If I told you to eat what you love and cut back on your workouts if you want to lose weight, you might tell me I’m crazy.
Diet and fitness “experts” certainly would.
But their terrible advice about fitness and nutrition has led to the current obesity epidemic. Nearly 40% of Americans are now obese and nearly 70% are overweight.
And the problem is only getting worse.
A new study in the prestigious JAMA medical journal reports that more people are giving up on trying to lose weight.1
Researchers asked 27,350 overweight and obese adults whether they had tried to lose weight in the past 12 months. Since 1988, the number of people trying to lose the weight dropped from 56% to 49%.
I don’t blame them. For decades, people have been trying to follow “expert” diet and exercise advice that just doesn’t work.
Low-fat dieting is the worst. Even if you lose some weight, you can’t sustain it. Studies show more than 90% of people who lose weight eventually gain 100% of the weight back. Often, they gain even more.
To make things worse, we get really bad advice about exercise. Most fitness “gurus” push you to do more cardio. They recommend long-distance running, treadmill workouts and aerobics classes. They tell you that cardio gets you into the “fat-melting zone.”
But the truth is that long cardio sessions program your body to use fat for fuel. You’re sending a signal that you need fat. In short, cardio makes your body hold onto fat to use later.
It’s no wonder so many people have given up trying to lose weight!
In my practice, I help my patients drop extra weight and get back to a naturally lean body. They can’t believe how easy it is once they learn the right way. Here are four simple steps that can work for you, too.
Four Simple Steps for a Lean Body
1. Return to a primal diet. Our primal ancestors had no obesity epidemic. They naturally ate a low-carb diet. To eat like our ancestors, get most of your calories from fat and protein. Look for grass-fed beef and dairy products, wild-caught coldwater fish, and poultry and eggs from pastured animals. Choose healthy fats like olive oil, butter and coconut oil.
And when it comes to carbs, stay on track with the Glycemic Index (GI). The GI is a measure of how quickly blood sugar levels shoot up after eating carbs. Foods with a higher GI give you a higher spike. Carbs with a low GI break down slowly. They release smaller, more manageable amounts of glucose into your bloodstream. Click here to check out my glycemic guide.
2. Cut back your workout sessions. Instead of long cardio sessions that build fat, my PACE program uses short sessions of high-intensity, progressively challenging workouts. It conditions your body to burn fat for up to 24 hours after you exercise — not just while you exercise. It’s key to lasting fat loss. And you can do it in as little as 12 minutes a day.
Patients here at the Sears Institute for Anti-Aging Medicine have been using PACE for years to drop weight and tap into the energy of their youth. If you want to learn some great fat-burning PACE exercises, click right here. You’ll get a full PACE workout to try.
3. Use this leptin-balancing herb. When things are running smoothly, your fat cells produce leptin. This messenger molecule tells your brain when you’re full. That slows down your hunger. Then it tells the fat inside your cells to breakdown so it can be burned as energy. But when you eat foods that spike blood sugar, leptin gets thrown out of balance.
The best way I’ve found to rebalance leptin is a West African herb called irvingia gabonensis, or bush mango. Research shows this herb helps keep your leptin levels normal. In one study, people taking this extract lost an average of 28 pounds and lost 6 inches around their waist in just 10 weeks.2
For improving body weight and leptin function, I recommend 150 mg a day of irvingia seed extract. But read the label. Be sure the supplement you buy is made from 100% natural extract of African mango. I’ve seen some diluted and tainted forms on the market.
4. Stop carbs from turning to fat. Processed carbs like bread, pasta, potatoes and other starches convert to sugar and then fat in your body. But research shows that white kidney beans block starch digestion. They help stop starches from converting to fat. In one study, people taking white kidney bean extract lost over 6 pounds without changing their lifestyles at all in any other way. And 73.5% of them were able to keep the weight off.3
My favorite way to eat white kidney beans is to make minestrone soup. But to get the full carb-eliminating effect, you’ll want to take white kidney bean extract. Start with 500 mg twice a day. Take it 15 or 20 minutes before you eat.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS
1. Kassandra R. Snook, Andrew R. Hansen, Carmen H. Duke, et al. “Change in Percentages of Adults With Overweight or Obesity Trying to Lose Weight, 1988-2014.” JAMA, 2017; 317 (9): 971.
2. Oben JE, et al. “Irvingia gabonensis significantly reduces body weight and improves metabolic parameters in overweight humans.” Lipids in Health and Disease. 2009, 8:7.
3. Grube B, Chong W, Chong P, Riede L. “Weight reduction and maintenance with IQP-PV-101: A 12-week randomized controlled study with a 24-week open label period.” Obesity. 2014;22(3):645-51.