KPBS had this brilliant episode last month on loosing weight.  According to the description:

In summary (I got more than 10 tips out of this video...):

1) Visceral fat is extremely dangerous and you often don't even know you have it because it is INSIDE of you around your organs. 

2) Skipping meals makes you crave high calorie fats and sugars to compensate for not eating enough.  When you eat regularly and are getting the nutrients you need, you don't crave high or low calorie foods which means you don't need willpower to fight cravings..... or salad.

3) Change your plate size to something smaller and you will eat less.  Having a bigger plate makes you eat more, even if you aren't hungry anymore.

4) Use low calorie versions of your favorite foods, like yogurt with spices for salad dressing instead of creamy bottled dressings or toast in the morning instead of donuts.  You are likely eating up to 60% more calories that you realize, which makes a 1200 calorie day actually a 3000 calorie day!

5) Healthy foods like fruit or starchy vegetables like peas and carrots are not always "free" foods and low in calories, especially if you are eating too much of them.  

6) Protein rich foods keep you feeling fuller for longer and suppresses food cravings and lower portion sizes.

7) Liquefied food stays in your stomach longer, which makes you feel fuller for longer and thus staves off hunger pains.  Soups and smoothies anyone?!?

8) The more variety on your plate, the more likely you will overeat.  Likewise, the more food options you have, the more likely you will load up your plate.  Say no to the buffet! 

9) Calcium from dairy binds to the fat you consume so you don't absorb as much of it.  Instead, it goes right through you!  Lower fat dairy options work just as well as high fat dairy, except you have a sum total less fat absorbed when you consume low fat dairy options.

10) Most fat burned from exercise is burned in the 72 hours AFTER exercise, not during.  During exercise you burn mostly simple carbohydrates.  

11) Incorporating small changes in your routine to minimize the amount you sit burns more calories throughout the day, which can add up to hundreds of calories a day.  Walk the stairs or pace while on the phone.

There is a connection we have with our bodies (and our bodies have with our mind) that is convoluted, dialectical, impatient, loving, and downright complicated (See Part 1).  Sometimes, things go catastrophically wrong with that connection and we are left wondering what is wrong with us.   What does a disconnection look like?


1) There are the people that don't know they have a body.  I'm not kidding.  They get dressed in the morning and eat every day and exercise and hug people, but never do so from a point of actually being IN their body.  Their bodies are full of pain that that is just about the only thing they know about it.  They have cut off their bodies and don't really feel much.  They often don’t even realize that they don’t realize that they have cut off their bodies.  When they start unfreezing or something gets through their tough and numbed exterior, they are often surprised that there is a whole world they never knew existed.  These are the people that say things like my world became alive or full of color after falling in love or recovering from depression or finally getting relief from a debilitating illness.  



2) There are the people that change their bodies in extreme ways to fit into an ideal image.  They get surgery, take drugs, sculpt themselves at the gym, and watch or count everything that enters their mouth.  They feel like their body doesn't match their internal image of themselves and are so dysphoric they are willing to do ANYTHING to not be what other people see them as on the outside.  Their brains quite literally have an image (or a map) of what their bodies are supposed to look like.  In fact, there is a whole section of the brain called the parietal lobes that integrates information from your senses and your experiences and expectations of what it means to be a human and what a human is supposed to look like to give you an internal image of what you are supposed to look like.  You hear these people spending the majority of their day preoccupied with “improving” themselves.  This disconnection between what you think or feel you should look like and what you actually look like is what causes why skinny people to say they feel fat and transgender individuals to say their bodies don’t match their gender.



3) There are the people that abuse their bodies in ways that poses a threat their own health.  Something has happened that is so overwhelming emotionally that self-abuse and self-harm through pain, abstinence, denial, and more is the only way to get a break from the weight of the emotions and thoughts.  Abusing their bodies seem to be the only thing that makes life REAL.  Everyday life is like walking through a movie watching someone else, or is so horribly hellish that they feel completely and utterly isolated and alone.  Physical pain and denial is a way to gain control and mastery over their own lives.  The only time they feel alive is when they are getting that adrenaline rush or consuming food and drink that is making them sick or cutting themselves to make sure they are still alive.



How do you heal from a disconnection when we never acknowledged there was a connection, or even recognize that the problem is the actual connection?


Check back tomorrow for Part 3 of Thoughts on Bodies: Healing the Divide

Bodies.  Our bodies define us in so many ways, yet we disown them in so many more.  Our uniforms, our haircuts, our styles and the way we showcase ourselves signify everything from socio-economic class and race, to gender identity, to the community we identify with and our "tribe".  At the same time, we disown our bodies and disconnect with them in profound and sometimes abusive ways.  Our relationships and experiences with our bodies, whether it is dragging them around and making them wait while we think or learn, or taking them out for a walk, or getting frustrated when they get sick or break out in hives or whatever, define our core experience.  We struggle each day to feed them the right way, rest them enough, and exercise them enough.  We become so shameful about them that we try and force our bodies to conform to an ideal, and we get frustrated that they can't keep up with us.  


