By Lisa Freeman
Are you finding that nothing you do is helping you lose weight? I have seven recommendations to help make that plateau a thing of the past.
One, get rid of vegetable oils, aka, industrial seed oils. These are the most inflammatory fats you could ever consume. They are even worse than sugar and alcohol. What? What did she just say? How is that possible?
The reason they are so inflammatory is because of how these fats are structured and processed. The inflammation occurs around the receptor sites that integrate into your cell membrane which communicates with your fat hormone. If you have inflammation around your cells from the vegetable oils, the fat hormones can’t get in, which means there is no signal getting through. This will cause dysfunction and symptoms like the inability to lose weight. There are eight such oils.
- Canola
- Corn
- Cottonseed
- Sunflower
- Soybean
- Safflower
- Rice bran
- Grapeseed
Swap them out for healthier fats that are saturated and mono-unsaturated in their structure such as:
- Olive oil
- Avocado oil
- Duck fat
- Coconut oil
- Beef tallow
- Grassfed butter
- Grassfed ghee
- Lard
Two, master your stress and get quality sleep, emphasizing at least two hours of deep sleep each night. Deep sleep, which is called stage four Delta sleep, is where most of your fat hormones are activated and doing their job of burning fat. There are other hormones such as growth hormone that are activated during this time of sleep. Your body is burning a lot of fat during deep sleep. Master stress because if you’re stressed from your day’s activity, this will raise your glucose and insulin, which will put you in a fat storage state. Lowering your stress will help with your sleep.
Three, swap out some of your daily fat for animal-based protein. Animal-based protein will help you build lean muscle mass, which is great for an increase in your calorie burning. But also it will help you stay full and satiated so you don’t over eat. A general rule of thumb is to get one gram of protein per pound of your ideal body weight. This is different if you are doing heavy training consistently.
Four, drop your total carbs if you haven’t done so already to 50 grams total for the day—not net carbs, but rather total carbs. This will lower your insulin and help you burn body fat. It will also shuttle the fatty acid to your liver. This will help you produce ketone bodies, which are signalling molecules to uncouple your mitochondria. This will lower inflammation and also increase your calorie-burning capabilities, aka, your metabolism rate.
Five, have you tested your fasting glucose? Have you tested your fasting insulin? Have you tested your glucose after eating? You may be eating healthy food, but it can actually be raising inflammation and causing you to gain weight. The best way to test this is to get a continuous glucose monitor called a CGM. This way you can monitor your glucose for the whole day. With this monitor you can eat a meal and then look at your post prandial glucose.
After an hour of eating, you can check it again to see if it has dropped below 120 MG/DL.
Then check in two hours and see if it’s below 100. I also recommend getting a fasting insulin done by your doctor or here at La Clinica. What you want to see is that it’s under five or, even better, between two and three.
Six, the best way to burn body fat is to achieve metabolic flexibility, recycle damaged cells to components, lower inflammation, and fix the gut. You can do all this with intermittent fasting. I recommend and “18-6” patterns, which is 18 hours of fasting followed by a six-hour eating window. I also recommend a 24-hour fast per week. This is a great way to break your weight loss plateau.
Seven, support your liver. Your liver is responsible for many things associated with detoxification and breaking down dietary fat. Your body assimilates and absorbs all these fats, soluble vitamins for performance and lowering inflammation.
What the liver produces is bile, which breaks down the fat. Most people produce thick, sluggish bile. I recommend the following to help support your liver.
- Arugula
- Dandelion greens
- Ginger
- Black coffee
- Radishes
- Radicchio
- Apple cider vinegar
These seven recommendations can help push you over that frustrating weight plateau. If you have any further questions or would like to talk further about your personal nutritional or training needs, contact me at The Clinic, 415 152 2255 or lisaf689@yahoo.com.
WhatsApp: 744 138 5863; Lisa Freeman@MX.
