A recent article in the Washington Post revealed some “secrets” of highly obese people.  What they discovered was a primer about what not to do for fast fat loss. For instance, obese people begin eating sooner, devour larger portions, skip breakfast, and – are you ready for this – eat faster than their lean counterparts.

Welcome to fast food nation, where we engulf McRibs driving 80 miles an hour on the freeway and mindlessly devour half a pint of chocolate chocolate chip in the kitchen while flipping through US Weekly.

The results aren’t pretty.

Let’s have a short, painless anatomy and physiology lesson about digestion. I promise it will be less boring than your tenth-grade teacher’s lecture.

It takes about 20 minutes before a hormone called CCK tells your brain to stop eating. When you engulf a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese and fries, you don’t give CCK enough time to relay the message to your brain, and you eat too much.

There’s more. You also raise fat-storing insulin levels. You don’t give your gut enough time to digest the food, which results in heartburn and indigestion. Your gut contracts, which sends you running to the bathroom and prevents nutrient absorption. (Not that that burger gives your body many nutrients to work with.) Weak digestion weakens your immune system, and a vicious cycle plays out.

Skip the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and slow the heck down. When you don’t fully swallow a bite before you chomp the next one, take that as a giant red flag you’re eating too quickly.

Digestion begins in your mouth, when that first taste of ketchup and bun saturate your taste buds and your teeth bite down into the juicy burger. Chewing grinds food into small bits so you can easily swallow the food. When you chew well, your digestive juices in your stomach coat the food, and consequently your body more effectively assimilates those nutrients.

Thoroughly chewing your food also allows your tongue to recognize the food. Your brain gets the message, which signals the digestive system to release the right juices to break down that food.

Have I lost you?

Here’s the short version: for every bite, check at least 20 – 25 times.

You can also shift gears to slow down with these nine strategies:

1. Don’t dashboard dine. Many states ticket you if you’re talking or texting while you drive. Let’s get a similar law for drivers who engulf Egg McMuffins and grande lattes on the freeway.
2. Eat during a regularly appointed time at your designated eating area. Eat your almond-crusted chicken and Brussels sprouts at the dining room table at 6 p.m., not while watching Cosby Show reruns on the sofa. And keep the bed for sleep and sex, not an 11 p.m. rendezvous with Ben & Jerry.
3. Be mindful and savor your food. Pretend like you’re dining with monks at a Zen monastery or the Queen of England.
4. Use chopsticks. Good luck slamming your food down with these guys!
5. Shrink your plate to shrink your stomach. Your stomach holds about a quart of food. Can it handle the amount you’ve got piled on your 14-inch plate?
6. Five to 10 servings of non-starchy veggies will fill you up and prove almost impossible to overeat.
7. Put your fork or chopsticks down between bites and chew.
8. Make your dining mantra “smaller bites, increased chewing.”
9. Get your enemies out of the house. You might have a will of steel mid-afternoon, but come 11 p.m., the Sausalito cookies have a way of luring you in without your consent.

© 2011 JJ Virgin & Associates, Inc. Celebrity Nutrition & Fitness Expert JJ Virgin helps clients lose weight fast by breaking free from food allergies.  She is the bestselling author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, a Huffington Post blogger, creator of the 4X4 Burst Training Workout & co-star of TLC’s Freaky Eaters. Visit her at http://www.jjvirgin.com to take the quiz & find out if Your “Healthy” Habits are Making You Tired, Bloated & Age Faster? 

Let’s back off the Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese and Happy Meals for a minute.

Sure, these (and many other carb/ fat/ sodium bombs) contribute to America’s obesity problem. But we’ve got a far bigger problem: we live in a fast-paced, super-sized culture that places no emphasis on slowing down and enjoying food.

Our society thrives on convenience. Let’s look at a typical day, which begins with those low-fat blueberry muffins Starbucks strategically places when you order your morning latte. When you get a mid-morning or 3 p.m. sugar crash, you probably head to a bagel cart, bodega, or snack machine to satisfy your cravings. And why bother prepping and preparing dinner anymore? Food manufacturers know we’re busy and are only too happy to help with microwave-in-a-bag meals, Hamburger Helper, and to-go Value Meals.

