Fruit Loops and Fat Loss…
The elusive Fat Loss Formula is far easier than you think. All you need is a simple system with simple guidelines to get incredible results. I stumbled upon this article written by my friend Dr. Colgan and thought if you have a few minutes to read it that the information in it is extremely helpful. It might even shed some fat cells along the way.
Oh, and if you want to know where to get some of the products and absolute cleanest and best protein shakes on the market I included the links to our page where you can purchase them at a discount. Email us if you have any questions!
Since the public got internet savvy about two decade ago, and began to look up the science for themselves, the cereal industry has been losing profits. More and more folk are realizing that, no matter what it says on the packet and in the ads, the latest fruity-tooty loopy breakfast cereal is just processed carbs and sugar with near zero nutritional value. Many of the public also realize that feeding these abominations to your family makes them fat and sick.
The cereal industry has responded with aggressive advertising campaigns extolling breakfast as the most important meal of the day. They have supported numerous false proclamations that skipping breakfast is harmful, and increases risk of obesity and a plethora of other disorders.
They revived the old and discredited 1950s saying, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper!” And it has appeared in ads and articles millions of times, until unthinking people believe it is somehow “official” health information. What a crock !
The saying was written by a nutritionist in the 1950s. I don’t want to print her name, but you can put the saying in your browser find out. She herself had what some rude folk call, “piano leg syndrome” and died at age 70. Not a walking advertisement for health. The large number of Americans who still follow her dictum, most of whom are overweight, are waddling testimony of its nonsense.
The cereal industry campaigns to boost breakfast include funding of university studies that, predictably, support breakfast as the main and healthiest meal of the day. The negative studies, of which there are many, mysteriously disappear, and hardly ever get read, except at scientific conferences. Fortunately, the public have become savvy at finding this science, and the number of Americans who now regularly skip breakfast in order to control body fat has recently risen dramatically to 25% (1).
Numerous scientists have also been hitting back, showing that skipping breakfast, or having it late as a brunch, does not lead to obesity, has no bad health consequences, and can be very beneficial (2-10). In a recent, large 4-year study, people who skipped breakfast had a lower incidence of all diseases (including metabolic diseases) compared to breakfast eaters.(10) On average the breakfast skippers ate about 400 calories less per day.
Eat Late: Gain Weight
With the breakfast myth out of the way, we can get down to the great new science on timing of meals. Called chrononutrition, we now know that the recently discovered circadian clocks in the liver and intestines are linked to the clock in your brain. Release of hormones that control eating, especially the appetitive hormone leptin, and the satiety hormone ghrelin occur in precise cycles over the 24-hour daily rhythm. But, because of the gut clocks, the times you eat can disrupt and entrain the 24-hour rhythm, so that hormone cycles become erratic.
Dinner late at night is the worst, largely because the natural circadian rhythm of leptin and appetite decline at dusk and do not switch on again until morning. Habitually late dinners (9:00 pm to midnight) gradually entrain leptin, keeping it high, so that appetite continues at high levels during the night (11,12).
Late dinners cause multiple health problems, including night-time food cravings and night binges, sleep disorders, mood disorders, and distorted perception of body image (11). Late dinners also raise the stress hormone cortisol, and raise blood insulin and glucose to levels characteristic of the metabolic syndrome (12). When going to eat out late, we advise all our clients to eat dinner earlier, and stick to a social supper snack and a glass of good wine.
Speaking to a sweet group of older ladies in Las Vegas, a big question was, “ How do we get rid of the bingo wings?” My answer, “Stop attacking the buffet at 10 pm,” got a good laugh. Then I explained I was serious.
Spacing of Meals
The time between meals is also critical for body fat control. Until the last decade, researchers completely ignored this variable, rendering the studies almost useless. Consider someone who usually eats dinner about 10 pm, and then breakfast at 6 am to get to work by 7 o’clock. Thus there is 8 hours between the two meals. Compare him with someone who usually eats dinner at 7 pm, then has nothing until after his workout, 9-10 am. He has 15 hours between meals. In circadian terms the hormone cycles of these two people are completely different.
The first man is committing two gustatory sins: late dinner, and bracketing the night too closely, which entrains his circadian clock at both ends to disrupt both leptin-driven appetite, and ghrelin-driven satiety mechanisms (13). He will eat more, he will choose more processed carbohydrates to eat, and he is much more likely to be overweight (14).
In a recent crossover controlled trial on two groups of healthy young men, eating was not allowed between 7:00 pm and 6:00 am, a reasonable 11 hours between meals, timed so as to be synchronized with the circadian rhythm of hormones. The rest of the time they ate whatever and whenever they wanted.
When in the crossover phase of the study without the night-time restriction, both groups of men ate more erratically, and consumed an average of 244 more calories per day (13). That’s 1708 extra calories per week, over 69,000 extra calories per year. If they were calories they did not need, and were not using up, then they would gain about 20 pounds of body fat in one year.
Space Meals Evenly
There is more to it than just spacing meals to suit your circadian rhythm. There is also the immediate effect of the meal. Beware the insulin pendulum. Insulin is a storage hormone. If it gets spikes, it gets mad and swings wildly. It then stores everything you eat.
