This is the time of year for giving…
My gift to you is: Free advice to help your health, increase energy and help those who’d like to shed some excess body fat just before their Christmas Day feast.
These hacks will not cost you any money, for some they are reminders, and for others some important information…
1. Sleep:
Yes this shouldn’t be a surprise, but people need to be told more often, because they are still not prioritizing sleep.
If you can get good quality sleep on a regular basis this helps you:
– make better decisions
– removes toxins out of your body that helps your hormones regulate better
Sleep deprivation “brain drain” discovery is that the reduction isn’t shared equally.
In your brain, your parietal lobe and the prefrontal cortex actually lose 12 – 14% of their glucose when you don’t sleep.
These are the areas of the brain we most need for thinking, for distinguishing between ideas, for social control, and for being able to tell the difference between right and wrong.
(And who wants to be making the wrong decisions?)
Our body has what is essentially a cellular waste management system called the lymphatic system.
It’s responsible for eliminating metabolic waste and toxins to keep you healthy, however this does not include your brain.
Your brain is a closed system controlled by a blood-brain barrier, which decides what can go through and what cannot.
This waste removal literally makes room for growth and development. Removing and recycling dead cells, tossing out toxins, and shuttling out waste is critical to brain function.
Because you are so active during the day, the brain is not able to remove waste, until the time when you sleep.
If this system does not get done, removing harmful waste products – it is believed to be one of the foundational causes for Alzheimer’s disease.
Our blueprint:
We have different systems in our body, and Mother Nature knew that at times there will be famine, and other times of the year there will be food sources to feast on.
This can handle calorie increase in a feast situation to counteract a famine situation, we can store fat to use later, we will survive.
Mother Nature did not make a system to help the body recover on minimal sleep, we do not have a backup system to bank up hours of sleep.
We have a situation now of lack of sleep, therefore we have gone into a desperate state – which is shown through the amount of chronic illnesses.
More in my free ebook
2. Cold Thermogenesis:
Did you know that there is a type of fat that helps you burn energy and lose weight?
It’s called brown fat, a heat-generating fat that burns energy instead of storing it.
According to recent research, brown fat may have an important role in weight management.
The more brown fat you have the more fuel your body will burn, you will have a better metabolic rate that will process your fuel more efficiently.
Some effective ways to increase your brown fat is to incorporate some of the following:
- Cold showers – finish your shower with only cold water.
To get used to it, just put your hands and feet under the water, and gradually of the weeks get your whole body under.
Then allow your body to warm up naturally, do not turn the hot water back on. - Keep your heating turned down, and allow your body to heat up naturally, same applies for making your body cool down naturally without the aid of air conditioners.
- Drinking about 500 ml of ice water each morning
- Immersing yourself in ice water up to your waist for 10 minutes, three times per week. (Simply fill your tub with cold water and ice cubes)
If you are interested in using an infrared sauna for a cold shower contrast here are some packages available.
3. Move – 10K steps a day
We as humans were made to move a lot.
We don’t have to run, just walk and keep active.
Staying active, helps our muscles, joints, tendons and bones to stay strong.
This also helps to burn energy effectively, which in turn helps to keep body fat down. We can keep ourselves in a calorie deficit.
By walking everyday, at a pace that is not threatening to the heart and hormones, the body does not go into a fight and flight response (sympathetic), it will stay in a parasympathetic state, which allows body fat to burn.
Once you start jogging or elevating your heart rate too much, you place your body into a fight and flight response, so therefore your body is trying to stay alive, more than trying to burn body fat.
This time of year is hectic and stressful enough, so do not place the body into more stress by running if you do not need to.
Walking is great to unwind, clear your mind and let thoughts come and go. Your body will appreciate this and reward you by burning body fat.
An average step count to work to each day is 10,000 steps.
4. Fasting
By simply giving your stomach time to rest from having to process food is a great start to better health.
Fasting rejuvenates your cells.