Our kids pick up on these habits. Rather than prepare a vegetable omelet for breakfast, for instance, we nuke a Pillsbury toaster strudel and hand them a Capri Sun to wash it down. Or we let them out the door with nothing, thinking school will somehow step in and provide a healthy meal.

Convenience foods also pack an addictive fat-sugar-salt combo that makes mindless overeating far too easy. We’re not eating real food, so our bodies don’t know when to stop eating.

I get it. We’re all busy these days with the economic downturn, pressure to create overachieving kids, and endless homework, PTO meetings, and after-school activities. But what’s more important than the nourishment healthy foods can provide you and your loved ones?

Let’s jump off the fast train and create mindful eating habits with these five strategies:

1. Eat breakfast within an hour of waking. I want you to get a balance of protein, healthy fats, non-starchy veggies, and high-fiber carbs. For instance, try turkey and veggies on a lettuce wrap or cage-free organic eggs (if you don’t have food sensitivities) with fresh veggies. Stop it with the time excuses. You can make a protein smoothie in minutes with VegaLite and Medibulk, both from Thorne Research, in So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk. Toss in some chia or flax seeds and maybe some berries, and you have a fast, filling meal that keeps you and your kids focused for hours.
2. Focus on friends and family, not food. When you gather with friends or family, you’re often tempted to load up on food to celebrate. Instead of planting yourself in front of the buffet table and piling your plate with three-cheese lasagna and cream cheese brownies, sit down and catch up with a friend or relative. Focus on sensible, filling foods like veggies and hummus or raw fruit. Skip the creamy dressings, fatty meats, and anything fried or cheese-filled. If you simply can’t resist your mom’s gooey raspberry triple-decker cheesecake, have three polite bites and step away from the table.
3. Get kids involved in meal planning. Trade your hectic weekday dinners for a more relaxed family meal. Skip the sodium-packed canned sauces, for instance, and make your own. Let kids help chop veggies or stir pots to foster a curiosity and interest in healthful foods. Turn off the TV, put away your iPhone, and enjoy dinner together.
4. Skip the soda. Many people I know rely on soda for mid-afternoon pick me ups. Soda advertisements make all kinds of bogus claims, from refreshment to increased energy. Trust me, the 10 teaspoons of sugar in a 12-ounce Coke will only give you a sugar crash. Swap the soda (even diet ones) and those 100% fruit juices for sparkling water with an Emergen-C packet.
5. Make lateral changes. Cutting out junk food doesn’t mean deprivation. Instead, edge out the bad foods with healthier options. Rather than PB & J, for instance, give your kids organic apple slices with almond butter. Instead of Chunky Monkey, mix frozen berries into Greek yogurt. And skip the deep-fried foods for fun healthier finger-food alternatives like almond-encrusted chicken fingers and sautéed green beans.

© 2011 JJ Virgin & Associates, Inc. Celebrity Nutrition & Fitness Expert JJ Virgin helps clients lose weight fast by breaking free from food allergies.  She is the bestselling author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, a Huffington Post blogger, creator of the 4X4 Burst Training Workout & co-star of TLC’s Freaky Eaters. Visit her at http://www.jjvirgin.com to take the quiz & find out if Your “Healthy” Habits are Making You Tired, Bloated & Age Faster? 

