Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

There are no short cuts to weight loss. In my experience, I still find that the most effective way to help people lose weight is with the combination of a healthier diet and exercise along with addressing underlying metabolic imbalances — such as insulin resistance, thyroid gland function and stress levels (because stress hormones impact both insulin resistance and thyroid hormones).

However, there have been recent discoveries, and much discussion¹ about the role that so-called brown fat may play in weight loss. Brown adipose tissue — brown fat — is common to many mammals. It’s different from our blobby yellow fat in that it has a very high metabolic rate and contains a protein that converts calories directly to heat. That helps it do its job, which is to keep mammals warm in cold weather. Even when brown fat isn’t kicking in to raise body temperature, its high metabolic rate also helps keep those animals lean.

As humans, we are born with some brown fat, but it was thought that we lose all of it as we age. However, recent research in the New England Journal of Medicine² has discovered that adults do retain some brown fat, and that brown fat is inversely proportional to body mass index (BMI). Researchers now think that increasing our brown fat activity may help us lose weight.

Since the primary trigger for brown fat thermogenesis (burning) is having adequate levels of T3 thyroid hormone,³ metabolic balance and optimization is the most important factor in keeping brown fat as active as it should be.

However, I did some research and there are ways to enhance brown fat activity.

In a world where we are taught that the way to control our weight is to eat less and exercise more, the only thing that matters in our food choices is how many calories they contain. With this method you will see some shocking food comparisons which can make some very healthy food choices seem bad. Such food comparison bits have been on TV a lot lately with the recent release of book called, Eat This, Not That.

In traditional approaches to dieting, one of the tools that seems to improve weight loss is food journaling, writing down everything you eat. This method works because it helps control the mindless eating that people do — just popping something in your mouth even if you aren’t hungry. In fact, one study found that food journaling every day led to twice as much weight loss among dieters.¹

We have only six short weeks left until Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer — and bathing suit season for most people. If your New Year’s resolution to lose weight hasn’t worked as well as you had hoped, don’t despair. There’s still time to look better at the beach. And I can tell you how to do it.

Several studies comparing different methods of weight loss give the scientific evidence that supports what I’ve been telling you all along: low-carb eating plans are the best way to lose weight.

The first study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association,¹compared the weight-loss results for 311 overweight and obese women who were assigned to follow either the Atkins (very low-carb), Ornish (very low-fat vegetarian), Zone (40% carbs) or LEARN (calorie-controlled, low-fat) diets. Those on the Atkins diet lost 10.3 lb compared to an average of 4.6 lbs in the other groups, and interestingly, far fewer people dropped out on the low-carb diet compared to the other diets.

Study two, from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association² looked at how a low-carbohydrate/high-protein diet compared with a high-carbohydrate/low-fat diet on ratings of hunger and eating restraint. Both groups ate less, but the low-carb group was significantly less hungry. Not surprisingly, they also lost more weight.

Study three is from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.³ This study of 53 obese women compared a very low-carbohydrate diet to a calorie-restricted diet with 30% of the calories as fat. The very low carbohydrate diet group lost almost 16 lb in 3 months, and more of the weight lost was actual body fat compared to a 9-lb weight loss in the calorie- and fat-restricted diet.

There you have it. In all three studies, low-carb diets led to the greatest weight loss. End of story, right?

What is it that separates folks who can stay disciplined with their eating and exercise from folks who feel they “blow it” every 4 weeks?

If you’ve wasted time and money on scam cellulite solutions, you’re going to be happy — and sad — to hear what I have to say. The truth is that the solution to your cellulite problem has been right in front of your face all along.

And yes, it’s the classic 3-step system of the right diet, the right exercise, and getting social support. There’s nothing fancy, nothing expensive, and nothing magical about any of these. Perhaps you expected me to promote some magical seaweed that’s harvested off the coast of the Canary Islands only between November and December when the moon is full? Well, if that’s the case, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

If you have been fighting the battle of the bulge for any length of time, you have undoubtedly been told to just suck it up and use a little bit of will power. If it were that easy, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic in this country. In this article, we’ll explore why using “will power” is usually so ineffective.

Did it ever occur to you that the reason you can’t lose weight may be due to the fact that you are eating foods that you’re allergic to? This is a revelation to many people who have struggled unsuccessfully for years to get rid of unwanted pounds.

The prevalence of food allergies is on the rise in both children and adults.^1-2 Allergies can be responsible for a number of health issues including irritable bowel type symptoms³ and migraines.⁴ Very few people are aware however, that immune responses to foods can go on to create a number of metabolic disruptions that can contribute to weight gain.

At LMI where we counsel people to lose weight using our Metabolic Code Diet (MCD) eating program, we see this all the time. We had one patient in our diet group who had tried a very low carb diet in the past, and lost no weight. The reason? She was sensitive to dairy and didn’t know it. On her previous diet, she was eating a lot of cheese. On the MCD, which is a lower carb, low allergen eating plan, she cut out the cow’s milk cheeses and dairy products, ate according to our meal recommendations, and the weight started coming off.

Would you buy a product that had a 95% failure rate?

Not one of us would buy a car or a computer that was known to fail 95% of the time. So why then do so many of us pay enormous amounts of money and give hours of our time to diets with a 95% failure rate??

Part 1 of a 2 Part Series

In a world where the numbers of overweight and obese people only continue to climb, many people are desperate for any help they can get with weight loss. Sure, most people can lose weight following a low carb, or conversely, a low calorie, low fat diet — for a little while anyway. But long-term compliance continues to elude many people. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could eat all the carbs or all the fat you wanted and not gain weight?