New Year, New Ways To Health

How many cards and greetings and wishes did you receive over the holiday season?   Wouldn't it be grand if they all came true!  Happiness, cheer, joy, peace, prosperity, rest, mental clarity, fun times, sunny days, health ...  How many of these can we actually do something about?  And what resolutions did you make for 2012?  I will bet that 80 - 90% of new year resolutions are related to health, and most of those have to do with losing weight.


Here are some suggestions on reaching your goals in that area.  And it's not about a Diet.  How many of those have you been on, and how many have actually worked for the long haul?  Instead, I'd like you to consider embarking on a new way of eating.  It includes breaking the addiction to sugar - or should I say the carbohydrates that become sugar in your blood.  Another perk to this eating plan is the elimination of the appetite stimulant  insulin.  Stay with me here, this plan has been proven to work for many people, and it hasn't even been difficult for them!  Well, maybe a little for the first week of boot camp ... but after that, no hunger or cravings ... you'll feel like a million bucks!


If you're game, read on:


The first week, cut out all carbohydrates: fruit, sweet and starchy vegetables (carrots, potatoes, yams), grains, breads, cereals, sugars.  Watch out for hidden carbs in salad dressings, processed food, soy, dairy products, especially milk and sweet yogurt.  
Eat lots of protein: meats, fish, cheese, eggs, cottage cheese, plain greek yogurt and nuts along with low-carb veggies and salads, and be sure to have plenty of fat (really).  Be sure to eat often, at least every 4 hours and drink plenty of water.  If you let yourself get hungry or thirsty, you risk making bad choices.  When you feel a craving sneaking up on you, munch on nuts and cheese - food with fat in it will help to eliminate sugar cravings in the first week.     
 By the end of 7 days, your metabolism will have made a radical shift from sugar burning to fat burning.  You will definitely feel a change, both in your energy level and mood.  At this point, you may notice your clothes fitting better, which reminds me, do not weigh yourself - put your bathroom scale in the garage!  If you really must weigh yourself, do it in the cold.  The scale really is not an accurate measure of how you're doing.

After a week, or two if you want, you can eat a few more carbs: total of 40 - 60 grams a day.  This would allow your body to continue indefinitely to burn fat successfully and easily.  But we're human and have a tendency to believe we deserve to have what we want, so we cheat and go off the program.  This will not happen because you will add in a 2x a week 'carb-load'.  This means that on two separate days you eat less that 30 grams of carbs during the day, and that evening you go for it and eat the carbs you've been sorely missing - beer and pasta, oatmeal, rice, potatoes, even some dessert.  It's like legally blowing it, because the next day you'll be back to low carb eating and still be burning fat.  Wait a couple days and do it again.  You must not carb-load two days in a row, because that will change you back over to sugar burning - and that means back to boot camp with you!

Once you settle in to this cycle, it becomes a healthy way of life.  When you're exercising, you're burning fat, and when you're sleeping, you're burning fat.  I think you will find this eating plan easy to do and you'll be amazed at how good you feel.  I hope so.

Next time we'll consider "not all carbs are created equal".

to you health,

Patty