People always ask what exercises gets rid of belly and back fat while chiseling a six pack?  The answer may surprise many of you.  Six pack abs don’t necessarily come from hours of work in the gym but rather from your diet.  Sure you need to do things that strengthen the core, but I know many who already have a six pack but due to the fat over the top you can’t see the work that been accomplished.

Fat loss uses my 80/20 rule.  80% of fat loss is diet and 20% is exercise.  They both play an important role but fat loss is more about the types of food you eat.  If you truly want to see your abdominal muscles you must follow these 8 food rules.

1.  Decide to eliminate or severely limit fructose and sucrose from your diet. This is very difficult because almost all processed foods contain fructose or sucrose.  This is the first and most important step to repairing hormone balances in your body that allow you to lose weight.  Read my blog post http://jacksonvillearkansasfitness.com/2015/03/13/health-begins-in-the-gut-gut-health/ for more on this.

2.  Add lots of ant-inflammatory vegetables to your diet. Vegetables like broccoli, carrots, onions, greens and sweet potato’s all have anti-inflammatory qualities that heal the body and help lower insulin levels and improve glucose management.  Lowering insulin levels is crucial to fat loss.

3.  Eat whole fruits every day. Fruits are loaded with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.  Many people may say don’t eat fruit if you’re trying to lose weight but it’s not true.  Eating whole fruit is one of the best things you can do for fat loss and muscle recovery.

4.  Eat eggs every day. Eggs are probably the best fat loss food in the world.  They are loaded with protein, vitamins and minerals.  Eat the whole egg because the yolk is where all the nutrients are located.  Don’t worry about the cholesterol because cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease chronic systemic inflammation does.  I have and will be writing more on inflammation.

5.  Put nuts in your snacks. Preferably use nuts that come from trees.  Nuts contain good fat (omega 3 oil) that make you feel full longer.  This is a great trick for overcoming leptin resistance and helping you avoid eating processed high fructose snacks.

6.  Get your gut right. Add foods like sauerkraut, kim chi, and yogurt to your diet.  These fermented foods contain probiotics that heal the gut lining and return the intestines to their natural state.  A healthy gut helps the body process nutrients more efficiently and lowers chronic systemic inflammation.

7.  Add these spices to your food. Turmeric, cinnamon and garlic should be added to food.  All three are anti-inflammatories, antibacterial, and antioxidants.  Turmeric and cinnamon both have been directly linked to fat loss in multiple studies.

8.  Drink plenty of water, but if water doesn’t do it for you. Drink green or black tea.  Both have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities.

Adopt these food rules and you won’t have to count calories.  Fat loss has nothing to do with how many calories you eat or the type of exercise you do.  It’s all the types of food you eat and correcting your hormone balance.  Start eating the right way today and begin losing fat.

If you would like more fitness and health information to include a FREE Super Foods e-book go to http://forms.aweber.com/form/68/1724902468.htm

Why is losing weight so hard?  The answer lies in the angry hormone triad.  The hormones leptin, insulin and cortisol dictate whether you lose or gain weight.  Get the angry hormone triad under control and you can lose weight.

Leptin is a hormone that’s designed to manage metabolism.  When leptin is functioning normal your metabolism roars on like a well tuned engine burning up the pizza you had last night.  In addition, it curves your appetite making you feel less hungry.  However, when leptin is out of balance your subconscious mind takes over because leptin takes over your brain.  Even though you are 50 lbs overweight leptin tells your brain you are hungry and need to eat.  At the same time your metabolism is grinding to a halt and stalling causing all that food your brain is telling you to eat to be stored as more fat.  This leads us to insulin.

Insulin is a master hormone and allows nutrients like sugar to enter and exit muscle and liver cells.  It does the same to fat cells.  If insulin levels are normal a person can store food in the form of glycogen and fat, but it can also allow you to release glycogen and fat from cells and burn it up as energy.  However, if insulin levels rise too much which is the case in many overweight people the body becomes wrecked with inflammation (which make you sick) and fat cells lose the ability to release fat.  When insulin levels are too high the body loses the ability to lose fat.

