Our Weight Loss Program
Are you overweight but have these symptoms? Fatigue (tiredness), lethargy (lack of enthusiasm and energy), preoccupation with food, low concentration, feeling cold, or loss of interest in sex? Those are the SAME symptoms people feel when they have extreme hunger! (As shown in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment). How can you be overweight and hungry all the time?
Processed food is designed to taste great, activate your brain’s reward centres and make you want to eat more. The Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Moss wrote a book exploring this topic, “Salt sugar fat: How the food giants hooked us”. When you eat the right foods at the right time of day they naturally activate your satiety centre in the brain, this makes you feel full. A bit like thirst, when you are thirsty you drink water. Without necessarily planning how much you will drink you automatically stop drinking when you have quenched your thirst. The body is genetically hard wired to self-regulate so you never eat too much food. The problem is today what we consider food is NOT real food, and our bodies are contaminated with chemicals that interfere with the key signals from the gut to the brain.
By changing what you eat you stop being addicted to eating and get your sense of being full back!
We don’t focus on weight loss, we focus on making sure each day you eat the right thing so your health improves, your sense of self confidence improves, and the weight naturally drops off and stays off. This is a whole new paradigm and lifestyle, which opens you up for a lifetime of vibrant health and enjoyment of a body you are proud of.
We believe your body wants to be well, and is holding onto the weight for a reason. Given the right weight loss program, you will lose the weight and naturally return to a state of wellness.
Boost your energy and increase your metabolic flexibility!
Many top executives and peak athletes are now using this approach to improve their performance. NASA is doing research with a Functional Medicine colleague[1] to see if this diet will help astronauts on long space journeys perform better.
Endurance athletes can burn their stored glycogen fuel of around 2,000 Calories then run out of energy, (if they are on the low fat high carbohydrate diet), where as a fat burning athletes on a different diet adapt their body to burn their stored fat as a fuel and that means they have >200,000 Calories in their energy tank before needing to refuel[2]. This dietary approach lets you burn fat whilst maintaining or building muscle.[3]
The US military is looking at changing the diets of elite operators like Navy SEALs as evidence emerges that this new diet enhances their abilities on the battlefield, and significantly improves endurance underwater.[4]
The goal for peak performance is having flexibility to easily switch which energy source your body burns as the situation changes. This has been shown to increase power, endurance and recovery time[5].
Feel full whilst losing weight and maintaining physical performance
A 2019 study at Ohio State University by Jeff Volek, PhD, [6] found that US soldiers on this diet for 12 weeks lost weight, significantly improved their body composition and insulin sensitivity, but suffered no loss in physical performance compared to matched controls. The diet was NOT calorie restricted however since the food they ate makes you feel full, they tended to eat less so lost weight. They lost an average of 17 pounds (7.5 kg), 5 percent of their overall body fat, 44 percent of their visceral fat, and had their insulin sensitivity improve by 48 per cent. There was no change in the participants on the mixed diet. Training results in physical strength, agility, and endurance in both groups were similar.
Reduce your waist circumference
Losing weight is a great goal, however for health, reducing your waist circumference (pants size) and increasing your ratio of muscle to fat is more important. Waist circumference reflects visceral fat, that is fat around your organs, especially your liver. That is the most dangerous type and MRI scans show the difference in deeper fat stores as waist circumference shrinks. Waist circumference is a key measure doctors use to assess your risk of developing diabetes or having a heart attack, so improving it is important.
With our obesity reversal program you will lose waist circumference and unleash a new lease on life.
Weight loss without hunger and while feeling energetic is possible!
Give us a call and let’s get started helping you transform your body once and for all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. If I have diabetes or high blood pressure or high cholesterol can I still do the program?
A. Yes! Diabetes and obesity often go hand in hand as their causes are similar. Many of our patients have both diseases, as well as high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Long before you had Type 2 diabetes you likely had insulin resistance. This is a state where your body has to make more and more insulin to get your blood sugar back down to normal levels as your cells are not taking it in as easily. (This is covered much more in our diabetes reversal program page). Most people find as we address your obesity, your diabetes gets much better, as your insulin resistance gets better so your blood sugars normalise, and you can get off some if not all your diabetes medications. This is important as many medications have side effects, for example insulin causes weight gain! Most patients find as they lose weight their blood pressure dramatically improves. Problems like sleep apnoea may also be fixed and you could stop using your CPAP machine. Your cholesterol will also improve rapidly and follow up blood tests will track this. If you have the APOE4 gene SNP we may adjust the program as genetically you process saturated fat differently.
Q2. Are there medications I can use to lose weight?
A. Yes, there are a few options available these days. We tend not to use them very often as our patients generally don’t need them. We’d be happy to discuss all the options with you when we formulate your weight loss plan.
Q3. Do my genes make me fat?
