October 2009 Newsletter: Weight, It’s Not About Calories and Willpower?

Welcome fall! The seasons are changing and so are the times in which we find ourselves. I know I’m wondering how I got to be 31 (birthday is today!) and why are the Steelers 1-2, losing to the Bears and Bengals. Really, is this happening?

It seems a 31st birthday has hit me more than my 30th. All of a sudden I’m like, “Woo, I’m really not getting any younger” (even though I feel it), and life is what you put into it. Hallmark wasn’t lying. Two years ago I left my corporate job and would have never imagined life would be this rich, spectacular and challenging (I have some really exciting news to share with you next month so stay tuned!). I see so many people like myself, reconfiguring their lives to match these crazy times, bucking the status quo and going for it, whatever “it” may be.

As someone who is not a huge fan of authority or of old-fashioned institutions, I find this all very exciting. People are finally starting to question and wonder, “Why” and “How”, and they are searching for new meaning. A little dose of skepticism (or intellectual curiosity for those Pollyannas) is healthy!

I see my clients understanding how much more powerful food is than pills. I see them getting savvier about what food even is! They are educating their doctors about food and healing themselves from diagnoses that were slapped on them by outdated medical information. For example, there is Dan, a former client, who had various diagnoses and struggled with digestive problems for most of his life. In four short months, his health was completely restored. Hear from Dan here with what life looks like now.

It’s empowering when you know you can heal and control your body. If you can do that, what else is there to master?

Before we get back to debunking myths, a few housekeeping items:

1.    Many have written that you’ve missed some of the Lounge & Learn classes but are interested in the various calls. All class recordings are available on my website. The $30 is an introductory price and will be going up along with my new website in two weeks. So get them here now. From “Gluten-Free” to “Supercharging Your Metabolism”, each one is designed around radical changes through rational strategies.

2.    The next Lounge & Learn will be Monday, October 19 @ 7:30 p.m. We’ll be discussing “The Divine Secrets of the Unemotional Eating Sisterhood”.  Sign up here (space is limited and these calls are growing immensely in popularity because of all the juicy information discussed).

3.    My new website (www.alishapiro.com) will be up very soon. If you want to continue to receive my newsletters, you will have to sign up from the new website. There will be a complimentary Lounge & Learn for signing up. I’ll send out an email giving you instructions but be alert!

As you have followed me the past couple of newsletters, I’ve been debunking popular health myths.  We are now onto myth number 4: I just can’t lose weight. I’ve struggled with my weight all my life and probably will forever. No matter how much I count calories or exercise, I can’t seem to get my weight under control.

Sound familiar? It has to, because 95% of people aren’t losing weight and keeping it off. And it’s for three main reasons:

1.    Weight^loss is not about calories in, calories out
2.    Conventional cardio makes you fat
3.    Most of weight^loss isn’t about weight

Remember what I said about times are changing – keep that open-mindedness even with what may seem obvious!

There’s a new emerging equation and by now, some of the mainstream media is picking up bits and pieces of it (my “Supercharging Your Metabolism” call ties all this information together in a nice and neat 7-step equation). And well, food companies have been aware of this information for years which is why they meticulously design their foods to exploit your genetic weaknesses and raise their profits.

While calories are important, equally important are caloric quality and balancing your hormones. When eating poor quality, processed foods, signals that keep your metabolism running smoothly don’t get delivered and the memo that you are full never arrives. On the hormonal side, which is affected by food, environmental toxins and lifestyle habits, hormones control satiety, appetite and the thyroid, (which is the gas pedal to the metabolism). When they are out of whack, so is the scale (here’s an article on plastics role in weight gain).

Our food quality and lifestyles have gotten so out of sync with our ancestral heritage that our bodies are on the fritz. Yes, evolution is real.   Because there is so much added stress on our bodies, from poor diet to lack of sleep to environmental toxins, doing long bouts of cardio can actually  stress the body even more. The excessive adrenaline and cortisol production that results from this exercise further aggravates the hormonal dance.

