at the same times of day, in the same portion sizes to you even though both of you are on this one single diet. Same goes for twins. Just because you can eat broccoli with tonnes of butter with a nice piece of steak at this point in your life doesn’t necessarily mean your identical twin can eat the same way.
Okay so now I’m just trying to think how to describe a diet that is different for each person.
The whole point of this diet is to find the right foods that work for you and the wrong foods that don’t work for you and by work for you I mean after you eat a certain food does it make you look, feel, and perform better in life and if you continue to eat this food overtime is it helping to improve your financial and health status, is it improving your relationships, and most importantly is this food making you a happy, joyful, pleasurable, and peaceful human being full of vitality, love, and laughter.
So I guess you could call this diet a diet of discovery or a process diet because as time goes on you will be fine tuning and figuring out the foods that you should be eating and shouldn’t be eating in this moment. On this diet you will find some foods that worked for you 6 months ago may no longer be serving you now and the right foods that are working for you now in a few years time may turn out to be the wrong foods for you. This diet is constantly changing and evolving and it’s the process that you focus on while eating this way, not some far off distant goal or outcome.
To begin this unique individualised diet it must start with real food. I’ve talked about real foods compared to fake foods in podcast number seven and eight so listen to those for more detail, but basically if it came from a man-made packet instead of a nature-based pasture it’s not real food.
So starting with real food the next step is to find out what foods are creating a low-level inflammatory, immune, and stress reaction in your body and which foods aren’t.
One simple way of doing this is by tracking your heart rate. Fifteen minutes before eating the food you’re testing measure your resting heart rate for 60 seconds to get your heart beats per minute. After finishing the food wait another 15 minutes before measuring your heart rate again. Be sure to keep yourself in a relaxed state during the entire process. If your heart rate increased up to 9 beats per minute retest the food. You really want no increase at all in your heart rate, but anything under 5 beats per minute is fine. If your heart rate increased by at least 10 beats per minute then your body is reacting to that food and it’s best not to eat that food for another 3 to 6 months before retesting it again.
One of the oldest methods to find out if your body is reacting to a food in a negative way is by following a strict elimination provocation diet. This diet integrates well with your unique diet that you are working on discovering as they both have the same basic idea. Eat the foods that work for you and don’t eat the foods that don’t work for you. Plus both diets keep you in a limitless mindset as they’re both about discovering your own unique diet. The main difference being that at the very beginning of your new way of eating with an Elimination Provocation diet you cut down on the highest allergenic foods and other foods that a lot of people are intolerant and sensitive to. The other difference is that most people do an EP diet once and believe that’s how they should be eating from now on until forever. Whereas with the unique diet that your customising for your own needs you are continually improving and testing and removing what works and what doesn’t work over your lifetime.
So after 90 days on the EP diet you begin introducing one at a time 4 days apart a new food and keep track of any changes in your bodymind. If you react badly keep that food at bay for another 3 to 6 months before reintroducing it again. If you respond positively that food stays in your diet until the next time you want to test if it’s working for you or not.
Check out The Elimination Diet book by Tom Malterre and Alissa Segersten for more detailed information including food elimination introduction lists, meal plans, and recipes.
Another method you can use to find out if the foods you’re eating are making your bodymind happy or not is by muscle testing. Muscle testing, also known as applied kinesiology, is based on the energetic being of your body and is used to diagnose and treat many health issues by testing how your body reacts to certain objects or questions. With regards to foods you could hold a food with one hand close to your chest and heart and hold up your other arm keeping it straight. You would get someone else to press down on your extended arm and if you’re able to keep your arm straight and in place then that food would be acceptable to eat. If your extended arm becomes weak and drops down then that food should not be eaten at this time.
Another thing you’ll need to discover is how much fats, proteins, and carbohydrates you should be eating, that is what is your ideal macronutrient ratio. One way to find this out is by keeping a body language log. You want to track your satisfaction, energy, and mood levels after each meal. Regarding satisfaction one thing to keep an eye on is whether you’re still hungry or crave sweets after a meal. If you’re still hungry then you may have had too many carbs. If you’re craving sweets than maybe you didn’t have enough carbs or you had too much fat and protein. When it comes to energy levels if it didn’t get noticeably better after a meal you probably had too much fat and protein and if you feel absolutely wiped out and ready for a nap that’s a sign of too many carbs. Finally, with your mood if you’re anxious or irritable than you most likely had too much sugar and you’re crashing after the meal.
For more information on real food and for a body language log that you can use to track your macronutrients I highly recommend Sean Croxton’s eBook The Dark Side of Fat Loss. It talks about real food and other holistic ways of improving your health and includes a really nice one page body language log that’s intuitive and simple to use.
Remember:
“There’s no one true diet for all.”
So the next time someone says there is and that these are the only foods you should be eating for the rest of your life and they don’t allow for flexibility and adaptability and growth, well don’t accept it blindly. It doesn’t mean you can’t use restricted diets in limitless ways. It just means these diets should only be used for short periods of time before moving onto the next one.
