Yes, You Still Should Eat Carbohydrates

Due to all of the low carb information being tossed around in the last several years, it has become more and more prevalent for new clients to attempt to completely eliminate carbohydrates in the hopes of losing weight. The truth is you absolutely need glucose for normal body functioning, and eating carbohydrates is the easiest way for this to happen. While it's true that you can make glucose from protein or fat, unless you have a clear reason for eliminating carbohydrates from your diet, it's best to include them. Let's take a look at why that is.

As mentioned above, we need glucose to live. Whether that's from a potato or converted from a protein, it's an absolute necessity. For instance, the brain requires about 130g of glucose per day (1). Outside of our organs requiring carbohydrates, they also provide us with faster-acting energy. Think about activities lasting somewhere in the vicinity of 15 seconds to 2 minutes, such as a sprint. And, many people just function better with some carbohydrate intake. If you've ever cut most out of your diet for a period of time, there's a good chance your were absolutely miserable.

There are some hormone changes that can occur from drastically reducing your carbohydrate intake. Effects such as decreased testosterone, decreased estrogen, decreased progesterone, increased cortisol, increased LDL-cholesterol concentrations, and irregular periods have been shown in several studies (2, 3, 4, 5). Granted, the studies were comparing ketogenic diets versus non-ketogenic diets, but it still can explain some of the effects from very low carbohydrates. A ketogenic diet is one in which carbohydrate intake is so low that the body begins using ketones (proteins) as fuel rather than carbohydrates.

The exact amounts of carbohydrates people intake will vary greatly depending on several factors including body size, amount of lean mass, the activity level, age, genetics, and preference, to name a few. In general, though, 1 cupped handful of healthy carbs for women and 2 cupped handfuls for men are recommended to start with. By healthy carbs, I'm referring to foods that are higher in fiber, which also are slower-digesting. This is completely doable by eating:

• Fruits

• Vegetables

• Legumes and beans

• Some whole grains (depending on your goals)

It can't be stated strongly enough, the type of carbohydrate you eat is crucially important. Not all carbs are created equal. For instance, eating an apple is very different from eating a piece of cake. An apple contains fiber (both soluble and insoluble), plenty of nutrients, and will keep us much more satiated than cake, which is devoid of nutrients, stimulates our appetite, causes a spike in insulin (a storage hormone), and leads to greater blood sugar fluctuations. As much as possible, we're looking to get more of the healthy type carbohydrates.  A great rule of thumb is that if it comes out of a box, it's not a great source. 

It's best not to start out by eliminating carbs altogether in your weight loss journey. That is most likely too challenging and usually unnecessary. Plus, there are valuable nutrients in healthy carbs that you should be getting regularly.

 

References

1. Fuhrman, Joel (1995). Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor's Program for 

Conquering Disease. New York, New York: St. Martin's Press

2. Johnston CS, et al. (2006). Ketogenic low-carbohydrate diets have no metabolic advantage over nonketogenic low-carbohydrate diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 83(5), 1055-61.

3. Lane AR, Duke JW, Hackney AC. (2010). Influence of dietary carbohydrate intake on the free testosterone: cortisol ratio responses to short-term intensive exercise training. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 108(6), 1125-31.

4. Brinkworth GD, et al. (2009). Long-term Effects of a Very Low-Carbohydrate Diet and a Low-Fat Diet on Mood and Cognitive Function. Arch Intern Med, 169(20), 1873-1880

5. Soenen S, et al. (2012). Relatively high-protein or ‘low-carb’ energy-restricted diets for body weight loss and body weight maintenance? Physiol Behav, 107(3), 374-80.

Menopause and Weight Loss

Weight gain, or a difficulty in losing weight, among women in midlife has been a common complaint among clients over the years. Research shows that while this is common, it is more likely a result of aging and lifestyle changes, but menopause does play a role (1). So, let's break that down a little bit.