$%!*$%(*) It really isn’t that complicated though, I promise.  If you try to make it complicated and dramatic, then you are probably using your weight as an excuse not to address some other issue that is more painful to your soul than your pant size. Furthermore, if you get annoyed just reading that, then I’m probably speaking directly to you.

So enough with the problems, give me some answers! Here are five tips to get started on melting the weight off, permanently:

1.    Get on the “Cook It Yourself” diet. If you want to eat it, cook it. To understand how processed and restaurant food messes with your appetite for DAYS (yes, not just one meal), read this .

2.    For meals and foods you can’t cook, focus on nutritional value, not caloric value. Real food is packed with nutrition making you feel full and your hormones balanced. See here how I surprised Bill Henley on NBC about what real food is!

3.    Upgrade your grocery cart with these metabolism-boosting choices

4.    Integrate interval and weight training into your work-outs. This is crucial! You can work out less and get better results.

5.  Sit somewhere quiet. Be with yourself or a trusted friend who will be supportive yet candid. Ask the questions, “What would I have to deal with if I weren’t trying to lose weight?” Once you figure that out, get moving on solving that. Weight loss will be much more effortless when you have a life void of emotional landmines.

If you are really serious about weight^loss (and don’t want to wait years till doctors and the mainstream media catch on), I’m going to plug my “Supercharging Your Metabolism” call again, because it’s that good – and accurate. It will save you months of frustration and lay out the entire seven pieces of the real weight^loss equation (it includes great interval and mental exercises for weight^loss). And it’s only a $30 investment. Remember, prices are going up when I launch my new website.

And if you know it’s more an emotional-eating problem versus a logical one, join us on “The Divine Secrets of the Unemotional Eating Sisterhood” call on Monday, October 19 at 7:30 p.m. We’ll peel back the onion and explore what is making you eat emotionally and then provide a plan to end this de-habilitating cycle. It will be liberating and packed with great insights and mental exercises to have you stop eating and start living.

As I close, I want to give a special thanks to all my clients who have worked with me over the past two and a half years. Thank you for trusting in me to co-pilot your health and for being a rebel rouser. Many of my clients would never think of themselves as rebellious but they are, in the most quiet and influential of ways. They have bucked a social milieu and an economy that can only exist when we feel inadequate – in our bodies, our health, in our knowledge and in effect, our power. They are living and breathing inspiration to their families, friends, communities and doctors, of the power of whole foods and whole living.

You see, when you adopt this lifestyle, you aren’t just changing how you eat; you are changing the world. The times are definitely changing and for those people like my clients, it’s definitely for the better!

Here’s to some fabulous fall foliage,

Ali

Rocket man: Dan’s full throttle success

Ali’s program was amazing.  Hands down the best investment I’ve ever made in myself.  And I’m someone who invests a lot in myself.  The program was full of fun, discovery and friendship, and by the end, I found myself feeling the happiest I’ve felt in tens years and the most in control of my emotions and energy ever.

I lost more than 10 lbs and got back down to my high school weight as an unintended (but much appreciated!) side effect of our focus on getting my digestive, energy and mood issues under control.

Ali also helped me see how nutrition and health fit together with my long term goals and with the things I value in day to day life. Now I’m rocketing forward towards my goals while also enjoying the simple pleasures of each day more than I ever have. ~ Dan S., Washington, D.C.

Weight, it’s not about willpower? How losing weight really works.

Believe it or not, weight loss is not about calories in versus calories out. I know it sounds like I’m saying the world isn’t flat circa 2000 years ago. (Yes, the Earth as a round object was known way before Magellan and Columbus. Many scientists knew the earth wasn’t round before the Church finally came to that public conclusion…do I see a pattern here?)

I recently did a teleclass on “Supercharging Your Metabolism”, (and yes, it’s available for download for only $30. This is an introductory price, which will go up October 1) which summarizes the real equation to weight loss. Calories are a factor, but so are many other things which I got into great detail on this call. But just like much other nutrition and health information, lots of industries benefit from you being in the dark.