But instead of going on a diet why not make your diet a part of your lifestyle. Because there is one true dieting process for all and with heart rate monitoring, elimination diets, muscle testing, and body language logs you will find out and realise for yourself the one true diet that works for you and that makes you happy, healthy, whole, and complete. Forever.
Amen!
Links and Resources
- WGP 007: Food Nutrition – What is Real Food?
- WGP 008: A Real Food Manifesto
- The Elimination Die — Tom Malterre, Alissa Segersten
- The Dark Side of Fat Loss — Sean Croxton
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring How to get Yourself Back on a Holistic Track after Overindulging on Food:
- I’ll explain how overeating can be a gateway to many other dream-negating bad habits
- I’ll talk about some of the causes for overeating
- Finally I’ll share five tips that’ll help get your bodymind back into a holistic way of being after an episode of overeating
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Overeating, binging, and overindulging on food are habits that other animals don’t seem to exhibit. The human animal, however, practises this habitual way of eating to the extreme a lot more than it should.
When you binge eat there’s the possibility of thinking that since you’re already doing something that’s not exactly health-promoting you may as well do some other non-healthy things like indulge in some alcohol, sloth around all day, or just think horrible negative thoughts like how sucky it is to be you right now for not having the willpower to just say no to food.
As a kid I would binge eat on cookies or crackers and hot chocolate (yummy) and I still have binge eating episodes to this day. I know for myself that once I start going down the binge eating path my return to the path of a healthy way of eating can be a long and difficult one as other healthy habits fall by the wayside as well. My sleeping pattern would go all over the place, I’d forget (on purpose) about keeping up with my usual movement practise, and I’d find my thoughts heading down a dark corridor.
One reason for overeating is not being mindful and conscious of your own actions.
I know many people who literally eat like ducks. They barely chew their food and end up swallowing big portions of food down their gullets. I know many people like this because I used to be one. You can only see what you have within you, so that’s why it’s easy for me to see this because I definitely had this mindless habit for a long time. Back in the day I was one of the fastest eaters on the planet (true story) and I never took the time to chew my food, you know to just enjoy the taste. I was never fully involved in the whole eating process. I guess you could say I thought eating was a waste of time and I had better things to do. Problem is because I ate so fast I wasn’t giving my body the proper signals that I’ve eaten and it’s time to stop now. So I would have seconds, thirds, and all too often a fourth serving. Looking back at it now all I can think is ‘man I really was a pig… or a duck.
Another reason for binge eating is emotional.
Feeling alone or hurt. Feeling like you don’t have a purpose and don’t know who you are and what you want or living a life that you really aren’t in love with. So loneliness, confusion, and fear of life itself will cause many people to turn to food for comfort and this can turn into a long period of binge eating.
Last reason I’ll give for overindulging on food is the season.
What I’m talking about here are special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and holidays, all of these are perfect excuses to get off the health train and on the indulgence express (my kind of ride). I mean who doesn’t love pumpkin pies, fruit salads with ice cream, cakes, and my personal favourite homemade smoked salmon. Smoked salmon, you may be thinking how is that unhealthy? Well let me tell you how. If you can sit down and eat half a whole salmon including the head in less than 20 minutes that my friend is overindulging of the highest degree. Remember:
“Too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.”
All right so let’s get into five ways you can get yourself back to living a holistic healthy lifestyle after an episode of overeating.
So the day after your however-long binge first thing you want to do is to get back in touch with your dream. What is your dream? Do you even have a dream? Have you written it down with specific goals and outlined the steps you need to take to get you there? Have you got clear personal core values on when to say yes or no when it comes to your dream? If you haven’t got a dream with clear goals and core values then you’re living life with no real direction.
A dream is your compass, your GPS that keeps you on your chosen path.
As the saying goes:
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
So unless your dream is to gain massive amounts of weight or to outdo everyone at a buffet meal or to win an all-you-can-eat contest then overeating, binging, and overindulging on food are not dream-affirmative actions. Listen to the Dream Building podcast I did for more information on using dreams to help guide your holistic lifestyle, it’s podcast number 14.
Second tip: get outdoors. Strip to the bare essentials (not fully naked, but if you can get fully naked more power to you) and get some sunshine on your skin and ground yourself to the Earth by going barefoot on the grass, soil, or sand. Connecting with nature will help improve your mood, boost your immune system, and help reduce the inflammation caused by the excessive amounts of energy you’ve been putting into your body.
Third tip is to do a little fasting. Digestion is a 4-6 hour process and your body has to focus a lot of attention on this very important function. Nutrients and energy will be diverted to your stomach and intestines to ensure proper digestion takes place, but this means other functions in your body will be somewhat affected.
One process that happens in your cells only during times your body isn’t digesting and when you haven’t eaten in a long time is called autophagy. Autophagy is when cells destroy, clear out, and recycle old, damaged, and unused proteins. This makes for a healthier, cleaner internal environment for the cell giving it longevity and maintaining its ability to function at an optimal level. By fasting you give your cells the chance to clear out the junk and to repair or get rid of what’s not working.
