By Dr. Keith Sheehan
Ok, so, recently, I decided I was too fat, again. Yet, I was keeping my carbs low, and exercising, so what gives? Here’s what we already know about weight loss:
1. Find out what your food allergies are with Nutrition Response Testing, take the appropriate enzyme/acid preparation for that food allergy, and avoid that food 100%! This is a must!
2. Get a proper Nutrition Response TechniqueSM evaluation, to handle any nutritional deficiencies. This is a must. If you have any nutritional deficiencies that are not being handled, weight loss is going to be vastly more difficult!
3. Count carbohydrates (also known as “carbs”). If there are any questions about this, get one of the handouts on this from our office, we have two of them, based on the books “Life Without Bread”, and “The Schwarzbein Principle”. Depending on how much exercise you do, and how overweight you are, this will determine how much you have to cut them down to lose weight. Basically, you record how many grams of carbs you eat per day. If you want to lose weight, cut them down 5-25 grams per day, until you start losing weight, then stay at this level. You can re-evaluate this once per week. For instance, if, for week one, you average 150 grams of carbs per day, you can cut them down to 145-125 per day for week 2, and see how well this works. Let’s say that you choose to stay below 135 carbs per day, and you lose 1 pound this week. You stay at this level until you stop losing weight, where you then repeat the process. This is a very easy process, and takes a little time. You must count carbs every day to do this though, it’s an absolute must. One thing I’ve found is that if you have a hard time losing weight, you’ll probably need to cut your carbs to a minimum, like below 50 per day. If weight loss is no big deal for you, you’ll probably be fine around 100 carbs per day. Also, calorie restriction may work in the short term, but since it’s based on willpower, it fails 97% of the time (from overall dieting statistics). Changing your operating basis to a low carb lifestyle works, though.
These 3 steps will kick off weight loss quickly for over 95% of our patients. Here’s a couple of tips that I found to be useful to either 1) speed up this process, or 2) work though any plateaus you may encounter. I had to incorporate these to lose weight because I was already doing #1 – #3 above.
1. Exercise. People always ask me what exercise is the best exercise, and I always tell them it’s the exercise they will do every day. This being said, walking, and other “easier” exercises, will not work too well for weight loss, unless you are over 50 pounds overweight. Any kind of interval training is best. Interval training is defined as short bursts of activity, back to back with periods of low activity. Examples are sprinting, coupled with walking, weight lifting, coupled with resting, fast biking coupled with slow biking, and you get the idea. Here’s a couple of articles on it:
https://www.everydayhealth.com/fitness/high-intensity-interval-training-for-beginners.aspx
https://www.intervaltraining.net/HiitTraining-30.html
https://www.strength-training-woman.com/interval-strength-training-routines.html
2. I think that you have to get into the mindset that you need to exercise every day, and that you have to switch up what you do every day, so that you don’t get bored. Getting into a habit of doing exercise every day makes it more of a habit. If you plan just to go to the gym twice per week, and you miss 1 workout per week, you’re down to 1 workout a week. With a busy schedule, this will happen a lot! That’s why I do the 30 day at home crossfit challenge every day, and shoot for 3-4 days of weight training. I know I’ll be exercising every day then.
3. Walking before and after lunch. When I am doing training down in Florida, I walk 1 mile to lunch, and one mile back to class after. I always lose about 3 pounds over the course of 4 days of doing this.
4. Make your dinner on the smaller side, even if you have your carbs really low. I think this has something to do with the fact that we digest more poorly as we age, and we tend to need less food as we age. Eating less naturally stimulates the detoxification process, and aids in sleep, to further lower stress hormones (like cortisol), to further weight loss. So to recap: the first 3 steps listed above will get your weight loss started, so start there. If you reach a plateau, or would like to go faster, to the next 4 steps. This will work for over 99% of the people. Good luck, and give me feedback on how your program is going!
Sheehan Natural Health Improvement Center
1301 East King Street
Lancaster, PA 17602
(717) 392-6606
SheehanChiropractic.com