Pharma companies can continue to sell Alli or other prescription weight loss pills. The dieting industry gets reoccuring revenue from all your failed attempts. Food companies can peddle their  junk and make ridiculous profit margins because they are disguised as diet and health foods. Restaurants continue to sell more food because what they do to their food, makes you eat more.

Let me explain. In a nutshell, losing weight is about metabolism and metabolism is about all the chemical reactions in your body, including hormones. And a lot of processed foods interfere with this dance and as a result, the body doesn’t get the chemical message that it’s full.

Recently, a scientific study out of Texas (yes, there is some good there) showed how high amounts of saturated fat cause the body to ignore the appetite-suppressing signals from leptin and insulin, hormones involved in weight regulation. This can sabotage your dieting efforts not just for a meal but for days. What does this mean for those uninterested in the science but obsessed with scale – you will eat like a pig because the body knows no better.

So for all those who think losing weight is all about will power, think again. Self responsibility is key but it’s a will to cook your own food that is important. If there’s any diet I recommend, it’s the “Cook it Yourself” diet. This is the biggest piece of the REAL weight loss equation. I discuss the other steps in balancing your bodies metabolism and a simple action plan to maximize your metabolism in my teleclass which is available for a nominal investment in your health of $30.

If you are serious about weight loss, get it here now  because it’s going up in price to $43 this Thursday, October 1. It’s worth it’s weight in gold, frustration and self-confidence. And if you aren’t trying to lose weight, try not to be so judgemental of those who are. It’s a jungle out there.

The elephant in the room (& I’m not talking about that jack-ass Joe Wilson)

I have a lot to say on health-care. I’m going to allow myself to cool down before I provide my solutions.

I don’t want to just yell, scream, bitch and complain like some at those past town hall meetings in towns I never want to visit (I’m starting to wonder if a side-effect of fast food, artificial flavors and color dyes is decreased circulation to the head?). Plus, I know the solutions and money to pay for all of them are already here if we’d just be willing to look and EAT outside the box – literally.

Processed foods are what’s killing America and yet seems no one has the stamina to take on Big Food (if you are into evil, processed food is a genius business model. Get people tired and riddled with aches and pains so they can’t come after you!).

Read an excellent article here (by Micheal Pollen, one of my heros) on how real health-care change starts with real food.

Yippee! I’m healthy!

Exhale. I just got back from my yearly oncologist appointment. Nothing like a yearly cancer check-up to remind you how fragile and whacked out life is. It’s been 12 years since I’ve been doing this yearly ritual. Seventeen and a half since I’ve had my own cancer doctor.

The first five years after your cancer treatments, you go every six months because you’ve only earned a “remission” label. It takes five years to graduate to yearly appointments and the coveted “cured”. And even then, the healing has just begun.

Some think the first five years are the most nerve-wracking. You still think every ache, pain and/or lump means you have one foot in the grave. You sit in the doctor’s office, with the smells of chemo and plastic needles still enough to make you nauseous. You look at the other patients in the waiting room and you have to fight back tears because you still feel raw from the whole experience.

The emotional fragility of this point in time is unparallel. You are scared shitless and put your faith into everything the doctor says. She/he has become God to you because the other God you somewhat believed in, has a funny way of showing he cares.

But then, if you eat well, exercise, keep your environment as non-toxic as possible, find a sense of spirituality that helps you navigate life and no doubt, have a lot of luck, the years accumulate. You no longer wake up every morning fishing for lumps and the joint pains you chock up to working out too much. Cancer no longer runs your thoughts.

I can’t speak for every person who has experienced cancer, but for me, to truly move on with my life, I had to figure out why this happened and then if I couldn’t find answers, make a reason. I know conventional medical information, outside of lung cancer, can’t tell you why cancer happens. But being a big picture thinker and in the wellness field, I know a lot of medical information is funded by profit-motivated groups and the nature of research itself doesn’t look at system synergies but more isolated pieces of the puzzle. Yet, the human body is the most complex system in the world.

The more I research, the more I feel these years after being cured are more perplexing. I have to be vigilant about breast and thyroid cancers from the radiation I received. These are serious risks that I don’t take lightly. As my Dad says, “There’s always a trap door that can open on your ass.”

