Shedding Fat with J. J. Virgin
In This Chapter
- Focusing on excess fat, not pounds
- Being strategic about exercise
- Prioritizing sleep
- Checking for sensitivity to particular foods
- Addressing hormone imbalances
In Chapter 19, we offered basic strategies for losing weight. This chapter digs deeper, providing advanced techniques that will give you a whole new perspective on how to slim down and stay thin.
Unlike the rest of the book, this chapter is the result of an interview Hy had with fitness and nutrition guru J. J. Virgin. J. J. has helped such celebrities as movie stars Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and Brandon Routh, rock star Gene Simmons, and mega-selling author Jack Canfield, and for two years was the nutrition expert on the Dr. Phil show. Suzanne Sommers has said, “Every now and then someone comes along who connects the dots and takes the mystery out of losing weight; J. J. Virgin has done that.” In addition to personal coaching, J. J. offers various products through her website www.JJVirgin.com—including her book Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy.
Don’t focus on being overweight. Aim to stop being “over-fat.”
For example, you might be the ideal weight for your height, yet have high body fat and low muscle mass. This is called TOFI: thin outside, fat inside. You want to instead be as close to rock-solid as possible.
If you’re a woman, you should typically have 18-25 percent body fat; and if you’re a man, 10-18 percent fat. (And if you’re an athlete, you should be even leaner.)
Thyroidian Tip
There are a number of high-end devices for determining body fat. I use a Tanita Segmental scale, because it tells you not only what your body fat is but where it is. Many gyms and doctors keep such a scale in-house and will measure you for an affordable fee.
In order to lose your excess fat and keep it off forever, you must fix what’s going on metabolically. Getting your thyroid hormones on track is critical, but you’ll usually need to do more than that.
If you’re 20 or more pounds over-fat, and you can’t manage to lose 1-3 pounds of fat a week despite following a balanced eating plan and exercising, you’re what I call “weight loss resistant.”
Weight loss resistance can stem from a variety of factors, including poor eating patterns, ineffective exercise, sleep deprivation, food sensitivity, low stomach acid, stress, insulin resistance, and sex hormone imbalances. I’ll be addressing all of these issues in this chapter.
Optimize Your Eating Patterns
One of the more unproductive ideas in the diet world is that we need to eat every couple of hours. Eating raises blood sugar, which your cells then burn for energy; but what you actually want them to do is burn off your stored fat for fuel. Frequent eating turns your body into a better sugar burner and a poorer fat burner—the exact opposite of your goal. You should instead settle on a standard three meals a day, with 4-6 hours of no eating between them.
Thyroidian Tip
If your body isn’t working right—for example, if you’re under chronic stress—your cells might have trouble accessing your stored fat. In this case, don’t let yourself starve; go ahead and eat more frequently at first. As you follow the other strategies in this chapter, there’s a good chance your problem will resolve itself, after which you can settle on three meals a day with no snacking in between.
More specifically, you should start each day by taking your thyroid medication (if any), spending 30-60 minutes doing your morning routine, and then eating a substantial breakfast of 500-600 calories.
Breakfast sets your metabolic tone for the day. It’s important to start with a slow, steady release of blood sugar. As you then become active, your insulin will drop down to fasting levels, causing your body to use stored fat for fuel.
Studies have shown that someone who eats a breakfast of 500-600 calories is likely to lose as much as 20 pounds more a year than someone who eats a light breakfast of only 300 calories, or skips the meal altogether. You’re also more likely to feel better, with improved energy and mental clarity.
You shouldn’t go longer than 4-6 hours without eating, though, because that tends to raise stress hormones such as cortisol. So enjoy a light lunch at midday; or if you need to skip lunch, have a mini-meal in the middle of the afternoon.
As for dinner, eat it at least 2-3 hours before going to bed. That’s because when you sleep your stomach produces a hormone called ghrelin that both makes you hungry and stimulates the secretion of growth hormone. If you’ve got a full stomach, it’ll inhibit the release of ghrelin, and you’ll end up with too little hormone for facilitating cell growth and repair. Further, lying down with a full stomach can trigger a washback of stomach acid into your esophagus. Over time this can lead to inflammation, difficulty swallowing, and other problems.
While you should refrain from eating between meals, you should drink lots of water to fill you up. Studies have found that when you’re hungry, a glass of water can quickly shut that feeling down. Also good is drinking green tea, which has helpful antioxidants.
