By: Steven Sisskind MD
Does any of this sound familiar?

• I’m doing everything right and I still can’t lose the weight
• Go out? I don’t want to go out. I don’t want people to see me.
• I don’t want to buy new clothes. What’s the point?
• I just don’t feel valuable.
• I’m never going to look good again.
• This is out of control! How big will I get?
• What’s wrong with me?!

These are some of the statements I hear from my patients all the time, and my answer usually is, “It’s not you. It’s your hormones.”
In my experience, although hormones are complex, there are four that, if out of balance, make losing weight virtually impossible.

Fat Burning Barrier #1:
Not Enough Adiponectin
Adiponectin is literally the hormone that tells your body to burn fat for fuel. It’s like your body’s “fat burning torch.” Multiple studies have shown that the more of this super hormone you have circulating in your bloodstream, the more fat you burn. Research shows that low levels of adiponectin are associated with a higher incidence of obesity. In fact, according to Dr. Leo Galland, Director of The Foundation for Integrated Medicine, “A lack of adequate adiponectin is emerging as a significant factor in people’s inability to melt flab and stay slim.

The frustrating thing about adiponectin is that the more fat you have, the lower your levels—which is why losing fat is so darn difficult at the beginning. You need a kick start, so here are two “at home” methods for naturally boosting your adiponectin levels and stoking your fat burning fire:
First, increase your magnesium intake, either by taking a high quality supplement (which is quite inexpensive), or by consuming seeds (pumpkin seeds are great) and green, leafy vegetables like spinach and kale.

A much more aggressive approach is to do something called “intermittent fasting,” which has been shown to significantly increase adiponectin levels. This works by fasting one day, and then eating big the next. While it can work for weight loss, the jury is still out as to whether or not this is healthy. Plus, who wants to live this way?

Fat Burning Barrier Number 2:
Too Much Ghrelin.
Ghrelin is called the “Hunger Hormone.” The more ghrelin you have in your system, the hungrier you are. If you find yourself fighting cravings and can’t seem to stay away from the fridge after dinner, it’s probably due to elevated ghrelin levels. The hard fact is that ghrelin works directly on the hunger centre of your brain by activating the brain’s reward response to highly addictive sweet, fatty foods. This increases your food intake at the worst possible time—at night—and ultimately makes you gain more weight.
There is something you can start doing tonight that can lower your ghrelin levels and help you feel more satisfied: Get some sleep. New research has shown that even low levels of sleep deprivation increase your ghrelin levels and lead to more body fat storage. Most adults need between six to eight hours of sleep. And NO…jacking yourself up in the morning with caffeine or energy drinks is the wrong thing to do if you want to lose weight. Give yourself the gift of restful, uninterrupted sleep is a great way to lower your ghrelin levels and bolster your weight loss regimen.

Fat Burning Barrier Number 3:
Insulin Imbalance
If you’re overweight, there’s a good chance that you’re experiencing some level of insulin imbalance, resulting in excess glucose, or sugar, in your system. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re diabetic, it does mean that your body’s insulin, or glucose regulator, becomes less effective at lowering your blood sugars.
The end result is that instead of using the excess sugar to feed your muscles or burning it for energy, most of the carbohydrates you consume get stored as fat. If you have insulin resistance, it is virtually impossible to lose fat. That said, there’s a surprisingly simple trick to addressing the excess glucose problem—and it just might be in your kitchen cupboard.
A recent study found that consuming two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar before a high carb meal significantly reduces blood glucose levels for those people with insulin resistance, which is that imbalance I spoke about. While this might not be appetizing for everyone, the study did say that apple cider vinegar might work as well as prescription drugs at regulating blood sugar.

Fat Burning Barrier Number 4:
A Cortisol Overload
Your body produces cortisol in response to stress and ramps you up so you can be ready to fight or flee. This can be a good thing in dangerous situations, like if you were to run across a bear while hiking. However, with the constant stress we’re all under in today’s hectic, 24/7, crisis-driven world, our cortisol levels are elevated far beyond what we were originally designed to handle.
The result is a quadruple whammy on your waistline. Excess cortisol increases your cravings for sweets and carbs, which can lead to overeating and constant hunger. Result? You get fat. Plus, cortisol causes your body to actually break down your muscle tissue for energy, which is absolutely the worst thing for weight loss. The less muscle you have, the lower your metabolism will be and the more fat you’ll gain. Also, elevated cortisol levels cause a larger percentage of fat to be stored in the abdominal area. What’s worse, that the more abdominal fat you have, the more cortisol you produce in response to stress, which then causes more abdominal fat to be stored.

Finally, recent studies link high cortisol levels to depression in adults and children. And we all know that when you’re depressed, you eat more.

