Are you getting a good signal?

Are you getting a good signal?

Balancing hormones naturally for optimal health

 

What does it really mean to be ‘healthy’?

‘Healthy’ means getting our bodies to function ‘naturally’, as nature intended, with no signs of being ill or over-weight. If you have medical conditions then your body is not functioning naturally, and if you are over-weight, you are malnourished.

So what’s the best way to get healthier and leaner? Well it all starts with the liver and reducing the burden. The liver needs to be clean and working optimally before hormones will work properly, so a clean diet free from toxins is essential.

When you eat toxic, highly processed and hard to digest food, it places not only a massive stress on the digestive system but overloads the liver, which has to deal with and detoxify everything before it will allow it into your blood stream.

The liver cleans the blood, as well as having many other functions. If you have an overloaded liver then it will affect all of these processes. Circulatory problems such as gas, IBS, bloating and diverticulitis (where waste gets into the bloodstream via splits in the colon wall), are all signs that nutrients are not being absorbed properly.

When your liver is over burdened it makes you ‘bigger’ and in turn heavier as it has to dilute and house these toxins to make them less harmful to you. This is why after a weekend of indulgence you can be several pounds heavier come Monday morning!

One of the first things you can do to help flush out these toxins is drink water! Yes, an easy solution I know but how many people actually drink any, let alone enough water each day. Every single process in your body, including hormone production is affected by hydration. Your blood is thicker and more syrupy when you are dehydrated and slows all processes down. It’s like trying to run in glue.

One of the first places your body takes water from when you are dehydrated is the upper part of your colon. This means you are more likely to be constipated or find it harder to eliminate. If you are not regular, ie go every single day, then eating all the time is not recommended as it will just back up and your body will be under too much stress. Food is treated as an invader, a stressor, until it has met the liver. If you eat 6 times then that’s 6 times your body will be under digestive stress. Eat no more than 2-3 times a day.

Drinking plenty of water also decreases the risk of kidney stones, cystitis and in turn low back pain. Water thins your bodies liquids, makes them less syrupy and therefore contain less bacteria.

Our hormones are created from the nutrients we get from food. If you are eating poor quality and nutrient deficient food then our bodies systems become compromised and can lead to problems such as thyroid issues.

Our glands, found in seven sites in the body including the neck, groin and under arms, become overburdened and undernourished and don’t work efficiently. Glands release hormones into the bloodstream and receptors need to be available to catch them and take them to where they are needed. If you are eating nutrient poor food or food that doesn’t suit you then this process doesn’t happen 100%

Think about an aerial and your tv. When the weather is good the signal gets to your tv 100% and the picture and quality is great. When the weather is poor the picture starts breaking up and quality is compromised. 

If all our circulatory pathways are compromised our hormones cannot act properly. Our bodies will not be working ‘naturally’ as nature intended. So even if you eat something good like broccoli, all the goodness won’t get there as with messed up hormones, you cannot absorb the nutrients in their entirety. You basically are what you digest.

Our body’s functions can be affected by the following:

-       Inflammation

-       Poor red blood cell production

-       Blood pressure issues

-       Toxicity

-       Dehydration

When inflammation is present in the body then cortisol, our ‘get up and go’ stress hormone is elevated which means fat burning is reduced or switched off completely.

Cortisol isn’t all bad though. It is naturally present in the body in the first part of the day, which is when we need it. Then it should start decreasing from mid afternoon onwards when our growth and repair hormones take over.

However, this is not the case for many of us as we carry on rushing about from the morning at 100 miles per hour picking up the kids etc and working late into the night on our computers. 

So again, if our cortisol levels are high then fat burning hormones don’t get a look in. Have you ever wondered why that even when you throw ‘going to the gym’ into the hectic evening mix that you STILL don’t get results? You need to empty your stress bucket!

Too much cortisol can lead to decreased memory, focus, clarity and increased moodiness. It can also lead to fatigue, depression, low sex drive, increased abdominal fat, impaired immune system and loss of lean tissue. When you don’t sleep well cortisol increases and your repair hormones decrease. Is it any wonder why the nation gets sick so much?

So, here are the top four things you need to do to get your hormones balanced and reduce disease:

1.    Clean up the liver through a good, clean diet

2.    See point 1

3.    Reduce stress

4.    Drink water – 1 litre for every 50lbs body weight

If you clean up your diet overall, everything will start to function ‘naturally’ and will often remove the need for medication, or at least reduce the doses.

If you would like to know more about eating clean you can download our 28 day nutrition for health plan completely free from www.OptimisationPlan.com

 

 

How to beat eating triggers

How to beat eating triggers

Does this sound familiar…

You are at work and your boss has dropped a rush job on you, putting you under immense pressure. As you try and get through it the phones are ringing off the hook making things extremely difficult. You get through it by working through your break then rush off to pick up the kids from the child minder. They start acting up in the car ride home and continue when you get home. While you are trying to make their tea they are running riot. Once they are finally in bed you collapse on the sofa with a glass of wine and bar of chocolate and say to yourself that you’ll ‘be good’ starting tomorrow. And, as you’ve had a glass you may as well finish off the bottle!