It's true that estrogen deprivation happens after menopause, which can lead to an increase in body fat combined with a decrease in lean body mass (2). Women do have a tendency to gain weight with age irrespective of their menopausal status, which is typically associated with less physical activity which leads to a decrease in bone mineral density and muscle mass. This is typically true of men too. The older people get, they tend to be less physically active, which decreases energy expenditure. When combined with a similar caloric intake, this decreased energy expenditure leads to weight gain.

You may be surprised to hear it, but sleep loss is also attributed to weight gain in midlife women. We've been preaching it for years, but sleep does have a substantial effect on your weight. Many potential issues contribute to sleep loss in women including night sweats, mood problems, obstructive sleep apnea, and low estrogen (3). As we all know very well, little sleep can lead to less physical activity, sugar cravings, decreased insulin sensitivity, and less caloric output (4).

While we can't point to menopause entirely for the increase in weight, it does affect the distribution of fat on the body. Menopausal women tend to have a greater percentage of body fat on the organs (visceral fat) as compared to women in the premenopausal state (5). This is a big deal. Obese postmenopausal women have higher overall mortality risk with as high as a 4-fold increase in cardiovascular deaths and it raises the risk of type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, high blood pressure, and some cancers including uterine and breast (6).

So, what do we do about all of this? The research points to lifestyle factors such as exercise, nutrition, stress, and sleep (big surprise!) as being critical stave off much of the health risks associated with weight gain and health issues with women as they approach menopause (7). For you, this means:
* some kind of caloric reduction
* a diet including meat, plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes with a moderate fat intake
* resistance training to improve lean body mass, which will increase basal metabolic rate and energy expenditure
* 7-9.5 hours of sleep per night

Our best advice is to start with one of these areas at a time. Specifically, pick one task you can do that will touch on an aspect of one of the lifestyle factors mentioned. For instance, a great option for increasing the quality of your sleep could be no screens one hour prior going to bed. You would then systematically go through a task or two for each of these, and before you know it, you would be in a dramatically better place.

#References
1. Karvonen-Gutierrez, C. & Kim, C. (2016). Association of mid-life changes in body size, body composition and obesity status with the menopausal transition. Healthcare, 4(3).
2. Leeners, B., Geary, N., Tobler, P., & Asarian, L. (2017). Ovarian hormones and obesity [published online ahead of print March 2, 2017]. Human Reproduction, 23(3), p.300-321.
3. Eichling, P. & Sahni, J. (2005). Menopause related sleep disorders. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 1(3), p.291-300.
4. Wiley, T. & Formby, B. (2000). *Lights Out*. New York: Simon & Schuster.
5. Milewicz, A., Tworowska, U., & Demissie, M. (2001). Menopausal obesity: myth or fact? Climacteric, 4(4), p.273-283.
6. Thurston, R., Sowers, M., Sternfeld, B., et al. (2009). Gains in body fat and vasomotor symptom reporting over the menopausal transition: the study of women’s health across the nation. American Journal of Epidemiology, 170(6), p.766-774.
7. Kapoor, E., Collazo-Clavell, M., & Faubion, S. (2017). Weight gain in women at midlife: a concise review of the pathophysiology and strategies for management. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 92(10), p. 1552-1558.

Second & Third Order Consequences

I’m a huge fan of reading books that I think will help me or my business make more progress. One of the recent ones I have read was called Principles by Ray Dalio. Ray is the owner of an investment company called Bridgewater Associates.

Among many of the useful concepts, principles, and ideas, second- and third-order consequences really resonated with me and made me think of my clients and athletes. As Dailo states “I've come to see that people who overweigh the first-order consequences of their decisions and ignore the effects of second- and subsequent-order consequences rarely reach their goals. This is because first-order consequences often have the opposite desirabilities form second-order consequences, resulting in big mistakes in decision making.”

