FEEL GREAT LOSE WEIGHT

There is a new book I've been reading called, "Feel Great, Lose Weight. It is by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. 

It has really impacted me on how I see and view weight loss. I love how the title has been written in reverse of what we normally promote for weight loss. The thought is usually lose weight feel great but maybe we need to feel great in order to lose weight? I love this concept. 

A lot of people start diets every year with very short term success. Few have long term lasting success. Also a lot of people punish themselves to lose weight and don't like who they are even with the weight loss. 

Obesity is killing 11 million people a year. 

Did you know that research says if someone in your social circle is obese then you are 45% more likely be obese. If a friend of a friend is obese you are 25% more likely to be obese. If a friend of a friend of a friend is obese your 10% more likely to be obese. That is so powerful. Even our friends influence our weight. 

Dr. Chatterjee's book focuses on these 5 things regarding weight loss.

What we eat

Why we eat

When we eat

How we eat

Where we eat

This book helps people find the RIGHT weight loss approach for them. How refreshing.

Weight loss is not about calorie restrictions. It's about helping the body reset to it's factory settings, and helping your body heal from the inside out. 

 Lets dive into WHY we eat. We eat when we're lonely, when we're bored, when we're stressed, when we're disconnected. Understanding that is half the battle. You need to be able to identify why your eating. We might need better strategies to handle stress better then trying a new diet plan. We might need to sleep better instead of trying the "30 day fix." Did you know that if you sleep 5 1/2 hours a night instead of 8 hours your going to eat on average 22 percent more calories the following day. So after 5 days of not sleeping well you may eat a whole extra days worth of calories just from not sleeping well...WHOAH!

What's actually happening to your body when you don't sleep well? Ghrelin- your hunger hormone goes up, so your more hungry. You satiety hormones go down so you don't feel full. Your more emotionally reactive, so its harder to say no to temptation. So maybe just getting more sleep is the missing link to your weight loss.

I'll briefly touch on self esteem because the diet industry circles self esteem like a shark. When you put on more weight your self esteem takes a hit. You start to blame yourself and beat your self down for failing instead of blaming the diet. What if it isn't your fault for the weight gain? The thought we usually have is that to lose weight you need to eat less and exercise more and this implies that if you don't do this it's your fault you didn't lose weight. This directly undermines your self worth. It also takes away your ability to understand your body's function and why you may not be able to lose weight. How we treat people who are overweight really needs to change, especially when it comes to children. You need to know you are not a failure. 

Did you also know that if you've had any history of trauma in your childhood (physical, mental or emotional) you are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese in your adult years. This info is so important when working with someone regarding weight loss. This conversation has happened to me already this year four times. I have discussed weight loss with my patients and history of childhood or teen years trauma comes up. In one case my patient was using her weight as a body shield so she wouldn't be hurt again. What's crazy is she didn't connect those dots until we began discussing weight loss and the fear she has about actually losing the weight. 

The point is it needs to be a personalized approach to how you lose weight. It is rarely a one size fits all approach anymore. 

Tip: When you open your fridge maybe start by asking, "what am I feeling, and what do I need?" Whatever it is, try meeting that need without food.  Ex. lonely...call or text a friend and chat some.

3 F's to think about: Feeling, Food and Find. 

1. What am I really feeling? Am I stressed? Am I angry? Am I lonely or tired? Think on this first before acting on it. 

2. How does food feed that feeling? If you are grabbing the bag of chips pause and ask yourself what that food is offering you with how you feel? 

We need to build awareness first before we can make permanent changes to our behavior. 

3. Find a non food behavior to feed that feeling. If you are stressed and are wanting to grab the ice-cream you know is in the freezer....STOP. Go through the first 2 F's then think if there is a action you can take instead of the ice-cream to help you with your stress. Maybe a bath, an evening walk, laying on the floor to breath or stretch, coloring, reading, listening to music or an uplifting message. 

Now give yourself some grace...you might not change this behavior right away the first time, but even just being more aware and practicing these F's is a great starting point even if you do have the ice cream at least you are aware of why you chose to have it. 

