The REAL Reason You Can't Lose Weight - 3 Secret Ways You're Sabotaging Your Own Fat Loss.

So there are three daily habits that you may be missing that may be sabotaging your fat loss. And I want this video to help you understand why you wanna bring these three back in and how simple they are. I can tell you that for over 25 years in my clinic, I started to see that there were small little daily steps that prevented somebody from losing weight. Women would come in, they would say, oh my gosh, I'm doing everything you told me to do and I'm still not dropping weight. And what I found is these three things were missing. So let's get right to it and talk about these three things. Ready? Okay, number one, fiber. I've done a ton of videos on fiber. Fiber, fiber, fiber. And here's the information that I want you to understand because fiber is so easy to bring back in. So there was a 2016 study in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine that found that only 5% of American adults meet their fiber intake. This means 19 out of 20 adults don't get enough fiber. Let's make sure we all understand what fiber is. And there was a large 2019 review in the Journal of Nutrition that found that fiber was the single best predictor of long-term fat loss and diet adherence. And here's what happens when you eat lots of fiber. First, you're less hungry. So fiber fills you up. Second, remember we've talked about this, that when you put fiber with a meal, you slow down the glucose uptake. So if you don't have fiber, you're gonna have this huge sugar spike. If you have a big sugar spike, you're gonna get a lot of insulin. And when you get more insulin and more sugar going in the system, your poor little body doesn't know what to do with it, so it stores it as fat. But if you eat fiber with even your highest carb meal, or I mean, even with your dessert, absinthe fiber, what you're going to start to see is that the glucose spike is going to be a lot less. This is why it's such an important nutrient. And the other thing that we know based off of research, and I will tell you, I know this based off of clinical experience, that long-term consistent weight loss, meaning over six months or more, requires you to eat daily doses of fiber. So what's the goal? What's the daily dose? It's 25 grams of fiber for women and 32 grams a day of fiber for men. And it's really easy to get fiber into your diet. I can say that like here, I've got microgreens, and they're really simple. I put them in a bowl next to some animal meat. I do eat animal meat, so next to chicken or fish or a grass-fed steak, and they're just microgreens. They came out of a bag, and I literally put them next to my meat. Couldn't be any easier. Other great way to get fiber in is blueberries. So we know that blueberries will start to, they're rich in fiber, they're great for your brain, and you can add them to some yogurt and you'll start to get more fiber into your diet through a very sweet way. So you can also look at, those of you that are plant-based, things like beans. So two cups of beans has 15 grams of fiber. Or if you're like, I don't have time to eat all of that, you could go towards psyllium husks. And psyllium husks, two tablespoons of a psyllium husk will give you 12 to 14 grams of fiber. So there's a lot of different ways to bring fiber in. Okay, second thing you're doing, or hopefully you're not doing, that you're doing that could be preventing fat loss, and it's drinking water. I am not joking, let me tell you the research on it. There was a study that was published in Physiology and Behavior that found drinking water before or with meals led to significantly greater weight loss over 12 weeks. The participants in the study had reduced hunger and they had fewer food cravings just by drinking water with their meals. And there was a 23 review in current obesity reports that explain why this happens. When your body is properly hydrated, your cells produce more energy, which of course then if you have more energy, you're gonna feel like walking more. Your metabolic rate increases. How many of you are like, oh my God, I want my metabolism to speed up? It's that easy. Or the last thing that it did, I should say and, is your body burns more fat throughout the day when you are well hydrated. So water is also incredibly important because it not just hydrates you, but it fills your stomach and that fullness tends to lead people to eating a lot less. So if you don't know how to drink water, I mean I know you know how, but if you are lacking a routine, here's a couple of things to think about. Have a glass of water when you first wake up in the morning. Have it before you even drink your coffee, before anything else. Have one glass of water with every meal that you eat. Like a big glass, like this size. I'm not talking a little bit, a little one. And have a glass of water before you go to bed. Now, if you're like me and you wake up in the middle of night don't wait a couple of hours before bed, have that last glass of water because you might find that your bladder wakes you up at night. But put it into a routine. First thing when you get up, every meal and two hours before you go to bed. So maybe after dinner you have another, maybe you have water for dessert. So, but it's simple, it's just forgotten, right? And we don't give it enough credit for losing weight. Okay, third way that you can start to burn more fat by using your daily habits and things you might not be doing I'm suspecting this one you may not be doing and it's getting a daily dose of fermented foods. Now I've brought you a lot here on fermented foods. I think it's massively important that we bring fermented foods in. I've done some really cool videos on how just a cup of sauerkraut every