HOW TO STOP / CONTROL CRAVINGS

Today I want to talk to you about why we're gaining more and more weight and not in a healthy way, and why some of the main healthy foods that we're eating, well, they're creating some of the biggest problems, no pun intended. But before I jump in, I want to say thank you for all of the amazing feedback on video one where we address the number one biggest obstacle, holding back your fat loss.

Sounds like it really resonated with you.

Which is exactly what I was aiming for. So today I want to keep the momentum going and help you overcome this, the second largest obstacle that stands in the way of fat loss. We overcame the first main obstacle in video 1 when we sorted out the start to your vision. We identified your false assumed truths holding you back and started to open up the doors to your driving core motivator. If you did not watch that training video, I highly suggest that you do. And as the following videos will be so much more impactful if you did so in this video today, I want to talk to you specifically about why you eat healthy foods, but you either can't lose the weight or the scale keeps going up. In addition, because I really want you to get this, I'm going to share exactly how and why we get and.

Store fat in the first place.

So there's been a lot of new science on this topic and many, much of this new science really disproves things that have been told to us as facts for the past 30 plus years. The updated science alone will completely change your outlook on fat loss. Just having this new information will make taking the correct actions so much easier. So you're definitely going to want to invest the next few minutes in your own education to get this information and make sure you hang on till the very end of this video because I'm going to give you three steps, specific things that you can do today. You can start them today right after this video to start getting your body in some serious fat burning.

Now, as a licensed master sports nutritionist and functional fitness trainer, I have helped hundreds of thousands of people lose the fat and keep it off. So one of the things I hear all the time is some version of I'm eating healthy or I'm eating clean, but I just can't lose the weight. Now, when I started asking what foods they were eating, it became crystal clear what was happening. They were eating healthy foods, but they were not eating enough foods that would assist with fat loss. And there's a difference. For example. So let me ask you, what do you think of when I Mention these foods. Okay, you ready? Oatmeal. How about quinoa? How about brown rice? And 100% whole wheat bread or just.

Whole grains in general?

Oh, and what about corn? I think we can all agree that individually, they're all considered by the masses somewhat as healthy foods. Now, the issue comes when we start combining them to create meals. Now, if you don't do it properly, those healthy considered foods can start increasing your waistline and can do so pretty quickly. Now, let's take breakfast as an example. Let's say for breakfast you have some oatmeal and you maybe have some fruit or honey that you add to it, and then you have a piece of whole grain to toast or a banana with a glass of orange juice. Sound pretty healthy to you, right? Well, not if losing body fat is your goal. So I'm going to get into the why in just a second, but I.

Want you to take a minute to.

Share a story first. It really gives a real life example of how our bodies process certain foods and how they are contributing to our obesity epidemic. Now, I've been teaching these concepts for quite some time now, but, but this is a real life example and it really drove the point home for me more than anything ever has. And I think it's going to do the same for you. Okay, so just a few years back, I was on a trip where I spent a week in the very beautiful, yet very impoverished country of Nicaragua. Now, it's actually the second poorest country in the entire Western hemisphere. I was on a trip there to serve those who cannot serve themselves in a very, very impoverished area called Tippitapa. Now, this area has a population of about 6,000 people and literally no economic opportunity. I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen this with my own eyes. But this community, they had survived in some of the worst living conditions I had ever experienced. For most countries, the average life expectancy is 71 for men and 77 for women. But the average life expectancy expectancy in this small area of Tippy Toppa was just 37 years old.

Wow.

Now, I stayed personally in the city of Managua, which with traffic was about an hour and a half drive each way to get in and out of Tippy Toppa. Now, the drive was pleasant for the most part. On the way there, the roads were nice and we turned down this right turn and it went onto this rotted out dirt road that was leading to a neighborhood in Tibetan that we were.

Going to be working in.

