Simple Ways to Reduce Fat Stores on the Body

Losing weight can take some mindfulness. With the HCG Diet protocol at The Natural Path, I learned what I needed to get the fat stores off and keep them off!

Believe it or not, diet and exercise are certainly not the only 2 parameters in your life that you can use to control your body composition. There are so many other systems in our bodies that can be optimized to make our bodies stronger, more efficient calorie burners.  Diet and exercise are important to maintaining a healthy life and a healthy body.  However, I would like to shine light on some other healthy habits that can make our bodies even more optimal.  With the HCG Diet program that we offer at The Natural Path, I like to share this information with my patients to help make the weight loss from the HCG Diet last!

Cortisol and it’s Effects on Body Composition

When the body under goes stress, it releases Cortisol.  Cortisol is a hormone that is responsible for lowering lean mass and depositing fat stores in the abdominal region.  Reducing stress is crucial to bring cortisol levels down in the body.  I even notice when my HCG Diet patients go through a stressful week they do not lose as much weight.  I have seen this correlation be quite clear.

Ways to reduce stress are to get plenty of sleep at night, breathe deeply, reduce or remove refined sugars from the diet, try short bursts of high intensity exercise and following a healthy eating plan.  I recently read a study which showed how statistically significant it was on weight loss when patients slept 8.5 hours per night over 5.5 hours per night.  Also, be sure to have FUN in your life!

Getting a Grip on our Diet Can Reduce Body Fat

This is old news! However, if someone suffers from obesity and wants to lose weight they need to make dietary modifications.  In a nutshell, it is important to really limit processed foods in our diets.  We have access to clean, lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, nuts/seeds and low processed grains.  If we make these foods the mainstay in our diet along with some good quality omega 3 fatty acids we are going to have some results.  I also recommend eliminating allergenic foods. I find that most patients do better with a limited amount of gluten and dairy.  I also recommend avoiding all artificial sweeteners!  Try this for just a couple of weeks and see what happens.

The worst culprits for body composition are grain based desserts — cakes, cookies, granola, granola bars, pie, donuts, muffins, etc.  Also … breads, cereals, processed lunches, fast food, pre packaged frozen dinners, coffee drinks, energy drinks, juice and soda.  Other foods that you might think are healthy but are actually really loaded with sugar are flavored yogurts,  many condiments and salad dressings.  High fructose fruits such as apple, pear, mango, watermelon, grapes, persimmon, cherries, papaya, pineapple, etc should all be eaten in moderation.  Dried fruits should be extremely limited as they are basically sugar.

 A Little Note on Exercise and Body Composition

A healthy body requires movement.  In Chinese Medicine, stagnation is what leads to most disease states.  Moving the body is important.  Lately, I really like the research that shows how 20 minutes of high intensity exercise can really lead to a better metabolism.  Short bursts of high intensity exercise can improve muscle energy utilization and expenditure and results in a better quality muscle fiber. Muscle burns 3 to 5x the energy that fat does.  Therefore, the more muscle you have the better you will be at burning calories.

There you have it.  Make strides to eat better, exercise 3x per week for 20 minutes of high intensity training, sleep and reduce stress. These are all very manageable changes that you can make in your life.  Go for it! I believe in you!

Categories: Food Information, General Wellness, hCG Diet