In this podcast we cover:
- How to find motivation when you want fast results
- Why am I gaining weight
- Supplements to assist dieting
- Where to nutrition info
- And some great motivational quotes
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Question 1
Why is my body so sensitive to foods (meaning gain soooo easily). I’m mainly Paleo.
Ok there could be a few reasons for this. I don’t have any other backgorund or health information here so I’ll just shoot a few things off that you could explore in this situation.
Firstly, it’s interesting when it comes to diets, for example, lots of people think all of their problems will be solved if they follow a paleo diet but often this isn’t the case. So one thing you could assess is food intake. Start by keeping a food diary so you actually know what’s going into your mouth and then you can break it down and see if you’re really eating healthy. Even following a paleo diet I find lots of people eat too many paleofied baked goods, or lots of ‘healthy’ paleo snacks, meaning they are still consuming too much sugar and too many of the wrong types of foods.
And often people following paleo eat too much protein and fat and not enough veggies and this doesn’t promote healthy digestion in most cases. So first I’d just start by evaluating your own daily and weekly food intake because it may just be that you think you are eating well but really you’re not. And often when I look at people’s food diaries this tends to be the case and offers the simplest solution. Just change what you’re eating and tweak things so you stop gaining and start losing.
Secondly, could it be insulin resistance? If you have insulin resistance it can cause excess weight gain. You can get tested for insulin resistance with your doctor. What about stress? How are your stress levels? If you have a lot of stress, the high cortisol can cause more weight gain, particularly the storage of belly fat. When you look at stress think about your sleep patterns too, if you don’t sleep well this causes more stress and therefore weight gain. So essentially what we are talking about here is there could be some kind of hormonal imbalance going on. So think about that as a possible contributor.
Also there could be food sensitivities. Go back to your food diary and just think about how you are digesting things, or maybe there is something you are eating a lot of that could be causing a sensitivity. If that’s the case there may be more inflammation and poor digestion and this could contribute to weight gain. In this case you’d be thinking about you gut health, taking a probiotic, thinking about what foods you are eating and what could be changed.
As you can see it’s not always straightforward but perhaps that will give you some areas to explore. And really it is just a matter of trying to work through these things starting at the simplest thing, which is what exactly am I eating.
Question 2
What supplements to take to assist in dieting?
This is a really wide open question but I’m going to have to assume it means a weight loss diet. So you’d probably be looking for supplements that can either help make things easier, or help boost weight loss.
To assist in getting started and managing sugar cravings and blood sugar control you could try a supplement called gymnema syvestre. I’ve found that works really well. The proposed mechanism behind it’s effectiveness is it tricks your body into mimicing glucose molecules, blocking the cell receptors in the intestine so you won’t uptake sugar. As a result it helps dulls down your senses to sugar so you don’t feel like eating sugary things. Chromium is another supplement that helps with blood sugar and cravings. Often you will find gymnema sylvestre and chromium in combo supplements called blood sugar support or something like that.
As for helping to boost things up I think one way you can do this is by helping the liver. The liver performs so many functions in the body including fat metabolism and often the liver can be a bit sluggish. In traditional medicine bitters help with liver function so things like dandelion root tea, or eating dandelion leaves in salads, peppermint, and ginger is great for this too. And if you don’t want to include any of those then taking a supplement called milk thistle is very effective.
Without having any other background info that are probably the best things to suggest.
Question 3
How do you decide what information to trust and where to get that information?
I think I might have talked about this before, I’m not sure but it is an interesting question. We live in a time where we have abundant access to information at our fingertips via the internet and I think that is only going to keep getting worse and worse with more and more people coming online. So how do we decide what information to trust and where to get info from?
Well the best thing to do here is use a bit of common sense and some of your own research skills as well. Ask yourself if the source of the information is credible and what background the info is coming from. For example is the website you are looking at by a health practitioner or large health organization or is it a personal blog? Does the information come from scientific research and professional experience or is it just a regurgitation of something someone read somewhere else? Do you just like the information that’s being shared and believe it is trustworthy and credible?