Considering the greater impact (i.e. second- and third-order consequences) that your decisions can have. It's often the first-order temptations, such as eating junk food or skipping a gym session, that cost us what we want. While this is easy to get in the habit of doing, it's going to be what is standing between you and what you want in the long run. No doubt, this way of thinking takes discipline. In the end, though, you'll find that it's much more rewarding.  #results

Light & Sleep

"Not enough sleep makes you fat, hungry, impotent, hypertensive, and cancerous, with a bad heart." - T.S. Wiley, *Lights Out*

Okay, so this quote may be a bit extreme, but it certainly got your attention. Sleep is one of those things we tend to put off for any number of reasons. Working late, watching TV, or just screwing around before going to bed. Regardless of the reason, your lack of sleep may be hurting not only your progress in the gym, but also your overall health.

Sleeping, or lack thereof, can be responsible for a whole host of health issues including weight gain, sugar cravings, elevated cortisol, and depression. Sleep is the time when our body produces melatonin, one of the most potent antioxidants. Antioxidants are molecules that inhibit the oxidation of other molecules. Melatonin, along with other antioxidants, act to protect cells from damage. But more than that, we need melatonin to help put us to sleep. 

Light is very problematic when talking about sleep. With light exposure, melatonin is suppressed. The light and dark cycles that we experience everyday should, ideally, coincide with when we go to sleep and when we wake up. Now, that can't always happen, but we need to make great strides to have clear cut times when we're awake (and around light), and when we're going to sleep (and around low/no light). 

We are very sensitive to light; much more than you may be aware. It's not enough to wear a sleep mask to block out light that hits your eyes. It's light that hits your body, in general, that is an issue. A study was done to determine if light exposure to your body can affect sleep (1). The researchers took used a fiber-optic cable to illuminate a small quarter-sized patch on the back of each subject's knee. Outside of that illuminated patch, the subjects were in complete darkness. This affected the subjects' temperature and melatonin secretion. Imagine what a bright TV screen would do?

These light and dark cycles control insulin through carbohydrate cravings and stress mechanisms. When the lights are on, your cortisol stays up because it's a blood-sugar mobilizer - it helps you to be ready to run or fight. If you continue this, and levels of cortisol stay high, cortisol, which mobilizes blood sugar, keeps insulin high leading to insulin resistance. 

As we now have been getting to winter, here are some general guidelines to mitigate some of these issues with the days getting shorter:

•  turn the TV off 45-60 minutes before bed
•  get up as close to dawn as possible
•  after dark, keep the lights as dim as possible
•  keep your bedroom as dark as possible (ZERO light)

References

1. Campbell, S. & Murphy, P. (1998). Extraocular circadian phototransduction in humans. Science, 279(5349), 396-399.

2. Wiley, T. & Formby, B. (2000). *Lights Out*. New York: Simon & Schuster

How To Sneak More Vegetables Into Your Diet

The subject of eating more vegetables comes up all the time when taking on a new client. We ask clients to eat 1-2 fist-sized portions of vegetables with every meal, which typically results in an "are you serious?" type of look. We certainly get that, as vegetables aren't generally something for which we get cravings. That may be, but they provide us with phytonutrients and fiber, which are very healthy and beneficial for staying healthy and keeping weight at a healthy level. It's very rare that we come across someone looking to lose weight that loves vegetables and eats them with every meal.

So, here are some strategies for you to sneak more vegetables in your diet.

1. Smoothies

Eating vegetables for breakfast is the toughest thing to do for most people, but this is usually our first option, as it's the simplest and you literally cannot taste the vegetables. Spinach is easy to throw into a smoothie, as is an avocado, which will thicken it up and make it more like a milkshake. Start with one handful of spinach, and go up from there. Some other options of vegetables could be kale (de-veined to reduce the bitterness), or romaine lettuce. Add the right amount of healthy protein powder (1-2 scoops) and possibly some berries and/or 1-2 dates for some more flavor. Try this first for a solid breakfast.