1. “Light” coffee drinks. Starbucks can now make your caramel Frappuccino “lite” with less calories and fat. Don’t fool yourself, however, in to thinking it’s somehow healthier. To compensate for less fat, many of these drinks pack more sugar than their regular versions. Likewise, “light” coffee drinks you buy in convenience stores come loaded with artificial sweeteners, high-fructose corn syrup, nonfat milk, and other additives that wreak metabolic havoc. Even without the sweeteners, the caffeine-milk combo cranks up your blood sugar and leaves you craving that low-fat apple streusel muffin. Skip the java and opt for green tea (iced or hot) instead.
2. Special K and skim milk. Let’s bust this nutritional urban legend once and for all. Despite that your receptionist swears her fat-free cereal with milk and a banana keeps her full and lean, this is hardly the ideal way to start your morning. Your body converts even the “healthiest” cereals into sugar, which raises your insulin levels, stores fat, and sets you up for a mid-morning bagel-cart crash. Dump the processed crap and start your morning with protein. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded increased protein helps you eat less food and promotes fast fat loss. And stop with the time excuses: a fast, easy morning smoothie satiates you and promotes fast fat loss.
3. “Healthy” cookies. Low-fat, high-fiber, low-carb: whatever. A cookie is a cookie, period. Manufacturers pull all kinds of stunts to convince you junk foods like cookies are suddenly healthy. (Looking at you, cookie diet.) Stop kidding yourself with the healthy cookie oxymoron and be honest: when’s the last time you opened a box of Girl Scouts Thin Mints and ate just one? If you must have a cookie, go to your bakery for the absolute best one, eat three bites, and toss the rest.
4. Baked chips other “healthy” snack foods. Speaking of eating just one, when was the last time you noshed on just one handful of popcorn? I don’t care if Whole Foods promotes their new Pirate’s Booty White Cheddar with 67% less fat, or that Lay’s makes baked (rather than fried) potato chips. The halo effect alone can make you devour an entire bag. And just because they’re lower in fat doesn’t mean these chips or popcorn aren’t still high glycemic, which means they raise your blood sugar and store fat. Skip the crunchy snacks for a handful of nutrient-packed raw almonds.
5. “Healthy” sugars. Your best friend and your favorite magazine both hype agave as a healthier sweetener. Reality check. Agave contains up to 90% fructose: way more than even often-maligned high-fructose corn syrup. Fructose wreaks havoc on your liver, which metabolizes agave like alcohol and can create fatty liver. Fructose also raises cholesterol and inflammation levels. And guess how your liver repackages fructose? Here’s a hint: you can kiss fast fat loss and your size-4 skinny jeans goodbye. Dump the agave and whatever other “healthy” sugars you see at Whole Foods for xylitol, which actually contains health benefits.

Sources:

Astrup A. The satiating power of protein—a key to obesity prevention? American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 82, No. 1, 1-2, July 2005.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/03/30/beware-of-the-agave-nectar-health-food.aspx

Don’t you hate how some people constantly get sick in your office and yet other coworkers never take a sick day?

Despite what you hear, your ultimate weapon against the dreaded cold/ flu season isn’t a flu shot. You can’t just stop by your Walgreens for a shot, continue your crappy diet and sedentary behavior, and expect to be flu-free all winter.

Get proactive and boost your immune system naturally. Besides sailing through the season with nary a sniffle, you’ll create healthy habits that carry you beyond cold/ flu season with these five powerful strategies.

