I had a fellow come into the office the other day to make copies of a patient's records.  I happened to be sitting at the front desk and he took the opportunity to tell me his health history and everything he was doing to fix himself.  He had a nasty limp and was not moving well which he insisted was the reason he was overweight.  He explained that he was like most Americans in that he had several pieces of exercise equipment in his garage collecting dust that were never used.  But he was going to pull them out and lose this extra weight...

I pointed out that exercise does not have much impact on loosing weight, but he continued with his story as though I had never said a thing.  Readiness is everything, and he was letting me know that he was not ready to confront that he was buying into the great lie that has been pushed onto the public for the last 100 years - that exercise is the key to weight loss.

Now don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe that exercise is a vital part of a healthy life style.  It is essential for everything from strong bones to brain health.  But when it comes to weight loss, the evidence says otherwise.  Studies show exercise in important for keeping weight off long term once the weight has already been lost.  This is a lifestyle factor - a mental and emotional stance towards life that is necessary to keep from falling back into the behavior patterns that created the weight gain in the first place.  But exercise in itself will only account for about 10% of the weight lost during a diet and then only if certain rules are followed regarding the kind and duration of the exercise.

"What rules?" you ask?  The real objective of exercise for weight loss is not the calories you burn while exercising, but to increase your metabolic rate and to increase your lean muscle mass.  Both of these mean you will burn more calories during the rest of the day when you are not exercising.  To achieve both of these objectives you need to push your body to its absolute maximum exertion for very short periods of time - much like a sprinter does in a track meet or a weight lifting champion does.  Achieving peak output on gym equipment means cycling or rowing or ellipticaling or running as fast as you can for 30 seconds then taking it easy for 2 minutes then repeating this cycle 4 to 6 more times.  With weight lifting this means lifting enough weight that you reach fatigue failure with the 7th to 10th rep, then quitting that specific exercise for at least 3 days to allow for muscle recovery.  This maximizes growth hormone release, which is what we are after.

Following the workout with a top quality protein snack (like egg or whey protein) within ½ hour of the workout can boost muscle gain.  Be sure not to dump a bunch of sugar or carbs into the system along with the protein.  Intermittent fasting is also a good way to boost growth hormone.  A simple 24 to 36 hour fast one day a week on just water or raw or steamed low starch vegetables only will accomplish this nicely.  

Jogging, rapid walking, bicycling, and the like only burn around 300 to 400 calories per hour.  The nature of that exercise uses up your available blood sugar stored in the muscles and liver enough to lower your blood sugar and make you really hungry after such exercise.  That "health muffin" and cup of mocha latte you grab after your exercise routine more than counter balances any calories you burned with the exercise.  If you are into energy drinks, you can consume enough calories for two workouts.  Further, the insulin swings that occur with the lower blood sugar then the spike in sugar levels with the snack after the workout lock any fat into the cells so that you can't burn any fat anyway.

As humans, we hugely overestimate the value of the good things we do for ourselves and hugely underestimate the impact of the bad things.  We can rationalize eating all kinds of junk with the excuse of "I worked out today."

It is your hormone balance, particularly insulin and cortisol, that control fat burning in your body.  Insulin is the fat storing hormone.  Any time you eat sugar, your insulin level skyrockets upward because sugar burns the body and binds with proteins to form nasty sugared proteins called aminoglycans.  The first step to prevent this is to open the cell doors with insulin to let the sugar (and any fats floating around in the blood) into the cell because the cells can burn the sugars in a way to make energy for us.  This still produces some burning damage to our body proteins, but not as much as if the sugar was left to float around in the blood stream.  Unfortunately this also stores our fats.  Plus as much as the liver can manage, it will turn the sugar into fats in the blood for storage for energy later.  So sugar hits us two ways - it drives up insulin which makes us store fats and it is converted into fats for even more storage.

The second hormone to look at is cortisol - one of the stress response hormones.  Normally cortisol is for decreasing inflammation in fight-or-flight situations, and it does well at this in short term stress.  But the body has a habit of ignoring signals from hormones and other processes that fire for too long a period of time.  The cells become resistant to the hormone or signal.  For instance in type 2 diabetes the cells have learned to ignore insulin because of chronically high levels of insulin from too much sugar and carbohydrate consumption.  The same thing happens in chronic stress.  The body learns to ignore cortisol and as a result inflammation goes up.  A consequence of inflammation is the development of fat storage around the middle of our bodies.

