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Nirvana Diet

A Diet For the Mind

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Weight loss tip: Why I am not losing weight

March 28, 2016 by Skyler Madison Leave a Comment

 

Weight loss tip: The hidden cause of unexplained weight gain may be poor liver function
Here is an important weight loss tip that I discovered. I have been working for over 15 years coaching people to lose weight and keep it off. I follow what I teach and never gain weight. Then suddenly a few extra pounds started to come on that I could not lose. That is when I discovered this.

 

There is a hidden often unrecognized reason people do not lose weight. It has to do with an important aspect of weight loss which is the liver and how well it is functioning. There are a lot of reasons why your liver may be sluggish and it is the body’s primary agent for metabolizing fat and the primary way the blood gets detoxified in the body. If the liver is not functioning well, which means the liver gets fatty, we can begin to pack on the pounds and have difficulty losing weight even if we are trying to.

 

There are many reasons why the liver may not be optimally functioning that include:

  1. High fat diet primarily animal fat
  2. Use of artificial sweeteners
  3. Alcohol consumption that builds up over time
  4. Use of prescription and over the counter medications

With this weight loss tip, you have nothing to lose except weight. By doing some easy things that can help rebuild and detoxify the liver and its important function in the body.

 

Here is what I tried and recommend:

  1. A simple liver cleanse: ½ teaspoon turmeric, ¼ teaspoon ginger, ½ lemon and ½ cup water. This is excellent twice daily.
  2. Juice down: beets, carrots, lemon, ginger cucumber and wheat grass or spirulina.
  3. Take a supplement with milk thistle.

If you are working diligently at exercising and eating right but still struggle to lose weight have your liver function checked to shed light on this little-known weight loss tip that can really make a difference or try some of the remedies I mention. According to homeopathic medicine, poor liver function can also be a root cause of insomnia, waking up at 3am.

It is easier to follow healthy habits when your body is in good shape.

Filed Under: Health and Wellness, Uncategorized Tagged With: fatty liver, weight loss tip

How lose weight: what and when to eat.

November 21, 2015 by Skyler Madison Leave a Comment

woman with huge healthy sandwichAccording to the latest research, how to lose weight successfully is a function of what you eat and when you eat it.

 

So while the weight loss formula that I recommend is very simple, to eat real food, you might also want to consider the nutrient content of what you eat in terms of the time of day you eat it according to research done by Dr. Panda.

 

It is also  important to understand that not all calories are created equal and this has an impact on when you eat certain foods. Successful weight loss does not boil down to just a calories in calories out approach. How to lose weight successfully is very much more a function of what type of calorie it is, in particular how many carbohydrates it contains.

 

If you are planning to eat a meal that has carbohydrates you might want to eat that type of meal earlier in the day. In fact I would say, to make dinner the least carb laden meal that would include eating only eat vegetables and protein and a healthy fat such as olive oil or avocado.

 

This advice flies in the face of a commonly held rule of how to lose weight that a calorie is a calorie, no matter what time of day you consume it. Weight loss does not boil down to a simple weight loss mathematical equation of consuming fewer calories than you expend.

 

In fact, there is now emerging evidence that people who consume the exact same diets in terms of calories and macronutrients – carbs, protein and fat – may see very different results on the scale and in terms of blood sugar control, triglycerides and even cholesterol levels, depending on how they distribute their food intake throughout the day. It seems to be metabolically favorable to consume most of our calories and carbs in the early part of the day, compared to consuming the majority of them in the evening. This makes sense because it aligns with how we expend our energy.

 

The reason for this has to do with a part of our brain called the hypothalamus, which houses a cluster of nerves that govern a “master biological clock,” also known as circadian rhythms. In response to different cues, most notably light and dark, the master clock up-regulates or down-regulates genes that produce the hormones, enzymes and cell receptors responsible for metabolizing and storing carbohydrates and fat.

 

In the morning, people seem most sensitive to the effects of insulin, requiring less of this hormone in order to clear our blood of the sugar produced from a higher carb meal. At night, we are less sensitive to insulin, resulting in higher blood sugar levels, higher levels of insulin secreted and increased amounts of fat storage in response to higher carbohydrate meals. In other words, the carbs do not get used but stored as fat.

 

Clearly, this does not bode well for those of us used to large pasta and rice-based dinners and grazing well into the evening! This research is still emerging, but it does not change the overall rule that of how to lose weight successfully, you should eat when you are hungry, eat the right food, (real food) and stop eating when you are full.

