What are the 5 Steps to Lose Weight in the New Year?

1- Get Adequate Sleep
2- Balance Stress Hormones
3- Improve Eating Plan
4- Daily Exercise
5- Optimize Detoxification

1- Get Adequate Sleep

Is too little sleep a cause of weight gain?

Recent studies have suggested an association between sleep duration and weight gain. Sleeping less than 6 hours — or more than nine hours — a night appears to increase the likelihood of weight gain. In one study, recurrent sleep deprivation in men increased their preferences for high-calorie foods and their overall calorie intake. When are are tired from lack of sleep with tend to go for the sugar and breads to give us energy and keep us going.

Another contributing factor might be that lack of sleep leads to fatigue and results in less physical activity. When we are tired we have very little motivation to hit the gym and do our work out. If you exercise when you are tired, you are more likely to elevated cortisol the stress hormone and this will blunt the positive effects of exercise. So now you have another reason to get a good night’s sleep.

Getting 7-8 hours of sleep on a regular schedule helps to tame cortisol and improve the thyroid and testosterone production. To improve sleep cycles, go to bed at the same time every night around 9-10 pm and wake at about 5 to 6 am. Taking 400 to 800 mg of magnesium citrate or glycinate prior to sleep can help with relaxing the brain and body.

2- Balance Stress Hormones

Could my hormones be the cause of my weight gain?

This is one of the most frequent questions that I get asked by patients daily.  In fact, the two most common complaints I hear throughout my day are the following:  “I’m tired and I can’t lose weight.”
So could hormones be causing these issues?  The answer to this question is a resounding yes!!  The hormones that cause weight gain in both men are women are the folllowing:
• Insulin
• Cortisol
• Thyroid
• Estrogen
For an in depth discussion on each of these hormones, check out a previous article titled “
Are My Hormones Causing Weight Gain? 4 Hormones to Balance to Lose Weight.”

3- Improved eating is 80% of the weight loss plan

When it comes to weight loss, your eating plan is 70-80% of the weight loss game and exercise is the other 20-30 %. You can never exercise your way out of a bad diet. An eating plan that is focused on lean proteins, combined with seeds, nuts and eggs is a good place to start. You can never exercise your way out of a bad diet. This may seem simple, but it works well. Staying away from breads, cookies, candies and snackie cakes is essential if you are interested in losing weight.

I remember a time back when I finished my residency when I weighed 40 lbs. more than I do now and had a lot of weight around my waist.  I was so tired from lack of sleep and increased stress, I ate a diet high in sugar, bread and pasta to give me energy to make it through the day. I had my blood sugar checked and I was in the pre-diabetes range.  I knew I needed to make a change.  So I went to work to figure out what I needed to do to lose weight, better control my blood sugars and fit into my old pants.  I designed a diet plan called “Slim for Life.”  I followed my own researched guidelines strictly for two years and lost 40 lbs. and got into the best sharp of my life.  This diet plan focused on controlling blood sugars and calming down the negative effects of too much insulin.  This plan is available in our clinic and over the years has been very successful in helping many people lose weight and rejuvenate their health.

4- Daily exercise with HIIT Training

Bodybuilders and others have long used steady-state cardio, which involves low- to moderate-intensity exercise performed at 60%-70% of one’s maximum heart rate (MHR), to whittle away body fat. Trainers and other experts argue that since lower-intensity cardio exercise burns a higher percentage of fat for energy, slow and steady indeed wins the race. HIIT cardio, on the other hand, involves intervals of high-intensity exercise–at a rate near 90% MHR–followed by intervals of slower-paced active recovery. What they found, time after time, was that HIIT cardio was the best way to lose fat, despite the fact that it required less total time.

The most recent study, out of Australia, reported that a group of females who followed a 20-minute HIIT program consisting of eight-second sprints followed by 12 seconds of rest lost an amazing six times more bodyfat than a group that followed a 40-minute cardio program performed at a constant intensity of 60% MHR.

So how is the best way to do this. I recommend jumping on the treadmill and going hard for 30-60 seconds follow by walking at a brisk pace for about 60 to 90 seconds. This cycle should continue until you have completed enough cycles to exercise for 20 to 30 minutes. This could be performed on any piece of exercise equipment.
5- Detox Your Body from Environmental Toxins

Scientists recently uncovered a surprising and disturbing fact: environmental toxins make you fat and cause diabetes(1). Inside the body, these chemicals monkey with our ability to balance blood sugar and metabolize cholesterol. Over time, the changes can lead to insulin resistance and weight gain.

It has been reported that we are exposed to more toxins in one day than our great grandparents were exposed in their whole life.Environmental toxins are responsible for many cancers, neurological diseases, heart disease, strokes and of course weight gain! Our bodies do have a built-in detox function to deal with these dangers, but those systems are constantly overloaded! Detoxing assists and improves what our bodies are trying to do naturally.Your liver is constantly working to excrete toxins on its own. So how do we help our liver?

Drink filtered water. This will help you excrete toxins in both the urine and the stool.

Sweat! Do some exercise that will help you sweat and infrared saunas are especially helpful.

Support your Liver. Taking 600 mg of N-Acetyl-Cysteine twice a day (which is a precursor to glutathione) will help you make more glutathione and will help your body to excrete toxins. Glutathione is the substance your liver produces to detoxify. Taking a product call Liver- GI Detox can help as well. Doing a yearly detoxification with a product called Ultra Clear Renew is also a good idea.

Hopefully, this helps shed some light on the subject.  Come see us at Health Rejuvenation Institute and we can help you lose that extra weight.

Dr. Randy Lundell, DO