Unstable blood sugar levels due to poor communication between the liver and the pancreas in the most common chronic stress I find and the first thing I correct in patients through a special type of adjustment and a low carb diet for 3 to 4 weeks.  It is amazing how much better people feel just from balancing their blood sugar levels to even out the spikes and dips in blood sugar.

But there are many other chronic sources of stress.  Chronic infections (especially gut), muscle imbalance producing structural stress and pain, poor diet choices, nutrient deficiencies, emotional and relationship stress, medication/drug usage stress, leaky gut and food intolerances, and so on.  The list of chronic stressors is very long, and they must be brought under control to bring health back to your system.  Chronic stress makes you fat - particularly around the middle.

So, managing your hormones is the most important aspect to loosing weight.

How do you do that?  Step number one is to cut out the sugars from the diet.  That means not only the obvious sugar, but all the starchy foods that turn into sugar 5 minutes after you swallow them.  I have so many patients that proudly tell me that they don't eat sugar.  What they love is pasta and bread.  Unfortunately after 5 minutes of digestion that pasta and bread is no different than sucking down pure sugar.  (One plus to pasta is that it won't release toxic fructose like white sugar does, but on the other side, pasta is made of gluten which most people have some level of intolerance to.) 

So - if you want to lose weight - stick to non-starchy vegetables and proteins... no breads, no starches, no sweets, and only limited amounts of whole fruit.  Any fat you eat is fat in your body stores you will not be burning, so keep the fat consumption low and neutral.  By neutral I mean no seed oils, only such fats as olive, avocado, butter/ghee, and animal fats from pasture raised animals.  (Feed lot animals have lots of inflammation producing oils and toxins in their flesh and fats, and inflammation makes us fat.)

Second step to loosing weight is to address as many chronic stress sources as possible.  My Super Health Questionnaire can be used to highlight many of these chronic stressors.  Here we work closely together to resolve these stressors so you can heal and lose weight.

The third step is to finally address calories.  Calories equal fuel for your body.  If you need 2000 calories of fuel each day and you eat 4000 calories each day then you are going to gain weight really fast.  Calories are not everything in losing weight, but they can't be ignored.  Any way you want to cut it, you have to eat fewer calories than you burn up each day to lose stored fat on your body.  Notice I didn't say to lose weight.  Many diets work by altering your foods in such a way that your body will dump stored water.  You can lose 10, 20, even 30 pounds in just water weight alone without actually ever losing an ounce of fat.  The problem is that once you remove the artificial eating style of the diet, the water jumps right back on and the weight bounces right back.  I have done this very thing.  It is very annoying.

There are many ways to lower your caloric intake enough to actually lose stored fat.  I have discussed many of these in previous newsletters.  The focus of this newsletter is to get you tuned in to cutting the sugar and starch out and start addressing the stressors that are blocking your return to health.  Exercise does not actually help you lose weight, so don't pretend that just getting started up at the gym will have any real impact on your weight.  It is very important for a lot of other things, so by all means get to the gym.  But controlling your insulin and cortisol levels by cutting out the sugar, carbs, and stress are the first two steps to really losing weight.  Once that is achieved, then we address cutting down the calories to see the fat melt off.

Take care,

A couple years ago I wrote about cooking with coconut milk.  At that time the only coconut milk available was imported in cans from Southeast Asia.  Now you can get it in the health dairy section at the grocery store in cartons just like regular milk.  But this is watered down compared to the best imported coconut milk, which is more like thick cream.  I have tried all the varieties available at the local Asian markets and my very favorite for flavor and consistency is Chaokoh brand.  It is ridiculously overpriced on Amazon, but I have it in the office for only $1.95 a can.  

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Gut microbes help the body extract more calories from food

 

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 We all want to stay young and healthy, but the short sighted mass market approaches to simple fixes for aging are backfiring.  40 years ago it was estrogen for women - until it was found to jump your chances of breast cancer way up.  Now it is testosterone fro men.  Pharmaceutical companies have no problem pushing a remedy that has only been tested for a few months for side effects.  Well now the longer evidence is coming out.  You chance of a heart attack goes up 500% on testosterone and prostate cancer jumps up just like hormone replacement in women did with breast cancer.  Even more important, there is no evidence that testosterone has any benefit in the first place.  There is a lot of placebo effect associated with it, but the evidence shows that it only increases muscle mass 1.2% and does not improve mobility. 

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Solar-powered oven makes fresh water

About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor

Ellen Flowers FGM
Spiritual Life Coach

 

 

Catherine Cummings

 

 

Jin Shin Jitsu

 

 

Lorena Morales

 

 

Massage Practitioner

 

 

 

 

 Is there a sweet that is not poisonous?  Yes!


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