(Guest post by Shaun Hadshall) Did you know that if you’re 40, 50, or 60 years old and focus solely on optimizing hormones that you can lose 65% more weight than following a calorie-cutting diet? In fact, this was confirmed in a peer-reviewed published research study from the New England Journal of Medicine, it took two groups of dieters, and the group that focused solely on hormones and ignores calorie counting lost 65% more weight than the group that was suffering their way through another crash diet.
Shaun Hadshall is the founder of Beyond 40 and in this post, he shares 3 simple strategies that you can use to take control of insulin. Insulin is your body’s number one fat storage hormone, so by taking control of insulin you can keep your body in a fat burning environment around the clock.
I’m also gonna share a list of foods at the end that you can add to your diet starting today that will automatically boost your body’s master fat-burning gland, your thyroid gland, this is super important because your thyroid regulates your metabolism and it controls your body weight, so more on that in a second.
First, let’s talk about insulin because when insulin is elevated it makes impossible for your body to access the fat as a fuel on a daily basis. So it is in your best interest to take total control of insulin and keep it stable, and the three strategies I’m about to share will help you to do that.
1. Food pairing
the first one is food pairing or food combination. In particular, every time that you eat a high sugar fruit or a high starchy food, you’re going to raise insulin higher and faster than other foods because complex carbohydrates and fruits raise insulin higher and faster because of the sugar content in them, this takes the body out of a fat burning environment.
The problem is that you need these carbohydrates because every time you follow a low-carb diet whether is paleo or keto or the Mediterranean, any of these low-carb diets can and do work temporarily. So it only takes one week and research shows that leptin and thyroid hormones can be suppressed up to 50% just by cutting out glucose-based carbs.
The problem here is that glucose from these starchy carbohydrates is a building block of thyroid and leptin hormones so you need that glucose. The solution is what I call carb refits. So about two or three nights of the week I have a high carb dinner or what I like to do is on the weekends when we are naturally want to eat more carbs, I’m just going to have a higher carb day or two where I’m gonna eat cleaner carbs. But the secret to making it all this work is to combine these carbohydrates with a high-quality protein.
So I recommend a fist-sized portion of carbs whether is a piece of fruit like an apple or something like that that has more sugar in it, I would go ahead and maybe have ¾ of a cup of cottage cheese or greek yogurt with it.
Now with this, I’m decreasing the glycemic index and the glycemic load by combining these two foods together, keeping insulin more stable.
Same thing with starches, oats, rice, potatoes, or any of these starchy carbohydrates. Fist size with a palm-sized portion of lean protein. Chicken turkey, fish, lean red meat, eggs, any type of lean protein with the carbs.
Again, this will help stabilize and lower the insulin spike from those carbohydrates, keeping the body in a fat-burning environment.
2. Intermittent fasting.
The second strategy is to use some form of intermittent fasting, so I don’t care what method you use, when you’re in a fasted state, insulin’s automatically stable, it’s lower and what happens is this allows your body to release other fat burning hormones like glucagon, like growth hormone, like adrenaline, and these hormones will release fatty acids from your fat cells into the bloodstream where they can be used as fuel during the fasted window.
So any type of intermittent fasting, whether you wanna do a simple 12 – 12 method where you fast for 12 hours and you feed for 12 hours, or maybe you wanna use the 16 eight, or 5 days per week, where you fast for 16 hours and you only feed for eight, or maybe you just want to do a really healthy fast where you fast for 24 hours once a week or twice a week if you want to be agressive.
Any one of these methods is going to allow insulin to be stable during the fasted window to help you burn more fat.
3. Exercise timing
the third strategy is exercise timing. See, eating before exercise is not necessarily a bad choice because it will give you energy and will increase your performance. However, remember of you eat before exercise, even if there are no carbs in the meal, you’re still going to raise insulin and it takes your body out of a fat-burning environment, so although you might be increasing energy and performance you’re gonna decrease your body’s ability to use stored fat as a fuel source.
So the solution is a couple of times per week is to exercise in a fasted state. If you’re new to this, I recommend shorter workouts to start with. But some types of high intensity in a fasted state, whether you wake up in the morning and do it right away, you do it during a fasted window, or you wait about 3 and a half to 4 hours after a meal.
So you see, you eat a balanced meal, it’s going to raise insulin no matter what the food is, so you wanna wait about 3 ½ to 4 hours, this will allow insulin to stabilize so when you go to exercise now the body can access those stored fat cells as a fuel source.
And lastly, let’s talk about this list of foods, 11 foods that you can add to you diet, and this is super important, again, because they help boost your thyroid hormones and this is critical if you’re over 40 years old, because your thyroid literally is the master fat burning gland of your body.
This is not about health and looking great, that is just the bonus side effects, this is about life changes, you see, when you put the right stuff in your body, when you exercise, and you eat right consistently and you optimize your hormones using the strategies that I shared, it is not a “maybe offering”, it is going to leak over into every area of your life in a positive way. I know personally that when I do this stuff, I’m a better papa to my grandkids, I’m a better husband to my wife, I’m a better Christian, I’m stronger spiritually, I’m better at my career, It leaks over into every area of your life automatically, this is not a gift that is reserved for me,it is for you too, and lastly time!. Time is our precious commodity, we have a bunch of noise I hope this helps you to cut through the clutter and the noise and keep going strong.