Now there are many different ways to fast. You could do a 24 hour fast once or twice a week, a 48 hour water fast, 3 day fruit fast, couple weeks of juice fasting, or what I normally practise intermittent fasting where you fast between 12-18 hours and eat only within a certain feeding window of 12-6 hours.
Right now I’m doing a 12 hour fast with a 12 hour feeding window. So I usually finish eating dinner before 7 and don’t have breakfast until 7 the next morning.
Fourth tip is to move at high intensities. High intensity movement patterns include lifting heavy (at least 80% your 1 rep maximum) and high intensity interval training where you go all out for a certain amount of time and then rest for a certain amount of time and you repeat this over and over.
High intensity training helps maintain and build lean muscle mass, which is a metabolically rich part of your body, meaning the more muscle you have the more energy you actually need to maintain it. HIT also keeps your metabolism raised long after the workout, up to 48 hours in some cases, allowing your body to burn energy and fat even while you’re at rest. HIT compared to longer endurance activities stops your stress hormone cortisol from staying too high for too long, which is exactly what you want as cortisol is catabolic, meaning it breaks things down including muscle tissue. Last benefit to high intensity workouts is that they can be extremely short. So instead of going for an hour long run you could do sprints on a spin bike with the whole workout lasting no more than 20 minutes and turn yourself into a metabolic beast.
Last tip to getting yourself back on track after an episode of binge eating is to get back to eating real food. Stick to whole foods from Mother Nature and skip the packaged and processed junk from Father Industry. If for one week you can lower your starch and fruit intake that’d be even better.
Remember:
“Real food is real medicine.”
And by eating real food you’re giving your body exactly what it needs to heal and repair itself. Especially important after a period of feeding it an excessive amount of energy or significant amounts of fake pretend food-like products.
So follow your dream, connect with nature, do a little fasting, do intense movements, and just eat real food and in no time you’ll be back on track to living your dream and living a holistic healthy lifestyle.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Vitamin D and Smart Sun Exposure:
- I’ll explain the importance of Vitamin D and how it is made
- I’ll talk about how conventional mainstream sun safety advice and practises are causing more harm than good
- Finally I’ll give tips on how to practise smart sex (that’s smart Sun EXposure) and how to optimise your vitamin D levels so you can continue to live a happy, healthy, and holistic life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
In the previous podcast I talked about some very important hormones that you needed to know about. By living a holistic lifestyle you can keep these hormones in a beautiful state of harmony and balance which in turn keep you and your body happy, healthy, and in harmony and balance as well.
One hormone I didn’t mention in the last podcast was vitamin D. I didn’t talk about vitamin D in the previous show because I believe that no matter the chaos in your physical, emotional, and mental body’s vitamin D has the power to bring all of you back to centre, in harmony, in balance, in peace and one with the universe. Yeah I know sounds pretty hippy dippy and I’ll talk more about this at the end of this, but for now let me talk more about vitamin D.
First up vitamin D has been given just the worst name ever because it isn’t a vitamin at all. A vitamin is an organic compound that your body cannot make and vitamin D is created by your body when your skin gets exposed to the sun. Technically vitamin D is a fat-soluble secosteroid so it’s a steroid hormone much like cortisone and testosterone, but let’s not get too technical here shall we.
I like to call vitamin D the sun hormone… sounds nice right.
The sun hormone controls the expression of over 1000 genes in your body meaning it can turn on or off about 5% of your entire genetic code. Whoa! The sun hormone also reduces inflammation, boosts your immune system, destroys disease, prevents tumours, fights cancer, strengthens your bones, is a powerful antioxidant, improves mood, enhances and activates the actions of the nutrients you eat, so overall vitamin D (the sun hormone) helps you live a longer quality of life.
Right now there is a worldwide deficiency in vitamin D levels in the human population. Even those in equatorial regions are vitamin D deficient can you believe it.
On top of that skin cancer rates continue to rise despite people following national health guidelines for sun safety.
In New Zealand where I live we have the SunSmart campaign where we are advised to slip on a long-sleeved shirt and into the shade, slop on copious amounts of high sun protection factor (SPF) broad spectrum sunscreen, slap on a wide brimmed hat, and wrap on some wrap-around sunnies (that’s sunglasses for you non-local folk). So Slip, Slop, Slap, and Wrap… pretty catchy right.
This campaign also recommends the following:
- During September to April (the warmer months of the year) we should be sun protected between the hours of 10a-4p, and in the early morning and late afternoon have some form of outdoor activity for 30 minutes without sun protection
- During May to August (the cooler months of the year) we should be outdoors for 30 minutes with face, arms, and hands exposed in the hours around noon
Now unfortunately it is this exact misinformation that is leading to both decreased levels of vitamin D and increased levels of skin cancer in the human population.
How so?
Well first I’ll talk about how your body actually makes vitamin D.