1.  Eat your vegetables. Load up on broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage, which come packed with immune-boosting sulfur. Likewise, spinach packs beta-carotene, vitamin C, and plenty of other antioxidants to stave off a cold even at your immune-challenged office. (Wouldn’t it be nice to take a sick day and not actually be sick?) Skip the chicken noodle soup for an organic chicken broth packed with vegetables. And eat your veggies with good fat: olive or coconut oil helps your body absorb their fat-soluble nutrients.
2.  Optimize your vitamin D.  Researchers at the University of Copenhagen found vitamin D activates your immune defenses. Without sufficient vitamin D, your immune system can’t fight serious infections. Get 20 minutes of sun without sunscreen a few times each week. Even with the sun, most people aren’t making enough vitamin D these days, so a supplement proves your best strategy to guarantee optimal levels. Thorne Research makes vitamin D capsules and liquid in various dosages to match your needs.
3.  Stress less. A meta-analysis of 300 studies showed chronic stress – whether a few days or several years – dramatically weakens all aspects of immunity. Researchers found that “long-term or chronic stress, through too much wear and tear, can ravage the immune system.”  Stress lowers natural killer cell activity, raises fat-storing cortisol, and depletes vitamin C.  You can’t change the economy or fire your boss, but you can change how you respond to stress.  Watch a silly comedy with your girlfriends, have a venti decaf green tea at Starbucks (theanine in the tea helps you relax), create a gratitude list, and take some daily me time for a hot bath and calming meditation.
4.  Sleep more.  Just one night of poor sleep raises stress hormones and impairs immune function. Poor sleep also increases appetite, cravings, and aging. (That’s one reason why late-night party girl starlets start looking older than they are at a certain point.) You need seven to nine hours of high-quality sleep each night.  Sleep doesn’t just happen: you’ve got to prepare your body for rest. Power down your laptop and your body the hour before bed with a hot bath, a sleepy time tea, and some soothing music.
5. Exercise. A study in the International Journal of Sports Medicine showed moderate exercise can increase your body’s macrophage production. These Pac-man guys destroy harmful bacteria and strengthen your immune system. You may be surprised to learn that running, aerobics classes, and treadmill marathons all raise cortisol and actually weaken your immune system. Ditch those hours making yourself sick for burst training, which lets you get a four-minute workout in your own home and boosts fast fat loss.

Sources:

Nieman D. Exercise, Infection, and Immunity. Int J Sports Med 1994; 15: S131-S141

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7379094/Vitamin-D-triggers-and-arms-the-immune-system.html

http://www.apa.org/research/action/immune.aspx

© 2011 JJ Virgin & Associates, Inc. Celebrity Nutrition & Fitness Expert JJ Virgin helps clients lose weight fast by breaking free from food allergies.  She is the bestselling author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy, a Huffington Post blogger, creator of the 4X4 Burst Training Workout & co-star of TLC’s Freaky Eaters. Visit her at http://www.jjvirgin.com to take the quiz & find out if Your “Healthy” Habits are Making You Tired, Bloated & Age Faster? 

1. Shiver – single-digit snowstorms probably aren’t your favorite weather, but knowing you’re burning fat might make them a little more tolerable. When you shiver, your muscles involuntarily clench to generate heat. As a result, you burn up to four times as many calories as your cold-weather escaping friends lying on a breezy beach in Honolulu. Rubbing your hands together and shifting feet to stay warm steps up calorie burning another notch.
2. Sleep longer – turn off your TV, stop wasting hours on Facebook, and use darker winter hours to get more zzz’s. A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine compared two groups of overweight, healthy participants on calorie-restricted diets who slept either 8.5 or 5.5 hours each night for two weeks. What a difference those three hours made: the 8.5-hour group burned 400 more calories every night, lost more fat, preserved more muscle, and woke up less hungry than the 5.5-hour group.
3. Warm up with soup – make soup a cold-weather staple and bypass the winter weight gain. A study in Obesity Research showed people who ate two servings of lower-calorie soup lost 50% more weight than people who ate the same amount of calories in higher-calorie snack foods. Soup makes it easy to combine hunger-busting protein, veggies, and fibrous starches like lentils and beans in a chicken or vegetable broth. Hot liquid-based foods like soup also force you to slow down so you eat less and get full faster.
4. Hot green tea – skip the sugar-loaded Starbucks latte for a calming cup of naturally sweet hot green tea. Green tea curbs your appetite so you’re less tempted to order that 480-calorie cinnamon chip scone. Sipping green tea throughout the day also generates body heat so you stay warm and burn more fat. A study in Physiology & Behavior, for instance, concluded that green tea helps improves energy expenditure and fat oxidation.
5. Try a new sport – running isn’t an option with the sleet and wind, your gym’s become packed with hibernators hogging machines, and the dark hours inspire you to hide under the covers rather than move. Look at cold weather not as a limitation, but an opportunity to discover a new, exciting sport that helps you to get off the couch, into a groove, and fight off the winter blahs. Indoor rock climbing (burst training to the extreme), a Zumba class, or snow-skiing all make fun, challenging, fast fat loss cold-weather exercise options.
6. 6.   Don’t stress out – December brings overcrowded shopping malls, familial tension, and year-end work deadlines. Feeling the pressure? Stress raises cortisol, which makes you store fat. Put down the double-shot candy cane martini and grab Relora from Thorne Research. This powerful botanical-blend formula helps you reduce stress, balance cortisol, and relieve tension and anxiety. In other words, you’ll probably want to keep a bottle nearby when you open your post-holiday credit card bills.
7. Support optimal digestion (especially if you overindulge) – your normally rational aunt becomes a tyrannical carb pusher during the holidays and you engulf enough calories on New Year’s Eve to feed a small country. Compensate your dietary recklessness with good digestive support. BioGest and Plantizyme, both from Thorne Research, even help your digestive system adequately break down that instantly regrettable triple chocolate mint brownie your favorite co-worker brought to the office. Look at it this way: with digestive enzymes, at least you won’t have to suffer indigestion along with your January 1 hangover.
8. Curb your appetite – you ate lunch two hours ago, so why did you just mindlessly devour two lukewarm Cinnabons at the mall food court? Hunger strikes when you least expect it and leads you to commit various forms of carbicide. Appestacin from Thorne Research can become your best ally to put the brakes on the baklava.  This unique supplement combines therapeutic herbs with time-release caffeine to help stymie your appetite, boost your energy, stimulate fast fat loss, and promote a positive mood.
9.  Maintain your good habits – you stayed disciplined with your New Year’s resolutions and maintained fast fat loss through the winter. Maintenance can prove the most challenging part of weight loss, and unfortunately you always need to maintain. Think of Satiecin from Thorne Research as willpower in a bottle. This unique formula combines therapeutic nutrients like 5-HTP to balance neurotransmitters and blood sugar levels so you’re far less tempted to have that chocolate croissant along with your grande green tea.

