One powerful hormone that can make you fat or lean

Have you had your insulin levels checked?  This is one hormone that has a dramatic impact on your health; it can make you anabolic (lean & muscular) or make your waistline as big as an oompa loompah.  Many people know that carbohydrates affect your insulin levels – carbs give you an insulin response where you either use glucose for energy or store it as body fat.  The problem is your insulin can stay elevated if the carbs are refined or too sugary; which is much like a tropical storm raging out of control eating up everything in it’s path.  When you add in stress it goes from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane fast as stress is cortisol which raises insulin. 

I recently ran labs on myself as I frequently do and found my fasting insulin to be 8.  Whoa!  I have been eating healthy and avoiding refined carbs so how can this be?  I quickly realized the master of disaster is stress.  It is time to take my own advice and control my stress.  You may be seeing less of me as I have to take a much needed sabbatical, lower my stress and train for my physical needs and if everything goes well, you will literally be seeing less of me.  My goal is simple, my waistline needs to be lower than my age.  --JROD

What have you done lately to ensure sunny, blue skies? 

 Do you know what your fasting insulin level is?

Do you have your Toxic Umbrella-Part III? Clean out your fat cells

As a lab interpreter, I think it is very important to check exposure levels so I ran a Chlorinated Pesticides/PCBs/Volatile Solvents test on myself as I believe if I am going to ask a client to do something I have to do it myself first.  I am the first person in the world to come back below the detectable limit for Pesticides, PCBs and solvents.  Trust me, I questioned this too and had an extensive conversation with the lab as they ran the results more than once to verify.  They asked me if I lived in a bubble (non-plastic of course).  I am very aware now and take great effort to limit my exposure, but I used to be a painting contractor and took a bath in most of the tested solvents.  So eliminating these items and testing below the detectable limit doesn’t happen by accident and I have done more detox protocols than I can count on my fingers and toes and use a non-toxic Infrared Sauna like crazy.  Honestly the best defense is being aware, you can lower your toxic exposure by 85% simply by being aware, however once it sits in your fat cells it takes sophisticated protocols and great effort to get rid of these nasty bastards.  For example they are finding fat soluble toxins like DDT in newborns which is evidence these toxins have a half-life of about 40 years and are carrying from generation to generation.  This massive exposure is why you are seeing obese babies being born (they aren’t eating McDonalds yet).  

It is an overwhelming toxic world, however You can do something about this exposure.
Being aware is the first step, cleaning out your fat cells through proper detoxing is next! 

Jrod

Will fruit make me fat?

 The tough & beautiful Jordan McDonald obviously has very little back fat

This is such a popular question now with Paleo as popular as it is.  The Paleo way of eating frowns upon fruit and using any type of sweeteners and is not fond of carbohydrates in general.
The subscap measurement in the BioSignature method answers this question in short order.  The subscap or the "back fat" measurement is an indicator whether you can tolerate carbs or not.  The general rule is if the back fat is above 10mm - SORRY - carbs are not your friend and they will make you fat.  If you are one of the lucky 10% that have a back fat measurement of 10mm or less you can actually tolerate carbs and stay lean.  
Of course commone sense comes into play here and you still need to make wise carb choices and stay away from too many sweets, refined carbs and grains.

If this is too complicated for you or you don't have access to Jrod to check your back fat try this simple method.

KISS – Keeping It Simple Silly

Try this at home, free test to know if you can tolerate carbs
Eat some carbs and then look in the mirror.  If you look fat – hmmm . . .carbs may be a back stabbing bitch (BSB) ;(

Not sure?  Send in a pic and we will run it through our high tech data analysis program and post your answer on Face book

Do carbs really make you fat? Can fish oil really help me lose body fat?

What should I eat for breakfast?  What do I need to know about this craze called Cross Fit?  How much D3 should I be taking, if any?  Is it normal for my joints to hurt from exercise?  Is periodization in my exercise routine necessary?

Charles Poliquin answers all these burning questions and more in this Q&A interview.

Fat? Tired? Moody? Choices have much more to do with these than you know

FOOD not only shapes your body, it shapes your mood, perception and choices.  The old adage ‘You are what you eat’ is way truer than most of us realize.  Your eating habits are not a matter of discipline; they are a matter of choice.  Every time we eat we are making a choice to either fulfill our primal needs for nutrients or satisfy our hunger cravings properly or eat what tastes good at the moment and leaves us feeling like crap later.  Each feeding is a new choice much like LIFE is basically a serious of choices.

Hundreds of times per day we are making choices whether we realize it or not.  Choices that will affect us positively or negatively.  Make no mistake, you may be saying to yourself, I rarely make choices or I don’t make choices they are made for me. 

Repeat this out loud:  I MAKE CHOICES EVER DAY.

To get on a successful path you have got to start making positive, healthy life choices.  Let me give you some examples of simple choices that we all face everyday that impact our lives.  

It starts early in the day; we choose to get up when we should (around 6-6:30am) or we choose to sleep in late.  We choose to eat a healthy breakfast before we leave the house as opposed to skipping breakfast or God forbid-eat breakfast at a fast food place.  We choose to pack a lunch and snacks for ourselves and take it with us for the day or we choose to leave snacks and lunch up to fate and buy them out of the vending machine or at a fast food restaurant or even worse we just skip them.

We choose to work-out after work (because it is our scheduled work-out day) or we choose to skip the gym because we just don’t feel motivated to work-out today.  We think maybe tomorrow will be a better day.  If we chose the work-out path, we also choose to take our BCAA's and recovery drink while we are working out and then we get a solid meal in us within 30-45 minutes after workout.  We then choose to head home and prepare for wind-down and the next day.  We choose take our calming supplements, get our stuff ready for the next day and relax before bed.  We then choose to be in bed by 10pm at the latest, because we love regimen and we know what lack of sleep does to ourselves.

If we chose to skip work-out our night might be like this:  we choose to go out to eat and watch the game.  We have some nasty restaurant food that does not satisfy our nutrient needs.  We choose to let a friend talk us into having a few drinks, which is horrible for us and expensive.  We choose to stay out later than we planned, simply by choosing not to go home when we should.  We then choose to go home and watch some TV to unwind before we fall asleep.  We choose to fall asleep in front of the TV around midnight and then we don’t want to get up in the morning because of that stupid choice last night.  Of course we did not choose to get ready for the next day, or take our calming supplements because we were a little buzzed and off regimen.

See where I’m going with this?  It’s all about little choices that add up to good days or bad days.  So many times I hear people say “I had the worst day, I had bad luck all day today.”  Since I’m guessing no one else has said it to you, I will say it. 

YOU ARE MAKING BAD CHOICES, BAD LUCK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!         Dawn