New Year, New You? – Ditch the detox and the diet. Every year all round the world we make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and get fit. Most gyms will do around 25% of their yearly business in the month January but how many people are still going six or even three months later? January is not a time of renewal it’s the middle of winter for most people and it is not natural for the body to want to make dramatic changes that will affect your hormones, your gut bacteria and your mood. The result is that most people are doomed to failure and many will give up and revert to mean after four to eight weeks. The current craze is to do a detox such as colon cleanses, liver flush, kidney flush, bile flush etc. However well these protocols are intended in the long run they will do very little for you unless you like running to the bathroom because your bowels are loose! A three or ten or even a twenty day detox may have some benefits but they will never get to the root of the problem which is at a cellular level. Cleansing the liver does not mean that your cells have maximum fluidity and the hormone receptors and mitochondria (energy factory of the cells) are firing at maximum capacity. If your cells are not functioning properly you become tired and sluggish due to a lack of energy. Does this sound familiar? So if you are not detoxing or dieting what can you do? For most of us the Christmas weight is the first thing we want to lose. The best way to get rid of these is to have a purge on the leftover Christmas food and bin it. Better to waste it in the waste than to waste it on your waste. For some people this may not be a practical solution due to finances, but what cost your health? Then slowly start removing the bad sugar from your diet. Cut down on sugar in tea and coffee slowly so that you don’t notice it. Eat less bread (cut out a slice a day and gradually increase it to a level of tolerance). Have less pasta on your plate or less rice. The best thing to do is to increase your intake of fibre rich vegetables (don’t increase fruit intake) which will fill you up and feed your healthy gut bacteria. Increase your levels of fibre and decrease your starchy carbohydrates (this includes potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams). If you do this slowly you won’t notice it very much. If you have ever given up sugar in tea or coffee, the best way to do it is to gradually reduce the amount so that you are desensitising your taste buds so that you get to the point where you no longer need it. It’s the same principal with starchy foods which are basically sugar (this is what they break down into when in your body during the digestion process). Gradually reduce and replace with more fibre rich vegetables so that you are eating more real food that only has one ingredient. There are grains and starches that only have one ingredient but some are better than others eg. Quinoa or amaranth. These can be used as a substitute for rice and will not spike your blood sugar with insulin so much. Insulin is the fat hormone and too much of it makes us fat in the first place (not the whole story but a large part of it). If you carry out the above during the winter months at a pace that is slow so that you won’t feel deprived then when spring arrives you will be able to make bigger changes without will power and reach your weight and health goals. Spring is a time of huge seasonal change and when are bodies will naturally lose some of the winter fat which was designed to keep us warm and have energy available during the time when food was scarce. We are in a much better place at this time both physically, mentally and emotionally and making appropriate changes one step at a time becomes an easier and natural process. Stress is one of the biggest obstacles to weight loss especially if you are trying to live on a healthy Mediterranean diet but you don’t live by the Mediterranean Sea and its freezing cold outside. Just trying to eat foods that are unnatural for your part of the world adds more stress to an already stressful time of year (post-Christmas blues). Ditch the salad for healthy homemade soups or have your salad with something warming and nourishing. There is a world of resources available on the internet to find something to suit you. Alternatively contact me to discuss further. Nick Brennan is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Nutritional Therapist
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 10:27:41 +0000
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