Fatloss two MORE ways....Today's post:  Thursday, 6-14-2018

Most people talk of diets to lose fat.  They refer to eating less until you weigh less and then thinking you can resume eating more and still weigh less.

Not only do people who do this keep their fat, they add to it if they do this.  Worse, they get even fatter a recent study found if they do it over and over again!

So  such diets not only don’t work, they fatten you.

But permanent fatloss without excess hunger IS possible if you consistently do the things that cause it.

The basics are clear:

A.  Eat a lot of organic, nonstarchy vegetables; some organic whole fresh fruit, and health producing protein foods and fats & oils.  Use red wine and dark chocolate in light moderate amounts and eat no real sugar or in occasional moderate amounts only. Drink water, chilled water, tea, green tea, and coffee. Use organic spices to make dishes and salads that you enjoy eating.

B.  Eat and drink almost zero of anything else.  Be careful to never consume MSG or high fructose corn syrup or hybrid wheat or regular or diet soft drinks or artificial sweeteners or grain oils such as corn, soy, safflower, or canola.  And never, ever eat hydrogenated oils.

C.  Do some effective strength training for your legs, butt, lower back, upper back, and chest at least twice a week.  (More men do this than women; but it is at least twice as important for women to do it!)  Do some vigorous cardio as interval cardio or variable cardio with rests or easier parts between the vigorous ones at least 3 days a week for 20 minutes or less per session.  Do at least four short walks of about 7 minutes each every week.  (If you have time for hiking or dancing or martial arts or yoga too and enjoy them do those also.)

D.  Don’t take drugs that fatten or depress you or speed your aging or give you migraines or insomnia.  (Many drugs that do these things are simply not needed because there are much better solutions.  Some drugs that fatten are needed and can be replaced but it can take a good bit of extra effort.)

E. Take supplements that slow aging, protect your heart, lower inflammation, and keep your bones strong.

There are many other things that help or that can enable some people to lose fat that some people need in addition to these.  But those work only if added to these basics!

This post is about the two more ways to lose fat that are important to know.

1.  Get enough sleep and find a way to keep too little sleep or stress or perimenopause from causing you to have the fattening very high cortisol levels.

2.  Some gut bacteria reliably fatten people while other gut bacteria tend to help keep you lean.

So if you do the things that give your gut lots of probiotic bacteria and remove fattening bacteria that’s a second thing you can do besides the basics to lose fat you keep off.

Isabel de Los Rios sent an email today noting that getting  enough sleep helps lower cortisol and improve mood and avoid high cortisol from stress.  She often finds that clients struggling to lose fat, who make enough sleep a priority begin to lose fat once they do!

An article in a recent HSI email quotes a study that suggests that a 3 part Ayurvedic supplement can enable better digestion well enough to help fat loss and improve health enough to significantly increase longevity because of its unusually effective support of probiotic bacteria.

Those two emails inspired me to write this post.

1. So what can you do to get enough sleep of good quality?

2. What can you do to ensure you have more good -- and not fattening -- gut bacteria?

The rest of this post lists some of the effective ways to do these two things.

1.  What can you do to get enough sleep of good quality?

The list of effective things is long. Here is a short list of the most effective things that most people can do.

a) Your body will give you the best sleep when you give it a reliable anchor once a day to work from because it is programmed to do so by circadian rhythms. 

Find a time that gets you up early enough to be ready in time for your earliest day.  Set your alarm for that time and get up immediately at that exact time seven days a week.

Never use a snooze alarm or reset for a later time because for four reasons that’s always bad news: 

You lose the productive time you then stay in bed.  Worse, you get very little worthwhile sleep.  You reduce your feeling of control and ability to do be in control.  Worst of all, you throw off your circadian rhythm enough to get less effective sleep!

On weekends -- or on days that good or bad events get you home very late – I’ve found that getting up at the regular time and then taking a nap later that day for catch up sleep works and allows you to keep that anchor so you sleep better every night.

Travel and severe illnesses and some emergencies can throw this off; but you recover better if you return to this regular getting up time as soon as possible after that.

b)  Do some form of vigorous exercise before breakfast and before you leave home or go to work for the day because doing this has been shown to cause better quality sleep and allows you to fall asleep quickly when you go to bed. You also tend to think better and be more productive  at work or later in the day if you do this!

c)  Complete darkness when you sleep prevents lights from disrupting your sleep and causes extra melatonin release for better and deeper sleep. 

Blackout curtains for your bedroom and covers for screens that stay on after you go to bed can help.  But doing this very effectively can be so expensive and hard to set up it may not happen.  And it forces you to use a flashlight every time you get up during the night. 

