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Food comes first in this program. Real, crunchy, colorful, satisfying and delicious food that our body needs to function optimally.
I want you to start to shift your mindset away from “food is the enemy” to a new mantra, “food is our savior.” Our goal is to eat foods that truly nourish our body. Some of the barriers to this are the mental hangups we have from the calories-in/calories-out game.
We need to eat delicious whole foods to lose weight. If our body does not have what it needs, how can we expect our metabolism thermostat to become functional? We need to fill our kitchens with colorful vegetables and fruits, proteins and healthy fats. This is critical and it is important to lose weight in a way that feels good and is nourishing.
This program will have both an accelerated and basic weight loss version. Both options are proven and based in science. The rate at which they work varies. The research suggests that lowering carbohydrate intake a significant degree works in an accelerated way. The sticky part is that after 3 months, participants tend to fall off the food plan. This is why it is helpful to toggle back and forth between the accelerated and basic weight loss plan.
Starting with the accelerated plan is a great option when momentum and motivation are high. However, there will be a point in time that it will be important to intentionally gauge your mindset and drop to the less intense protocol. At the start of each week and month it is critical to be mindful and set your intentions. Sometimes we are really motivated and sometimes we have to slow down and that is OK.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. The most important thing is to lock into our long-term goals.
A little less fat & a little more carbohydrates or protein.
This basic weight loss program is inspired and modeled by the Mediterranean Diet for which there are many studies supporting the benefits for health and weight loss. We are going to be choosing foods from one of three categories for each of our meals: protein, fats, and carbohydrates. The quality of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates matters as well. Some of the options particularly for protein and carbohydrates are not bad, but we want to limit to only one meal per day. For example, carbohydrates that are “grains” such as oats or brown rice, on this program are limited to only one serving per day.
The hallmarks of this type of food plan are:
The Macronutrient breakdown for this program is more moderate in carbohydrates. We want to be eating the type of carbohydrates that do not have a significant impact on blood glucose. This means carbohydrates that have fiber and potentially protein as well. These carbohydrates in addition to vegetables would be legumes and whole grains such as steel cut oats or quinoa. Fruit is a little more flexible on this basic program. In this program we are swapping out some of the fat servings for healthy carbohydrates and protein servings instead.
This program is mildly ketogenic.
The ketogenic diet is a very specific food plan where we are altering your Macronutrients. Macronutrients are Proteins, Carbohydrates, and Fats that make up everything we eat.
There are 3 key principles of a ketogenic diet:
It is important to understand that when cutting down on carbohydrates, your body shifts the metabolism. Your body is forced to start burning fat for energy. When your body is burning fat for energy, ketone bodies are produced, and you enter a metabolic state called ketosis. What is interesting about the ketogenic diet is that it is the only food plan where we have access to a test to determine if our body is in this metabolic state. Urine, Blood, and Breath testing can be used to see if ketosis is achieved. We all should be approaching ketosis in the morning when we wake up from our overnight “fast”.
Nutritional ketosis is a normal part of our physiology. In a ketogenic diet, we are just using metabolic state to have a positive impact on health.