It’s not true. So, if you skip meals, it’s gonna have such a negative effect on your body that when you do go to sit down and eat, you’ll probably overconsume.

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A calorie is not just a calorie. It depends on the source of your calories, whether it’s coming from caloric-dense foods or nutritional-dense foods. Caloric-dense foods would be more so our cookies, our cakes. We can have a cookie that’s 100 calories, we’ll eat it, it’ll digest really fast, then it’s gonna spike our blood sugar levels where, when we start to crash again, we’re gonna crave more sugar for that energy pick-me-up.

And that can make you gain weight.

On the other hand, you can have a banana, Which is an example of a nutritionally dense food, do bananas make you fat?

Bananas do not make you fat. Bananas, they’re a great source of potassium, but for those 100 calories you’re also gonna get the fiber and the nutrients that your body needs in that cellular level to make sure that you are healthy and that you’re nourished and you definitely need to nourish your body.

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When we are restricting calories, you are restricting the energy source of your body. You’re also restricting the energy source of your brain. And if that’s happening, then, you know, very primitive, protective mechanisms start to kick into place where your body senses that as

a physiological threat and does start to shift your metabolic balance to burn less because it’s getting less.

Your body will jump into this protective physiological, biological mechanism to reduce the amount of energy you’re using, which is why it is hard for people to maintain weight and starving yourself can also shrink your muscles. You wanna make sure that you’re not eating less than 70% of your overall calorie needs.

If you do, that’s where not only are you probably gonna feel extremely hungry and it’s gonna take you off of any goals that you’re setting, but you’re probably gonna start compromising your muscle mass as well, and that’s where weight loss is gonna be unhealthy.

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Timing your meals is always a big question. The timing of the day is not going to affect weight loss. Calories are what’s going to affect weight loss or body-fat loss. So, if you eat a bunch of additional calories and you’re in calorie surplus and those are coming late at night, then that’s what’s causing something like weight gain.

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Our body runs on fuel, and food is our fuel. So if we have our breakfast, then we feel we have more sustained energy throughout the day. if you do choose to eat breakfast, feel free to go for that 2% yogurt.

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Fat is incredibly necessary. We should not be afraid of fat. We need fat in our diet. Fat’s gonna be necessary for things like absorbing nutrients, like the fat-soluble nutrients like vitamin A and D and E and K.

And you also need to make sure that fat, specifically cholesterol, is what’s gonna help produce things like your hormones, so things like estrogen and testosterone, growth hormones, so we need all those kind of things. Fat-free foods are often loaded with sugar or salt.

So, if you have a wholesome product and you’re removing the fat of it, it’s gonna taste completely different. You probably wouldn’t even like it. But what they’re gonna do is replace that flavor with something else, and usually it’s either sodium or sugar. So, with sugar, when we have, like, a yogurt that has the fruit at the bottom, they’re gonna have way more sugars than if you had, like, a 2% Greek yogurt.

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Fat isn’t the only nutrient you can keep in your diet and still lose weight. One of the biggest myths about carbs is that you must omit them from your diet to lose weight, or my body doesn’t digest them well and I have to omit them because I’d never lose weight unless I restrict myself. It’s not true. It’s almost impossible to have a no-carb diet. Fruits and vegetables are known as carbohydrates, and we must get those for their nutrients.

Why do carbs have a bad name? It’s because of the simple carbs. The carbs that you see prepackaged that are the cookies, the cakes, the sodas, and the potato chips. They’re called simple carbs because the chemical structure of them is usually one to two glucose molecules put together. So, when you have, like, a small glucose molecule, it’s easy for them to break away.

But with our complex carbs, they are really long chains of carbon that usually are about 18-carbon long, and then, by the time that your body starts to break it down, it’s gonna take a while, and that’s exactly what we want because it helps balance our blood sugar and also that fiber keeps us full for longer and then also prevents us from snacking. So, eat your carbs.

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what about going gluten-free to lose weight? Gluten-free for weight loss can be a huge marketing ploy. So, with gluten-free, there are a lot of people that do have an intolerance to gluten. Or they have celiac disease, which is where the body starts attacking itself and can deteriorate the body. But there are also people without these conditions who are looking to…

Blame something like gluten without checking the rest of their diet. If you are honest with yourself, recording your food, checking the ingredients, and then you eat the gluten and you feel the intolerance, then great. But a lot of people will choose to just jump in and be like, gluten’s the enemy. So, most of us don’t need to cut out gluten or fat or carbs to lose weight.

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The diet sodas are terrible, with all the additives, preservatives in them, and hidden sugars. A lot of the added sugars are the synthetic sugars

that are supposed to be great because they don’t release insulin, which then doesn’t cause a spike in blood sugar levels. But, internally,

if we don’t stimulate the release of insulin, those sugars, the synthetic sugars, go to the liver, build up around the liver, hinder the functioning of the liver, and then can lead to nonalcoholic fatty disease.

