Every year we make promises to ourselves to lose the extra weight and get in shape. It's our fist goal with every New Year. Our New Year's Resolutions always fall short after about a month of trying hard. Then the routine gets old. The healthy eating habits and exercise don't seem as fresh and fun. The time and energy to keep up the wellness plan seems to seem to take more energy than we have or want to give it. Why does this always seem to happen? Often it has to do with boredom. Or simply lack of motivation. Or simply getting into a place of being tired of what we're doing. 

Often the area we fall short in is the view of a perfect weight loss plan. Or our own unimaginable goals that everything will be flawless and happen perfectly from start to finish is not realistic.  The time it takes to lose weight gets in the way of the real world needs with our family and jobs. We mentally make excuses for those real world needs too, which often side track our weight loss goals. 

The "all in it to win it" mentality many of us have this short coming. If we can't follow the most perfect weight loss plan and follow it 100% percent of the time 24/7 ....then we're thinking we're falling. We'll start and stope and restart, over and over again. Which is so far from the truth! There is no perfect weight loss plan or program.

We're also way too hard on ourselves to be perfect at weight loss. The best weight loss plan is one you'll stick to. Be it eating really well all of the time, or most of the week. That's your call. you know what you can handle. Some of us can't have cheat days because we overeat. Some of us do better with a cheat meal here or there. We sometimes need a day of a break from eating so healthy. Sometimes we even need a week to gather our thoughts and reevaluate what we're doing. What's working and what's not, this is why it helps to journal your weight loss. We're human and have slip-ups from time to time, it's natural. Too many of us let a piece of cake or plate of pasta to completely derail our weight loss efforts. We must get up the next day and start again, regardless of our own bad food choices. Haven given to the wrong foods ia not a deal breaker. It takes tough individuals to lose weight and it's a long distance run over a sprint. 


Many of us really can benefit from having an accountability group to keep us on track the bond we have with others on the same journey has been scientifically studied and found to be key in long range weight loss success. 

We actually have several groups which are totally FREE to join. 

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​Intermittent fasting is currently one of the most popular health and fitness trends. People are using it to lose weight, improve health and simplify their healthy lifestyle.
Many studies (click, click, click) show that it can have huge effects on your body and brain, and may even help you live much more longer.
IF is a term for an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. It is not a "diet" in the conventional sense, it is more accurately described as an "eating pattern."
These are the most popular methods:

• The 16/8 Method: Also called the Leangains, it involves skipping breakfast and restricting your daily eating period to 8 hours, for example from 1 pm to 9 pm. Then you "fast" for 16 hours in between.
• Eat-Stop-Eat: This involves fasting for 24 hours, once or twice a week, for example by not eating from dinner one day until dinner the next day.
• The 5:2 Diet: On two non-consecutive days of the week, only eat 500-600 calories. Eat normally the other 5 days.

Humans have actually been fasting throughout evolution. Sometimes it was done because food was not available, and it has also been a part of major religion. When you think about it, our ancestors didn't have supermarkets or food available year-round. Sometimes they couldn't find anything to eat, and their bodies evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time.


What Is Fasting?

When you eat food, it gets broken down into various molecules that your cells can use. These molecules are released into your blood. Insulin is released as well, and its job is to shuttle the nutrients into the cells. Depending on how much food you eat in a meal, your insulin levels can remain elevated for several hours (from 3 – 6 and more).
When your body is digesting and absorbing what you’ve eaten, it’s in a “fed” or “post prandial” state. Once it has finished processing and absorbing the meal, insulin levels drop to a “minimum” low (or “baseline”) level, and your body enters a “fasted” or “post absorptive” state.
Every day your body moves between “fed” and “fasted” states, and the purpose of intermittent fasting is to extend the amount of time spent fasting.


