My top three strategies that I employ with my clients to put the breaks on their fat storage curve are Intolerances, Transfats and Sugar. Which one I hit them with first varies depending on their lifestyle and diet, and I recommend that for the first week you concentrate on just one; get to grips with it, adapt to it, and then progress – trying to do a complete lifestyle and eating pattern overhaul is often a short-lived endeavour.
Each point is as equally valid as the others, so decide for yourself which is the biggest let-down for you and plan out how to tackle it. On that, by the way, I strongly recommend using a little NLP trick with your goal setting: write your goals in the present, definitive tense; so rather than saying “I will not eat chocolate” change it to “I do not eat chocolate”. It’s a tiny point, but a gem.
1 – Intolerances
The top 4 most likely are Gluten/Wheat, Dairy, Alcohol, and Legumes, almost in that order (there’s not a lot between the first two, though I would say Wheat Gluten is at the top of the pile).
The reasoning here is simple: what goes into your stomach is not necessarily what gets digested into your bloodstream, and your fat cells (adipose tissue) also act as a safety mechanism, storing anything your body percieves as harmful until your liver can get round to cleansing it.
Note that an intolerance, or sensitivity if you prefer, is not an allergy – an allergy puts you in hospital, and intolerance is often mistook for wind, bloating, excema, bags under your eyes, fluffy mouth, and a whole range of other stuff you don’t really notice until it’s gone.
2 – Transfats
Now some of these sneaky buggers can be hard to spot, others are more obvious. Contained in a sausage, for example, are processed and de-natured fats (or lipids, as they will be called from here on) and are pretty obvious as being on the avoid-list.
Margerine and non-butter spreads are very definitely on the list, despite the health claims on the packaging. Don’t even get me started on this: butter is the only butter. Yes, it’s high in fat, but it’s natural, you can digest it, and if it comes from cows/goats that have been grass fed and allowed to get some sunshine it will be a source of omega-3 fatty acids, which actually help you lose fat stores.
A somewhat less obvious example to think about would be cooking with extra virgin olive oil; EVOO is a polyunsaturated omega-6 chain lipid that is a total wuss. Heat it above about thirty degree centigrade and it will mutate into a transfat, heck leave it out in the sunshine for a half hour and it will mutate. Only consume it cold, and if you want to cook with olive oil for vegetarian/taste reasons, only use raw unfiltered oil and try not to cook above 160 degrees in the oven.
Transfats, hydrogenated fats, fats from vegetable sources, these are all likely to be stored as love handles and beer bellies. Stomp them out.
(Tip: the best lipids to cook with are goose fat, beef dripping, coconut oil and lard, in that order)
3 – Sugar
The dreaded “Insulin” word is on the horizon folks – to burn fat on a daily basis, you need to control your insulin. In effect, this is actually very simple: Little Pickers Wear Bigger Knickers. So stop picking. Stick to three square meals a day, and you’ll only have three periods of high insulin.
One of my tribesman dropped a whole bunch of inches off his waistline, and when I asked what he’d changed he said “I’ve stopped putting honey in my tea”. Honey is an awesome food, but by having it in his tea between meals was clearly just enough to keep him from going to a low enough level of insulin to burn fat; note that this is nothing to do with overall calorific intake/expenditure, more your liver and pancreatic “gear change”.
Refined sugars are even worse – unbelieveably potent, they don’t just nudge your pancreas, they pin it against a wall and beat the hell out of it. Absolute top of the list of refined sugars to avoid is High Fructose Corn Syrup – studies have shown this has a 100% fat storage rate and, worryingly, once it’s stored in your body exercise has . . . no effect whatsoever. To put that into context, Tate & Lyle white sugar had a 70-80% storage rate, but was [relatively] easily accessed for consumption during moderate aerobic activity.
Alcohol, by the way, is globules of sugar with an ethenol molecule in it, so as well as the ethanol scoring on the intolerance rule above it also strikes on the sugar spiking rule. Stick to one drink per 24hrs; if you can’t stop at one *ahem, looks sheepish* don’t drink at all while trying to trim up.
Likewise, orange juice and bananas – the former even more than the later, these pack a heavy glycaemic (blood sugar) punch, and while that is what you want after a workout, it’s not what you want while sitting at a desk.
Confused? Don’t be – like I say, put any one of these strategies into place and you’ll see a difference in as little as ten days. As always, I’m here my folks, so holler up if you need me.