Cortisol is the last hormone in the angry hormone triad.  Cortisol is one bad mother.  This hormone stores unwanted fat at high rate’s, causes muscle to waste away, increases insulin and glucose levels, and slows metabolism.  Cortisol is controlled by a myriad of things.  Sleep, stress, exercise and food all play a role.  Allow this hormone to get angry and weight loss is a no go.

So how do you fix the angry hormone triad?  It’s easier than you think.  Number one is diet.  You must eliminate food that has no nutrients and is high in fructose.  You must add in nutrient dense food (vegetables, fruit, eggs and nuts), anti-inflammatory foods (broccoli, blue berries, and turmeric to name a few) and foods that restore normal gut flora (kim chi, sauerkraut, and greek yogurt).  (E-mail me and I will send you a free E-book loaded with this type of food).  Number two is exercise.  You must get fit.  Not walking fit but truly fit.  Increase muscle and strength with resistance training.  Keep exercise sessions short but intense.  Anaerobic exercise is essential to great health and weight loss.  Some think due to health and joint problems that there is no hope.  You’re wrong!  Everything can be modified as you strengthen the body and gain a level of fitness you once thought impossible.  Number three is sleep.  You must learn to improve the quality of your sleep.  Doing things like turning off most the lights two hours prior to bedtime and sleeping in complete darkness.  (Visit our Facebook page by searching Expect Results Fitness and look for the post 9 Things You Can Do To Get Better Sleep).  Number four is lowering stress.  Easier said than done, but you must determine the source of your stress and develop a plan that will allow you to eliminate it.  It may be developing a budget with Dave Ramsey or seeking parenting help from a counselor.  Stress must be made the servant not the master.

I would love to help you achieve your health and weight loss goals.  Contact me at 501-607-4974 and try Fitness Boot Camp for FREE!

Did you know that up to 70% of your immune system resides in your digestive tract?  In addition, an unhealthy digestive tract may play a role many of the chronic diseases Americans suffer from today.  An old Ayurvedic Proverb states, “When diet is wrong medicine is of no use, when diet is correct medicine is of no need.”  Truer words have never been written because what you eat determines the health of your digestive system and the health of your digestive tract plays a huge role on your total health.

The healthy gut is made up of trillions of bacteria called “flora” that assist in the digestive process among other things.  When you truly begin to study the digestive system and the impact it has on total health it can be a bit over whelming.  A healthy digestive tract protects the body from infection, regulates metabolism, and promotes immune health.  However, an unhealthy digestive system does just the opposite and is increasingly being linked to many of the chronic and autoimmune diseases plaguing America’s health.

The digestive system is designed to be a highly selective closed system.  This means the digestive tract contains and maintains sensors that should only allow useful nutrients to exit the intestinal walls and enter the blood stream.  However, research is telling us that certain foods and medicines increase the intestinal wall permeability allowing foreign matter to enter the blood stream and cause the immune system to act causing inflammation and potentially disease states.  This increased permeability is often referred to as “leaky gut syndrome.”

While the medical community does not fully understand the causes or cures for leaky gut syndrome, they do know that certain things have the potential to improve and cause dysfunction in the digestive tract.  The below information has the potential to improve your digestive tract and health.  In the case of medications mentioned we do not suggest you stop using the medication but do encourage you to do some research and have a conversation with your doctor about possible alternatives.

1. Eliminate or reduce refined and processed foods in your diet. Many of these foods contain chemicals that have the potential to damage the intestinal lining.
2. Eat fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir, kim chi, and yogurt or learn how to make your own fermented vegetables. Fermented foods increase the good bacteria in your gut and work exponentially better than probiotics.
3. However, if fermented food is not an option probiotics is the next best choice and will also increase good bacteria in the digestive tract increasing the health of the digestive system.
4. Eliminate or greatly reduce refined sugar in your diet. Sugar can cause an overgrowth in yeast which is linked to increased permeability in the intestinal lining.
5. Eat foods high in fermentable fiber like sweet potato, yams and yucca.
6. Eliminate or decrease gluten in your diet. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley and is linked to causing damage to the lining of the intestines.
7. Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDS) have the potential to damage the lining of your intestines and cause leaky gut.
8. Increase the amount of Vitamin D in your diet by getting out in the sun or eating more eggs.
9. Increase the amount of zinc in your diet, eating pumpkin seed, dark chocolate, and ribs.
10. Decrease stress. Make a worry list and determine everything that’s causing stress in your life.  Take care of the things that can be solved easily and develop a plan for those things that will take time.
11. Antibiotics can kill off too many good bacteria causing a shift in the good/bad ratio causing dysfunction within the digestive tract. Fermented foods and/or probiotics are needed reverse damage done by antibiotics.