Okay I know I said earlier that I didn’t want to get too technical, but the way the human body makes this potent healthful hormone from sunlight or light energy is pretty cool.
When UVB rays from the sun hit your skin they react with a precursor molecule in your skin called 7-dehydrocholesterol to create vitamin D3. Now you can find this particular form of vitamin D in supplements. When this D3 is released from your skin into your bloodstream it travels to your liver where it’s converted to 25-hydroxyvitamin D3. 25-hydryoxyvitamin D3 then gets transported to your kidneys where it’s activated into the steroid hormone form that your body actually uses. This active form of vitamin D is called 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 and it’s this form of the sun hormone that regulates gene expression and makes you a happy and healthy human.
Now the sun gives off a few different ultra violet rays, but its UVA and UVB that are relevant here. Here are some details about these two different spectrums of sunlight:
- UVA does not get absorbed by the ozone layer and reaches the Earth’s surface year round. UVB is mostly absorbed by the ozone layer and only reaches the Earth’s surface during summer and the warmer months of the year.
- UVA penetrates a few layers into the skin. UVB does not.
- UVA causes skin to thicken and age, but not burn. UVB does the opposite. It burns, but does not thicken or age skin.
- UVA damages melanin-producing cells (melanin gives colour to your skin and acts as an antioxidant, meaning melanin protects against skin cancer). UVB promotes melanin production.
- UVA overexposure leads to malignant melanoma (the aggressive type of skin cancer). UVB overexposure leads to non-melanoma skin cancer (the least dangerous of skin cancers).
- UVA passes through glass. UVB does not.
- UVA will not produce vitamin D. UVB will.
Also take note that due to the fact that most of the UVB rays get absorbed by the ozone layer the angle of the sun to the Earth will determine the amount of UVB that actually hits the Earth’s surface. So during the summer and warmer months of the year when the sun is high between 10a and 4p there will be full UVB exposure on the Earth’s surface, as well as UVA of course. However, in the winter months when the sun is low on the horizon then very little to no UVB penetrates the ozone layer, but there’s still full UVA exposure on the Earth’s surface.
So if you’re living north and south of the 33rd parallels of the Earth’s latitude then you’re not getting any UVB during the cooler months of the year, but you’re getting plenty of UVA.
Okay enough about sunrays. I want to talk about sunscreens now.
Sunscreens are just the icing on the proverbial cake of misinformation. They are meant to protect the skin of the human race, but as it turns out most commercial sunscreens or sunblocks are nothing but a big disgrace.
Your skin can also be called your second mouth as approximately 60-70% of what you put on your skin gets absorbed directly into your bloodstream – bypassing your liver and its detoxifying processes. What goes on your skin goes straight to your blood.
The majority of sunscreens sold in supermarkets and pharmacies today are made with toxic chemicals that will actually increase your chances of getting skin and other cancers. These chemicals include:
- Retinol
- Retinyl palmitate
- OMC or octyl methaxycinnamate
- Octocrylene
- Avobenzone
- Oxybenzone
- Homosalate
- Octinoxate and
- Octisalate
Add to this fact that many sunscreen SPF factors are based on blocking UVB exclusively meaning you get no vitamin D producing rays, but plenty of the UVA cancer causing rays. As for the broad spectrum sunscreens, which block both UVA and UVB, most of them don’t block both rays evenly. Instead it’s more 67-95% of UVB being blocked compared to only 5-33% of UVA.
Let me put it all together then and summarise how modern living, national sun safety guidelines, and sunscreen care products create vitamin D deficiency and skin cancer.
You work indoors most of the day missing out on vitamin D production. Even worse you sit next to windows that are not UV-rated thinking that you’re getting a daily dose of sunshine. Problem is because glass filters out UVB and not UVA it’s more of a daily dose of cancer that you’re getting.
When you’re outside you’re told to cover up during the hottest part of the day which is also the time that UVB penetrates and gets through the ozone layer to the Earth’s surface. Then when it’s cooler you uncover yourself a bit more, but there’s no longer any UVB and only UVA hits your skin.
You use toxic chemical heavy sunscreens and sunblocks that not only block more UVB than UVA, but they also block your body’s ability to function 100% by overtaxing your innate detoxification system, meaning they overload your liver and this leaves the door wide open to diseases. Plus the chemicals themselves (the ones I mentioned before) they are carcinogenic, meaning they cause the overgrowth of cancer cells in your body.
So here you have two sources of cancer. You get cancer externally via UVA rays penetrating deep into your skin and into your cells and you can get cancer internally from the toxic chemicals used in sunscreens that get absorbed through your skin.
Alright so let’s get into some tips on how you can practise smart sex, smart Sun Exposure.
First, go outside during UVB penetration times. This will depend on your location, time of the year, and is based on the sun’s position in the sky. Remember when the sun is high, vitamin D production is high.
