Ways to fix 10 fatloss blocks  II…

Today's Post:  Thursday, 8-25-2016

A few posts back we covered the basics of fat loss.

Yesterday, I got an email saying that to lose fat you keep off, lose all your excess fat, and lose fat if something blocks your fat loss, there are 6 common causes that you may need to check and fix.

Then I found 4 more in a Reader's Digest that I thought worth including.

So this post has those and some ways to fix them.

6 Weird Reasons You Can't Lose Weight in a Sharecare email, 8-17 had these:

1.  Prescription medications

2.  Certain medical conditions

3.  Menopause effects

4.  Your friends

5.  Stress

6.  Bad habits

And the Reader's Digest article added these 4 I think worth listing of their 8 they listed.

7.  You eat when you're distracted

8.  You dine out for every meal

9.   You rely on dieting alone

10. You starve yourself.

Last week, Thursday, 8-18-2016, we covered the first 4:

1.  Prescription medications

2.  Certain medical conditions

3.  Menopause effects

4.  Your friends

This week we cover:

5.  Stress

6.  Bad habits

7.  You eat when you're distracted

8.  You dine out for every meal

9.   You rely on dieting alone

10. You starve yourself.

5.  Stress

“The impact stress can have on your weight is two fold, according to Brown. Stress not only ups your cortisol levels, leading to an increase in appetite, he says, but it can also lead to emotional eating, often causing us to reach for high-fat, carb-heavy comfort foods like pizza, sweets and chips.

Stress can also keep you up at night, and several studies have shown strong links between weight gain, obesity and lack of sleep.”

This is a tough area but there are three ways to prevent it from blocking your fat loss.

a) The fat loss block is from the stress effects listed. So one way is to attack the effects directly.

The first way is to learn and use things that slash emotional eating and cravings. 

If you eat health OK protein foods and oils and vegetables often prepared and spiced in a way that tastes good to you AND you completely stop what Dave Asprey calls Kryptonite foods and drinks like soft drinks and wheat food and junk oils and high fructose corn syrup AND you don’t limit calories too much,

you will simply stop having the cravings that eating too little and the Kryptonite foods and drinks cause by themselves.

And if when tempted by Kryptonite foods you focus on how harmful and fattening they are and how the makers are making money selling them to people who don’t know this AND you completely avoid focusing on their taste, that too is proven to help.

That’s because your actions follow from which part of your brain you are using.  When you think about those harms with your thinking brain and stop thinking with your emotional brain only, you have control and no or far less cravings.

This has actually been verified by brain scans by the way!

Another way is to learn the “sleep hacks” and energy boosters that enable you to sleep well and keep up your energy level even when you are stressed.

Daily vigorous exercise most mornings even if just for a few minutes and getting up at exactly the same time each morning and close to the same time most evenings and wearing a sleep mask so your eyes have darkness when you are sleeping and many more help do this.

The information in the Bulletproof Diet by Dave Asprey has advanced techniques too.  But just doing these easy basics can make a huge difference.

Also, it’s a bit messy to use unless you are quite careful.  But his MCT 8 oil product, Brain Octane is a way to power your brain and have usable energy without using excessive coffee or sugar.

My own trial of this is in its early stages; but if you need a mood or energy pick me up badly,

there are two ways to use this to get it instead of using any soft drinks or any kind of sugar!

Bullet Proof’s Dave Asprey found that combining a tested to be low in mold coffee with ghee or unsalted butter from grass fed cows and his Brain Octane, you get a much better lift from the caffeine and avoid many of the side effects like feeling jittery that he believes come from molds in many kinds of coffee.  AND, you get the brain boost from the MCT 8 too!

I’m trying just adding a Tablespoon of his Brain Octane to a quarter cup of the coffee at my day job to boost my afternoon energy.  Bringing a thermos with Bulletproof Coffee might work better.  But just using the coffee at work does seem more effective with the Brain Octane added.

Another way to de-stress in the evening after work without drinking extra wine or eating a junky sweet treat is to reread a novel that is very involving that you enjoyed reading before.

A lot of the stress and tiredness from jobs that require thinking or decision making is that the parts of your brain that do that work literally use up their available energy and neurotransmitters.  AND, a study found that this kind of reading directly gives that part of your brain a recharge!

b)  The other way is to turn down the stress by solving the problem or escaping its effects.

