Obesity

One of the goals of the National Institutes of Health is to reduce obesity among adults by more than half by the year 2025. However, current data suggests that the situation is getting worse. Due to rising rates of childhood obesity, life expectancy for the average American could decrease by two to five years over the next few decades unless major efforts are made to slow down the rising rates of obesity.

What’s more, obesity is a risk factor for heart disease and other serious health complications:

* Obesity is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Having these disorders at the same time is a condition called metabolic syndrome, which can lead to an increased risk for heart disease and kidney disease.

* High blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease, is twice as common in obese adults than in those who are at a healthy weight.

* Obesity can also lead to arthritis, which is caused by stress on your joints.

Obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are a common grouping of risk factors for people with heart disease. Managing all these risk factors will help reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.

What You Can Do Today? Why am I telling you all of this?!

Being overweight or obese together represent the number-two preventable cause of death in the U.S. after smoking. There are many things you can do to get your weight under control and to help manage your risk for heart disease:

* Develop a diet and exercise plan that you feel is realistic and something you can maintain ( I can help you with this!)

* Talk to your doctor about medicines that may help control your risk factors for heart disease. If you are prescribed medicines, take them exactly as directed and for as long as your doctor recommends. You have probably heard “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” It is possible in most cases to recover and get your diabetes, cholesterol, and blood pressure under control with eating the right way!

* Resolve to make this year a healthier one-set a weight-loss goal and stick with it.

Zach Schott, Director of Coaching for Fast Weight Loss 365

Stop demonizing food!

This is just one example above: One regular Thomas brand bagel with two tablespoons of cream cheese is about 280 calories. It is possible to achieve your health goals with either one, but diet culture tells you both of these are BAD!

Why? Why can’t you be healthy and eat a bagel with cream cheese? ( Which who doesn’t love a good bagel now and then?!) “But carbs are bad and the cream cheese is fatty Zach!” I hear it all the time from my clients who are brainwashed by the culture they have been accustomed to. What if I told you that those 180 calories are exactly the same to your body as eating a 1/2 cup of egg whites, 40 cal bread, and a cup of blueberries, would you believe it? The bagel thin with cream cheese and the egg whites, lite bread, and blueberries are both almost EXACTLY 180 calories each. Stop food shaming yourself and enjoy both of them guilt free.

Let’s talk demonizing food- “Good” vs. “Bad”

Many people still have it solidified in their brains that if they eat a certain food it makes them “bad, or “good.”

Can you relate?

We think it’s harmless calling something a cheat meal, but in reality if we know cheating is morally bad, then we are thinking we are doing something bad!

How does that make you feel usually? Guilty!!

A lot of clients look at me crazy when I tell them they can eat anything they want. Diet culture goes completely against this thought process. Most people binge and restrict, and binge and restrict. Why do you think the term yo-yo dieting exist?

Can you ponder upon the fact that no food is inherently bad, and just look at food as fuel? All food has calories, some just have more nutrients then others!

If you find yourself stuck in a rut of back and forth dieting, and want to stop that pattern, book a free strategy session with me today and we will show you how this works!

Keto for a Week

So I have to be honest with you all…

I did not lose 10 pounds in 1 week doing keto. In fact, I barely lost any weight because I simply wanted to do it for educational and research purposes. I wanted to be able to speak more from experience so I can lead others better.

The main thing I did was annoy my wife since she was not doing it with me.

I did do a very strict ketogenic diet for the full week though and here is what I found out:

I personally enjoy eating a lot of the healthy fats: nuts, seeds, avocados. I found that it was difficult to actually get in enough fat to be in a ratio that would get me into ketosis. I almost felt like I had to drink olive oil straight out of the bottle!!!

Days 1-2

I noticed the slight brain fog from dropping my carb intake so drastically. One nice thing that I started to notice was that I lost a little water weight that sits around the belly. This makes sense because the body is burning up glycogen. One gram of glycogen generally stores about 4 grams of water. That means even eating healthy we can hold on to quite a bit of water in our bodies!

Days 3-4

I actually started to enjoy the style of eating which made my meals smaller; this is because they are more calorie dense. Here is why: Carbohydrates and Protein have 4 calories per gram. Fat contains 9 calories per gram, more that double. Sometimes I tend to overeat on meals with carbs, but overall I try to stay portioned and balanced. I monitored my macro-nutrient and micro-nutrient intake with a free app called Cronometer. I wanted to make sure I was not depriving myself of necessary nutrients for the sake of just wanting the experience. I really had to try hard to get in enough potassium without going over my net carbs. The easiest way to do that for me was with zucchini, avocado, and spinach. I still fell short though!

Days 5-7

I started to feel better energy and could tell I was not as hungry as I usually am when I wake up in the morning. I also noticed once I ate breakfast I could go for quite some time without feeling too hungry. We try to have at least 30 minutes of activity per day, and I did not see diminished energy when doing it. My seventh day doing the keto diet was on a Saturday, so I started out strong. By the end of the day, when I was originally going to stop anyways, I was craving all sorts of food (mainly carbohydrate and sugary stuff) I enjoyed a little too much food that night. The next morning I paid the price for it! I did NOT feel well. If I were to ever do this again, I would make sure to slowly increase my carbohydrate intake and slowly increase my protein.

Here are my 3 takeaways:

1. It is very difficult to actually get enough fat to make sure I was going to get into ketosis.

2. I enjoyed having a lot of healthy fats in my nutritional choices.

3. I do not feel like this is something that could be sustainable for me personally. I just love my carbohydrates too much.

Would I recommend the keto diet to my clients, friends, or family? Probably not. Unless a doctor prescribes the plan for a specific medical condition, I do not feel like this style of eating is as realistic for the average person. I feel a balanced nutritional approach to eating is a lot more sustainable and fits most peoples lifestyles better.

Zachary Schott, Owner and Director of Coaching