Expose as much of your skin as possible without sunscreen for the appropriate amount of time based on your skin type. You want to get a nice tan, but you never ever want to get sunburn. Sunburn causes a cascade of inflammation and immune activity in your body that over time will turn into a chronic disease. So if you’re very light skinned maybe 5-20 minutes is all you can do before the damaging effects of UVA kick in. Whereas if you have darker skin you could do between 20-60 minutes easy depending on how much melanin you have in your skin and how tolerant your skin is to the sun’s rays. Once you sense the burn in your skin then it’s time to slip, slop, slap, and wrap!
So during the summer season and the warmer months of the year expose yourself to the sun between 10a and 4p. During any other time of the season, year, or day cover up.
Second tip, keep away from windows during the day otherwise cover up as much as possible if stuck behind one.
Third tip is to eat your sunscreen. That’s right you can consume plenty of “sunscreen-like” compounds from real food that will protect you from sun damage from the inside out. How cool is that eh!
So eat plenty of antioxidant rich foods like small berries, vegetables, herbs and spices. The lycopene in tomatoes has been shown to be protective against sun damage. Omega-3 and saturated fats are great internal sunscreens so eat more oily fish and animal fat from grass-fed free-range pasture-raised happy animals. Astaxanthin is another great skin protecting compound that you can get from krill oil or in supplement form.
Fourth tip is to only buy and use all-natural organic sunscreens. A healthy sunscreen will have the active ingredients titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. These do the actual UV blocking. Also almond, coconut, sunflower, jojoba, and eucalyptus oils or any other ingredient you would normally think of as natural and even eat are fine. Shea butter is another popular natural ingredient. If you wouldn’t eat it don’t put it on your skin. For a basic sunscreen recipe all you need is some zinc oxide and a nice plant based lotion.
Fifth smart sex step is if you are unable to get enough sun exposure then eat your sun hormone. You can get vitamin D from real foods like wild caught oily fish, grass-fed butter and raw full-fat dairy, free-range pasture-raised egg yolks and lard, fermented cod-liver oil as well as other organically raised animal livers.
If you are unable to eat enough vitamin D foods then you can take vitamin D3 supplements, not D2, but D3 and make sure the capsule is infused with some fat like extra-virgin olive oil as the sun hormone is a fat-soluble molecule and is a lot easier to absorb when taken with fat.
When supplementing with vitamin D it is important to get your vitamin D levels tested. What you want is the blood test for 25-hydroxyvitamin D. A healthy range is between 35-65 ng/mL. Your results will then determine your actions, meaning do not blindly believe you are vitamin D deficient or sufficient and go overboard on the supplements or not supplement enough. Test is best, do not guess. A good guideline to follow when supplementing vitamin D3 (while you wait for your results) is to take 1000 IU (international units) per 11kg/25lbs of body weight. Once you do find out your vitamin D levels you can increase or decrease your sun exposure and supplementation as is required.
Final and crucial tip and this has to do with optimising the vitamin D you do produce, eat, or supplement with, is to reduce your body fat. Remember vitamin D is a fat-soluble molecule so the more fat cells you have and the larger those fat cells are then the more vitamin D your body fat will hold onto and the less vitamin D there will be in your bloodstream to be converted into the more important active hormone needed for maintaining and building the wealth of your health.
Listen to the podcast before this one that I did on balancing your hormones to optimise your fat-burning potential for more information on how to reduce your body fat the easy way without having to count calories.
I’ll leave you with this.
I personally believe that Vitamin D is the most important hormone in the human body. The reason I say this is because the majority of multicellular life on this planet lives and dies by the sun and human beings are no different.
You and I,
“We are beings of light energy”
and none of us, not me, not you, not even the moon would be here if it weren’t for the beautiful unconditionally giving and loving sun that supports all the life in our little region of the universe.
The more disconnected you are from the source of your existence the more you disconnect yourself from who you really are, your true being.
The more you disconnect yourself from that light that birthed you, that light that currently breathes you, and that light that will one day return you to source, the less happy, the less whole, and the less complete you will feel.
In order to live an awesome life you need to get back to your roots and there’s nothing more rooted in human ancestral tradition and culture then having fun out in the sun man.
You want sun? Go get sun.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Calories and Hormones:
- I’ll explain what calories are and how counting calories won’t do much for your health
- I’ll talk about hormones and how they affect your health a lot more than calories
- Finally I’ll give a few tips on how to balance your hormones naturally to turn you into a fat-burning machine
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Calories are all people talk about when it comes to dieting and changing body composition. Funny thing is most people have no clue what a calorie actually is.
Well a calorie is a unit of heat energy where 1 calorie equals the amount of energy needed to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Centigrade.
The way calories are measured is to burn the dry weight of the object you want to find the calorie value of and then measure how much heat is given off. So if you wanted to find out the number of calories in a banana, for example, you would first dehydrate it and then burn it and by measuring the amount of heat it gives off you will be able to work out the amount of calories it contained.