If you find a way to get help from someone who has the expertise to solve the problems you face or even some friendly and supporting help in  working on it yourself, that often slashes the stress you are under.

Another useful technique is to avoid high risk, low reward choices which enables you to escape the stress that they often cause.  These are often simple like always wearing your seat belt and not running red lights without even looking at the cross traffic. 

Tony Robbins and Peter Drucker supplied these two helpful strategies.

Tony Robbins found that many people cannot think of a way to solve a stressful problem.  But when he asks them to imagine a few things that MIGHT help they often come up with several ideas.  Often the best of those or a combination of them WILL solve the problem!

Peter Drucker found that effective executives often succeeded when they could NOT do certain things and looked blocked.  He found what they did was to list ten or twelve things they COULD do and then get busy doing them. 

c)  The third way is to simply turn down the physical stress reaction long enough to rest your mind. 

Learning how to enable yourself to sleep well fits here.

Some people find that yoga or Tai Chi or studying another martial art does this. 

We list the other two first because not everyone has access to these.  But those who do get good and very good results from them.

6.  Bad habits

“If you’re not happy with the number on the scale, take stock of any habits that may be working against you – like skipping breakfast, not getting enough sleep or losing track of what you’re eating and drinking throughout the day – and then adjust accordingly.

“It’s about recognizing all of those little things,” says Brown.

And remember – real, lasting weight loss isn’t about temporary diets and dropping pounds fast. It’s about investing in your health for the long haul, and being proud of the small changes you’re making to better yourself.”

“Nothing motivates patients like success,” he says. So celebrate every one, even if they’re small, or slow going.

[He’s absolutely correct.  The lifestyle upgrades you make and keep doing that support health and fat loss enable you to stay healthy when others do not and keep off the fat you lose!]

Many people find that the best solution to these is to find out what substitutes that support fat loss are and do those instead!

If you are rushed for breakfast, find a way to eat a fast high protein breakfast at home or just after you arrive at work.

Also eating what you should be eating on a regular schedule and doing your exercises on a regular schedule become a time efficient habit that works FOR you.

And it cancels out NOT exercising or eating badly by habit by replacing them with good habits.

It’s Thursday today so I did 20 minutes of leg strength training before work; and I’ll have lowfat organic cottage cheese with tomato sauce, some extra virgin olive oil and a multiple spice curry I eat using two kinds of organic turmeric for dinner.

I have a similar protocol for each day from Sunday through Noon Saturday.  The only time I get creative and eat differently is Saturday night most weeks.

This makes our shopping trip very similar each time; and it ensures I eat right and exercise.

So ADDING this kind of good habit can erase bad habits—besides just working to stop the bad habits!

A similar themed Reader's Digest article added these three common blocks to fat loss:

7.  (From Reader's Digest)

“You eat when you’re distracted”

“Do you see crumbs or smudges on your computer keyboard, the touch screen of your phone, or your TV’s remote control? That’s a telltale sign that you’re doing other things while you’re eating. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for multitasking, and I definitely have days when I eat in front of the computer. Here’s the problem. Ask me how it tasted and I might not be able to tell you, because I was preoccupied by my work.

Researchers in Ireland interviewed a group of 66 adults on what made portion control difficult. One of the main factors, they reported, were elements of the eating environment—socializing with friends and family, watching television, or working on a computer or phone—that diverted their attention away from what they were eating.”

Other studies of people who watch TV -- both things they like and whatever is on to keep their mind occupied – while they eat some kind of junk food snack just eat it on autopilot until the container is empty.

This can relieve stress temporarily but it causes fat GAIN that the people who do it have ZERO control over while it’s happening.

Do this instead.  Don’t buy those things at the store and never have them at home.  Then eat a small snack that is filling and enjoyable but not fattening or blood sugar boosting BEFORE or AFTER you watch only TV the programs you enjoy most. Almond butter on celery works.  So does guacamole by itself.  So does some raw walnuts and a few organic raisins.

And, mute the ads for junk foods that are heavily advertised on TV.  The advertisers know the foods are harmful and fattening.  Why watch and listen to their ads when you’d prefer not to be fat?

8.  “You dine out for every meal”

“Occasional indulgences are not the problem. What is: We are eating out more and more often—over a 40-year period from 1970 to 2010, we nearly doubled the percentage of calories we get from food away from home. And we are all too often unaware of how many calories are in the dishes we eat. A study of fast-food eaters in Philadelphia and Baltimore found that they underestimated their meal by up to 400 calories!”

