HOW OVERCOMING RESISTANCE HOLDS THE KEY TO WEIGHT LOSS

I had a great conversation last night with Jon Gabriel. He was my guest on my BlogTalkRadio show. Jon is the author of a new book called The Gabriel Method. It’s about a “non- diet”, diet program. Jon once weighed over 400 pounds. He is 6’2” and now weighs 185. Many people emailed me wanting to know how he lost over 200 lbs.—all without dieting. And Jon is more than willing to talk about it.

He’d been working on Wall Street in New York City and was under a tremendous amount of stress. He was supposed to travel on September 11 on Flight 93, which was the plane that crashed into the field in Pennsylvania. This near fatal experience had a profound effect on his life and he credits it with the epiphany he had about his weight.

Suddenly, Jon had the realization that he wasn’t a “fat person” and recognized that was a thin person in a fat body. When he realized this, he knew that he could lose weight without dieting because he had “reset” his belief systems. After his epiphany, everything became a lot easier for him. He knew exactly what was preventing him from losing weight and was totally clear on what he needed to do to get rid of the extra weight. The stronger his beliefs and understanding of his own, personal truth became, the faster the weight came off.

Anyone who struggles with weight loss experiences some form of resistance. The precise form it takes will vary from person to person. The ability to explore and understand one’s source of the resistance is the key to unlocking the door to weight loss. Jon’s book explores this concept in depth as well as its relationship to the power of the mind-body connection.

Maintaining high body fat is a primitive response to stress, which has been programmed in all of us since Paleolithic times, but we live in modern society. Everything we experience on a physical or emotional level will cause our “primitive” bodies to react exactly as they were programmed some 75,000 years ago. So, maintaining high body fat originally evolved as a means of protection against the cold or of some kind of bodily injury. But, this archaic message to our bodies motivates us to store extra calories. It makes perfect sense, therefore, that once the body has the protection signal removed, it will allow weight to be shed. The key here is to discover the “trigger” that informs the pituitary gland in our brain of impending danger.

If we can send the brain such a signal, then it follows that we can also send the brain a message that in order to survive, we need to be slim, fit, and agile. Obviously, this is a very different signal to the brain and one of the best ways to deliver it is by the type of exercise we do. If we are just walking for exercise at a leisurely pace, the body does not receive the reinforcement of a need to be slim and fit. One can be quite obese and be capable of walking.

However, if we do burst training where brief intense periods of high intensity exercise are performed repetitively, the body will get the message that slim and lithe suits us better for survival. This kind of exercise is what our primitive brains might perceive of as the same reflex we once occasionally used to out run a predator. Understanding how our primitive brains and genetic ancestry works is critical for weight loss and optimal health.

The hour interview with Jon flew by in what seemed like just a few minutes. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to him. He is a passionate and engaging man, who has gone far beneath the surface of weight loss resistance to find a truth that we can all share and put to great use!

BIOIDENTICAL HORMONE REPLACEMENT DONE RIGHT

I speak to many women every day who have their hormones replaced by doctors in the most random ways. Most traditional doctors treat menopause and hormone replacement based only on symptoms, and with no consideration of what is happening in women’s bodies physiologically. I’ve seen some pretty frightening things in my time.

One of the worst is when a woman starts having menopausal symptoms and the doctor never checks her hormone levels. Women tell me quite often that they’ve reported having irregular periods to their gynecologists. This usually occurs with women who are close to 50-years-old. Gynecologists are supposed to be experts in women’s health and especially with issues like menopause. I have even seen a few women in this situation being put on birth control pills to regulate their periods.

The most common scenario for replacing women’s hormones is to put them on a static dose of hormones. The only time in a woman’s life that she would have hormones continuously would be during pregnancy. And this is when women gain a lot of weight, develop high blood pressure, and insulin resistance.

Many times, menopause symptoms are treated with anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills. All of these treatments could and should be eliminated. Simply restoring a hormone balance would resolve all the problems associated with menopause—and without the use of any toxic, prescription drugs. The only hormone replacement approach that makes sense to me is to administer hormones in a dosage as close as possible to the pattern existing in a patient before menopause. This pattern should be rhythmic and suited to the individual.

I also don’t believe that women with hysterectomies should be treated with a different hormone schedule. Many doctors feel that if a woman doesn’t have a uterus, then she doesn’t need progesterone. The question to ask then is: “What about the rest of her body?”

Progesterone doesn’t just go to the uterus. It travels throughout the body where it plays an important function in balancing women’s hormones. Ultimately, I believe that putting women’s hormones back as close to the way they were before menopause has the greatest benefit for maintaining health. It can also prevent disease as well as age-related declines in health. It is vital to support normal body function as long as possible for optimal healthy aging in both women and men. Have you had any experiences like the ones I’ve described in this post? I’d like to know.