The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
1. Promotes Weight Loss
One of the major intermittent fasting benefits is its ability to rev up fat burning and help the pounds slide off. In fact, many people prefer intermittent fasting to traditional diets because it doesn’t require you to meticulously measure your foods and track the calories and grams consumed.
2. Improves Blood Sugar
When you eat, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream. A hormone called insulin is responsible for transporting the glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells where it can be used up as energy.
3. Keeps Your Heart Healthy
One of the most impressive intermittent fasting benefits is its favorable effect on heart health. Studies show that intermittent fasting can help keep your heart healthy by lowering certain heart disease risk factors.
4. Reduces Inflammation
Inflammation is a normal immune response to injury. Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, can lead to chronic disease. Some research has even linked inflammation to conditions like heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer.
5. Protects Your Brain
In addition to keeping your heart healthy and warding off disease, some studies have found that intermittent fasting could also protect the health of your brain.
One animal study showed that intermittent fasting enhanced cognitive function and protected against changes in memory and learning function compared to a control group.
6. Decreases Hunger
Leptin, also known as the satiety hormone, is a hormone produced by the fat cells that helps signal when it’s time to stop eating. Your leptin levels drop when you’re hungry and increase when you’re feeling full.


For example, fasting triggers a physiological process known as “autophagy,” which deals with the destruction of cells in the body. Autophagy plays a crucial role in maintaining muscle mass and neutralizing some of the degenerative aspects of aging. In fact, it’s the primary mechanism behind the anti-aging effects of calorie restriction.

Eating healthy is simple, but it can be incredibly hard to stick to.

Eating healthy is simple, but it can be incredibly hard to stick to.One of the main obstacles is all the work required to plan for and cook healthy meals. If you do intermittent fasting, this gets easier because you don't need to plan, cook or clean up after as many meals as before. Intermittent fasting is actually very popular among the "life hacking" crowd because it improves your health while simplifying your life at the same time.
The simplest way to incorporate fasting into your diet is to allow your appetite and schedule dictate when you eat. For instance, if you wake up and you’re not hungry, you don’t have to eat breakfast for the sake of it. Wait until you’re hungry. Or if you find yourself stuck in a situation where the only food available is something you really don’t want to eat, skip the meal and make up the calories/macros later.


The Bottom Line
Studies show that when calorie deficits are matched, people lose weight equally well on a traditional diet as an intermittent fasting protocol. That said, just because intermittent fasting confers no metabolic benefits doesn’t mean it can’t help you in other ways.
If you’re a healthy adult that exercises regularly, whether you should do intermittent fasting boils down to how you like to eat and what best fits your lifestyle. If you get too hungry to comfortably fast for long periods. Find a meal frequency that works for you.
Remember that total daily intake (calories and macros) is what matters most in weight loss. How you get there is of little importance.

The Original Blog post was posted by our fabulous Weight Loss Coach, Registered Dietitian & Personal Trainer's blog - Coach Joel -
​ To read Joel's Blog and Original Post-  Click here >>>>>> 
​ http://your90daystransformation.com/2017/12/22/intermittent-fasting-healthy-lifestyle/

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--​What exactly do I mean by Sleeping in and Losing Weight? 


My personal trainer, registered dietitian & International weight loss expert Coach Joel calls this the "Whoosh" effect.

Many experts in weight loss refer to this as intermittent fasting. Basically after taking a break from eating after an extended period of time ( even sleeping works ) the body goes into a fat burning mode. This is not a calorie cutting way to lose weight (btw) It has more to do with using the body the way it works to naturally burn fuel. The timing your food intake to specifically have a natural burn and using our natural hormones to help us lose weight. Eating when you're hungry over eating when  the clock says it's time to eat. Many of us are so trained by the clock to eat on cue vs. when we're actually hungry.