Now, this dirt road eventually slowed our pace to A crawl, as the van that we were in would routinely have to turn diagonal to crawl across big ruts and holes dug into the dirt road. Now, I quickly forgot about the bumpy road, though, because the smell of smoke started overtaking my senses. And I looked up to see what was burning up ahead and I saw smoke. I mean, it was crazy. And what I saw next, the sight of that will stick with me forever. So as I rolled up to the source of the smoke, I could see a massive trash dump. Not only this massive trash now, but it was smoldering with fires all over it. Now, just as I was trying to comprehend what I was looking at, my daughter pointed out the window and her jaw was wide open. She poked me on the shoulder and she said, mom, look at those little kids peeking through the traps. Sure enough, I looked through. There were children as young as 4 or 5 years old all the way to adults, sifting through the trash, looking for scraps of food, clothing, or any treasure that they could find. Now, this smoldering trash dump, and there's people on it, this truly gave another meaning of one man's trash is another man's treasure. Now, standing on the other side of the road were pregnant teenage girls as young as 12 and 13 in age, were avoiding the smoke but wanting to see if any food could be found. Now, as we continued on to the neighborhood, which was right next to this dump that was smoldering, we passed groups of young children, barely barefoot and filthy. But I noticed something really odd that stood out. I was so surprised to see how many obese adults there were. Now remember, these are people that are very, very poor. They have no economic opportunity and, and they don't know when or where their next meal is coming from other than scraps of food that they would sometimes find within the rubbish. They didn't know where their food was coming from. They were relying very, very heavily on outside resources and donations of food. Now, on this particular trip, I was part of that outside source. I was one of those people bringing food. Now, I knew we were doing a good thing, helping to feed the hungry and with these families and to build homes. But as a nutritionist, look, looking at the food they were serving and the food we were passing out to 250 families, I was torn. And I discussed with the group. I looked down at the food and it's this big bag of rice, beans, cheap greens and cheap oils. Now, all of these are cost effective and can feed a lot of people. And I got that. I also got that these foods would not spoil or have to be refrigerated, and that they were easy to transport in bulk, got all of that. But there was also so many unintended consequences. The food we were serving, the high starch grains, had a long shelf life. It was cheap, it was easy to get. For them, it was fixing a temporary problem, hunger for that moment. But it was creating a much bigger problem. What was so crazy is if you could look at these people, hungry and starving, getting maybe one or two meals a day, if there was some sort of outside assistance that was. Yet so many of them were obese. So how could they be starving and obese? I was baffled. And then to hear the health problems with them. Type 2 diabetes, the average life expectancy half of what it was for the rest of the country. When we handed out the prepared food bags to feed them after we left, this is what we gave them. Rice, beans, corn tortillas, pasta and canola oil. But they were still hungry. Obesity and disease ran rampant. Why is that so? Listen, these people didn't have a choice. They don't have a choice. They don't have food. They're digging through trash looking for food. And this is what they have access to. You listening? Have a choice. We have choices with lots of food options. And we're choosing specific foods that we think are healthy. We're choosing foods that are contributing to a huge obesity epidemic. And we are contributing to make it so you can't lose the fat. But let's look at things on a deeper level. Let's see how these foods interact with your body and how they impact your fat loss. These questions followed me throughout my entire week in Nicaragua. Not just because of how all these people I met and how I long to help them, but also in how this chance meeting of weeks serving them gave me a complete epiphany about what's happening in our fat loss. So remember our meal example from a few minutes ago where I talked about that breakfast of oatmeal and some fruit and honey and that toast with a glass of orange juice. So all of those I listed, oatmeal, fruit, honey, whole grain toast, oranges. They're all carbs. Now let's compare that to food. The starving and obese people that I saw in Tippitapa overeating, the rice, the starchy carbs, the beans, the corn, the pasta, all these things. Starchy carbs, starchy carb beans, starchy carb corn, starchy carb pasta, starchy carb tortilla, all starchy carbs. I started to get a better idea of how this impacts our fat loss or lack thereof. So let's look at how carbs behave in our body. Now, before we get going, let me stop you right there and say, don't worry, I'm not telling you that low carb is the answer or that no carb is the answer, because it's just not that simple. And that's definitely not the answer. But what I'm going to do is show you how the wrong carbs and fats and proteins behave in our bodies. Then why balancing them is so critical for fat loss. So the first thing we need to understand is a hormone in our body called insulin. So insulin basically regulates if our body is going to store energy as body fat, or if it's going to burn it. And to cut to the chase, if your body is producing insulin, when it is producing the insulin, you are not in fat burning mode while you're producing it. So you're probably wondering, okay, well then how do I stop my body from producing insulin? That might be the right train of thought, but it's definitely not the solution. So let's keep looking at this from a simplistic point of view to better help you out understand insulin and how it works in your body. Think back to a time when you had a big high carb meal, like a big pasta dish or maybe a bowl of oatmeal with some sugar. How did you feel after? When you were headed to work or sitting in a class after, did you have trouble concentrating? Did you feel groggy? Did you have a lack of energy? Did you feel like you needed to take a nap or like you couldn't focus? Now the scientific food for this is food coma. And if you are a lot like.