single day can improve your mental state. I'll leave the links to those videos there. But when it comes to weight loss, one of the things we know about fermented foods is that they change the bacterial profile in your gut. And the more healthy bacteria you have, the healthier your metabolism will be, the better you will be at burning fat. So here's the interesting thing on the research on that. There's a 21 study in Cell, which is a very prestigious publication that found that people who increased fermented food intake had a greater microbiome diversity and significantly lower inflammatory levels. There was another study published in British Journal of Nutrition that found people who regularly consumed fermented dairy, so it can be yummy, and we'll talk about how you get it here in a moment, had lower body fat and improved metabolic markers. So what does this look like for you? Fermented foods are really unique in the sense that when you ferment them, you create this huge new set of bacteria. So when it comes to fermented foods, what I want you to do is do as many different fermented foods as possible. So here's an example of a glass of raw kefir. I got it at my store. It is raw. You want kefir to be raw because, if you can, because you don't kill the probiotic bacteria. When you pasteurize something, you will kill it. So this is one with turmeric in it. It's super yummy, has some cinnamon in it, and kefir, unlike any other fermented food, has trillions of good bacteria in it. It packs a serious probiotic punch. You can do yogurt, so daily yogurt. Now, we wanna make sure that it has a good probiotic count, so you might look at the side label and just see if it tells you what kind of probiotic is in there and how much. Sauerkraut is a must. You can put sauerkraut into your salad. You don't have to just eat it straight if you don't like the taste of it. Put it into a salad so the taste isn't as sour, and it spreads it out. And when you're doing the fermented vegetables, remember that each vegetable gives off a different set of bacteria. So you might do fermented cabbage. What I've got right here is fermented beets. I've talked a lot about the power of kimchi and how fermented scallions can help improve immunity. So make sure you diversify your fermented foods. When you're eating fermented foods on a daily basis, what you're gonna start to see is you're gonna bring back the health of your gut bacteria. And when you bring back your health of your gut bacteria, there are several things that happen. You're gonna improve insulin sensitivity. You're gonna decrease your cravings. You're gonna help regulate your appetite hormones so you're not as hungry long-term. So you can have a cup of sauerkraut with your dinner and it may kill your hunger for a day or two. And you're going to improve the production of short-chain fatty acids, which are necessary for fat metabolism. So easy to bring in, easy to make. If you're finding fermented foods out there are difficult to or expensive to buy, remember you can make them yourself. I've got several recipes in Eat Like a Girl that you can follow. So it doesn't have to be expensive. But I will tell you the major outlier of all health is in that daily dose of fermented foods. And I've brought hundreds of incredible experts onto my podcast. And the one nutritional concept that everybody agrees upon is fermented foods are the key to living in a body you love that's healthy and vibrant and drops weight. So what I want you to keep remembering when you get stuck with your weight loss, it's not complicated. We've made it sound complicated. We just gotta go back. Remember your metabolic switch. You're a sugar burner metabolism and you're a fat burner metabolism. You wanna keep moving in between these two. This is what I taught you in Fast Like a Girl. Then we wanna start looking at the foods we eat. If we eat more protein, that can be really helpful for holding onto muscle which will improve your metabolism. I've done a ton of videos on that. But then on this video, I really wanted to point out it's simple, it's fiber, it's water, it's fermented foods. Let's not forget them, especially if you're trying to drop weight. So put in the comments if you have found these three things to be helpful because what I'm trying to encourage you all to do is to get out of shiny object syndrome. Stop trying to follow the latest fad or stop putting your money into the trendy supplement. Many of you are doing the weight loss drugs and you're trying to financially get off of those. And these are the principles of healthy eating that are often forgotten and will sabotage the way that you lose fat. I wanna tell you about a member of my Reset Academy named Sarah who tried everything to lose weight. She was eating right, she was meal prepping, she was fasting, she was working out and she could not lose weight. And she was missing one key thing that many of you are missing and not prioritizing. So in this video, I wanna show you exactly how to start to prioritize this and what the research is saying on this really key part of losing weight that we are not talking enough about. Let's dive in. So many times we are solving the wrong problem when it comes to trying to lose weight. We sit there and we think, oh my God, I must not be disciplined enough. Oh, it must be in my genetics. I keep not going on diet after diet and I can't lose weight. And what we're not talking about and addressing is that why does the body hold on to weight? And it's a protective mechanism because it is in stress. And one of the things we know about a stressed body is it needs rest and recovery and it needs to be trained to know that it needs to come out of stress. So the thing that Sarah was not addressing and prioritizing was