Irregular eating makes insulin furious. I see lots of people who starve themselves to the point of shaking from low blood sugar, then gobble those “oh so enticing, only 100 calories” snacks. They immediately spike their insulin sky high. The insulin behaves as if you really are starving and proceeds to store everything. Then, it drops like a stone and you feel shaky and peckish again within a couple of hours.
If you are striving to lose fat, keep your insulin even throughout the day. Two effective things you can do to keep insulin quiet. First, eat five small meals, evenly spaced throughout the day. Do this habitually, so that you weave it as a strong pattern into your physiology and into the tapestry of your life.
Remember, it’s not a quick fix to fit into a dress or look good on the beach. Being lean and fit is the only lifestyle that yields healthy longevity. You want it to become so automatic you don’t have to work at it at all.
Second strategy we use to satisfy insulin metabolism; make the meals isocaloric and nutritionally complete. Insulin gets really mad when essential nutrients are missing. So, we make each meal approximately the same number of calories, and ensure that each has a full complement of vitamins, minerals, fats, first-class proteins, and fiber.
All our clients also have to spend 12 gym sessions learning the correct resistance exercise program for life. That’s a toughie. The food is much easier. It’s an immediate fix to use the nutritionally complete and balanced Isagenix Isalean shakes (250 calories each) for three of the meals. With a coffee or tea, or an Isagenix e-shot, plus a shot of Ionix Supreme, and an apple or some mixed fresh berries, each meal is then about 400 calories.
We keep the other two meals, usually late breakfast after workout, and dinner about 7-8 pm, about the same, but composed of organic meats or wild fish and organic veggies, plus an evening glass of wine. All told, it is about 2000 calories a day.
Our 2,000 evenly spaced calories a day is a “never hungry” intake. Yet virtually everyone steadily loses fat on it. It takes a bit longer to start working if you have disrupted your body for years, by starving on unsuccessful,1200 calorie “diet plans,” or a succession of crazy diets. But, within weeks, the regularity of timing and composition of meals, and the match with your circadian cycle takes over. Then the miracle of the human body allows a whole new you to emerge.
1. Levitsky DA, Pacanowski CR. Effect of skipping breakfast on subsequent energy intake. Physiol Behav (2013)119:9–16. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2013.05.006
2. Abalkhail B, Shawky S. Prevalence of daily breakfast intake, iron deficiency anaemia and awareness of being anaemic among Saudi school students. Int J Food Sci Nutr (2002) 53:519–28. doi:10.1080/09637480220164370
3. Resnicow K. The relationship between breakfast habits and plasma cholesterol levels in schoolchildren. J Sch Health (1991) 61:81–5. doi:10.1111/j.1746-1561.1991.tb03242.x
4. Sampson AE, Dixit S, Meyers AF, Houser R Jr. The nutritional impact of breakfast consumption on the diets of inner-city African-American elementary school children. J Natl Med Assoc (1995) 87:195–202.
5. Williams P. Breakfast and the diets of Australian adults: an analysis of data from the 1995 national nutrition survey. Int J Food Sci Nutr (2005) 56:65–79. doi:10.1080/09637480500082108
6. Forslund HB, Lindroos AK, Sjostrom L, Lissner L. Meal patterns and obesity in Swedish women – a simple instrument describing usual meal types, frequency and temporal distribution. Eur J Clin Nutr (2002)56:740–7. doi:10.1038/sj.ejcn.1601387
7. Fujiwara T. Skipping breakfast is associated with dysmenorrhea in young women in Japan. Int J Food Sci Nutr(2003) 54:505–9. doi:10.1080/09637480310001622369
8. Nicklas TA, Morales M, Linares A, Yang SJ, Baranowski T, De Moor C, et al. Children’s meal patterns have changed over a 21-year period: the Bogalusa Heart Study. J Am Diet Assoc (2004) 104:753–61. doi:10.1016/j.jada.2004.02.030
9. Williams BM, O’Neil CE, Keast DR, Cho S, Nicklas TA. Are breakfast consumption patterns associated with weight status and nutrient adequacy in African-American children? Public Health Nutr (2009) 12:489–96. doi:10.1017/S1368980008002760
10. Okamoto E, Hiratsuka Y, Otsubo K, Kumakawa T. Evaluation of the health check up and guidance program through linkage with health insurance claims. J Natl Inst Public Health (2013) 62(1):13–30.
11. Boseck JJ, Engel SG, Allison KC, Crosby RD, Mitchell JE, de Zwaan M. The application of ecological momentary assessment to the study of night eating. Int J Eat Disord (2007) 40(3):271–6. doi:10.1002/eat.20359
12. Allison KC, Ahima RS, O’Reardon JP, Dinges DF, Sharma V, Cummings DE, et al. Neuroendocrine profiles associated with energy intake, sleep, and stress in the night eating syndrome. J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2005)90(11):6214–7. doi:10.1210/jc.2005-1018.
13. LeCheminant JD, Christenson E, Bailey BW, Tucker LA. Restricting night-time eating reduces daily energy intake in healthy young men: a short-term cross-over study. Br J Nutr (2013) 23:1–6. doi:10.1017/S0007114513001359.
14. Kanerva N, et al. Tendency towards evening-ness is associated with unhealthy dietary habits. Chronobiol Int, 2012;29:920-927.