A. Obesity and being overweight does tend to run in families however there is no one gene responsible for being overweight. Much research is being done in this area as people want a medication to fix obesity. For example the APOE4/4 gene (gs216) is important as being homozygous is linked to an increased risk of heart disease and Alzheimer’s. FATSO gene (FTO) - fat mass and obesity associated, and causes increased risk for obesity and poor leptin control (poor satiety). SLCA, ANKK1/DRD2, MC4R are involved in eating behaviours and many genes such as mTOR, SIRT1, FOXO3 are involved in longevity.
Our integrative, Functional Medicine approach to weight loss is comprehensive and works regardless of your genetic tendency. In fact through losing weight and reducing inflammation we activate epi-genetic pathways that alters your genetic expression, so even if you started out with a higher risk for certain conditions like obesity, you can change that trajectory. We also help you reset your weight Set Point so from then on you naturally tend to hold a healthy weight easily.
Q4. Why are children overweight and obese?
A. Over the last 30 year many childhood diseases have sky rocketed. Obesity and diabetes are the most noticeable, but others such as autoimmune diseases, allergies, asthma, ADHD, autism[7], hypospadias[8] and cancer have also increased. The major reasons are our diet and toxin exposures, not better diagnosis.
Children can be seen as the canaries in the coal mine.
They are more vulnerable to toxins than adults, and the impacts of eating food their body is not designed for tend to show up earlier. Chemicals such as BPA that the embryo is exposed to in the womb can pre dispose adults to weight gain later in life.
BPA is commonly found in tinned goods, receipts, plastic bottles, and take away food containers.
BPA is simply the most studied chemical of thousands. With time more chemicals will likely be shown to have obesogenic impacts on us. The Evergreen Doctors holistic approach considers and treats these toxin exposures where necessary, allowing the body to safely detox and be restored to a state of wellness. A lot of the toxins in fact get stored in fat, so as we lose weight we are actually undergoing a detox, and this creates a positive feedback cycle as it makes further weight loss easier.
Research has also shown that higher prenatal carbohydrate intake (52% of calories) by the mother is linked to higher birthweight and higher BMI in childhood.[9] Maternal carbohydrate intake (especially sugar) is an independent risk factor for childhood obesity.[10]
As mentioned earlier low-fat milk has also been linked to weight gain and obesity in children as young as 4 years old.[11]
Children that are overweight get teased at school, can develop eating disorders and are very likely to develop diabetes, heart disease, joint pain and NASH (Fatty Liver disease) at a young age.
The dietary food plans we use are child friendly and are now being used by some medical centres to help kids improve their behaviour, concentration spans and emotional self-regulation ability.
Our patients frequently involve the whole family to get support on their own journey and to help their loved ones transform their bodies as well.
References
[1] Dr.Terry Wahls
[2] Dr Caryn Zinn (PhD) is a Registered Dietitian in New Zealand and senior lecturer and researcher at the Auckland University of Technology.
[3] Kephart, W.C., Pledge, C.D., Roberson, P.A., Mumford, P.W., Romero, M.A., Mobley, C.B., Martin, J.S., Young, K.C., Lowery, R.P., Wilson, J.M, Huggins, K.W., Roberts, M.D. (2018). The Three-Month Effects of a Ketogenic Diet on Body Composition, Blood Parameters, and Performance Metrics in CrossFit Trainees: A Pilot Study. Sports 6(1): 1. Doi: 10.3390/sports6010001.
[4] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/navy-seals-keto-diet-to-be-even-more-effective-2019-6?r=US&IR=T
[5] Ramonas, A., Brown, F., Plews, D., Zinn, C., Kilding, A., Laursen, P.B. Long-term effects of low carbohydrate high fat diets on exercise performance: A systematic review. Kephart, W.C., Pledge, C.D., Roberson, P.A., Mumford, P.W., Romero, M.A., Mobley, C.B., Martin, J.S., Young, K.C., Lowery, R.P., Wilson, J.M, Huggins, K.W., Roberts, M.D. (2018). The Three-Month Effects of a Ketogenic Diet on Body Composition, Blood Parameters, and Performance Metrics in CrossFit Trainees: A Pilot Study. Sports 6(1):1. Doi: 10.3390/sports6010001.
[6] https://academic.oup.com/milmed/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/milmed/usz046/5382216
[7] Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health contributed to a new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that found the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) had a 15% increase from the most recent report two years ago. Consistent with previous reports, boys were four times more likely to be identified with ASD than girls. The rate is now one in 38 among boys (or 2.7 percent) and one in 152 among girls (or 0.7 percent) [Link]
[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2083775
[9] AJCN, 2017
[10] BMJ Open, 2015; BMC Pregnancy Childbirth, 2016
[11] Arch Dis Child. 2013 May;98(5):335-40. doi: 10.1136/archdischild-2012-302941. Longitudinal evaluation of milk type consumed and weight status in preschoolers.Scharf RJ1, Demmer RT, DeBoer MD