Once your cells are healthy, your internal system works better, and this gives you cognitive strength, stable blood sugar levels, and most importantly your hormones are not being hammered.
Fasting is what reduces insulin sensitivity – so simply work on twelve hours of an ‘eating window’ and ‘twelve hours’ of no eating (fasting), then gradually taper down the eating window and increase the fasting window most days of the week.
This is a perfect time to trial this, especially around ‘festive gatherings’. You can expand the time without food (famine), and then when your social catch up is on, you can feast…
Fasting is the oldest dietary intervention in the world.
It is profoundly different from all other dietary strategies. It is not the latest and greatest but the tried and true. It is not something to do but something to not do. Because it differs from conventional dieting in many important ways, fasting carries many distinct advantages.
Fasting is free.
In fact, not only is it free, it actually saves money because you do not need to buy any food at all! There are not expensive foods. There are not expensive supplements. There are no meal replacement bars, shakes, or medications. The price of fasting is zero.
Feats follow fasts. Fasts follow feasts.
This is how we have always lived. Birthdays, weddings, holidays, and other special occasions have always, throughout human history, been celebrated with feasts. But those feasts should be followed by fasts.
Our ancestors did this on a regular occasion, a feast always follows a famine, it’s just now-a-days we ‘feast’ all the time and forget the famine side of things.
What happens when we fast?:
The process of using and storing food energy that occurs when we eat goes in reverse when we fast. Insulin levels drop, signaling the body to start burning stores energy.
Glycogen (the glucose that’s stored in the liver) is the most easily accessible energy source, and the liver stores enough to provide energy from twenty-four hours or so. After that, the body starts to break down stored body fat for energy.
The body really only exists in two states – the fed (high-insulin) state and the fasted (low-insulin) state.
Either we are storing food energy or we are burning food energy. If eating and fasting are balanced, then there is not net weight gain.
If, however, we spend the majority of the day storing food energy (because we’re in the fed state), then over time, we will gain weight. What is needed then is to restore balance by increasing the amount of time we burn food energy (by going into the fasted state).
Two great books I recommend: ‘The Complete guide to Fasting’ or ‘The Obesity Code’
both written by :- Dr Jason Fung.
5. Meditate
I know it’s not sexy, but meditation can be a five minute stillness exercise, sitting comfortably in a chair, sitting outside under a tree with a cup of tea.
Mediation does not have to be sitting cross legged in front of an alter – it’s about stillness and breath work.
The reason this is on the list is because is settles the nervous system, taking you out of fight and flight mode, allowing the cortisol hormone to have a rest, settling the insulin levels, that are going crazy with many of us.
Try Headspace app this is free and you can start to get a routine with this.
There are many podcasts that can guide you through a mindful meditation to help you as well.
Some people walk and use breath work such as a slow 4 count breath in, hold at the top, then slow 4 count breath out , slight hold and continue that for a lap around the block.
Free resources I recommend:
Podcast : Tara Brach
App: Headspace
Spotify: Cheryl Wood
My gifts to you….
All of the tips I have given are based on switching your sympathetic nervous system to a parasympathetic mode.
By working on this through sleep, low impact movement, fasting and mediation you will start to balance out the crazy busy, to the rest and repair.
The more you rest and repair the more you will reduce insulin resistance as well.
Once you have reduced you insulin concerns, your adrenals and pancreas will not be be hammered, and the nourishing food you have will actually be processed correctly.
When your adrenals are fried, along with an overworked pancreas, your liver is affected, this tampers with your metabolic rate.
Then when your metabolic rate is broken, it slows down and weight gain is coming on thick and fast, stubborn weight loss is now your problem along with low energy and insomnia.
So if you don’t know where to start… download this free ebook to take the first step and then you can go from there.
I wish you all a wonderful year ahead, with new ambitions, new connections and new found passions…
To your healthy mind and healthy body,
Thank you for your support, I am very grateful.
Kerrie