Drinking Your Meal
Every meal should ideally include protein, fats, non-starchy veggies, and low-sugar carbs. My suggestions on creating balanced meals with these food groups appear in Chapter 21.
If you have problems with portion control, however, or if you’re just too busy to prepare all your meals, a simple solution is to replace one meal a day with a protein shake. As long as you’re careful to create a drink with the right balance of nutrients and calories, your body won’t mind at all.
Whey protein shakes are especially popular. I happen to be sensitive to dairy, so instead use rice pea protein as a base. Whatever your preference, be sure to buy high-quality protein powder. You want it to be easy to digest, and to contain enough protein to make you feel satisfied—25-30 grams if you’re a woman, a bit more if you’re a man.
I add to that a quarter cup of coconut milk, 1-2 tablespoons of fiber such as flax seed meal, a cup of mixed organic berries, water, and ice. In a couple of minutes, my “meal” is ready to be enjoyed.
This is an easy way to sneak healthy ingredients, such as low-fat protein and fiber, into your diet. Also, it’s so convenient that it demolishes any excuse you might have to skip breakfast or lunch because “I don’t have time.” Even better, studies show that those who replace a meal a day with a shake long-term lose more weight than those who don’t … and keep the weight off.
Managing Sweeteners
Another frequent cause of weight loss resistance is too much sugar. Foods and drink with lots of sugar will make your insulin levels skyrocket, bringing your fat burning to an abrupt stop. So when you’re making a protein shake or other drink, be sure to limit the sugars to 10 grams total.
Also avoid fructose and fructose-based additives such as agave, which are super-sweet. (Don’t be fooled by fructose’s low glycemic index.) And be especially wary of eating or drinking something sweet right after working out. Too much sugar will make your body’s fat burning efficiency plummet, turning your workout into virtually wasted effort.
Thyroidian Tip
It may seem counterintuitive that you can invest 1-2 hours of time and sweat into an exercise session and then derail that work in seconds with a sugary drink. But you need to think of your body as a chemistry lab, not a bank account. Everything has to be working in harmony for your body to burn fat effectively.
Don’t use artificial sweeteners, as they put you at risk for too many health problems. I favor natural sugar substitutes such as Xylitol and Stevia. And when actual sugar is required, I use small amounts of evaporated cane juice.
Burst Training
In a society that encourages us to do less and less, I recommend that you push in the other direction and do more. Park your car several blocks from your office so you have to stroll to work, skip the elevator for the stairs, and replace meeting for lunch with a walking date. You can even try wearing a pedometer, which studies have shown motivates us to be more physical. Such movement is good for you, and I want you to think of it as your activity for daily living.
That said, you should not view it as an efficient way to slim down. It would take hundreds of hours of casual walking to burn off even 10 pounds.
Along similar lines, endurance-style training such as jogging and cycling for an hour at a time raises stress hormones, and that lowers the effectiveness of T3, testosterone, and growth hormones that help your body build muscle and burn fat. So you may end up putting in a huge amount of time and effort for limited results.
Much more strategic for shedding fat is high-intensity interval training, or burst training. For example, instead of walking or jogging for an hour, warm up for a couple minutes, and then sprint as hard as you can for 30-60 seconds. When you’re done, walk or jog for 1-3 minutes to recover and allow your heart rate to go back down; and then sprint all out again for another 30-60 seconds.
Definition
Burst training is a workout method that involves exerting yourself as hard as you can—by sprinting, swimming, etc.—for 30-60 seconds, resting for 1-3 minutes, and then exerting yourself all-out again. This high-intensity interval training typically burns fat much more efficiently than conventional exercise such as walking or jogging.
Don’t pace yourself on the sprints; it’s better to finish in 30 seconds than in 60, and take double the time to recover. Repeat this pattern for a total of 4-8 minutes. Even this small amount of time invested causes your body to burn fat for a long while afterward.
Burst training isn’t exclusive to sprinting. You can do a set by climbing up and down stairs as quickly as you can; pedaling a bike at maximum speed; swimming really fast; jumping rope rapidly; or doing Turkish Get-Ups. (You can find links to videos of me performing the latter, and more, at this book’s website CIGThyroid.com.)
Because you don’t need a gym or equipment for burst training, you can do it anytime and anywhere that’s convenient for you, and mix up the ways you perform sets to keep the exercising fun. The variety also keeps your body challenged.