Now this is all fine and dandy when measuring calories using a calorimeter in a stale, stable, stagnant setting like a scientific laboratory, but when you’re talking about measuring the burning of foods in the human body or the metabolic-effect of how food calories are utilised by human physiology then Houston… we have a problem.
You see if you were to ask an aboriginal tribe in a South American jungle or African bushland or Australian outback who are excellent specimens of optimal human health whether they weighed, measured, and counted the amount of calories or energy or foods they ate on a regular basis, they would just look at you sideways, show off their bright-white teeth with a wide grin, and then they’d start laughing their bottoms off. They have a lot more important things to be concerned with than calories like maintaining shelters, hunting and gathering food, and getting back to telling stories and playing around all day. Sounds like the life right?
Your ancestors as far back as 100 years ago were not concerned with counting calories and obesity wasn’t even an issue back then. Today, however, it seems like the more calories we count as a society the more obese we seem to be getting. What’s up with that?
The reason is human beings are not calorimeters. You are not a simple input and output device. Your body is one of the most complex biological machines in the universe. Your body is an interconnected system of trillions of inputs and outputs.
For someone to say that they know exactly what happens to the hundred calories they eat from food or say that they know exactly how much calories they burned during exercise is human hubris at it again, meaning we think we know better than Mother Nature. It is impossible to know the exact amount of fuel energy you get from food and how much energy you burn from movement.
Another thing is that not all calories are created equal. 2000 calories of sugar water, for example, if you were to compare this to 2000 calories of coloured vegetables, yes they are the same amount of energy, exactly the same amount of energy, but when your body begins to digest, absorb, assimilate and metabolise and make use of the macro and micronutrients you will see a totally different effect in how your body looks, in how you think and feel, and how you act in life. A human body made up of sugar water compared to one made up of vegetables would be the same as comparing a house made up of straw and one made up of brick and mortar. One is weak and full of holes (tumours) whereas the other is strong and solid (healthy).
Ask yourself are the calories that you’re currently consuming on a regular basis turning you into a person of straw or into a solid piece of human awesomeness?
There are a number of ways the foods you eat and the movements you perform affect your biology way beyond calories and energy expenditure. You need to stop focusing on calories when it comes to happiness and health because there’s more to your wellbeing than just energy in and energy out.
The foods you eat and the movements you perform will absolutely determine the physical structure and functionality of your organs, they will determine your mood, and food and movement have a huge impact on your hormones.
Speaking of hormones these are molecules that your body uses to communicate between the many different organs, glands, and tissues. Hormones affect your body’s metabolism, immune function, growth and repair, your mood, your stress levels, and your body composition.
The major hormones you need to know about are:
- Insulin
- Cortisol
- Melatonin
- Leptin
- Ghrelin
- Oestrogen and testosterone and
- Thyroid hormones
Insulin is an anabolic or growth hormone released by your pancreas and helps transport nutrients from your bloodstream into your cells. Excessive amounts of glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream leads to the transformation of most of this glucose into fatty acids and high levels of nutrients in your blood causes your pancreas to release large amounts of insulin. Once insulin gets into your bloodstream it then does its job of storing all those nutrients into your cells as well as putting any leftover fatty acids into your fat cells, so insulin plays a major role in fat accumulation.
Cortisol known as the stress hormone is catabolic meaning it breaks things down and it is released by your adrenal glands in response to physical or perceived stress, low blood sugar levels, or low leptin levels. When your blood sugar levels get too low this will cause a cortisol spike. This sudden increase in cortisol then raises your blood sugar levels and when blood glucose gets too high insulin will need to be released to bring it back to a healthy low level and if your blood glucose drops too far then cortisol comes out to play again and this sugar and hormonal rollercoaster continues on and on making for a fatter and heavier you.
Melatonin is your antioxidant, anti-tumour, circadian clock time for bed hormone. Melatonin needs to be low in the morning and high in the evening for the best sleep and recovery as well as for the most growth hormone release during sleep, which helps you burn fat as you dream. This is the opposite rhythm to cortisol. Cortisol needs to be high in the morning and low in the evening. So if you don’t get enough daylight exposure during the day, you’re exposed to too much blue and bright lights after sundown, and if your cortisol rhythm is not normal, this will cause your melatonin levels to be low making it difficult for you to fall asleep and to get a full nights rest.
Leptin is a satiety hormone meaning it signals to your brain when you have enough energy in your body and is released by your fat cells. The more fat you have the more leptin your fat cells release signalling to your brain that you have plenty of energy on board and you don’t need to eat. The less fat you have the less leptin gets released signalling to your brain that you don’t have enough energy on board and that it’s time to eat. The problem for obese individuals is something called leptin resistance where you have so many fat cells releasing a lot of leptin that your brain just can’t take the excessive amounts of communication anymore and just stops listening. So even though your fat cells are signalling non-stop to your brain that your body has more than enough energy on board and that you don’t need to eat, your brain ignores these signals and still thinks you’re low on leptin and therefore low on energy and fat stores. Chronically low leptin levels as perceived by your brain will cause an increased release of the stress hormone cortisol and high cortisol levels keep your leptin levels low.