Also make a note if you are in fact hungry for food then that's ok, just prepare something that is good for you, nourishing to your body that will satisfy you and not leave you hungry for more quickly after. An example of this is a protein smoothie, or a protein source with broccoli and 1/2 a sweet potato. These foods satisfy you and keep you full longer then say a bag of chips or a pack of crackers. 

He mentions something called "blissy" foods in the book. These foods are products designed by the food industry with unique combinations of fat and sugars to literally make them irresistible to you. This plays a huge impact on your brain and dopamine in particular. If you keep eating these foods  over and over dopamine gets released in anticipation to you eating these foods via the site, the smell and even the location of these foods. This means your neurochemistry can change based on this. That is scary. 

These foods are typically fast food choices in general. He mentions having one of his patients take a different route home from work to avoid driving by a fast food restaurant that would "call her name" in the evenings when she was to tired to make something at home to eat. This route even took her 10 minutes longer to get home but she did it anyway. It worked. She was less tempted and was able to not crave the food after changing her route. She then went on to making more meals at home and lost the weight she had wanted to lose. 

Environment plays a large part in your success with weight loss. Our environment impacts our behavior much more then we realize. Did you know that if there are 6 or more fast food restaurants within a 1/2 mile radius of your house you are 40% more likely to be overweight or obese. The goal here is to change what you can. Don't use will power out in the world, use your home as your safe zone. Don't buy it or bring it into your house. Keep your house as a place that is supporting you and your efforts.

Lets talk about having time to cook. It is not true that eating well has to be expensive. Wild salmon is however, expensive but sardines in a can are not (not saying you need to eat sardines because personally...yuk). 

Where you live definitely influences what you eat. But something that keeps the cost down with eating whole foods is truly knowing how to cook. If you do not know how to cook then eating "healthy" can be very expensive. So start by getting some foundational cooking lessons. You could start by looking up cooking lessons for free on YouTube. Knowing how to do some basic cooking can save you time in the kitchen and keep your shopping costs down as well. 

He makes this wild suggestion in his book that I hadn't thought of. He suggests eating dinner leftovers for breakfast in the morning and it can satisfy you much more than a yogurt/granola style breakfast. How crazy! Eating whole foods for breakfast can really be a game changer for your concentration, focus, and hunger for your whole day. 

Before I wrap up I want to mention exercise. Something Dr. Chaterjee talks about in his book is there is a tribe in Tanzania and the researcher there is measuring the calorie expenditure in this tribe. He is showing that these "hunter gatherers" are moving a lot more then we do on a daily basis but they are burning off roughly the same calories a day as the standard sedentary westerner. Roughly 2-3000 calories a day which is roughly the same as us, even though they are moving a lot more. So what does that mean? Can you lose weight without exercise? Yes you can. Is it recommended? Absolutely not. We often feel very guilty when we don't exercise. Here is a myth we tend to believe. If we run and burn off 400 calories at one time our body then reduces how much calories we burn off in other areas. This is simply not true. The truth is burning off more calories doesn't equal more weight loss. We are more complex metabolically than this. So moving more doesn't necessarily equal burning off more calories. Moving actually builds the self esteem more and makes you feel better. We were designed to move. It is not about burning calories. Weight loss is really a self esteem issue. You can't exercise your way out of a bad diet. 

So where do you start? People are struggling all over the world with even more than weight loss these days with the chaos of the world. 

Dr. Chatterjee says what we say here at the office, "Keep it simple, don't try and over haul your lifestyle all at once." Try these 3 simple habits today. 1. Lift: Lift something heavy every day. 2. Connect:  Connect with another human being in some way every day. Often we snack and want to eat something because we are lonely.  3. Reflect: Every evening ask yourself 2 questions. What went well today? What might I want to change tomorrow?  Ex. I cooked my family a home cooked meal! Yeah! or I stayed up to late watching useless television and it made me crave sugar. I wont do that tomorrow night. 

Start small, be consistent and watch the results start to happen. Please reach out to me if I can be of any help!