 

Filed Under: Habit Change, Health and Wellness Tagged With: how to lose weight, when to eat

Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

November 18, 2015 by Skyler Madison Leave a Comment

Avoid Holiday Weight Gain and Still Be Merry

Tis the season for overeating… are you ready to gain some weight?

Here we go, the holiday dinners, office parties and celebrations with family are coming!!

All that holiday cheer and good will piled high in the form of mashed potatoes, gingerbread cookies and your favorite sugary, fattening foods is about the get under way. But how do you avoid holiday weight gain.

 

How are you going to enjoy the holidays without losing your commitment to living a healthier life?

Oh you tell yourself….“Just one little bite,” you tell yourself, as you reach for another one of your favorite Christmas treats.

 

But you know… it never stops at just one.

Research shows the average person gains between seven and ten pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ouch… Before you know it, your pants feel a little tighter, your belly sits heavy and the “spirit” of the season settles in around your mid-line.

So you decide you’ll make some hard and strict New Year’s resolutions in a few weeks and lose the extra weight then, so no point holding yourself back now!

 

I say if you don’t change the way you think and act… you get the same results. *So don’t it!*

Don’t buy into a bunch of clichés about “everything in moderation” and letting yourself appreciate the “good things” and “live a little.”

You’ll live a lot more and a lot longer and a lot better if you put in some healthy lifestyle habits RIGHT NOW–before the holidays hit in full force!

 

There are so many better things than overeating and packing on extra weight over the holidays!

 

With some of the healthy recipes developed by my daughter Hunter at her Healthy Kitchen, some self-encouragement and support you can make this your healthiest and happiest holiday season ever!

 

Filed Under: Health and Wellness, Uncategorized Tagged With: gain, holiday, weight

Want change? Embrace change without needing anything to change

May 17, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

smell-flowersWe live in a culture that is full of advertisements that encourage us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We all want to change or strive to keep things the way they area.  What you may be wondering is wrong with that? The messages are subtle: a mother who sits down on a park bench to take a well-deserved break eats a Nutrigrain bar. If you pay attention, most food advertising is selling and linking pleasure and reward with food. No wonder so many people associate food with a reward. This is one of the main reasons people find it difficult to lose weight. Successfully losing weight requires re-wiring the brain.  To find out more download my free EBook The Key to Successful Weight Loss.

The wisdom traditions have been suggesting the root of suffering is the constant striving for pleasure along with the desire to avoid pain and displeasure. We are very conditioned to think there is something outside of ourselves whether it is a pill or an Almond Joy that can give us pleasure and the happiness we are longing for.

The sad thing is that all these things do is to lull is deeper into a lifeless sleep. I feel very grateful that I am aware of how this conditioning negatively affects us and try as best I can to help other people to awaken and start making decisions based on their self-interest as opposed to mindlessly pursuing short term fixes in the form of candy bars and other distractions. I think my meditation practice has helped me to do this. That is why I created Meditation Made Easy. Try it you might like it or leave a comment to let me know how this resonates with you.

Filed Under: Diet for the Mind, Habit Change, Happiness, Health and Wellness

Why watching TV causes weight gain

May 16, 2012 by admin Leave a Comment

pasta-spoonThe most important piece of information I got out of watching The Weight of the Nation which was focused more on the consequences of weight gain than how to lose weight is the effect of watching TV on weight gain. Why would watching TV cause people to gain so much weight? The Weight of the Nation focused on children, and called the advertisements for soda and cereal predatory. Food companies understand how brand loyalty works. The younger you get them the more hooked they get. The more you eat junk food the more food you eat and the cycle is hard to break.

The other reason watching TV causes weight gain is that the commercials border on being hypnotic.  The continual parade of fast food and junk food commercials which now position Coke as happiness, or happy meals, or other subtle messages that link food with feeling good are having the effect of re-wiring the brain to think like that.

The other obvious reason watching TV causes weight gain is the couch potato syndrome. People tend to eat mindlessly while watching TV and the time spent watching TV takes away from other things you might do that cause you to be more active.

I think the writing is clearly on the wall. The first step you should take to lose weight may have to do with your TV habits. The second obvious step is to stop drinking sugar with which most drinks are loaded. The most remarkable statistic presented on The Weight of the Nation is how the obesity curve sky rocketed beginning in the 1980’s. This is also when food companies started putting high fructose corn syrup in everything. It is also saturated fat, hormones in milk the list goes on. The next step you can take is to stop eating foods that have ingredients on the label you do not recognize. It’s simple. Eat real food…preferably grown locally.  This is of course the genius of my program The Nirvana Diet™.

Let me know what you think are some of the keys steps to take to lose weight.

Filed Under: Health and Wellness, Weight Loss Tagged With: tv weight gain

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