Sources:

http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/06/15/fit-or-fiction-does-exercising-in-hot-weather-burn-more-calorie/

Auvichayapat P, et al. Effectiveness of green tea on weight reduction in obese Thais: A randomized, controlled trial. Physiol Behav. 2008 Feb 27;93(3):486-91.

Nedeltcheva AV, et al. Insufficient Sleep Undermines Dietary Efforts to Reduce Adiposity. Annals of Internal Medicine October 5, 2010. Vol. 153, no. 7. 435-441.

Rolls BJ, et al. Provision of foods differing in energy density affects long-term weight loss. Obes Res. 2005 Jun;13(6):1052-60.

Reduced fat, low carb, high fiber, less calories… Manufacturers constantly devise numerous schemes to get your food dollars with so-called improved and healthier foods.

The reality is a cookie is a cookie, period. (Yep, even that silly Cookie Diet.)

Any time you remove something from a food, you’ve got to add something else. Manufacturers compensate low-fat yogurt, for instance, with added sugar. Low-carb foods, likewise, often come packed with artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols, and higher amounts of saturated fat.

Rather than buy supposedly healthier versions of junk foods, I want you to fill up on whole foods so you have no cabinet space (let alone appetite) for the Entenmann’s Crumb Coffee Cake and Pirate’s Booty aged white cheddar popcorn.

Before you take away, I want you to add these five things to your diet for fast fat loss:

1. Fiber. Want the number one nutrient that, hands down, gets fast fat loss? Fiber slows stomach emptying and suppresses ghrelin, a hormone your stomach produces to remind you to eat. More fiber means you’re less likely to go down in those walnut blondies you made for your daughter’s class. A study in the journal Nutrition Review showed people who got just 14 grams of fiber last four pounds over four months without any additional food restrictions. (I’m not giving you permission, by the way, to load up on fiber and still eat a brownie.) Fiber also helps you detox, lowers LDL cholesterol and raises HDL cholesterol, and helps support a healthy gastrointestinal tract. If you’re not meeting your fiber quota from food, Medibulk from Thorne Research provides a therapeutic eight grams of fiber per serving.