Once you become used to burst training, you can perform 4-6 sets of 30-60 second bursts, never going beyond a total of 8 minutes. You should do this at least three times a week, preferably on alternate days. (Then again, some of my more athletic clients “burst” every few hours.)
Burst training is time-efficient; a 4-minute workout can achieve the same fat-burning as a 20-minute endurance workout. And while each burst raises your stress hormones, it does so for a very brief period—after which you allow them to come back down. Then you raise them again, and you let them come down again. This effectively trains your sympathetic nervous system to be able to handle higher levels of stress, and recover faster. And fat burning aside, that’s an important part of being fit; because true fitness is about being able to keep pushing yourself to do more, but it’s also about how quickly you recover.
Another advantage of burst training is the oxygen debt raises your lactic acid, which in turn spurs the production of human growth hormone. So you’re causing your body to have an anabolic, or building up, response, not just a breaking down response.
This training will make you stronger in everything you do, and speed your recovery time for all activities. For example, one of my clients was doing endurance-style jogging on a treadmill at 4.5 miles per hour. Her body had become adjusted to this pace, and she’d hit a wall with losing weight. I converted her to burst training, and the fat started sliding off. She was so happy that she stuck to bursts exclusively for 3 months. Then she returned to the treadmill and set it for her normal jog of 4.5 mph; but it suddenly felt like nothing to her. She kept turning up the speed. She finally ended up at 6.4 mph to feel challenged. She couldn’t believe the increase in fitness she’d achieved as a side effect of burning fat.
Thyroidian Tip
As you get stronger at bursting, don’t go longer: go harder. Continue to up the intensity. You’ll stay fit as long as you keep pushing to improve.
Strength Training
If you’re over the age of 35, your body will start slowly breaking down more muscle and bone than it builds up. That’s bad for your overall health, but it’s especially a problem when you’re trying to shed fat.
First, your muscles are one of the main parts of your body that respond to insulin. If your muscles start decaying, it reduces your body’s ability to access stored fat. This is a key cause of weight loss resistance.
Second, muscles require continual energy just to maintain themselves. When you lose muscle mass, your body’s energy demands and metabolism decrease, making it that much more difficult to lose weight.
The solution to both problems is strength training, which works against the aging process by building your muscles up. Your larger muscles will increase your body’s insulin sensitivity, making it easier to access stored fat. And the extra muscles will significantly increase your body’s energy needs and so continually burn off more fat. On top of these benefits, you’ll look better, feel stronger, and enjoy a healthier life.
Definition
Strength training builds up your muscles by increasing their ability to resist force via free weights and other devices. Growing your muscles helps you burn fat by both raising your metabolism and heightening your body’s responsiveness to insulin.
You should ideally strengthen all the major muscle groups, which can be organized into four areas:
- Upper body pushing: Shoulders, triceps, and chest. Exercises include push-ups, overhead presses, dips, and chest presses (optionally with a big stability ball).
- Upper body pulling: Lats (latissimus dorsi), upper back, biceps, shoulders, and back of the shoulders. Exercises include pull-ups, Vancouver rows, one arm rows, and upright rows.
- Hips and thighs: Quads, hamstrings, glutes (gluteus maximus), and lower back. Exercises include step-ups, squats, lunges, and plies.
- Power core: Lower back (again), abdominals, and obliques. Exercises include crunches, soccer sit ups, and abs on a medicine ball.
Notice that I recommend exercises that work multiple joints simultaneously. For example, do a push-up instead of a simple tricep extension; a pull-up rather than a bicep curl; and a squat in place of a leg extension.
Make use of cables and free weights. And as you become more experienced, vary things up by exercising in progressively imbalanced ways. For example, instead of standing on both feet, try doing free weights while sitting on a ball, or standing on one foot, or lifting a leg up. You want to encourage your body to develop balance and stay stable, because that really activates your core.
Also, do big, full-body movements. It requires a lot more energy, and so has a greater effect.
Thyroidian Tip
To get to a range where you’re building muscles, do 8-12 repetitions, with a 60-second rest in between sets. The short break gives you some time to recover, but not too much. Not totally recovering will recruit more muscle fibers to help on the next set, and that will end up strengthening and building those muscles.