We eat for many different reasons other than physiological hunger, and emotional reasons such as stress, is pretty high up on the list. After a stressful day we reach for certain food and drink to help us relax and unwind. It’s our treat after a hard day. When we stop our brain’s trigger ‘reward’ and we all too commonly reach for comfort food that will trigger a feel good response, even though that feeling is short-lived.

Eating can also happen in the evening to beat night time boredom. Identifying a stress or boredom food link is the first step, followed by establishing an alternative, non food-related reward. Easier said than done I know but it is a very important aspect of successful fat loss and improving your health.

There are four types of triggers. Let’s look at them below:

Physical sensations

These can be internal physiological sensations to do with blood sugar or external stimuli such as the smell of food. Tips to manage these would be:

-       Avoid going past tempting shops

-       Keep tempting food out of the house

-       Eat protein and good fats with every meal to keep you fuller for longer

-       Eat enough at each meal so you don’t get hungry quickly

-       Eat real and natural food to get your quota of vitamins, minerals and fibre, then you won’t get the signal to eat

Locations

It can be challenging eating when you are away from home, whether just shopping, with friends or travelling.

Tips to manage these would be:

-       Don’t go to the supermarket when you are hungry

-       Eat before going to a social event so you don’t ‘have’ to eat what is on offer, such as brown and yellow buffet food!

-       Take your own food with you

-       If it’s not in your house you can’t eat it!

Emotions

We already mentioned stress and boredom, but emotions can be very real and powerful feelings that cause us to turn to food or drink for comfort. Other emotional triggers include loneliness, low self-esteem, anger, tiredness.

When you recognise that you are about to self-sabotage your own efforts just STOP! Think…are you actually hungry?

Do you physiologically need it? Will it help you with your goals? Probably not. So, take a few deep breaths and go and do something else instead.

Here are some ideas:

-       Go for a walk

-       Phone a friend

-       Drink a glass of water and brush your teeth

-       Clean/tidy up something

-       Play with the kids

-       Dance to your favorite music

-       Go to the gym or class

-       Have a bubble bath

-       Read a book or watch a dvd

-       Do your nails

-       Go on Facebook!

Relationships

Other people can provide an enormous challenge when trying to stay on the healthy eating path. They themselves may not be ready to make such a change so will do their utmost to sabotage your efforts so they don’t have to change themselves.

You could just say nothing to anyone about your quest to be healthier, then when offered something you can say you’ve already eaten or just not hungry. Alternatively if you have a gathering or social occasion coming up, eat really well all that week so you can relax and have a little of what you fancy and REALLY enjoy it without feeling guilty.

You may be able to eat healthily until you are amongst other people. You may feel obliged to eat everything that is served to you by your caring partner, mother, aunt or friend. You may be worried about hurting their feelings especially if they have made a huge effort. This is a difficult situation but at the end of the day it is YOUR body and if it doesn’t need the extra food there is only one place it will go…into FAT STORAGE!

But, getting the support of your friends and family is really important. You can explain to them firmly that you are fed up of feeling tired, sluggish and fat in all of your clothes and need them to support you in your quest to be slimmer and healthier, even if they themselves are not ready. The chances are they will soon see how much better you will start looking and feeling about yourself that they will end up joining you eventually anyway.

Need a hand?

Myself and my colleague Matt Murphy know how hard it is to stay on track sometimes, and that it can be very lonely when no one seems to be there to support you.

We wanted to help as many people as possible, which is why we created our nutrition plan and even gave it away for free! (You can get yours too from www.OptimisationPlan.com)

But, we found when our clients started communicating with each other, they were much more successful, dropped pounds of body fat and gained bags more energy.

This is why we have created an online support program to go alongside our plan called The Optimisation Journey. It combines all the great information from our Optimisation Plan given to gradually on a daily basis so you are not overwhelmed and can concentrate on a bit at a time.

There will be motivational videos and optional workouts to do and also a support group where all members can chat, share ideas, recipes and all support each other on their own journeys. This is actually the best part of the plan.

Our next journey is due to kick off on Monday 17^th September. For more information click here www.optimisationplan.com/journey

Eat, fast and live longer?

Did you manage to catch the program on BBC2 on Monday about intermittent fasting? It was when journalist and presenter Michael Mosley tried out a couple of methods to see if he could prevent future diseases, prolong ageing and get a bit leaner in the process.

Here’s the link if not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01lxyzc/Horizon_20122013_Eat_Fast_and_Live_Longer/

The majority of the program was well presented and informative. I was initially worried that it would give the public the wrong impression. I was concerned that people would think it was ok to just not eat whenever they wanted. That it would get people doing crazy very low calorie diets thinking they would be ok and good for health! But, it’s more structured than that and it does matter how you do it.

The first fast

Michael began with a pretty tough challenge. He had to fast for 3 days! He was only allowed water, tea and miso soup. Stupidly he sat with the crew in the restaurant watching them eat. One rule of fasting… don’t surround yourself with food!!

However, he managed to do it and after he got his blood results back, he was told there had been a dramatic improvement and his health had improved. But, unless he made changes to his current relatively poor diet, these changes wouldn’t last, and they didn’t, as he said later in the program. After he went back to how he was eating before, they went back up again.