2. Xylitol. Dump the aspartame and all those other artificial sweeteners that create calorie dysregulation and make you fat. Xylitol is a natural sweetener found in fruits and vegetables that supports bone health, reduces cavities, and helps boost fast fat loss. Like fiber, xylitol suppresses ghrelin. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who used xylitol at meals became satiated with fewer calories.

3. Vegetables. Let’s get this out first: corn, potatoes, peas, and carrots are not vegetables. That said, you could eat bushels of spinach and still not tally up many calories. Vegetables – particularly green, leafy ones – are nutrient- and fiber-packed powerhouses for very few calories. Be creative: even your most finicky kid will love Brussels sprouts sautéed in olive oil with a little organic bacon. (Some good fat will help you absorb the veggie’s fat-soluble vitamins.) If you’re not meeting your five-to-10 veggies serving quota, find creative ways to incorporate them like a mixed-green salad or a hearty winter soup.

4. Fish. Fat helps you burn fat? I know, it sounds crazy. But omega 3 fatty acids in wild, cold-water fish can shunt fat away from fat cells and allow your body to burn it for fuel. A study in the journal Appetite concluded eating fish suppresses post-meal hunger longer. Omega 3s also increase insulin sensitivity and raise your metabolism, both of which help you burn fat. A study in the Journal of Nutrition showed that mice that got fish oil with their high-fat diet metabolized more fat and gained significantly less weight than the high-fat mice that didn’t get fish oil.

5. Green Tea.  You know all those fast fat loss supplements that celebrities endorse? Almost every one contains a compound in green tea called EGCG, which boosts metabolism and helps you burn more fat. Skip those overpriced supplements and your afternoon latte for a venti hot green tea. A study in the journal Physiology & Behavior concluded people who drink green tea burn more fat than non-tea drinkers. Green tea also contains theanine, which reduces stress, cortisol levels, and your waistline.

Sources:
Auvichayapat P, et al. Effectiveness of green tea on weight reduction in obese Thais: A randomized, controlled trial. Physiol Behav. 2008 Feb 27;93(3):486-91.

Howarth NC, Saltzman E. Dietary fiber and weight regulation. Nutr Rev. 2001 May;59(5):129-39.

Mori T, et al. Dietary Fish Oil Upregulates Intestinal Lipid Metabolism and Reduces Body Weight Gain in C57BL/6J Mice. American Society for Nutrition. J. Nutr. 137:2629-2634, December 2007.

Parra D, et al. A diet rich in long chain omega-3 fatty acids modulates satiety in overweight and obese volunteers during weight loss. Appetite. 2008 Nov;51(3):676-80.

Shafer, R.B., et al., Effects of xylitol on gastric emptying and food intake. Am J Clin Nutr, 1987. 45(4): p. 744-7.

Your best friend just bought a one-week detox kit from Whole Foods, your sister raves about this lemon-juice-and-pepper cleanse, and your mom swears by a “colonic purging” she gets at her neighborhood spa.

Break the news to them gently. They’re all doing potentially irreversible damage with these programs that are heavy in price but weak on science.

Here’s the deal. The Master Cleanse and similar cleanses are almost entirely sugar and provide little if any nutrients. Even worse, they lack protein. Without protein, your body can’t effectively detox. Continue reading “The Dirty Truth behind those “Celebrity” Cleanses” »

To hell with consequences: you’re going to dive into that gooey piece of caramel praline cheesecake after your three-cheese lasagna and garlic-butter infused baguette. Tomorrow, after all, you’re going to diet.

Familiar scenario?

That feast-famine mentality only sets you up for failure. Fast fat loss isn’t an all-or-nothing scenario, and good eating habits don’t happen at the spur of the moment. That’s why your lasagna-and-cheesecake scenario – or whatever your metabolic poison might include – is like Groundhog Day. You keep doing it over and over, and you end up defeated and discouraged every time. Continue reading “Why I want you to avoid resolutions for 2012” »