As with any exercise, start out slowly by doing single moderate sets. As you develop strength, though, increase your pace to 2-3 sets, using the heaviest weights you can safely handle in good form. A rule of thumb is that if you can’t get to 8 repetitions in a set, you should switch to lighter weights; while if you can easily get past 12 repetitions, you should change up to heavier weights.
I recommend doing strength training at least two times a week, and preferably three times per week for optimal muscle building. Either way, allow for at least a 48-hour rest period in between each session focused on a particular muscle group.
There are a variety of ways you can combine your strength training with your burst training. For example, you can alternate them, doing weights on one day and then bursts the next day. Or you can do burst training followed by working your hips and thighs one day, and then work your upper body and core the next day.
If you can consistently perform both strength training and burst training three times a week, over time you’re likely to burn off fat with a speed you never imagined possible.
Getting a Good Night’s Sleep
Many people neglect to make sleep a priority, stealing time from it to get in an extra hour or two of work. What they don’t realize is that sleep has more of an impact on weight than almost any other lifestyle factor. Studies have shown that even if you’re eating right and exercising regularly, failing to get enough sleep puts you at high risk for obesity. There are several reasons for this.
First, your body produces a hormone called ghrelin that gives you an appetite and another called leptin that inhibits appetite. When you don’t get enough sleep, your ghrelin levels rise, making you hungry; while your leptin levels fall, making you even hungrier.
Inadequate sleep also lowers your serotonin, and raises your stress hormones and insulin levels. This results in higher blood sugar and the suppression of fat burning.
Further, the effects of greater hunger and lower fat burning are cumulative, getting worse the more nights you skimp on slumber.
To better understand these concepts, imagine yourself waking up without enough sleep. Feeling groggy and weak, you crave carbs and stimulants. You grab a muffin—which is so packed with sugar and fat it’s a barely disguised cupcake—and wash it down with a latte. That gives you a sugar rush, and you feel great for a few hours; but then you crash. And your response is to consume even more sugar and caffeine. You end up drinking coffee and caffeinated soda throughout the day. Unfortunately, that creates a brand-new problem, because caffeine remains active in the body for 12 hours.
As you approach nighttime, your adrenaline levels are high when they should be coming down. You respond by drinking a glass of wine; and when that doesn’t work, several glasses. You finally become calm enough to fall asleep. But the wine’s effects fade after a few hours, waking you in the middle of the night. You get up the next morning feeling unrested … and hungrier than ever for carbs and caffeine.
This is a vicious cycle; and it ends up packing on pounds around your waist. Instead, choose to be good to yourself, and consistently give yourself 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
You should ideally go to sleep around the same time every night; fall asleep within 30 minutes of lying down in bed; and wake up around the same time each morning, feeling thoroughly rested.
Dr. Michael Breus recommends creating a routine so consistent that you wake up every morning without the aid of an alarm clock. Instead of setting your alarm for the morning, he suggests you set it to go off at night—to remind you it’ll soon be time to go to sleep!
Specifically, he says to set it for an hour before bedtime. That gives you 60 minutes’ notice to get ready by powering down. The latter is hugely important. For example, there’s been a surge in childhood obesity, and some researchers point to a young person’s room having a TV and phone and computer firing up neurons throughout the evening so there’s no chance to calm down, lower stress hormones, and sink into a satisfying slumber.
To avoid the same fate, turn off all technology during your power-down hour. Spend the time calmly puttering around with simple chores, or taking a hot bath. Finally, get into bed and start reading a good book … but not a great book! You don’t want to get sucked into staying up for a long time, so pick something just entertaining enough to relax you. You should soon feel ready to nod off.
Thyroidian Tip
If you aren’t satisfied with the quality of your sleep but don’t know why, you may find helpful a product called Zeo. Using a headband and software that detect your brain waves, Zeo tracks your stages of sleep and presents detailed data to you in the morning, along with an overall sleep score, so you know what needs improving. To learn more, visit the website MyZeo.com.
A surprising cause of weight loss resistance is sensitivity to particular foods that create havoc as your body tries to deal with their ingestion. This happens more often than you might think; it’s estimated 30 percent of us have food sensitivity at some point in our lives.
In some cases the sensitivity is an allergic reaction. A frequent cause is a food making your gut more permeable than it should be and passing through the lining. Your autoimmune system may then respond by identifying the food as an invader and attacking it. This is especially a hazard if you have an autoimmune thyroid disease, as that puts you at greater risk of your immune system finding other targets to assault.