2. Cauliflower Or Broccoli Rice

Avoiding more traditional sides like mashed potatoes or rice is a bit of a challenge sometimes, and stumbling across this at the grocery store was a great find. Cauliflower rice definitely tastes better, but either of these (with some seasoning) is a great side in lieu of something worse. Experiment and see what you like best. The feedback from clients has been great.

3. Experiment With Lesser Known Root Vegetables

Okay, so this might not be a way to sneak in vegetables, but there are definitely some that you probably haven't tried, which can be great to experiment. Root vegetables are a great source of carbohydrates, fiber, and vitamins A and C. Often times, it's vegetables that you're familiar with that you might not like, but trying something new can easily change the game. You may just come across a great new vegetable to add to your meals. Some of these lesser known root vegetables include celery root, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, yuca, jicama, and parsnips.

4. Substitute Vegetable Noodles For Traditional Pasta

The spiralizer has become a necessity for many of our clients for one simple reason: it's fantastic for making vegetable noodles. If you've never done this before, it may seem odd, but using a spiralizer to make noodles out of vegetables like zucchini, cucumber, winter squash, beets, carrots, or sweet potatoes provide a great alternative to refined carbohydrates like pasta. 

Outside of the spiralizer, squash works perfectly for a traditional pasta substitute, and tastes great. There are two options you can use right away: spaghetti squash in place of traditional pasta and butternut squash instead of lasagna noodles. Trust us when we say many of our clients love both of these. 

5. Mix in scrambled eggs or frittatas

The beauty of making scrambled eggs or frittatas is that you can throw just about anything in there and it'll still taste great. We usually recommend spinach to start with because it's relatively tasteless and ends up condensing down quite a bit. Other vegetables like bell peppers, onions, or chives make great additions. Topping it off with a sprinkle of cheese, hot sauce, or salsa can be a nice addition to keep it tasting great.

Wrap Up

Look for the opportunity to get vegetables in any way you can. They are a necessity to healthy living, and will certainly help you lose weight and rid yourself of many health ailments. Experimenting can be a great way to continue making nutritional changes for the better and keep the weight coming off. 

Need Some More Help?

Achieve offers nutritional coaching for those of you that need a little more help in making the right nutritional choices. Work one-on-one with one of our coaches and get easy, step-by-step guidance to reach your goals and create lasting change. For more information, please visit our nutritional coaching page or contact us.

How To Use Your Phone To Lose Weight

You read that right. Your phone can be a powerful tool in your weight loss journey. What we can now use our phones for is nothing short of amazing. Sure, you can use it to troll Facebook countless times per day. You can also use it to keep you on track and make sure your environment is setting you up for success. We like to incorporate the thing that is on our clients all the time (the phone) to help them be successful. It can remind you to take your vitamins, track your calories, record your steps, and let you know to get up and move around. For now, let's take a look at three ways you can use it to lose weight.

Track Your Habits

Habits are what shape our lives. We are defined by our habits. These things we do everyday without thinking can largely determine what our life is like. If you master good habits that are conducive to positive change, then you'll be well on your way toward success. On the other hand, negative habits that pull you away from your goals are going to have the opposite effect. 

We talk about habits all the time with our clients because they're that important. Our nutritional coaching clients are given new habits when they've mastered other ones to keep them on the right track. Your phone can also keep you on track by reminding you to complete habits like drinking water, exercising in the morning, or eating breakfast. 

We like the applications Habit List, Coach.me, and Momentum. These applications allow you to enter whatever habits you would like to begin implementing or even habits you would like to stop doing. Sometimes, removing a destructive habit is the best course of action. 

They'll remind you to complete a habit and keep track of how many times you were successful in doing it. The little reports that you can see are a great way to determine if perhaps a habit that you chose was too difficult, and choosing something else may work better. 

One key tip in implementing habits is to only go after one at a time. Any more than that and you decrease your chance of success. Start with one, do it consistently for about two weeks, and only then should you add another one. 