We tend to treat our bodies as something separate from our "self".  We are embarrassed by them, dress them up, hide them, sculpt them with weights and dumbbells or plastic surgery, ink them, mutilate them, starve them, or overfeed them.  At the same time, they are what make us and helps define us as "who I am".  It is exactly the way we dress them up, or hide them, or sculpt them, or ink them, mutilate, starve, or overfeed them that sends a message about "this is who I am".  


Underneath all of that, though, is another dialectic.  We insist that our bodies are different than our minds and in many ways they most definitively are.  You can't think up E=mc2 by putting your body in a pink tutu or running around a tree (although you might be able to do those simultaneously), yet our bodies also create and define how our minds function.... and vice versa.  There is a connection between our minds and bodies that is so profound that we get pits and butterflies in our stomachs or feel like our hearts are breaking.  When we get angry, we clench our fists and when we get scared we lock our knees.  There is an intricate connection between mind and body that is so obvious that we often deny it exists at all.  In fact, the concept of separating our bodies so much as to talk about taking them for a walk or making them wait around while we learn seems ludicrous.  We are fundamentally intertwined with our bodies.


What happens when things go catastrophically wrong with that connection and we are left wondering what is wrong with us?  How do you heal from a disconnection when we never acknowledged there was a connection, or even recognize that the problem is the actual connection?  What does a disconnection look like?


These are the people that don't know they have a body, change it in ways to fit into an ideal image, or abuse it in ways that poses a threat their own health.   


Stay tuned for tomorrow on "Thoughts on Bodies- Part 2: Catastrophic Disconnection".  

There are four ways to loose weight:

1) Exercise yourself into the ground

2) Reduce your calories (and feel like you are starving)

3) Change the composition of what you are eating (ie: carbs vs proteins vs fats)

4) Maximize and optimize your metabolism


Most people who have tried to loose weight have tried the first two and usually find it very difficult.  I'll admit.... it does make good drama for TV though.  The other two are a bit easier, and make exercise and calorie reduction much easier and effective.  

First of all, carbohydrates are what turn into fat, not fat.  Your body is made of water, fat, and protein and your body uses sugars and carbs for fuel like a car uses gasoline.  Too much fuel (ie: carbs and sugar) will be converted into fat for storage to be used for fuel at a later time.  So, if you want to loose weight you have to decrease the amount of carbohydrates you are eating because you are over-fueling your body each day and your gas tank is too full.  

The best way to cut down on your carbs intake is to replace some of the carbs with protein and non-starchy vegetables (think green).  The idea is to cut down your carb intake so you have the optimal amount of fuel.  You can also force your body to break down protein for fuel too.  Since protein has the same amount of calories per gram as carbohydrates but uses more calories to digest it into smaller pieces to build and repair your body with, you feel full on the same amount of food but are actually getting less calories overall.  This can be good temporarily, but not in the long term.  You have to feed your body carbohydrates for fuel.  Not giving yourself the right fuel is like giving your car diesel when you are supposed to use regular unleaded. On the other hand, you could probably eat a whole garden of vegetables but you would still be hungry.  Increasing your protein intake and your vegetable intake will allow you to balance your fuel intake and feel satiated.  You will have the right amount of fuel and as a bonus, will also give yourself extra building blocks to make/build a better you!

Once you are getting the proper fuel and building materials to make a healthy you, it is important to make sure you are actually absorbing and using what you are eating.  Have you ever noticed when you take a multivitamin that your pee turns neon yellow?  Well.... that is because you are not absorbing all of your B vitamins and you are peeing them all out!  There are also micro-nutrients and micro-chemical substances that are not vitamins and minerals that your body needs to run.  Some of them your body can make, others you get from food and herbs (once upon a time on the savanna we ate herbs in our food everyday as extra flavor in cooked foods and as tea and as extra bulk in salad).  When your body gets all the things it needs to run right, then your body can heal itself.  Your body will gain weight as a reaction to not giving your body what it needs.  

Getting these micro-nutrients and micro-chemicals will boost your metabolism and help it run better.  Having a more efficient metabolism will burn more of your fat stores and even out your energy throughout the day.  You will also sleep better, gain muscle easier, and feel much better overall.  In fact, many digestive, skin, hair, and nail conditions are actually caused by your body not metabolizing as well as it can.

So where can you get these micro-nutrients and micro-chemicals?  Whole and unprocessed foods that are colorful, sunlight, clean water, clean air, and herbs. And we aren't talking crazy superfoods from China or herbs like ephedra.  Substances like reservatrol in your red wine or herbs like dandelions leaves and green tea will do wonders. Especially taking a good formula that contains concentrated amounts (so you don't have to be drunk everyday in the name of weight loss!) will get you jump started and help you get more for your money's worth on your multivitamins and foods.  


Interested in more?  Schedule a wellness assessment with me today!