Foods that commonly cause allergic reactions include dairy products (milk, yogurt, cheese), eggs, peanuts, soy products, wheat, seafood, and nuts. Telltale symptoms include sinus issues, throat clearing, moodiness, depression, anxiety, bloating—and, perversely, a craving for the food causing the problem.
A sensitivity can also be a food intolerance. In this case the food doesn’t trigger your immune system, but causes a bad reaction because your body has trouble breaking down or digesting it. Common causes of intolerance include the lactose in dairy products; tyrosine, which is in dairy products, soy products, peanuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and lima beans; a variety of preservatives and additives in processed foods; and gluten, which is a mix of proteins present in wheat and other grains.
Gluten is an especially frequent culprit, causing such bad reactions as bloating, cramping, inflammation, and problems absorbing nutrients. Gluten is tough to avoid, though, as it hides in thousands of products, including:
- Bread and bread crumbs
- Pasta and semolina
- Bulgar wheat, couscous, and farina
- Cookies, muffins, scones, cake, pies
- Cereals with wheat, barley, or rye
- Sausages and luncheon meats (often contain bread)
- Blue cheeses (often contain bread)
- Seitan (is pure wheat gluten)
- Most packaged foods (often contain bread)
You can find a more complete list at this book’s website, CIGThyroid.com.
If you have any reason to suspect a sensitivity to certain foods, the best thing to do is cut them completely out of your diet for a full month and see if you notice any changes in your health and/or your fat loss. If you don’t, you can eliminate this as a potential issue.
If you do have a sensitivity, though, you may start intensely craving the food causing your problems. You may also feel a lot worse for the first few days, experiencing bloating, diarrhea, headaches, and so on. Once your body adjusts, however, such uncomfortable feelings will go away; plus you may well drop around five pounds.
After a month has gone by, you can slowly and cautiously reintroduce one particular food at a time to see whether symptoms reappear. If they do, you’ll know that you need to avoid that food (or the group of foods it represents). But sometimes you can rotate a “problem” food back into your diet so long as you take care to eat it only once in a while.
Managing Low Stomach Acid
As you become older, your stomach acid may decrease. This can also happen as a result of food sensitivity, or from stress. When this occurs, it impairs digestion, and especially protein digestion, making you feel full but not satisfied. The loss of protein will reduce your body’s ability to grow new hormones, muscles, bones, skin, hair, nails, and so on.
An even more serious issue for weight loss is that your stomach acid is normally the first line of defense for killing invaders that come in through food. When your stomach acid is low, it creates an environment that allows for bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine; and this can lead to your body extracting more calories from the foods you eat and storing them as fat.
One of my clients had exactly this problem. Within a few months of our figuring out what was going on and addressing it, she lost 40 pounds. So gut bacterial overgrowth can have a profound effect on your weight.
This is why I tell clients to not take probiotics blindly. While the microorganisms in probiotics are normally beneficial, they can add to a bacterial problem when your stomach acid is low. A telltale sign for this issue is becoming bloated as the day goes on, whether you eat or not. If you notice this happening, have your doctor run a urine organic acid test that looks for gut dysbiosis (meaning “out of balance”).
If you test positive, you can typically eliminate the overgrowth via a round of antibacterial herbs, such as enteric-coated peppermint oil, garlic, ginger, grapefruit seed extract, olive leaf extract, bergerine, or echinacea. If necessary, you can also take prescription antibiotics.
Of course, that still leaves you with low stomach acid. Generally the best way to address this is with betaine HCl, which raises stomach acid. Do this cautiously, though, by taking one pill with a meal that includes protein and seeing how it makes you feel. If that goes well, increase the dosage to two pills per meal. Gradually keep increasing the number of pills (up to a maximum of eight) over the course of a number of meals until you feel the mildest little burn, and then reduce the dosage by one pill. Most people end up taking 3-6 pills per meal initially, and over time decrease that to 2-4 per meal.
Then again, if you prefer food to a pill, try regularly eating pineapple or papaya, which have acid-raising properties.
Crash Glanding
If you have a history of ulcers, gastritis, or gastrointestinal symptoms such as heartburn, you typically should not take an acid-raising medication such as betaine HCl. Instead, consult with your doctor about the best course of treatment.