So why does my insanely intelligent oncologist, who I really admire and like, still tell me that eating well, working out and doing yoga “doesn’t hurt” my chances of reoccurrence or secondary cancers from my chemo and radiation treatments (especially as the waiting room is overflowing with patients)? Is it really smart to get yearly CT, Mammogram and/or MRI tests when we are now finding out these can be contributing to cancer? Why are known carcinogens like BPA and DDT still in our environment when we’ve known for decades they contribute to cancer? And how do I trust the American Medical Association (AMA) when back in the day, they were in cahoots with the tobacco industry to delay the obvious conclusion that cigarettes cause cancer?

I’m not paranoid. I’m smart, have common sense and am insanely well-read. And I can no longer go on blind faith. I’ve been through too much. I brought “The Secret History of the War on Cancer” to my oncologist this morning to suggest he read it. It’s where I found some of my answers to how I want to work with him to manage my health. Yes, they are MY answers, not the answers. But it’s also MY health and my responsibility to do everything I can, including asking the hard questions, so I can continue to only come back once a year.

While sometimes I long for the days when I believed the doctor knew best, I also know from my yoga practice, life has no absolutes (it’s probably why I fundamentally believe in yoga as its truths pop up everywhere – no faith required). On the flip side, I’m thrilled to no longer be so close to my initial diagnosis that I fear the delay in the doctor coming to my exam room means something was found in my blood work.

In these 17 years being cancer free, I’ve been able to figure out why this happened physically and emotionally. As a result, I’ve put more faith in the Universe and myself, especially as my common sense, knowledge and hunches seem to years later, be confirmed by scientific research. However, the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. So I’ll continue co-pilot my health with my doctor, finding some sort of balance that I hope, continues to tip in my favor.

September Newsletter

It’s September 1 and I’m curious how we got here. Seriously. What a bullet train of a year it’s been. Somehow it got to be August and I realized, “Wow, I haven’t had one week of vacation all year!”  That’s how consumed I have been with all that I’ve been juggling.

Fall is a time to reflect and refocus. For those ready to finally lose weight for good and ditch their dieting drama, my September teleclass will be about what the dieting industry doesn’t want you to know and the proven, scientific weight loss formula that those 5 percent of people who do keep weight off, including myself and my clients, know that you don’t. All the details are here. It’s going to be life-changing.

To give you an idea of some of the success I’ve had with the approach I’ll be discussing on this call, check out a former client of mine Sera’s story here . It will inspire you to really look behind your dieting drama.

This month I’m taking a break from debunking myths and hours of writing, researching and witticisms. I’m a little tapped out from an e-book I’m writing for my summer grad course on sustainability which point to our industrial food system as the largest contributor to global warming. Yep, before you get smug over your hybrid and recyling habits, look at your fork.  More details to come about when that will be available. In the meantime, support your local farmers!

I’ll resume in October with my view on crappy health information that you need not digest. For now, I am just going to be. Because I write this newsletter a couple of weeks in advance, I want and need my one week of summer vacation which allows me to be “unplugged”. I’m recycling some blog posts to keep you on your toes and engaged in some of the most important health topics of our day.

If you are only going to read one, please read the conservative view on health-care reform written by Dr. Andrew Weil. It’s important because if we adopted true conservative reform (not what’s being peddled as conservative!), the system wouldn’t be overburdened or overpriced. Everyone could have access to quality care and we’d actually have a health-care system worth fighting for. Life would really be so simple if some people would just play nice in the sandbox and share!

A view of REAL conservative health-care reform

Be Patriotic with your Fork

Before you go hating on Michael Vick

Exhale. I’ve had to do that a lot lately as I feel people have become particularly judgmental, especially without a whole lot of facts. I guess it’s a survival technique – and so is rest, relaxation and unplugging! So rest assured, I’ll be back in October fired up all over again.

Bring on fall and dem Stillers (for those not from Pittsburgh, that’s how they say it in Pittsburgh. It’s not a typo)!

Ali