Mercifully, a much cheaper and more flexible way to do this you can begin within days from now is to buy a sleep mask on Amazon and wear it every night.

I use the Nidra sleep mask.  But there are others that are comparable. The Nidra sleep masks bought on Amazon are inexpensive.  I do find that daily wear forces me to buy a new one every few months. You can begin to use this in just a few days!

d) If you are over 40 or over 65 or need extra help falling asleep, taking a sublingual or chewing a lozenge of melatonin at bedtime can help.  If you are younger, a half a one mg lozenge can be enough.  If you are over 65, a 2.5 or 3 mg may work better.

e) If you are under stress or have a noisy bedroom or a hot one or have trouble falling asleep, it can help to take a 250 mg capsule of GABA and a 100 mg capsule of valerian.

This also has been found to increase the amount of deep sleep and growth hormone release during sleep.

Valerian has a pungent smell; and the ingredient you want for its effects produces the smell.

I keep mine in a sealed container that organic raisins once came home in.

f)  Taking a capsule or tablet of boswellia (from frankincense) and a cherry concentrate tablet or capsule at bedtime too can lower inflammation and small discomforts to help you go to sleep and stay asleep.  In fact, one study found that people who wake too early and have trouble going back to sleep actually got a WHOLE HOUR more sleep each night from doing this with cherry concentrate!

g)  Drink a glass or glass and a half of red wine BEFORE dinner and none after it.  And most days drink your last tea or coffee of the day by 2 PM.  This has been shown to increase the hours of effective sleep and the amount of deep sleep you get.

I find it works well.  The wine makes me mellow while I’m hungry waiting for dinner and during dinner without being as nap inducing after dinner as drinking that much or more after dinner.

h)  Don’t begin to take -- or find a way to discontinue -- drugs that cause migraines and insomnia and pain during the night. 

Following the fat loss basics well plus taking some specific supplements prevents strokes and heart attacks dramatically better AND faster than taking statins. 

That’s good to know because taking statins reliably causes migraines and insomnia that won’t leave until the statins are discontinued.

Beta blockers and blood thinners and osteoporosis drugs also have negative effects on sleep and cause depression -- plus they too do not work as well as less nasty and more effective alternatives.

Having a cool and quiet bedroom also helps.  But those can be too expensive to provide in many cases.  If you can do those in some way, do them!  But if you cannot, doing these first 8 will help you sleep well anyway.

What can you do to lower high cortisol from stress and perimenopause?

The supplement Relora is thought to do this.  But I think it as is effective as trying to bail water out of a bathtub with a thimble. 

*You need a way to overcome the challenges of the stress you are under and a way to relieve the physical symptoms of stress to lower cortisol from stress.

Learning how to not stress from threats not likely to be real and how to attack real threats with an overcome this challenge style can help. Both have been tested to work!

Surprisingly, slightly slow nose only breathing can turn down physical stress symptoms.

*In early menopause, much of its fattening effects come from a big increase in inflammation and a decrease in thyroid and rapidly dropping and variable progesterone levels which causes excessive cortisol release.

The great news is that following the basics of fatloss prevents this huge surge of inflammation; and NOT taking statins prevents the reduced level of energy; and the nutrition in the basic fatloss plan helps prevent the nutritional deficiencies that lower thyroid production.

Taking progesterone at a low dose, preferably a bioidentical progesterone, starting at the very first sign of the start of perimenopause may help.  But the effects vary between women and the reduction of production in progesterone varies too from start to finish.  So taking a low dose of progesterone will likely help. 

But other than a daily adjustment in the dose of progesterone, what is really needed besides the low dose is a way to remove the excess cortisol that’s more effective than bailing a bathtub with a thimble.

*What if there is a doable way to remove almost all the excess cortisol from stress and from perimenopause AND increase your metabolism and burn calories too?

Using the Bulletproof Vibe or Whole Body Vibration Plate they say does both -- burning extra calories AND removing any excess cortisol.

It is also likely to remove excessive fluid trapped in your lymphatic system in your legs and belly and around your internal organs.

I’m about to get one to test and report to you about.

If you follow the other ways above to get good sleep and reduce the effects of stress and perimenopause listed in this post, doing those things will increase your fat loss and the ease with which you keep it off.

The exciting news is that also using the VIBE or Whole Body Vibration Plate may triple that effect.

2. What can you do to ensure you have more good -- and not fattening -- gut bacteria?

a) Take them directly!  Jarrow makes a JarroDophilus with FOS which contains the major forms of probiotic bacteria and the FOS long chain sugars they thrive on.