Here’s how to break this vicious cortisol cycle. First, reduce or eliminate your caffeine intake. Caffeine increases cortisol secretion in people undergoing mental stress. (For many of us, that’s just about all the time).

Next (and don’t roll your eyes at this one!), layer in some exercise into your routine. Even walking for just 30 minutes each day will work wonders.
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Finally, try this stress reduction exercise that I use with my patients and my family. As you’re sitting there, simply breathe in through your nose, hold, and count to four. (Make sure to breathe into your belly- it should expand). Then let the air out through your mouth until it’s all gone. Pause for one second and breathe in again. Repeat this simple exercise eight times and you’ll reset your stress response. It’s that easy.

Time Magazine is iconic in its ability to pick trends and being ahead of much of the media.  The June 23rd 2014 edition declared “Eat Butter. Scientists labelled fat the enemy. Why they were wrong".

When I saw that front cover, I thought 'about time' (pun intended).  From that article a cascade of media followed. The information that fat was good, especially saturated fat was on major television shows around the globe, social media was a buzz and debate began in earnest.  

Since I’ve been working with Dr Steve Myers on the Changing Habits education course, it has become very clear that in the scientific community there is always a division of theories and results. Some science articles will say saturated fats are bad, while others will show the many benefits of it.  Then there is the debate on polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, omega 3, omega 6, EFA, EPA, GAMA and cholesterol.

To understand this division of camps, I think that history is a great place to start.  

It all began in the 1920s, when the company Procter and Gamble (originally soap and candle makers) required a fat that never went off, as one of the major ingredients in soap and candles.  Science came to the party and the hydrogenation of vegetable oil (an otherwise liquid at room temperature now became a solid) created such a fat.  The oil that was used, such as cotton seed oil was an industrial fat and not used for human consumption in the 1920s.

When candles were no longer needed, they began to use this new technology on food. There was no testing done on animals and humans for its safety.  Crisco Shortening was the result and then with the invention of partial hydrogenation, margarine had found a new home.  It was seen as a cleaner (some controversy about animal fat around this time) fat and cheaper than animal fats.

Then, in 1961 Ancel Keys hit the front cover of Time Magazine - he was known as the father of low fat.  He convinced through his theory and cherry picked research that fat was the culprit to the growing heart disease rate in the US.  There was another camp lead by John Yudkin that had a theory that sugar was the culprit behind heart disease.  But as history would go, we know who won that battle.   Fat became the number one enemy and margarine, vegetable oils and 11 serves of whole grains became the fat and food of choice to prevent heart disease.

Not only did saturated fats become public enemy number one, so did cholesterol and in 1984 on the front cover of Time Magazine, “Cholesterol - And Now the Bad News….”, soon turned to in 1999  “Cholesterol - And Now the Good News….”.

It’s now 2014 and the cracks and rumblings of the heart fat hypothesis have been rumbling for quite some time.  More and more people, scientists, doctors and nutritionists (including myself) have been talking about the flaws in this theory, some of us for 30 years.  In fact, in 1978 Dr Mary Enig, a nutritionist I followed in my early years as a nutritionist was talking about the dangers of trans fats which were created during the process of partial hydrogenation of a vegetable oil (margarine).

Many people who spoke out about margarine were seen as charlatans. In fact, as a columnist in 1991 I wrote about the dangers of margarine in our local paper, the Sunshine Coast Daily who was then threatened by the makers of margarine with a law suit if they did not write a retraction.  I refused to retract what I said, so to appease the makers of margarine, the editor did a whole page spread advertising the benefits of margarine.

Thought leaders in health and nutrition are usually people who are not wilfully blind to the facts and whistle blow their findings.  For me, it was about my philosophy as to who I trusted in the scientific community.  I wasn’t a scientist, I was a nutritionist.  

My father always said; ‘If you don’t stand for something you will fall for everything”.  I stood for evolutionary eating, knowing that our bodies have evolved with food over thousands of years and the food our ancestors ate was a good predictor on what we should eat.  

The Australian Heart Foundation which began in the 1950s took another view. They believed that saturated fats were bad and polyunsaturated in the form of margarine were better.  Their heart tick of approval sealed their fate.  By 2009, the front covers of major newspapers around Australia and the world were broadcasting the fact that trans fats were public enemy number one, even over saturated fats.  

The Australian Heart Foundation had been giving their tick of approval to trans fats for decades and now they had to make changes, but without losing face.  And they did.  But instead of taking the tick away from margarine, the formulation changed and the industrial process of interesterification which included hydrogenation was the result.  Yes, they got rid of the trans fats but in place of them, a new fat was created called interesterified fat (not ever found in nature, only formed by chemical procedures).  They continue to give their tick to this food to this very day, without the long term effects of this fat being known.