Me, you probably probably experienced this once.

Or twice in your life, or maybe you experience it daily. And this is going to sound complex, but it's actually pretty simple. What we want to do is control our insulin levels the best that we can. We want to keep things even keel and minimize those insulin spikes. So first, carbohydrates, a primary macronutrient that stimulates the body to produce insulin. Carbohydrates are broken down to a sugar called glucose, which, which enters into our bloodstream. Now, as glucose enters the bloodstream, it raises blood sugar levels. Now, elevated blood sugar levels triggers the release of insulin. And because remember, the job of insulin is essentially to control and to regulate sugar in our blood, it has a job to move it out of our blood. So it does this by signaling to the Liver, muscle, and fat cells to take the glucose out of your blood and to use it for energy. But what if the body already has enough energy? Then one signals to the liver to take the glucose and store it as glycogen. Now, glycogen is the energy that powers your muscles during exercise, and it's what endurance athletes try to replenish while they exercise. The average person has about 1500-2000 calories worth of stored glass glycogen in their bodies. About 20% of that is stored in the liver, and the other 80% is stored in the muscle. But what do you think happens when those glycogen stores are full? Well, let me tell you, if the storage is full, then the body can't use the glycogen for energy. So then what does the body do with the extra glycogen? That's right. That excess gets stored as body fat. Not good, right? You've probably heard about the pot popularity of going low, carb or no carb. Now, I'll be honest. In the short term, that strategy can work temporarily because no carb means no insulin production, which means you're not storing fat. But the problem is your brain and your body need carbohydrates to function and want to lose fat, not muscle. So we need carbs. And no carb plan only works for short term. And eventually you're going to have to start eating carbs again. One other little tidbit about glycogen so stores in your muscle is that each gram of glycogen in your muscle holds about one ounce of water. So think of glycogen as acting like a sponge that holds water. So you'll lose weight just by burning out of your glycogen stores. But it deceives a lot of people because it's all water weight, not fat weight. So when you do start eating those carbs again, the glycogen is replenishing your muscles. It will put water right back in as well. And when with that, all that weight comes right back on. So remember, we want fat loss, not temporary water loss. Okay? So hopefully you now have a little better understanding of how carbs behave in our body and how carbs and no carbs only work in the short term. But let's take a look at fats. Now, fats have zero impact on the body as far as producing insulin goes. But they do perform a very important function, though, because they slow down the absorption of carbohydrates in our body. Now, a lot of us are Always trying to rely on willpower. What if you could naturally control your appetite and not have to rely on that self control or willpower? Would that make life a bit easier? You see, when fats hit your stomach, it secretes a hormone that goes directly to the brain that signals the body to stop eating. Talk about a huge benefit of fats. They help you not overeat. Now, you could see when we're being told to eat fat free, all those years ago, this wasn't really doing us any favors because we want fat and its benefits. And when we went fat free, what we were doing was eating high carb replacements instead. Now, I can remember going to the movies and grabbing gummy bears and thinking, okay, they're fat free, I can have them. The problem was I couldn't stop eating them. I would eat a whole box and still be hungry for more. What I didn't know then, which I do know now, was that without the fat and all those carbs and sugar, it was just spiking my insulin. And that's what was making me crave more and more carbohydrates. Okay, so now it's time to look at protein. Now, protein has minimal impact on insulin production, but it's very important for another special reason. Protein stimulates another hormone which produces the opposite effect of insulin. Not only does it have the opposite effect, but it helps to control excessive insulin production. So the hormone secreted when you consume protein is called glucagan. Now, to keep it simple, insulin tells the body to store blood sugars. Glycogen, Glucagan tells the body to release stored glucogen into the system. Now, that's about as complex as we need to go right now. But does this make sense to you? Insulin determines if your body is storing or burning fat. Carbohydrates stimulate the production of insulin. Fats and protein do not. Fats slow the absorption of carbs, which slows the insulin release. And fats signal the brain to tell the body to stop eating. Proteins create a hormone called glucagan that is basically the opposite of insulin, and it helps manage excessive insulin production. So hopefully now you understand the biggest facts about insulin and how carbohydrates, fats, and proteins behave in the body. Understanding the impact that one of them has on another is the second most critical phase of fat loss. So when you think about your healthy eating habits, you probably can identify a few places where you are making some mistakes that are contributing to you holding on to that stubborn body fat. Now, the good news is that I'm going to tell you three things you can change today, right