Lose Weight or Lose 13 Years

We hear it all the time…lose weight for your health. Few people however, realize the extent to which this is critical to their physical well-being and ultimately their life expectancy.

In January 2003, the Journal of the American Medical Association featured a study finding that obesity appears to lessen life expectancy, especially among young adults. The study showed an obese 20-year-old white male, 5'10" and weighing 20.5 stone was estimated to lose 13 years of his life as a result of obesity.

Wow! That’s akin to smoking!

It is well researched that a Western diet that leads to obesity may actually act to stimulate the growth of cancer cells.

Don’t worry though! It is never too late to improve your health using food and lifestyle changes. Here are simple steps to follow which can make a difference:

1. Check to see if you are overweight or obese.

To find out your BMI you need to divide your weight (measured in kilos) by your height (measured in metres) squared. If the result is greater than 25, you need to lose weight. Use this BMI calculator https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/bmi-calculator/

2. Learn about blood sugar balance

If you haven’t heard me banging on about blood sugar balance and health, where have you been? It is, hands down the most profoundly effective, fundamentally important nutritional information you will ever learn. EVER. You NEED to know about this. If you don’t comment and I’ll do you a video to explain it.

3. Colour your diet with a large variety of colorful, cancer-fighting fruit and vegetables.

There are seven different color ranges of both fruit and vegetables and by choosing between 5 to 9 daily serves from a wide range of fruit and vegetables, we are extending our consumption of cancer (and other disease) fighting nutrients.

4. Eat lean protein with every meal.

Protein provides a powerful signal to the brain providing a longer sense of fullness. The right source of protein is essential to feeling sated and necessary to maintain your lean muscle mass. Good protein choices are lean meat, fish, eggs, lentils, nuts & tofu.

5. Rev up your metabolism with activity.

If you want to enjoy a lifetime of well being, exercise is a key ingredient. Thirty minutes activity each day that takes as much effort as a brisk walk is recommended for adults. Children should be active for an hour each day.

If you want to change your body shape, pilates and yoga are not your answer! They are good for you, but don’t work for the majority of people I work with. You need to lift weights and do HIIT workouts 3 -4 times a week (unless you’re in stage 2 of your Metabolic Balance programme, in which case, no exercise at all, but this is just for 2 weeks).

6. Get support to ensure you follow the right way of eating, ditch your diet mentality & establish new habits that work for you, not against you.

You need a coach. People who are coached are 80% more likely to actually achieve their goals, compared to people who are not coached.

Someone who can help you work with your unconscious mind is really important because your conscious mind is your goal setter, but your unconscious mind is your goal getter.

So all those of you who ‘know what you need to do but aren’t doing it’ you’re stuck in the conscious, rational mind – the part that knows what you need but ‘just can’t make it happen.’ Real change comes from working with the unconscious mind.

Whatever you do, don’t just do the same thing again and again. Go back to Slimming World? Get a new book? What does that change? Nothing.

Being overweight or obese has been identified next to smoking, as the most preventable major risk to developing cancer. That’s pretty serious. Even small weight losses have been shown to have beneficial health effects.

So it’s never too late to start and you can never be too young or too old to be concerned about your health and do something about achieving a more healthy weight.

I didn’t start losing weight and working out until I was 38. I got a coach (I had the knowledge LOL), a personal trainer and got myself sorted. That’s how I fell in love with helping women understand food, themselves and finally lose weight.

Where are you on your weight loss journey?