If you would like more fitness and health information to include a FREE Super Foods e-book go to http://forms.aweber.com/form/68/1724902468.htm

In November 2012, I woke up with a sore throat and made an appointment with my family physician.  After a few tests, the doctor came in the exam room and said I tested positive for strep throat, but she was more concerned with my blood pressure.  She requested I monitor my blood pressure and come back in a few weeks to discuss medication if it remained high.

I left her office thinking, “I’m 41 years old, and I’m not ready to be placed on a medication for the rest of my life.”  I went straight home, got on my laptop and started doing research on blood pressure.  After several hours of reading, I concluded that my diet was the culprit and it had to change.

One of the first articles I read hit me hardest.  I loved soda and the article stated the caramel coloring in soda was linked to hypertension (not to mention all the sugar in soda).  It was clear–soda had to go, and I quit that day and replaced the habit with the anti-inflammatory green tea.  As I continued my research, I started seeing a continuous theme that I followed.  The theme was anti-inflammatory foods and how adding these foods to my diet could change my health.  So I embarked on an experiment that changed my life.

Although the FDA has not evaluated all of the reported benefits of so-called anti-inflammatory foods, I started adding many of these foods to my palate, and my blood pressure started going down and lots of other things improved as well.  My seasonal allergies disappeared; I haven’t taken an over-the-counter allergy medication since I changed my diet.  I lost the mental fog that plagued me; I think more clearly and have more energy.  I went for my annual physical in August 2013, and my cholesterol and triglyceride numbers were great, but best of all, my blood pressure had normalized without medication.

I’m a realist, and I know myself.  I knew it would be hard to eliminate everything processed from my diet, but I made a decision I could limit processed and high-sugar foods.  I still eat pizza and have the occasional cheeseburger and chocolate brownie, but I added lots of great whole foods and spices to my diet and the change has been nothing short of miraculous.

Anti-inflammatory foods are delicious and possess tons of benefits, so many benefits I can’t fit them all into this article.  I started eating fruits like blueberries and blackberries; they contain anthocyanin a nutrient with tremendous health benefits and they taste great when mixed with strawberries in smoothies.  I also added red grapes to my diet—they contain resveratrol which some nutritionists consider a potent natural phenol in food.  Some even refer to it as a “reverse it all” due to the health damage it may possibly reverse.

Vegetables I started eating were carrots and sweet potatoes–they have anti-inflammatory qualities and are packed with the antioxidant beta carotene.  Another potent vegetable I eat is broccoli—a food that some studies suggest lowers blood pressure and boost testosterone in men.  I added fat-rich foods also to my diet like olives, extra virgin olive oil, avocado, ground flax seed and almond—they may reduce compounds that increases inflammation in the body.

Proteins like wild salmon and tuna provide vital protein while packing a huge dose of omega-3 fatty acids.  If fish is not a common food in your diet,  add a fish oil or krill oil supplement.  Whole eggs are another health food loaded with protein and one of the only foods that contain natural occurring vitamin D.

Probably the most important additions I made were actually spices.  Turmeric—an anti-everything food used heavily in India—has been compared with ibuprofen in studies as an active anti-inflammatory agent.  Cinnamon and ginger are two other spices that have been reported to pack a huge anti-inflammatory punch and could even act as natural antibiotics and antifungal agents.

In my own case study, anti-inflammatory foods have changed my health.  I recommend adding the fruits, vegetables, proteins, fats  and spices in this article to your own diet.  They’re all natural foods with nearly zero negative side effects.  After all what do you have to lose—high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or even cancer?

**Too much turmeric can cause intestinal issues and can cause uterine contractions in pregnant women.  Do your own research on how much to use and talk to your physician before using it if your pregnant.

If you’re interested in getting fit and learning how to eat better call or text me at 501-607-4974.  We offer 30 minute fitness classes that concentrate on strength training and short bouts of aerobic exercise.