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If you’re having juice every once in a while, great. You’re still getting the antioxidants out of it, you’re still getting the nutrients, but you’re removing that fiber. And fiber is key for the body to support gut health. With a lot of juice cleanses, they’re hella expensive, and we have this belief that they’re gonna be better for our bodies or it’s a cleansing effect of our body.

Realistically, what’s happening is that, when you have those juice cleanses that are mostly coming from, like, fruit sugars and then the vegetable sugars, it’s a high, high amount of fructose in the body. When the body consumes excess fructose, it has a spasming effect of the GI tract that can lend to the cleansing effect. So that when we are actually having a reaction to the high amounts of fructose in the body, people think it’s the cleansing effect because the marketing ploys have led us to believe that way.

But it’s not. You would be better cleansing your body by actually eating the apple, eating the spinach, and eating all the other fruits that are in that cleanse. That would be better for you because fiber is our natural detox. What it does is it goes through the body, picks up, like, excess fat, metabolic waste, and help cleanse it out.

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It can restrict calories and, at least temporarily, help you lose weight. If you’re only allowed to eat food for eight hours, that just gives someone a lot of structure, and that can be very, very helpful. You can only get so many calories in your mouth in that time. On the flip side,

someone can get a lot of calories in their mouth during that time as well. So, someone can, and many people do it, they’ve gained weight through intermittent fasting. So it’s not just gonna be this quick fix; there’s nothing magical to it.

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One of the common diets right now that is gaining popularity is the ketogenic diet. So, a lot of people who are doing that are just eliminating carbohydrates, which is why that’s hard to sustain, because your body does need carbohydrates for a reason. To be honest, there’s not a lot of research. There’s maybe a lot of research in mice models, but that hasn’t been transcribed into human studies.

People are eliminating whole grains and legumes, certain fruits and vegetables, and really increasing their fat intake, which, although fats are important, excess of any nutrient can cause metabolic changes in your body that will impact your cardiovascular health, your physical health, your metabolic health.

People are following ketogenic diets, are seeing weight loss, however, are coming with higher cholesterol markers, they’re coming with higher LDL markers, they’re coming with more irritable bowel symptoms, they’re coming with more gastrointestinal discomfort.

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The most prevalent concept around health these days is biohacking, which is the idea that you can defeat biology, you can work around your genetic predispositions, your metabolic parameters, and that is actually not true. And the reason for that is because you cannot defeat biology, you cannot hack hunger, you cannot hack access to healthcare, you cannot hack motivation.

And this idea that, again, if those results are there, you’re going to be able to feel more satisfied is also not true. So, this biohacking works on this concept and this belief that, you know, you can work your way and fix your body, and that prescribes to the social construct that it is up to you to change that.

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They’re hard to sustain, they’re hard to maintain, so the results are very temporary, which is why we go back to something, trying something new. It’s important to focus on behaviors rather than outcomes. A simple food log to lose weight is really just being honest with yourself,

identifying your foods and the hidden ingredients that could be contributing to excess of hundreds and hundreds of calories per day.

Take olive oil. Olive oil is great. But when we cook with it, we usually free-pour it into a pan. Each tablespoon of olive oil has 128 calories.

Now, if you’re pouring in, like, 6, 7, 8 tablespoons with your vegetables, you’re getting almost 1,000 calories that you don’t need.

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No, remove that. Because then you’re gonna want it more, and you’re gonna feel even more guilty about it. If you go out and you’re socializing

and you’re trying out any best restaurants that have filled with cream and butter, enjoy it. Just try to get a salad to start.

And filling up on salad is a great way to cut calories.

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Weight definitely isn’t everything. one of the biggest myths around weight loss and weight is that overweight equals unhealthy, normal weight equals healthy, as defined by the BMI category. BMI is a very inaccurate measure of health because it is just looking at your height and weight without taking into account what your metabolic factors and parameters are, what is your physiological health, your physical health, your sleep, your mental health, your relationship to food.

it’s very important to factor those things if we really wanna define someone as healthy. And if we’re not gonna look at it more holistically, I think what that does is it marginalizes people in bigger bodies. Plus, not everyone can lose weight, even if they’re putting in the same effort.

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That’s a very common myth, that everybody should have, has the same ability to lose weight, and if everybody eats the same way, they’re gonna look the same way, which is very untrue, and that’s incorrect. And the reason for that is I think it’s important to understand that

someone’s weight is a factor of so many different things. It is so complex.

All the way from your genetic predispositions, your family history, your past medical history, your relationship to food as you were growing up, because not everybody has access to food. Because health is about inclusion, access, connection, joy, and physiological well-being, and we have to take those factors into account.

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REDUCE BELLY FAT