sleep. And there's an incredible study out of the University of Chicago that I'm completely geeking out on. It's a 2010 study and they took two groups of people, they gave them the same amount of calories, they had the same amount of output of calories. The only difference was one group got eight and a half hours of sleep and the other group got five and a half hours of sleep. And here was what they found. It blows my mind, it should blow yours, which is that the sleep deprived group lost 55% less weight and 60% more weight loss from lean mass. So they didn't lose as much and what they did lose was mostly muscle, which is not great. So let's talk about why not getting enough sleep is as bad as eating too many calories or eating the wrong foods. So there are three major problems with not getting enough sleep that contribute to your inability to lose weight. So the first is your hunger hormones go haywire. So ghrelin is the hormone that is the signal that you're hungry and leptin is the signal that you are full. And according to a 2016 study in the Journal of Obesity, sleep restriction increases ghrelin, telling your brain that it is more hungry and it decreases leptin and disrupts leptin so leptin doesn't know that it's full. So you can wake up hungrier, you often will eat more because of this change in hunger hormones. Number two is not sleeping enough flips the switch on fat storage. So sleep deprivation equals cortisol rising. When cortisol goes up, whether it's through lack of sleep or stress, you will start to store more visceral fat. Visceral fat's gonna show up around your organs, it's also gonna, it's that hard fat around your belly. And in that chronically stressed state, what's gonna happen is your body's gonna break down muscle so it can grab some amino acids to bring up to the brain so that the brain can function normally. So Sarah, for example, it was in a deficit of calories but cortisol was still really high which was causing her body to prioritize fat storage and muscle breakdown. The third thing that the lack of sleep does is it disrupts your growth hormone. And this is a big one because you stop getting as much growth hormone after the age of 30, you can bring growth hormone back through things like intermittent fasting, I taught you all that in Fast Like a Girl. But what's interesting is that growth hormone is released in pulses. And the largest burst of growth hormone happens when you are asleep and in deep sleep brain waves. So deep sleep is where the brain shrinks so that the cerebral spinal fluid can go up and wash the brain free of all the toxins from the day. And it is in that deep sleep that your growth hormone actually goes up. So if you have fragmented sleep where you're not sleeping through the night, it will disrupt these hormonal patterns. So your recovery window becomes less efficient, it's harder to maintain lean mass while you're dieting. So five mistakes that people do to not get a good night's sleep because I don't know about you, but I've done a lot of sleep videos and I hear over and over again, like I wanna sleep, I wanna sleep, tell me, put it in the comments, I just can't get a good night's sleep. So here are the five things that you wanna really focus on. So one, stop scrolling on your phone before you go to bed, that's putting the brain in more of a sympathetic nervous system state. It's not, that is fight or flight, that's not rest and digest. Number two, biggie is a large meal close to bedtime. That increases insulin spikes, which suppresses growth hormone. We just already talked about how important growth hormone is. And it raises your core temperature, which may pull you out of sleep at two and three in the morning. Number three is using alcohol at night to relax. That fragments your REM sleep, elevates your cortisol levels, and it can put you in a sleep deficit. It can also raise your core temperature. So it's a biggie that will spike that core temperature and wake you up at two in the morning. The fourth one is inconsistent sleep schedules. So we're rhythmic humans, especially as women, if you're a woman, like we need a rhythm. So jet lag will disrupt this. Jet lag can make you more insulin resistant. It can affect fat metabolism. It can affect appetite. So we want a consistent sleep schedule. And the last mistake a lot of people make is having a warm room. You really need to get your body temperature down for your brain to go into that rested deep sleep. So it's not sleep, you gotta work at getting yourself prepared for sleep, especially right now. So during sleep, let's keep in mind that growth hormone is rising, insulin sensitivity is being restored, cortisol is being cleared, hunger hormones are being reset, muscle protein synthesis is happening. We wanna sleep, don't miss out on sleep. And we know from this study, people who don't sleep lose 55% less weight, and most of that weight comes from muscle. So here are seven steps that you can start to do. I'm gonna go through them really fast for you. One, let's lock in a sleep schedule. So let's get that rhythm so that your brain understands. There's a 2018 scientific report that says irregular sleep timing is linked to obesity and worse metabolic markers. So pick a consistent time to go to bed and a consistent time to wake up. Number two, start a 30 minute wind down ritual. That wasn't wind down ritual, that was wind down ritual. So if you have had a very stressed day, you are in a fight or flight mode. It is going to take about 30 minutes for your body to realize that it can rest now. I personally in my house, I have one room, I got a red light, I bought it, it's cheap, I bought it online and I just put it in so there's an irregular light bulb, a regular lamp, and I have it just sitting in one room and