now. To reduce the amount of insulin in your body and to control cravings. I'm not going to go all into all the tips because I have a lot of them and I cover those during my total body 3 thrive 8 week coaching process. But I am going to cover what you can get started with. The first one is a modified version of fasting. Now don't freak out. I'm not going to tell you to do intermittent fasting extremes where you just eat all your food in four hours a day and that's it. I'm not going to tell you to fast for a full day or even three days. But seriously, small cycles of modified fasting is a huge help for to solve this problem. When your body gets a longer break from eating eating, your body stops secreting insulin. When you're not secreting so much insulin, you get into serious fat burning mode. So take a long break at night. So what I do is I'll take a 12 hour break. So start eating later in the day or stop eating earlier, stop eating after 5 or 6 o', clock, maybe even give yourself a 12 hour break to let your body not secrete insulin. Have it in that mode when you're burning fat. The second tip I have for you is to limit your starchy carbs to two to three servings a day. So for example, let's say you want oatmeal for breakfast or you want a sandwich for lunch, or you really want that potato, you've got to limit those. Consider limiting them and having one for breakfast and lunch, but not having one for dinner. Watching those portions and having less is simple, right? Okay, now my third tip is when you do have those starchy carbs, combine them with protein, protein and fat to slow down that absorption. For example, if you want that oatmeal, also have some eggs and maybe almonds with that. Almonds are the fat eggs for the protein. Combine it to slow things down by eating them. I don't mean physically combine them into one mushy recipe, but eat those things together to combine them. It'll help you keep keep full longer, it'll help you feel satiated, and it will also help control those insulin levels. Now you might be thinking it's is this stuff really gonna work? Am I going to see a difference if I eat three meals a day or I limit my starchy carbs or add a protein and a fat to my carb? That seems like more food, right? That doesn't make much sense. But I'm here to tell you that yes, it actually makes perfect sense. And it is scientifically proven to help you with long lasting sustainable fat loss. So yes, it's totally gonna work. And not only is it going to work, it's going to make you feel amazing. You're going to feel more satiated and your fullness will last for several hours. Remember what we had just learned about insulin and it's trying to help your body regulate sugar. Starchy carbs that contain a lot of sugar. If you don't believe me, just start paying attention to labels and you'll see how much sugar is really in there. So because of this mass amount of sugar, your body is trying to place it elsewhere, taking it out of your bloodstream to convert to energy. In other words, glucose, an overabundance of glucose that can't be used for energy as stored as fat. And by eating fat and proteins with these starchy carbs, remember what I just taught you? You're going to be slowing down the absorption rate to those carbs. Fat is basically acting as your willpower because your body won't feel the need for more sugar, which would give you that pretend energy boost. When you add these proteins and fats, you'll actually feel full. You'll eat less, you'll taste your, your food better, and in fact, you may even feel like you're eating more food than you would have. But you're eating the right foods now, so it's not going to feel like some traditional calorie restricted, icky diet. And best of all, you're not going to be storing fat. Score. I mean, how awesome is that? Listen, trust me and try making these changes now. You will not regret it. And it's not as hard as you think. So if you're following me through this four part video series, you can learn how to start to tap into what you truly want. Your vision, how to identify your false assumed truths, how to scratch the surface on your dcm or your driving core motivator, which sets the foundation to get your momentum ramped up and to make some serious changes that will accelerate your fat loss. Now, I just spent the last few minutes teaching you why starchy carbs contribute to our fat storage and exactly how to slow down insulin production in your body. I gave you some tips you can use right away to start making a massive impact on your eating habits, your waistline, and how you feel. I really hope this was helpful to you and that I helped you understand why we haven't been able to get motivated and exactly how we get fat.

So I'm excited to share with you some more great content coming in my next video. It'll be out in about 48 hours, so be on the lookout for it.

You'll not want to miss this.

We're going to talk about the uncontrollable craving problem and explain the science of why you can't stop wanting to eat those foods that aren't helping your fat loss. Because you know what? It's actually not your fault. And we're going to talk about what to do when your mind is telling you no more. Stop it. You've had enough. But your body is screaming at you and craving for more and more and.

You just literally can't stop yourself.

I know this happens to you because it happens to so many all the time and it even happens to me. And in fact, it happened to me recently and in a really bad way. And I can't wait to tell you you about my story and how I figured out how to stop it. Now before I go, if you found this video helpful, I would love to hear from you.