Hi, it’s Mike with Power Your Life by Flex PT. At one point in my life I was a competitive power lifter, but I had gotten really heavy. I was pushing almost 300 pounds and I knew if I got hurt, I could not work out anymore. I knew my eating habits needed to change but I did not stop, and I let my diet go. I let my body go and I ended up very unhealthy. Eventually I found a way to take the weight off, but I soon realized the “diet” I was using to take that weight off really wasn’t serving me in the right way and was creating new issues.
I was exhausted, tired, and crabby all the time. This is what started me on this journey to discover how I could lose the weight, keep the weight off, be healthy, and still enjoy life. I wanted to not be exhausted, I wanted to have energy and be the husband and father that I knew I could be.
Through this journey I learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes but, I’m here today, better than ever. It is because of my struggles that I have created this new four-week weight loss system for busy moms and dads. I want to share with you the ability to be successful with weight loss and having a healthy lifestyle. That is why I have creating this new program.
In my Facebook Live and podcast episode titled “How Balance In Your Life is the Key to Your Weight Loss Problem as a Busy Mom or Dad” we talked a little bit about the weight loss vehicle and the wheels that go on that vehicle and how important it is to have balance. Remember the wheel needs to be completely round and balanced, we have to be covering all aspects of the diet, the body through exercise, the mindset, and the spiritual side. All of those together make it so that the vehicle can move smoothly move down the road. You don’t want it to be really bumpy.
That’s the ride that I used to be on until I figured out the secret to sustainable weight loss. That is why I put all of this information together into a nice, neat little package for you. But today, what I really would like to talk about is balance and how important it is when it comes to controlling the inflammation levels in your body. Controlling your body’s inflammation levels leads to faster weight loss. When you eat large amounts of sugars, carbs, dairy, or processed foods they turn into glucose or sugar within your body. That is how it breaks down and metabolizes.
When you eat a bad diet that’s really heavy in those things, what happens is as that goes down through your stomach and it’s broken down and it enters into your intestines into what we call your gut, it really offsets the balance between the good and bad bacteria in your gut. The bad bacteria overtake the good bacteria and that leads to this inflamed gut. So I want you to think about, in your gut, in your intestine, as the foods passing through, it’s designed at that point for your body to remove and absorb the nutrients and then all the bad stuff gets separated out and eliminated as waste.
Think of the intestinal wall as a kind of prison. The wall of the intestines is supposed to be really tight. So it lets the good guys through but the bad guys, they pass on by. If you’re eating a lot of stuff that’s really processed or boxed, it’s not good. What happens in the gut is it becomes inflamed because of that imbalance and the wall and the cells start spacing apart.
This creates gaps and like the prison walls, if you remove some stones out of those walls, the bad guys are going to get through. Typically what happens is those foreign products that your body doesn’t want and doesn’t need start to pass through the inflamed intestinal wall or through the gut. We call that a leaky gut. As the gut leaks it increases the inflammation in the body. All of these foreign particles pass through and get into your bloodstream. What your body does is say, “we need to fight this off”. Inflammation is how your body fights things it is how your body heals. But inflammation that’s uncontrolled becomes a problem.
Your gut is like your second brain. Have you ever had intense cravings for sugary, salty, or just carb heavy food? These intense cravings hit you out of nowhere and you’re powerless. You can’t even resist them. That’s because the bacteria levels in your gut are off. You’re increasing the inflammation and that increases the cravings for sugar, carbs, salt, preservatives. You can’t overcome these when this starts to hit you. I don’t care how much will power you have, your body signals from your gut and there’s no overpowering that signal.
What happens is as you eat more sugar, carbs, salt, and those kinds of things the bacterial levels, continue to be off and then you get more of an inflamed gut. It becomes even more leaky. You get more inflammation, you get more cravings and you just get on this cycle that gets so incredibly hard to get off. Here’s what I want you to know. This is not your fault. These cravings are not due to something that is wrong with you. It’s not a matter of willpower. It’s almost impossible to overcome because technically your body is doing what it was built to do. The cravings and cycling occur because of the kinds of foods that we’re eating. Even if you cut down your foods and eat less of them, if what you’re eating still involves too much for your body to handle inflammation is still going to occur. Which then that leads to other issues as well.
Increased inflammation will start to break down your joints. That’s where you start getting arthritis, stenosis of your spine, bursitis, tendinitis, a lot of the overall body pain, fibromyalgia, and all these chronic pain issues many times go along with uncontrolled inflammation. You start thinking it doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t take the weight off. That’s because this cycle is going on. If you don’t fix the bacterial levels within the gut it will eventually lead to insulin resistance.
Insulin is one of the hormones your body produces, which allows the cells to be unlocked. It’s like the key that allows the cells to be able to use glucose for energy. Glucose is the sugar in your blood, which is what the sugar and carbs become as the body processes your food. The insulin then unlocks the cell allowing the glucose to enter. If your body becomes resistant to the insulin your cells no longer open up to receive the glucose for energy.
It’s kind of like tolerance. Someone who never ever drinks but decides to have a couple of beers will probably be feeling great, because their tolerance is low. But someone who drinks a lot or quite often will have a tolerance and therefore it takes a lot more for them to have the same feeling as someone who does not drink very often.
If your body gets used to high levels of insulin, due to often eating sugar and carbs, eventually the insulin stops working for the cell. You have all this glucose and your body starts storing that as fat. It stores it within the cells of the body, but it also will store it in the liver. You may have heard of a fatty liver, that does lead to insulin resistance. When inflammatory levels are not controlled you cannot burn fat effectively and you can’t control your cravings. It really sets you up for failure.
This is one of the many things that I learned in my journey as I started putting together all of the pieces. This is also one of the things that I address in this new program, the four week weight loss system for busy moms and dads.
I know some of you have questions and our program and we’re still in the processes of finalizing it and putting it together. So, hold tight because I will get this information out to you very soon. We hope to have it ready within a couple of weeks. Stay healthy, and we’ll see you soon.