Ghrelin is a hunger hormone and works opposite to leptin. Low levels of leptin usually mean you are low on energy reserves and this causes a release of ghrelin which then increases your appetite. Once your appetite is satisfied and enough leptin hormone reaches your brain telling it you have enough energy on board then ghrelin hormone reduces which also lowers your appetite. Now if you have high levels of cortisol in your body this will cause leptin levels to be low meaning ghrelin will increase giving you an appetite. So the more stress you have the hungrier you get.
Oestrogen and testosterone are sex hormones used for growth and for reproduction. Women have slightly higher levels of oestrogen hormones compared to men and men have a lot more testosterone than women. Chronically high levels of insulin in your bloodstream (due to a high sugar diet for example) leads to an increase of testosterone in women and a decrease of testosterone in men as well as an increase of oestrogen in men. When cortisol is low testosterone and insulin are high, but when cortisol is high testosterone and insulin are low making cortisol a muscle wasting hormone. Chronically high levels of cortisol interferes with the normal production of your sex hormones, so too much stress overtime leads to low libido or sex drive, infertility, and the end of sexy times in the bedroom.
Last group of major hormones you really need to know about are your thyroid hormones. Your thyroid hormones are responsible for your body’s overall metabolism, meaning your cells ability to process energy. The two main thyroid hormones are T4 and T3. T4 is the inactive thyroid hormone and this is produced by your thyroid gland. The conversion of T4 to the active form T3 takes place primarily in your liver and in your gut. If your thyroid, liver, or gut are unhealthy and unable to do the work that they should then the production of T4 and T3 hormones will be dramatically impacted. Your body will either produce too much thyroid hormones leading to hyperthyroidism or having a very fast metabolic rate where you feel nervous or anxious a lot of the time, have irregular heartbeats, trouble sleeping, dry skin, excessive weight reduction, and excessive bowel movements. Or your body won’t produce enough thyroid hormones leading to hypothyroidism or having a very slow rate of metabolism where you feel depressed and irritable, experience hair loss and memory loss, feel tired and weak a lot of the time, find it difficult to reduce weight or have a dramatic increase in weight, have muscle cramps, feel cold a lot, have brittle nails, and constipation. High levels of perceived stress interferes with the production of T4 and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol interferes with the conversion of T4 to T3 causing abnormal metabolic function throughout your entire body.
Okay so that was a lot of information to take in about your major hormones. Now I’m not sure if you noticed, but there was one constant between them all. There was one hormone that popped up time and again and it has an impact on all the other hormones. Do you know the hormone I’m talking about? Yes, the stress hormone cortisol. That’s the hormone I’m talking about.
High cortisol leads to the increase of glucose in your bloodstream eventually causing a spike in insulin and this high insulin release causes fat storage and an increase in fat cell number and fat cell size.
High cortisol at night prevents melatonin from rising leading to trouble with sleep, less growth hormone release, less fat burning, a weakened immune system, and an increased risk of cancer.
High cortisol levels equal low leptin and high ghrelin levels meaning even if you’re obese or if you’ve eaten a big enough meal that normally would have satisfied you in the past, you will still have an appetite and feel hungry and will want to keep eating and you may never feel satiated.
High production of cortisol equals low production of your growth and sex hormones. More cortisol means less growth and more stress means less sex.
Finally high stress and rich cortisol production equals poor thyroid hormone production causing an abnormal rate of metabolism, either too high or too low. The majority of thyroid issues deal with a very slow rate of metabolism leading to difficulty reducing fat cell number and fat cell size.
So the big takeaway from all this hormone talk is that if you can control your cortisol you can control the rest of your hormones and you can determine the overall health of your body.
Not only that, but by taking control of your cortisol levels and the levels of all your other major hormones you can determine the amount of muscle and fat that your body synthesises and burns… without the need for counting calories.
Imagine that your hormones are an orchestra and that when they play in perfect harmony you get to hear wonderful music a beautiful symphony being played. However, when you have disharmony in the orchestra, when there’s a group or single instrument out of tune, out of sync, out of beat and rhythm then you’re left listening to something that would probably even make the walking dead turn and run in the other direction.
Homeostasis is a term that means a system is in balance and functioning as it should. When your many hormones are in harmony and playing sweet beautiful music together then you can consider your body to be in a homeostatic state. When your body is in homeostasis, where you’ve achieved hormonal harmony, then your body’s ability to burn fat and maintain or build health and muscle will be easy peasy lemon squeezy.
However, if your hormones are not in harmony with each other well then your ability to reduce fat and maintain or build health and muscle go right out the window. It doesn’t matter how many calories you count or restrict and no matter how hard you push yourself in the gym because if your cortisol and other hormone levels are not in healthy ranges then your body has bigger issues to deal with than worrying about energy in and energy out.