There is still a polarisation on saturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, but I like to think that both these fats are important.  In evolutionary terms, we were more likely to eat saturated fat in the summer when animals had more fat on them and less in the winter when they were leaner.  As for polyunsaturated fats which have their routes in nuts and seeds, these were winter foods that could be stored and carried into the spring and summer months.   So both fats are important for our health.  

We’ve been taken for a ride and as a result, many people have suffered needlessly with not only heart disease, but diabetes, cancer, autoimmunity and many other physical and mental disorders.  The tide is turning, nature-based evolutionary fats are making a comeback and I couldn’t be more happy.

Chemical-based fats to avoid: margarine and any processed fat that looks like margarine but may be called by another name like vegetable oil, vegetable fat, vegetable shortening, cotton seed oil, canola oil, grape seed oil, rice bran oil or any refined oil where solvents are required to extract the fat from the product.  I would also avoid any oil that may be genetically modified like soy oil or corn oil.  

Nature-based fats include: all nut and seed oils where you know their origin and are cold pressed not solvent extracted, all nuts and seeds, avocados, meat, cold water fish, poultry, tallow, lard, butter, ghee, cream, soft cheeses and hard cheeses traditionally made.

There will be many trends that come and go. Become informed; don’t be swayed by popular media. Find a philosophy that fits with your lifestyle and listen to your body's many signs and symptoms as to whether the diet protocol you have chosen is working for you.

At Changing Habits, we teach how to become a ‘bio hacker’ - someone who begins to learn what works for their body and their lifestyle by firstly becoming educated and secondly, by trial and error guided by tried and tested protocols. This is a great start to bring health and energy back in to your life and that of your family.
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By: Robert Redfern
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Can You Afford To Live Longer?
Since 1950 the life expectancy of a 65 year old has increased from an average of 8 extra years to an extra 14 years. In other words you can now live an extra 6 years thanks to better sanitation, better clean water, better diet and less hard manual work. The medical system will try to claim some benefit from their drugs and surgery, but it is impossible to prove since their drugs and treatment kill hundreds of thousands every year in each country, as well as saving some lives.

During the last 50 years there has been a social experiment in some countries whereby the population has been given free nursing care when they got older, but that is rapidly being seen as an impossible cost. Since most countries social systems are bankrupt (not just that of Greece) they are at least means testing the care or simply taking every penny you have for this care.
In the UK this care can cost thousands per month. The older you get without a plan to stay healthy the more chance you will end up penniless. Every day I hear of people who have had a stroke or dementia being taken into care when a simple plan may have prevented it. Even so-called wealthy Germany has promised care and pensions that are unsustainable and will bankrupt the country if it does not make charges.

Simple Food and Lifestyle Changes Will Help Prevent This Tragedy:
The studies are absolutely clear on this but while your doctor may make references to it they do not beg you to make the changes. I will because I am 100% sure your life will be better with these changes:

• Stop all Bread, Pasties, Cookies, Breakfast Grains & Cereals, Rice, Potatoes, Parsnips and Wheat Pasta.
  Why? Because they contain things that are dangerously detrimental to your health. Yes even organic grains and cereals!
• Stop all processed drinks such as Cola, Fruit Juices, and excess alcoholic drinks.
  Why? Because they are high in sugars and chemical alternatives to sugars.
• Add lots of green vegetables in smoothies, soups, and salads.
  Why? Because they stimulate growth factors that reverse ageing and keep you younger. Try a 60 day Green Smoothie Diet and look in the mirror if you want to prove it to yourself.
• Add lots of Dark skinned fruits such as Avocados, Blueberries, Raspberries and other berries
  Why? Because these are full of natural antioxidants to protect your arteries and brain from damage.
• Add lots of Exercise and movement and stop sitting down for more than 3 hours per day.
  Why? Studies are absolutely clear sitting down for more than 3 hours per day is devastating for your healthy future. Walking for a couple of hours per day, rebounding on a mini trampoline and simple stretching and muscle exercises will prevent disease and keep you strong.
• Add Water: Drink Water.
  Why? Drinking 6-8 glasses of water over the day before 6pm will help keep you healthy and lower your blood pressure when combined with the above.
• Add Salt: Take rock salt or unprocessed sea salt daily.
  Why? To maintain some of the missing minerals from the diet.
• Add Purpose To Your Life: Keep working or at least do voluntary work but do something of value to you and society. This will keep you younger. I feel like a 40 year old!

Take The Critical Supplements Missing From The Diet:
Whatever your budget you cannot risk not taking something and ending up with bills that will bankrupt you. Whether it is one or two things such as Iodine, Selenium and multi vitamin/minerals, they are infinitely cheaper than spending thousands on nursing care after a stroke or dementia.