it is my wind down room. I listen to chanting music, I read in there, I do yoga in there, I draw, I do anything that is different than what I did in my sympathetic fight or flight part of my day. So you might need a 30 minute wind down ritual. I highly, highly recommend it. Okay, step number three, you need a cold room. So what the research says, this is a 2012 review, is that ambient temperature is one of the top environmental factors for sleep architecture. And what they recommend is that you wanna be in a room that's 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 to 20 degrees Celsius. That's the temperature the room needs to be. So put on the air con, open up the window, if that, in the wintertime, but coldness really matters. Step number four, this is my favorite new hack and it's try glycine before you go to bed. Glycine is a powerful neurotransmitter, it is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So it quiets the neuronal firing and slows the brain chatter. I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm just like, stop talking up there, you don't need to talk to me now. And what glycine will do is it will slow the chatter that's going on. A 2012 study showed that three grams of glycine before bed improves sleep quality and it reduces next day fatigue. So it's not a fat loss supplement, it supports sleep, which we now know is a fat loss activity. Start thinking of it like that, just like you think of exercise as a fat loss activity. Weight loss is a fat loss activity, three grams in water, 30 to 60 minutes before you go to bed. Step number five you can do, which is stop eating two to three hours before you go to bed. When insulin goes up, growth hormone goes down. I've talked to you a lot about how when insulin, when melatonin goes up, the insulin goes down and you become much more insulin resistant. Well, guess what? When insulin spikes, growth hormone goes down and it will start to impact your sleep. There was a 2017 study that showed that the closer you eat to sleep, the higher your body fat percentage is. So we really want to make sure that the larger meals, I'm not talking about the little snacky meals, but the larger meal, you wouldn't want to eat the large meal and go straight to sleep. You wanna give it a couple hours of a window in between those. Okay, number six, this one's fun. Morning sunlight. Within 30 minutes of waking up, natural light hits the retinohypothalmatic tract, which anchors your circadian rhythm. So you get up, maybe it's still dark out, once it starts to get light, make sure your eyes are seeing light so you're telling your body, today right now is the start of the day. There was a 2013 study that showed that morning light advances circadian rhythm and improves sleep on the other end when you go to bed at night. So if you fix your morning light, you often fix your sleep challenge without changing much. And number seven, this one's really interesting, especially for my menopausal women, because during menopause, many of us struggle to start to break down caffeine. So cut your caffeine back and don't have it after 12 p.m. So what caffeine does is it blocks the adenosine receptors and it masks sleep pressure and sleep debt will still accumulate. So what's interesting is that coffee has a half-life of five to seven hours. So if you had a cup of coffee at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, at nine to 10 in the evening, you would still have 50% of that caffeine going through your body. So let's keep caffeine in the morning. And we also know that if you go to bed with some caffeine in you, it slows down those deep brainwave states, which what do we know about the sleep brainwave states? That's where we're getting more growth hormone. So this is an interesting one. A 2013 journal showed that caffeine six hours before bed reduced total sleep by one hour. So highly recommend you keep your caffeine earlier in the day. You might even set the mark of not after 10, but if you can start to keep caffeine as far away from sleep, you're gonna get not only be able to go to sleep easier, but you're gonna have better sleep quality. And this is exactly what Sarah did. So Sarah kept fasting because that was working. That was a good tool. She was kept changing up the different foods she was eating, trying different diets. She kept her exercise. But what she did is she decided to start prioritizing her sleep. And very quickly within a week, she started to see weight drop that she couldn't make happen without prioritizing sleep. And what's really interesting with Sarah's changes is here are some of the things that she started to notice. Was that week number one, her hunger went down. So we know that ghrelin started to go down, especially her morning hunger and her sugar cravings started to change. Week two, cortisol started to drop and she started to have more energy and better mental clarity. She noticed her belly was a little flatter. And then by week four, she started to see the difference on the scale. So I wanted to point that out because it took several weeks before the number on the scale changed, but she started to see this change. So I know so many of you are really working so hard to lose weight and you get frustrated and you turn on yourself. And I want you to see what the science is saying is that sleep needs to be a priority if you want to drop weight, especially if you want to drop weight and preserve muscle. So let me know if you've had great results with sleep. And as always, if this was helpful, but don't give up on yourself. It's not your genetics. It's not because you're undisciplined. It's because you didn't get information like this. And once you understand the strategy to weight loss, it becomes so much easier. Thank you.