What I’m ultimately saying is that when your hormones are in balance with each other you’re a lean, mean, and very keen playful, happy, and healthy human being. But when your hormones are ‘out of whack’ (yes that’s a scientific term where I’m from) when your hormones are out of balance then oops-a-daisy you become flabby, fat, and lazy.
So what causes hormone imbalances?
High levels of stress and inflammation and stress and inflammation are caused by unhealthy relationships, disconnection from Mother Nature, exposure to toxic compounds, improper sleep, too much not enough exercise, eating inflammatory foods, not drinking enough quality water, and incorrect breathing patterns.
To get your hormones in a happy and healthy harmonious state you need to reduce your stress levels and lower the amount of inflammation in your body and you can do this by living a holistic healthy lifestyle. If you listen to episodes 2-15 of the Whole Guidance Podcast I go into detail about how to do this, but I will share a few quick and easy tips here on how to keep cortisol your stress hormone in check which will reduce the amount of stress and inflammation in your body.
First tip is to remove sugars and grains from your diet. Pasteurised dairy too if you’re really serious about keeping your cortisol levels balanced. Sugars and grains and highly treated dairy products are pro-inflammatory causing a lot of fire in your belly and in your body and also cause a lot of insulin to be secreted by your pancreas. By removing these foods from your diet for 21 days you can then try reintroducing them again to see how you feel and I bet you’ll notice a difference. With less insulin in your bloodstream your body’s metabolism will gradually shift from burning sugar and storing fat to not needing sugar and burning fat. Replace the sugars, grains, and dairy with more animal and fruit fats and oils.
Second tip is to get quality sleep. Now I said quality, not quantity and this means consistently going to bed before 11p and getting up around 6 or 7a for at least 21 days. This will reset your circadian clock and help restore your melatonin to its correct levels, low in the morning and high in the evening.
Third tip is to breathe deep diaphragmatic belly breaths through your nose. This helps keep your body in a rest, digest, calm, and connect state and so reduces your cortisol and increases your fat burning potential as well as your growth and sex hormone levels. Listen to episode 4 on how to practise proper breathing technique.
Fourth tip is to sprint more and cardio less. What I mean is that instead of doing 30 minute, 60 minute, or 2 hour long duration cardio sessions, why not try 4 minutes of high intensity interval training. H I I T or HIIT is where you go all out at 80-100% effort for 30 seconds and then rest for 90 seconds and repeat this seven more times. Timing isn’t set in concrete so you can go hard for 60 seconds and rest for 60-240 seconds if you wanted to. There’s no set rules. Find what works for you. You can do HIIT on a spin bike, sprinting up hills, or by performing exercises like burpees. Sprint training burns fewer calories during the exercise than long duration cardio does, but it produces a healthier hormonal profile after the exercise is completed meaning cortisol levels don’t stay elevated for long periods after a sprint session and your metabolism remains higher for longer periods after HIIT as well.
Fifth tip is to support your liver and gut health to ensure optimal conversion of your inactive T4 hormone into the more active T3 hormone making you a metabolism beast. Easiest way to support your liver is to reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals in your environment. You can do this by swapping out commercial home and personal care products for organic plant-based ones. Easiest way to support your digestive system is to eat real food. Real food is from Mother Nature. Anything from Father Industry I consider fake pretend food-like products and these will only create inflammation in your gut.
As Michael Pollan an author who writes about real food says:
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Sixth tip is to manage your self when it comes to stress. I did a whole podcast on how stress affects your health and how to identify and reframe your perspective on the stressors in your life so listen to that for more details. Also meditation and practising mindfulness and awareness is another way to move away from past regrets and future failures and to just be in the present moment. The more you can be ‘in the now man’ then the less you will be stressing about stuff in your head.
My seventh and final tip for reducing stress and inflammation and on how to best balance cortisol and all your other hormones is to get some smart sun exposure. Vitamin D is a powerful hormone that regulates over 1000 genes in your body and today about 70% of people living in western society are deficient in vitamin D and do not have enough of this health building hormone. You need to be exposing your skin to the sun on a regular basis to get the right amount of vitamin D, but of course you don’t want to get too much sun as too much of a good thing will burn you on the outside and cause fire and inflammation on the inside. I’ll talk more about smart sun exposure and vitamin D in the next podcast.
I’ll leave you with this final thought.
Throughout human history calories were never counted or measured in order to be healthy. Building muscle, reducing fat, achieving a happy mindset, all of these were and still are easily accessible to anyone living with balanced hormones without the need for calorie counting.
When you focus on the quantity of calories this will cause an imbalance in the quantity and quality of your hormones. So at the end of the day if you want quality hormones you must focus on quality calories.
To learn more about how calories really don’t matter read The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor. This book lays out the science on how hormones beat out calories time and again for achieving the best health ever.
“Health is not a math equation.”
When your body is healthy, whole, and complete you’ll never have to think about calories ever again because health has always and will always be instinctively and innately and naturally easy.
Links and Resources
- WGP 004: How to Breathe for an Awesome Life
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
- The Calorie Myth — Jonathan Bailor
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