They are just a few things you can think about but it is still a difficult question to answer. There are loads of people who have personal blogs and give out information but they may not have any type of qualification. Some of the info is good and people’s personal experience is highly valid but if you do have a health condition then you’d probably be wise to do some further research. I know I used to think I knew a lot about nutrition but really I knew very little and everything I shared was based on personal experience. But I’ve learned that opinion and fact are two very different things. We can all have an opinion about something anything we like but that doesn’t make it valid. I still have an opinion but now my opinion is nearly always based on looking a wide variety of facts.
I also think it makes it difficult because there is always going to be opposing opinions when it comes to nutrition and health. Even if you look at scientific research you will find there are often studies that show a positive benefit and others that show none or show the opposite effect. So that means we need a lot of evidence in one direction to formulate a conclusive decision and be able to say, this is the truth about this food. That can sometimes depend on the person who is presenting the research and perhaps trying to bend things one way. I’ve attended presentations hosted by companies like coca cola where they have chosen only researchers who support their company. People who have done research and show that sugar sweetened beverages are on the decline. Fortunately you can see through this method of presentation.
It’s also a difficult question in the sense that some large health organization websites have information that is seemingly outdated and this causes confusion in relation to foods and what’s healthy.
So how do you decide what information to trust? Read widely and evaluate the facts yourself, keeping in mind that the source of information is credible and the information is based on fact, not just opinion.
Where do you get that information? Well there are plenty of great places to get information. Wonderful practitioners with websites and organizations doing great work, so it depend on what type of into you are looking for but just keep your eyes out for great people doing great work. And in the end you just have to make a decision based on common sense, instinct, and some of your own research as well.
Question 4
How do I find motivation to keep going when I don’t see quick results?
Gosh, what a great thing to talk about. Let’s face it we are all confronted with lack of motivation sometimes, and we all want to see quick results. One thing we all need to do is just stop wanting fast results. This is just a concept sold to us by the weight loss industry but there is not truth of fact in it. If you go REALLY strict with your diet and exercise then in 4-6 weeks you can get great results but chances are it may take longer and 12 weeks is a realistic time to commit yourself to seeing and true changes. And 12 weeks may just be the beginning.
So for all of us the key is to accept that everything in life is a process.
What comes to mind for me in situations like these is a concept I picked up years ago called the law of delayed gratification. When I first came across the concept of the law of delayed gratification it really opened up my eyes to accepting that everything in life is a process. I’m not too sure where I picked it up, it might have been from a book like the secret or something like that.
So let me just explain what the law of delayed gratification is.
• Plant a seed
• Baby to gestate
• Want to change careers I need to up skill
• Build a house I make a plan then I might need to organise finance, builders, and over a perios of time it all comes together
This is the law of delayed gratification. It’s a universal law. All things take time. We are all bound by the universal law of delayed gratification!
Nothing in this world happens overnight, nothing!
So when I get stuck in times lacking motivation and drive to keep going, I think about this law. I also draw on other things like motivational quotes and you can hang some of your favourite ones on sheets of paper on the toilet wall, in the kitchen, near your computer and that sort of thing. Because having positive affirmation around us helps.
POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS
A few of my favorites are:
‘FOCUS – Follow One Course Until Successful’
‘Life is a journey not a destination’
Einstien’s definition of insanity: ‘Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.’
I love that because we do just keep doing the same thing but nothing is going to change.
I had a client a couple of years back that was working really hard to get fit so he could get into the police force and one day he said: ‘Sometimes it’s necessary to get uncomfortable before we can get comfortable.’
For some reason that always stuck with me. If you feel discomfort, know that it is the old you shedding in order to reveal the new! Change is uncomfortable.
‘Successful people do what has to be done even when they don’t feel like it’
I saw a great one on Pinterest a while back. It said:
‘It will take 4 weeks for you to notice changes, 8 weeks for your loved ones, and 12 weeks for the general public so just keep on going.’
I loved this because it is totally true!
You need at least 12 weeks to turn things around and in the grand scheme of things that is not a long time. Even a year goes by fast, I mean here we are nearly through the second month of 2015.
I’ve got so any great quotes like this that I often pull out and I think they are great because in times when we do lack motivation it’s all about getting our mind in the right place. Most of the stuff we go through is mindset stuff so if we work on keeping a positive mind a bit more, I find that helps us to get past the idea of fast results so we can keep on going.
Take care
Jedha
Nutritionist & Health Coach
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