The focus of The Placebo Diet is of course around food and weight loss but It’s also around health, there are many, many diets that can help you lose weight but it doesn’t mean that they have your best interests at heart and are the healthiest
I’m all about long term health and longevity, and nutrition is just one part of the puzzle. For optimum health we need to also look at exercise, mobility, sleep, relaxation, and lowering our stress levels. You can be slim and unhealthy; you can be going to the gym 4 times a week and be wreaking havoc with your body and stressing out your cells. Balance is needed for a beautiful, healthy body that is working at its optimum.
Here are my 5 top life hacks and they aren’t hard or strict, you don’t need to restrict calories and deprive yourself and workout daily to be healthy….in fact that can be detrimental so I hope these life hacks will help you.
Exercise in a fasted state
I talk a lot about intermittent fasting and time restricted eating in my Colour Fast Re-Set programme and on my blog. If there is just one thing that you can do, NOT having breakfast as soon as you wake up is actually a good habit to get into. For the first few days you may experience “fake hunger” but delay breakfast or your first daily meal for as long as you can. AND adding in this and the following hack as extra activity can enhance your body’s fat burning ability!
After you wake up and before you eat your first meal of the day, aim to do 10 to 20 minutes of gentle exercise, walking the dog, a few yoga stretches, light movement, it doesn’t have to be high impact that will stress your body, if you can do it outdoors even better. After your gentle exercise…….
Take a fat burning shower
There are different types of fat in the body including white adipose tissue (WAT), which stores excess energy as triglycerides, and Brown adipose tissue (BAT), which dissipates stored energy as heat. So, exposing your body to cold, signals to your body to start burning the WAT – it’s a great habit to start getting intimate with cold!!! Taking a daily cold shower is the best option for most of us, you can alternate between cold and warm, do at least 10 secs of each, preferably longer on the cold and repeat for a few minutes.
Mix it up
Eating a rainbow of foods is important and adding antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables to your diet each day will strengthen your ability to fight infection and disease, It’s not just fruit and vegetables that offer a rainbow of antioxidants and health-giving benefits, try adding green tea, olives, cacao, coconut, kidney beans, turmeric, ginger, coriander, basil, parsley and cinnamon to your menu! Also eat good quality protein, fats and carbohydrates at every meal, this is all covered in my Colour Code System in The Placebo Diet and my Colour Fast Re-Set.
It’s about much more than the food that you eat. Variety is vital for health and longevity, for example doing short bursts of high-intensity interval cardio 3 times a week is great for your cardiovascular system and building muscle, but your body also needs to build stamina, by going on long walks, hikes, or being able to climb stairs. As we age mobility is as muscle and oxygen and so doing many different types of stretching, lifting, and in fact any kind of daily movement is more important than hours spent at the gym. Lindsey does some great HIIT, stretching, muscle building routines on video in our Members Area – it’s scientifically proven that doing long bouts of cardio is not the best way to burn fat. Excessive exercise leads to elevated cortisol levels, inflammation, and hormonal disruption. Variety is key and you need to do less exercise than you probably think for health and longevity.
Quit snacking
Eating at numerous times throughout the day can spike your blood sugar and insulin levels, if it becomes a habit then your body will begin to crave the hit it regularly gets and that’s where you get on a rollercoaster of craving. Sticking to an eating window of 8–12 hours and eating one, two or three meals within that window will increase your metabolic rate. You don’t have to reduce your caloric intake; the trick is not to eat less but to eat less often.
Work on getting better sleep
Sleep deprivation causes insulin resistance, raises cortisol levels, reduces glucose tolerance, and increases stressful sympathetic nervous system activity. Not sleeping could be a major factor on why you are overweight and finding it hard to lose weight. When you calm a busy mind and body, sleep, which is the greatest of all healers, can restore and rejuvenate in ways it just cannot do when you are awake and active.