Not being able to get his head around doing a fast like this every 1-2 months, he went in search of something easier. This is when he discovered a study going on in Chicago on alternate day fasting. This is when I started shouting at the TV!

Noooooooo!

It involved eating one meal on the ‘fast day’, so wasn’t about total abstinence from food. The following day was a ‘feed day’ where you could eat whatever you wanted, quite literally it seemed. Where did he get taken the next day for food? To a fast food drive through for burger, chips and ice-cream!

Apparently as long as you stick to 400-600 calories on your fast day it didn’t matter whether you ate a high or low fat diet! My god, HELLLOOOOOO! Calorie counting is also flawed, but that’s another article!

Now I’m sure you don’t need to be a fitness professional to realise that sounds like utter madness. It absolutely does matter WHAT you eat in order to get optimal health long term.

It has of course been proven that ALL diets work, but whether they make you healthy and feel great is another matter. Yes you can ‘lose weight’ by eating a chocolate bar for breakfast, lunch and dinner but it will not nourish your body and promote health.

Third time lucky

Thankfully Michael chose not to adopt this method and moved on to Baltimore, where they were researching ageing on the brain to prevent diseases like Alzheimer’s and Dementia. They had found that mice were living longer than those fed on a high sugar diet.

He tried their 5:2 fasting plan for 5 weeks where he ate normally for 5 days and ate just one meal for two of the days. The results were great and he said he felt really good.

• He lost over a stone
• His body fat dropped from 27% to 19%
• His blood sugar dropped to normal from being pre-diabetic
• His cholesterol improved
• The growth hormone IGF-1 halved
• He cut his risk of developing diseases in the future

And all this was done without the need for medication (the average 65 year old takes 8 drugs a day!), and just by eating a bit less and eating REAL food. 

In all the searches he had done and programs he had made, he had finally found a good, drug-free way of staying healthier for longer.

My fasting experience

I myself was aware of intermittent fasting about a year ago and my first reaction was, ‘No way I could NEVER do that!’ so I dismissed it.

I believed it wasn’t a good idea and that we were supposed to eat little and often. We were supposed to never let our metabolism drop otherwise our bodies would panic and go into starvation mode and pile weight back on after!

But, with new research coming in it seemed that it might not be the case.

Many of the fitness leaders that I follow had been trialling it out with their clients with great health and fat loss results. My colleague Matt then tried it too and also got great results. So, I thought I’d give it a go…

I was to do an intermittent fast for 17-18 hours. That meant having dinner then not eating till lunchtime the next day. For example, if I were to eat at 7pm, I would then break my fast with some greens and a healthy meal the next day at midday. I got myself into the right mind-set, took the idea on board and went for it.

Well, how did you think I felt? Starving? Was my tummy grumbling loudly? Did I feel weak and faint?

Actually I felt completely fine and was much easier than I expected it to be. I had a couple of grumbles but it wasn’t hunger, merely the sound of my gut contracting my empty intestine.

The following day I felt less bloated and lighter. It made me realise that we actually don’t need to eat as often as we think we do, that a lot of the time the hunger is psychological. We are programmed to eat at certain times of the day, regardless of whether we are actually hungry or in need of the next meal.

Small babies are the only ones who eat only when they are hungry, and they let you know about it! They don’t know about breakfast, lunch and dinner. They just let you know when they need to eat next via their bodies letting them know. We need to re-tune back into our own bodies and listen!

So, I began to use intermittent fasting more often. I now look in my diary and see what my busiest mornings are and plan fasts for those days when I can just get up and go and keep busy. I probably do a couple a week. The rest of the time I make sure I eat 2-3 really good quality meals that are made up of lots of green veggies, proteins, good fats and occasional good quality carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes, parsnips, quinoa, rice etc.

I have found that when I eat this way I am more satisfied for longer. This is because my body had been nourished with vitamins, minerals and fibre. It has no need to send out signals such as hunger or cravings as all my needs are met. This is because the food is real, fresh and not processed or full of additives.

I do have a little of what I fancy and know that if I start gaining a little more fat around my middle I need to cut back again. Life is for living but we need to be realistic. We cannot eat whatever we want, when we want and expect to stay healthy and lean.

The Optimisation Plan

If you’d like to learn how to eat for health, gain more energy and lose some body fat as a side effect, then download our 28 day plan for free from www.OptimisationPlan.com

 

In September we will also be running a support group to coach you through the plan with information and motivational videos. You will also be able to interact with all other members of the group and get inspiration for great recipes. I will be sending out details very soon.

Please note: we do not use intermittent fasting in this particular plan, but we do in our more advanced nutrition program. It’s important to note that fasting does not suit everyone, eg diabetics and pregnant women. If your diet is very poor then healthy changes will need to be made before trying fasting for the first time. The Optimisation Plan will help you do this.

Emma Boffo

Personal Trainer and Nutrition Coach

emma@optimiseu.com

www.OptimisationPlan.com

www.BoffosBootcamp.com

www.WeightLossGuruRuislip.com

www.TurboFitFormula.co.uk