Managing Stress
When you suffer from stress, an array of bad things happen. The stress hormone cortisol rises, which leads to higher blood sugar and reduced fat burning. At the same time, it lowers serotonin and leptin levels, making you hungrier. This awful combination is a formula for adding fat around your waist.
Stress also lowers the sex hormones DHEA and testosterone, hampering your ability to build up muscle.
In addition, stress lowers your stomach acid, which makes it more difficult for your body to digest protein and use the protein to create muscles.
Further, if the stress continues over a long period, your adrenal glands will eventually reverse gears and produce too little cortisol. At that point you’ll be relying on adrenaline for energy, or just have very little energy. If you then try to address your weight gain by cutting calories and/or engaging in endurance-style training, you may strain your adrenal glands to the point of doing lasting damage.
Once things get to this point, you may need to spend several months healing your body by eliminating stress, getting consistent and uninterrupted sleep, eating balanced meals, and performing burst training in moderation via 4-minute sessions. (For ways to specifically heal your adrenal glands, see Chapter 14.)
It’s not always possible to eliminate the source of your stress. However, you can often change your reaction to it, which will be just as effective in making your stress disappear. For more ideas on how to cut stress from your life—both for weight loss and overall health—see Chapter 22.
Managing Insulin Resistance
If your diet consists mostly of carbs and fructose, you’re pushing your blood sugar levels through the roof. Your pancreas reacts by pumping out insulin to lower your blood sugar. That works for a while. Over time, however, the cell receptors designed to respond to insulin become overloaded by the barrage, and desensitized. This makes your body partially resistant to insulin—and forces your pancreas to pump out even more insulin to achieve the effects it used to. This vicious cycle can make your cells increasingly insulin resistant.
At the same time, high levels of insulin effectively lock the doors to your fat cells, making it very hard for your body to burn stored fat for fuel. It also creates inflammation, which is an independent risk factor for weight loss resistance. And fat aside, excessive insulin raises your risk for high blood pressure, heart attacks, and other major diseases.
Fortunately, you can repair your body by doing a lot of the things that have already been recommended in this chapter:
- Eat balanced meals with low sugar and lots of fiber. This will lower your blood sugar, and so reduce insulin production.
- Eliminate stress. This will also lower blood sugar.
- Get 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. Sleep deprivation is a major contributor to insulin resistance.
- Do strength training. It’s a great way to improve insulin sensitivity.
In addition, try any or all of the following:
- Take fish oil pills, which reduce inflammation and help resensitize your cells’ insulin receptors.
- Take conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and/or lipoic acid, which also help resensitize your cells’ insulin receptors.
- Take chromium, vanadium, magnesium, and zinc, which help manage blood sugar.
- Determine your vitamin D levels with a test called 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and then take supplements (or spend more time in the sun) to get your vitamin D to 60-80 mgs per mL, which studies have shown combats insulin resistance.
Thyroidian Tip
Often occurring simultaneously with insulin resistance is resistance to leptin, a hormone that suppresses appetite. This creates a nightmare scenario of getting hungrier, and eating more, as your ability to burn fat decreases. Fortunately, most of the remedies just described for insulin resistance will cure leptin resistance as well.
Managing Sex Hormones
Whether you’re a man or woman, testosterone is critical to weight loss, because it helps you burn fat and build muscle. Unfortunately, your testosterone decreases as you get older. This means as you move past middle age, you’re likely to start developing belly fat unless you do something about it.
If you’re a woman, you have the additional burden of your cortisol levels rising as you approach menopause, putting you at risk for all the problems discussed in the previous section. Plus your estrogen and progesterone will become unbalanced, which often leads to increased fat retention.
As you know if you have thyroid disease, it’s really hard to fight against your hormones. But that doesn’t mean you have to give in to your body when it’s telling you to lose muscle and store fat. Instead, have a hormone specialist get you on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. In other words, make testosterone and other sex hormones work for you instead of against you.
If you continue to take great care of your body, your 50s and 60s can be the best years of your life.
The Least You Need to Know
- More important than your weight is your ratio of fat to lean body mass.
- The most effective exercises for burning off fat are burst training and strength training.
- One of the most important things you can do to keep burning fat is consistently get a good night’s sleep.
- If you can’t lose weight while craving a particular food, avoid that food for a month to see whether you’re sensitive to it.
- If you become bloated whether you eat or not, get tested for gut bacterial overgrowth.