Enhance Your Health
Health Tip of the Week: Fasting Speeds Up Weight Loss!
In the last 3-4 years, advances in the study of nutrition and weight loss have blasted off like a rocket into outer space. Old methods and theories are being disproved at an amazing rate.
Conventional weight loss recommendations have been shown to not only contribute to fluctuations in weight, but actual weight gain and ill health.
One of the newest applications has to do with how often we eat and the timing of when you eat your food. Intermittent fasting is another important factor in helping to optimize your weight.
According to doctors who have researched intermittent fasting, our ancient ancestors did not have access to food 24/7, so our genetics are optimized to having food at variable intervals, not every few hours. When you eat every few hours for months, years, or decades, never missing a meal, your body forgets how to burn fat as a fuel.
According to Zoe Harcombe, the author of The Obesity Epidemic, it becomes very inefficient at it. So, even though you've got 10, 30, 50, or 100 pounds of fat on your body, you can't burn it off.
One of the basic, fundamental principles is that — with few exceptions — you cannot burn body fat if you have other fuel available. "In the vast majority of the circumstances, if you've got carbohydrate available, either readily available – because you've just eaten carbohydrates – in the blood stream, or readily available in glycogen, of which we can store about 1,500 calories' worth; as long as you've got that, your body has absolutely no need to break down body fat whatsoever," she says, adding: "I mapped out a scenario in a presentation that I did recently, looking at somebody who's consumed predominantly carbohydrate calories and somebody who's consumed predominantly fat, protein, meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, nuts, and seeds (what we call good calories). Your body can use the good calories, because the fat and protein are also used for basal metabolic needs, cell repair, fighting infection, and building bone density."
As long as you're getting enough healthy fat, you don't need carbohydrates to cover your energy needs. In fact, in order to use up the energy provided by a 55 percent carb diet you'd have to be a triathlete or someone who exercises vigorously for hours every day.
Thought for the Week
Skip the carbs (foods that contain or breakdown into sugar), eat lots of veggies, nuts and protein. Use healthy oils (olive, walnut, coconut, grapeseed, fish) liberally. Limit fruit to special occasions such as a treat when you have a sweet craving. If you do this, your body will burn fat and become healthier.
Chiropractic Thought for the Week
One of the best analogies in chiropractic is that of the garden hose and irrigation. Water flows through the hose and waters the garden. With an ample supply of water, the garden flourishes and is healthy. Cut off the water and the plants wither, dry-up and eventually die.
The same can be said of your nervous system. Nerve impulses flow through the spinal nerves from the brain and spinal cord and control and co-ordinate the function of every system in your body.
Decrease the nerve flow and the body does not work as well as it should and eventually symptoms and ill health occur. Cut off the nerve flow entirely and the body ceases to live.
Spinal bone misalignment obstructs nerve flow to the body and can lead to ill health. Chiropractors correct the alignment of the spine, eliminating nerve pressure so that the body can function as nature intended.