When I first heard of intermittent fasting from my trainer, it scared me...honestly. All I could think was the downside on how this could be bad for the body since so many weight loss people push the 5 times a day of eating now. Many weight loss gurus encourage us to eat many meals a day throughout the day over having 3 meals which causes us to produce insulin throughout the day. Thinking this would be something which would lead me to feeling sluggish and and tired, I did not try it willingly. After experimenting with intermittent fasting (ALL by accident really with oversleeping and then watching the scale drop) After trying it out a few times were I at my last meal early at 6 PM and slept in until 11 o'clock on the weekends....I can say it truly works!

When you go from the 5 meals to the 3 meals ....it is a change you'll really notice physically and mentally. You're hungry again. You'll notice this right away over always feeling full throughout the day. The 5 meals a day are lower calorie meals and often higher in protein vs eating 3 more balanced meals spaced at certain times of the day. 

For more on intermittent fasting watch the below video. Of course, if you have questions Coach Joel can answer any for you as well. 

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Every journey has a moment when you've decided you've just simply had enough and want change. This change in my mindset has been a longtime coming for the last 4 or 5 years I've wanted to make a major change, but the final push to begin in a big way just wasn't there until very recently. The biggest positive change has been meeting and communicating with other people on the same path. This is a key piece in the journey!

A bit of my backstory. My weight loss journey has been on and off for most of my adult life. The first time I can remember "dieting" (as we called it back in the day) was after changing schools going from a relaxed environment to a super serious one. Being young and not sure what do with all the emotions I turned to food first (bad idea, but thought it was a good one at the time) Which worked for about a month or two, until I realized what was happening to my body. I can remember my mom had snapped a picture of me on the couch and I did not recognize myself.  The very first diet of my life began shortly after that picture was taken. 

For a few decades after this first diet I was on top of my food intake, very aware of everything good or bad which I put in my body. That change had been a catalyst for change in a good way. I was super committed to staying healthy, studying nutrition and exercising in moderation. All was good for many years. When I met my husband and had my children over a decade later things changed. The birth of my children brought about many changes in my body. The birth was pretty easy to recover from. All seemed fine for months then a serious weight gain started about a year later. That's when the battle with my weight started. Eating healthy everyday and exercising was the only way I could manage my weight consistently and this continued for another decade. Staying really conscious of what I consumed for food and how much exercised.

After that 10 year stretch I'd taken several office jobs back to back and not been as active, because of long hours and driving more. {Which we all need to be active regardless of how busy we are with our families, no excuses} Ready for a change for the last few years I've been meeting with personal trainers, dietitians, nutritionists, doctors and weight loss experts looking at different programs and paths to follow. One wanted me to be on a low fat plan. Another one wanted me to try a high protein plan. To tell you the truth they all have different views on what works and doesn't based on their own training and their clients success rates with different strategies. Much of what is written in books about weight loss is cookie-cutter and not as hands on as it needs to be. For many of us weight loss is just not as simple as calories in and calories out.

In real life we have many factors which prevent us from losing weight easily - hormonal differences, gender, age, metabolism issues, health conditions which prevent easy weight loss, etc. Bottom line is you must not give up and keep trying different plans until you find one which works for you.

I personally have recently started flexible dieting A.K.A. following my marcronutrient intake of foods for the last month. I've found it easy to follow and a convenient for a busy lifestyle. It's not short-term quick fix! It's not one of these trends were you'll drop 20lbs then when you stop you put it back on after you stop. This is a lifestyle you can follow long-term. I've been working with my dietitian and tracking my daily intake of food using My Fitness Pal - ​www.myfitnesspal.com  The strategy we've been using is looking at my health concerns first. Then next looking at the precise amount of calories from protein, carbohydrates and fats which are recommended based on those conditions. Then moving the numbers around based on those health concerns to get my weight to move.  Creating a calorie deficient to create weight loss is the goal, but at the same time working with the differences with metabolism, hormones etc. I must say loaded in the my fitness pal app are the default numbers which I must say will not work for everyone. A very fit person will have different numbers than someone who is not when it comes to carbs, fats and protein. 

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