Ignite your metabolism

 

Congratulations for kicking off the new year right and setting your 2020 Vision for health. If you've been following along these past few weeks and making some meaningful changes to your food and lifestyle, well done. Just a quick recap for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about...

A few weeks ago, I launched an eight-week series designed to guide readers through a three-phase program of health. We began with a one (or two) week detox where we eliminated the usual nasties, along with a few foods that cause our bodies to retain bloat and waste. We loaded up on clean, whole, single-ingredient foods and flushed out our bodies with lots of water and a few natural supplements to help detox the colon, liver and kidneys. It's amazing how good you'll feel when you lose all the bloat, and your belly starts melting. 

The good reports are coming in already. Before I sat down to write today, someone messaged saying she was down seven inches in just two weeks!

So, now we've got the body detoxed and we're ready to get started with a clean slate. If you follow my column or weekly podcast on Saturday mornings 8am PST/11am EST on OkanaganValleyRadio.com, you will likely have heard me talk about the importance of eating to stabilize blood sugar. Very simply put, it's PFC every three. When we eat a protein, fat and carb (PFC) within an hour of getting up, and then every three hours throughout the day, not only is blood sugar balanced but it puts the body into homeostasis – or, balance. It's the place where your body is comfortable and all systems can function optimally.

After detoxing we enter the second phase, ‘Ignite.’ It's in this phase where your body will now start to burn, sculpt and restore. Your metabolism is turning on and burns the fat, exercise is back in which helps to tone and sculpt, and we restore gut bacteria with probiotics and nutrient dense foods. Eating PFC every three continues, adding back some of the foods we eliminated during detox – such as dense beans, sweet potatoes, yams, beef, egg yolk and grains, including oatmeal, brown rice and quinoa. Quinoa is really a seed, but as most people tend to think of it the same as rice I'll include it here for now. 

You'll notice the nasties are still “off the table” so to speak. Things like gluten, soy, dairy, salt, sugar, coffee, tea, alcohol and soda really wreak havoc on our bodies and keep us from losing the weight and improving health. 

Does that mean I'm telling you not to ever have cheese again? Or coffee? No. What I recommend is to leave these things out for until you reach your goal, or at least for the eight weeks. Then add the foods back one at a time and note how they make you feel.

Many times we eat foods in combination and then have no idea what we ate that left us not why feeling so good later. Pizza for example has almost all of the things we are eliminating. Have you ever had a few slices and then had an upset stomach later that evening? Or a headache? And it may not be every time. 

Sometimes it affects you, other times not. You can never really put your finger on it. But once you've detoxed and eaten clean for several weeks, adding foods back one by one and noting their effect, if any, will give you insight into which foods are serving you and which aren't.

Exercise is also back in. There are many different types of exercise but honestly, the best one you can do is the one you will do. Consistently. And enjoy it. Find something you love that also gets you moving and elevates your heart rate and do it daily. Walking, jogging, hiking, skating, biking, swimming, dancing are all fantastic and fun ways to keep your body moving. 

It's also important as we age to include some weight bearing exercise to build up strength and prevent muscle loss. Studies show many injuries from falls occur because people were not strong enough to support their own body weight to prevent them hitting the ground. Strengthening your muscles is the best way to make sure you are strong enough to catch and hold yourself up and prevent injury.

And when you are add in some strength training, you'll get more benefit doing it first, followed by the fat burning cardio directly afterwards. The explosive effort of lifting weights, or your own body weight, helps to burn through the sugars more quickly, so that when you get to the cardio, you're burning off the fat more quickly. The same holds true for interval training, HIIT, or Tabata.

So there you have it: Detox is done, metabolism is turned on and you’re starting to burn fat. Nicely done. 

If you missed the detox article or podcast, you can head on over to Facebook and join my 8 Weeks is All it Takes group and watch my weekly videos to walk you through the program and help you achieve and maintain your 2020 vision for health and weight loss.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.