We’ve posted on this before.  An effective way to reduce the calories and reduce how fattening a restaurant meal is to you, do these few things:

Send back the cheap bread they serve you first and order a small salad to bring you right away with any salad dressing on the side or none or extra virgin olive oil only.

Also, order one glass of wine – or two if celebrating -- to have right away with the salad.

Then have no alcohol after dinner.  This is WAY less fattening than stuffing down rolls or bread and also having after dinner drinks.

Order and eat only protein foods and vegetables.  Ask that no potatoes or fries or bread be included or send them back to be tossed out if they come anyway.

This also makes the meal much less fattening.  AND if the protein entrée is good and the company is good and the before dinner wine is good, you’ll still enjoy eating out!

The other way is to bring more health OK meals from home for lunch or socialize at dinners you cook at home.  That gives you more control and costs less too!

Then with part of the money you save you can eat at better restaurants who are more used to your style of eating and serve better food.

9.   “You rely on dieting alone”

“ While you can lose weight even if the only movement you make all day is walking from your bed to your desk chair, it’s much easier and faster to drop pounds if you combine diet and exercise. If you are burning an extra 200 to 300 calories per day, that’s 200 to 300 calories less you have to carve out from your diet to get the same calorie deficit. Plus, exercise generates natural endorphins, so you feel better and have more energy even if you are a little hungry. All of which makes it easier to stick with the diet.

And once you’ve lost the weight, exercise has also proven to be key to keeping it off. According to the National Weight Control Registry, established in 1994 to identify and investigate the characteristics of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off for more than a year, 94 percent increased their physical activity in order to lose weight, with the most frequently reported form of exercise being walking. To keep it off, 90 percent report that they exercise an average of an hour a day.”

a) This badly understates the fat loss and keeping it off value of strength training!

If you are younger and can work out at a gym even two days a week with--one or two days between--doing deadlifts and squats or deadlifts and leg press and you gradually add weight until you are quite strong, you’ll add enough muscle that so much more of the calories you eat feed your muscles it will be dramatically easier for you to lose fat and keep it off.

Surprisingly, if you are older strength training is even MORE important to lose fat and keep it off.

“Dr Al Sears said this in his email today:  “If you do nothing to stop sarcopenia, you will lose about three pounds of muscle every decade. By the time you're 80 you could drop 35% to 40% of your muscle mass.¹”

The ads for the Perfect Workout, an effective strength training service even people who have never done strength training before can use and get results also stresses this fact.  

It’s extremely important because the process is an automatic fattener that will add fat to people who don’t strength train!

That’s because when you lose 3 pounds of muscle and just keep eating the same you gain 9 pounds of fat and 6 pounds on the scale.

And, without strength training that happens every 10 years!

If you invest half an hour two times a week you can totally prevent it from happening to you!

Also every time you do effective strength training or some form of brief but intense cardio with rests even if the total session is 10 minutes or less,  you burn extra calories for several hours after the exercise from the work your body does to rebuild and restore the muscles you just exercised that much.

So those two kinds of exercise can ALSO help you lose fat too. 

(The one pitfall to avoid is to eat fattening foods or more calories of health OK treats than even this extra calorie burn as a reward.  Eat the same but with extra protein and get your rewards when you look at the scale or in other ways instead!)

10.  “You starve yourself. “

So you trigger your failsafe famine response; get strong rebound hunger; and lose your energy to move or exercise.

Excess hunger blocks fat loss and even causes fat regain!  So that is NOT at all what you want to have happen.

Mercifully there are several ways to avoid it.

The more protein you eat, and the more health OK fats you eat, and the more strength training you do, and the more nonstarchy greens and other vegetables you eat, the more likely it is you can cut your calorie intake enough for some fat loss AND avoid this famine response.

Avoiding excess sugar and all forms of free fructose and artificial sweeteners also helps you avoid excess hunger while losing fat and keeping it off.

Adding strength training also enables you to lose fat and keep it off while eating MORE.

The other thing to do is to limit your calorie cut back to 20 or 30 % and avoid going over that.

Doing partial fasting three separate days a week or fasting more completely once a week can do this with less hassle because of the food prep time you save.

So, if you do it right, you can lose fat you keep off without excess hunger.

Follow these techniques to lose fat and keep it off without that kind of hunger and you will succeed!