You have to buy it and put it with your chilled foods taking it home and then keep it in the refrigerator to keep the bacteria alive until you take each capsule.  (The stores keep it in a chilled section.)

b) Eat the foods that contain them which include plain whole milk yogurt with live cultures and plain Greek yogurt with live cultures made from whole milk and organic sauerkraut and kimchi.

c)  Never, ever knowingly eat or drink a food that contains sucralose.  This artificial sweetener fattens directly AND it also kills probiotic bacteria leaving MORE fattening bacteria in your gut!

d)  Try to avoid, repeat avoid, taking antibiotics.  And, if you do take antibiotics, take extra probiotics for a few weeks afterwards!

Antibiotics kill many of your probiotic gut bacteria besides the harmful bacteria you take the antibiotics to get rid of.

Then too many probiotic bacteria attack harmful bacteria so you may not get some bacterial diseases and taking probiotics after an antibiotic can help kill some extra harmful bacteria that remain.

It’s better for example to get a flu shot and both pneumonia vaccines and take 10,000 iu of vitamin D3 and some vitamin K2 year round and olive leaf extract and NOT get bacterial pneumonia or bronchitis which might kill you or cause you to take antibiotics for it.

e)  There IS a specific gut bacteria that is known to help prevent you from adding or keeping excess fat!  The bad news is that, as far as I know it is not yet sold as a probiotic supplement that you can take.

The better news is that this gut bacteria likes to eat the fiber in nonstarchy organic vegetables! 

Eating nonstarchy organic vegetables often provides great nutrition and fiber and very few calories. It’s a foundation block of things TO eat to get and stay lean!

This antiobesity gut bacteria also likes the butyric acid in grass fed butter and ghee and whole milk yogurt and cheese!

So eating Kerrygold Dubliner cheese with organic broccoli florets is something they’d like!

*What if there were something you could add that would double the lean producing bacteria and more than cut in half the obesity causing bacteria while also slowing aging so much it added at least ten more years of good health to your life?

I got an email from HSI recently that said that taking the Ayurvedic supplement Triphala to your supplement routine may do this.

It’s been tested to show these effects. 

AND, Gaia herbs which makes high quality control herbs sells it.

Triphala contains amla which might be problematic for people already taking curcumin and ginger.  But if you eat organic fruit and take fruit concentrate supplements I believe this is not likely.

Here’s the info I found on Google:

“The three main fruits contained in Triphala are Haritaki (Chebulic Myrobalan), Amalaki (Amla), Bibhitaki (Belleric Myrobalan)

https://www.gaiaherbs.com/products/ingredient/197/Triphala  <<<<<

History

Triphala is a staple of Ayurvedic (Indian) practice used for well over 2,000 years. It is made from the dried powder of three different fruits, hence its name: tri (Three) and phala (Fruit). Amla (Emblica officinalis), Harada (Terminalia chebula) and Bihara (Terminalia bellirica) are mixed in equal parts to make a proper Triphala.

It is said of Triphala; “No mother? Do not worry so long as you have Triphala.” Indian people believe that Triphala can care for the internal organs as a mother cares for her children. 

References to the use of Triphala can be found in the Sushrut Samhita, which is dated to 1500 BC. The Sushrut Samhita contains 184 chapters and description of 1120 illnesses, 700 medicinal plants and a detailed study on Anatomy.

Function

Amla (aka. Indian Gooseberry, aka. Amalaki) is one of the highest natural known source of vitamin C, having 20 times the vitamin C content of an orange. The vitamin C in Amla is also uniquely heat stable. Amla is associated with the pitta dosha. 

Bihara is astringent, tonic, digestive and anti-spasmodic. 

Harada is a bitter and associated with the vata dosha, elements of air and space. It has emollient properties and as with most bitters encourages peristalsis and proper digestion. 

The Medicine Buddha in Tibetan tankas (sacred pictures) holds the harada plant.”

I think it likely that the effects of harada will help you process eating a lot of organic vegetables and fruit without bloating and contribute to having a smaller belly.

It may also help stop acid reflux!

Like the Bullet Proof VIBE, the supplement Triphala from Gaia herbs looks promising as a fat loss aid for good gut bacteria and to avoid bloating from the high fiber diet.

The actions in this post have worked for others.  So if you do them they may work for you also.

I’m hoping that the effects of the Bullet Proof Vibe and the Gaia Triphala add to these effects when I try them as well.

In my case, I plan to let you know if they did!