Improve Your Sleep

We have talked about it a bit before, but sleep is absolutely crucial to your health and wellbeing long-term. This includes weight loss. It's very challenging to drop weight when your hormone levels are off and you're exhausted all the time. It makes having the willpower to eat healthy and exercise that much more challenging. Lack of sleep can lead to sugar cravings too. Not a good thing. 

So, one of the tools we recommend to improve our clients sleep is the Bedtime feature within the Apple iOS Clock application. It's very easy to use. Just set your bed time, your wake time, and which days of the week you'd like it to remind you to go to sleep. The other great part of this app is that the sounds it wakes you up with are not only much more pleasant than a regular alarm clock, it gradually gets louder. You won't be startled as with many other alarm clocks. 

Log Your Food

While we consider food logging a higher level activity, in very small doses, it can be beneficial for almost anyone. At any given point, you may wonder why you're still not losing weight even though you've changed your diet for the better. You can recall eating all the good stuff like lean chicken breasts, salads, raw nuts, and fruit, but the scale doesn't reflect this. 

Typically, when a client says something like the above statement, one of the things we usually ask is "show me." Now, it's not that we don't trust people. It's that recalling food from memory, especially if you're really focusing on eating well, will typically result in you remembering all of the good food you ate that was consistent with our advice without the other food that wasn't. That's great to hear that you were really focused on eating well, and it shows you've been working hard. What's challenging is figuring out why you may not have lost weight. When we can take a look at your food, or when you can see it laid out, it's much easier to pinpoint the weak spots. On the other hand, when you're very successful, it helps to review those times to see what you did right.

Enter the food log. Often, just using it for one week can make a large enough difference to kickstart your weight loss. We have found that most of our clients find the task of recording their food either on paper or with apps like My Fitness Pal to be tedious. In order to make the process easier, we like photo food journals. They tend to have the highest adherence and the lowest barriers to entry. We like MealLogger the most, which you can get HERE.

Wrap Up

As smart phones continue to get better and better, there will be many more opportunities to use it to your advantage in your health and fitness journey. Everything you can do to hold yourself more accountable or keep you on track will increase your odds of success. It's about making things easier, and your phone is just another tool to help you along.

The Meal Plan Mistake

It's not uncommon to join a gym to start training and be handed a meal plan. This has been a mainstay in the fitness industry for a very long time. We get asked all the time for meal plans when we initially get started talking to our clients about nutrition. Much of the time, this is rooted in the idea that if they are just told what to eat and when, this whole weight loss thing will be a piece of cake. The problem with this method is it's extremely difficult for people to sustain long-term.

Meal plans are simply too rigid for the majority of people to follow for any length of time. You're told what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat. Regardless of how easy this sounds, life tends to happen and very quickly this perfect meal plan has become unrealistic. You have a work meeting that came up, your kid needs to be picked up from swim practice early, or, for some reason, chicken and broccoli for the fourth time this week just doesn't seem appetizing. These are all normal things that occur in everyone's lives. You can't always meticulously plan out your day and expect everything to fall into place. What happens when this occurs? The inflexibility of the meal plan doesn't adequately prepare you for any variables that may come up and you may derail a little bit.

All of the aspects of following a meal plan almost ensure it will be very challenging to follow. There are so many habits involved with following a meal plan such as preparing your kitchen, cooking, food preparation, and clean-up, that many people will be adopting several habits at once. With each additional habit you attempt, you decrease the likelihood that you'll be able to follow it. It's best to focus on one thing at a time, master that, and then move onto the next.

If you do happen to follow a meal plan very strictly, and complete it for the recommended length of time, this can cause some serious disordered eating further down the line. Most of these meal plans are supposed to be temporary, meaning you don't continue doing them after a clearly defined length of time, which is typically a few weeks to a month or two. For a shorter period of time, you may be able to complete the nutrition plan and lose some weight. If you happen to continue it for longer, based on some results you got, you can have other issues that come up whether they be behavioral, metabolic, or hormonal.

And lastly, meal plans are truly a one-size-fits-all approach. Every client is handed the same meal plan. There may be some differences on whether you're a man or woman, but for the most part, these are extremely similar. What if you don't like broccoli? Or you're a vegetarian? Or making an omelette isn't feasible for you in the mornings? You're not learning the right ways to eat; you're just following along. Behavior modification is the key to creating lasting lifestyle change.

So what do you do instead? Rather than give our clients a meal plan, we like to work with them and create outcome based strategies for them to do each week. Involving our clients in the process creates much more buy-in and increases the likelihood that they will complete these tasks successfully. It is key, though, that we choose one task at a time. Any more than that decreases the likelihood that the client will be successful at adopting this new way of eating. 

We all know what we should be eating. We regularly ask our clients if they know what food is good for weight loss, and what foods would cause weight gain. Nearly 100% of the time, they get the answers correct. This means there's not necessarily an educational issue here. It's largely behavioral. People know what they need to do to lose weight; it's getting them to do those things that is the challenge. This is why many of the habits and tasks we give our clients are based on behaviors and habits around eating. It's not necessarily what they're eating, but what they're doing when they're eating, who are they eating with, how much are they eating, etc. 

Some examples of behavioral or habit-based tasks we give our clients include chewing their food slowly, stopping eating when they're 80% full, eating protein with every meal, eating 5 to 7 servings of colorful fruits and vegetables everyday, or eating away from distractions. Each of these is teaching the client strategies that go much further telling them exactly what to eat and when. It allows them to be somewhat flexible and make choices for themselves that will still lead to their goal.

So, don't necessarily look for what appears to be the quick fix. Think of what is going to make you successful and stay successful both in the short term and several years down the line.

Kung Pao Chicken

Ingredients 

• 1 pound of boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch (or coconut flour)
• 2 Tbs light sesame oil (or 2 teaspoons vegetable oil)
• 3 Tbs green onions, chopped with tops
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4- 1 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (to your own taste)
• 1⁄2 teaspoon  powdered ginger (can use fresh grated if preferred)
• 2 Tbs rice wine vinegar
• 2 Tbs soy sauce 
• 1/3 cup dry roasted peanuts 
• 3 cups of cooked cauliflower rice 

Preparation 

• Combine chicken and cornstarch (or coconut flour) in small bowl.
• Toss to coat.
• Heat oil in large non-stick skillet or wok on medium heat.
• Add chicken.
• Stir fry 5- 7 minutes or until no longer pink in center.
• Remove from heat.
• Add green onions, garlic, red pepper and ginger to skillet.
• Stir fry 15 seconds.
• Remove from heat.
• Combine vinegar, soy sauce and sugar in small bowl.
• Stir well.
• Add to skillet.
• Return chicken to skillet.
• Stir until chicken is well coated.
• Stir in peanuts.
• Heat thoroughly, stirring occasionally.
• Serve over cauliflower rice.

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

Ingredients 

• 1 pound of Brussels sprouts, halved
• 4 strips of thick-cut bacon (preferably nitrate free)
• 2 Tbs butter
• 1/2 large onion, chopped 
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preparation 

• Cook bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until crispy  
• Remove to a paper towel-lined plate, then roughly chop.
• In the same pan with bacon fat, melt butter over high heat
• Add onions and Brussels Sprouts and cook, stirring occasionally, until sprouts are golden brown (8-10 minutes)
• Season with salt and pepper to taste
• Toss bacon back into pan
• Serve immediately.  Enjoy! 

Bacon Wrapped Dates

Ingredients 

• 15 dates (we used the Fancy Medjool dates from Trader Joe's)
• Package of Bacon (we used classic sliced uncured bacon from Trader Joe's) 
• 30 toothpicks 

Preparation 

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees 
• Cut the dates in half and take out the pit 
• Wrap with half of a piece of bacon
• Secure the bacon with a toothpick 
• Place on a baking sheet
• Bake for 20 to 25 minutes (depending on your bacon crispiness preference)
• Let cool for 10 minutes and enjoy!