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Dealing with Stress and Weight Gain?

July 18, 2008

Recent research has proven a direct link between stress and weight gain – particularly in the abdomen. The Keep Canada/Keep America Slim program deals in depth with stress and its connection to weight gain. In the meantime, here are some tips to help combat this side effect.

The over-riding philosophy of dealing with stress is to try and make stress a positive force in your life. Since it is unlikely that you will eliminate many sources of stress, you must learn to live with it in a positive way. In the future, when you feel stressed, use one of these approaches.

1. Exercise. This is a great stress-buster, but remember moderation. Excess exercise actually increases stress at a hormonal level. Choosing something that relaxes you – casual aerobics, a hike in the woods, playing with your kids, gardening – these are better choices than challenging yourself with a 10k run for instance. Don’t exerciser to exhaustion, just enough to offset the stress.

2. Eat a balanced diet -- and never skip a meal. This of course is a foundation of KCS. Smaller meals more often will regulate the appetite-increasing urges that come from stress.

3. Get enough sleep.  Sleep also helps stabilize stress and appetite hormones. Lack of sleep causes a stress reaction, making us hungry.

4. Escape from the source.  Take a break every day from your work and your daily routine. Help out on a minor sports team, volunteer in your community. Balancing the time spent in stressful situations like commuting with an “escape activity” will help your body to deal with stress when you face it. Without a break, daily stress becomes weekly and monthly, then yearly stress. It’s this continual stress that eventually creates abdominal fat. Reading a good book (not your newspaper), watching comedy shows, listening to soothing music, but be sure to focus. Don’t let your mind drift back to the source of your stress.

5. Eat whole foods. Stress makes us crave carbs, so keep a supply of healthy carbs and snacks handy. Fruit, cut-up veggies, nuts, cereal and other whole grain baked goods are better than convenience foods and high-sugar snacks, which are quickly turned into abdominal fat in the presence of stress hormones.

6. Limit caffeine, soft drinks and alcohol – Excess of these can cause cortisol levels to rise, stress to increase, blood sugar to drop and hunger to prevail. On the other hand, 1 or 2 drinks a day can lower stress. It’s all about moderation.

7. Take supplements. Numerous medical studies have shown that stress depletes important water soluble nutrients including B complex, vitamin C and minerals such as calcium and magnesium. Some nutrients, such as calcium, can actually help burn fat, offsetting the fat gained through stress.

8. Don’t diet. Losing weight can cause stress. The KCS program will keep you out of dieting but still in a weight-loss zone without creating undue stress.

Nutrients to offset stress

B VITAMINS, consisting of 11 separate nutrients, help support a healthy nervous system. The B vitamins are generally associated with brain and nervous-system function. Although some research indicates that individual Bs may have specific effect on stress, we recommend you always take the entire B Complex in balance.

VITAMIN C and other antioxidants.  Antioxidants from dietary sources, supplements or a combination of both reduce the cellular damages associated with oxidative stress. Stress increases the production of free radicals which lead to aging and ultimately disease.

MAGNOLIA EXTRACTS.  Based on Ayurvedic (India) medicine dating back thousands of years, this plant can reduce anxiety, irritability and nervousness.

PANAX GINSENG. Ginseng has been used historically in Asia for a variety of health benefits, but particularly for its adaptogenic and tonic effects on fatigued or stressed people.

ASHWAGANDHA. This root, also known as winter cherry or Indian ginseng, is another important herb from the Ayurvedic system of medicine.

RHODIOLA. Also known as Arctic root has been used in traditional folk medicine in China, Serbia, and the Carpathian Mountains of the Ukraine. In the former Soviet Union, it has been used as an adaptogen.

Stress is a normal part of life. What really matters are how much stress, what kind of stress, and ultimately how each individual handles the stress they face. If you are often stressed and show the weight-gain signs of abdominal fat, start to take steps to counteract it.

For more information on supplements, plus a list of recommended products, contact us at info@keepcanadaslim.com.

Supplement companies under scrutiny – Buyer beware!

June 25, 2008

The prison sentence handed out to former Metabolife CEO Michael Ellis this month in connection with adverse event reporting for a weight loss supplement reminds us of the caution we need to exercise in choosing supplements for health or weight loss. Ellis was given a six-month sentence and was ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.

In other news, the US FDA sent notices to 23 companies telling them to stop making cancer-cure claims for their products. Companies that fail to properly resolve violations cited in the warning letters will be subject to enforcement including seizure of illegal products, injunction, and possible criminal prosecution.

In a third report, dietary supplements maker Mannatech said it had settled lawsuits with shareholders who had accused the company of making false claims and using improper business practices to increase sales and boost the value of its stock.
Metabolife 365 was a top-selling supplement for several years in the US and on the Internet. The company also set up mall kiosks to mass market the product.  It was an ephedra-based product (illegal in Canada).

Metabolife sent letters to the US FDA in 1999 stating the company "never received a notice from a consumer that any serious adverse health event has occurred because of the ingestion of Metabolife 356." However in 2002, the company was forced to reveal they had more than 14,000 reports of adverse effects. These included seizures, heart attacks, strokes, loss of consciousness and other serious illnesses.

In the wake of the Metabolife episode, the US government tightened the rules surrounding Adverse Effect Reports, culminating in the passing in December 2006 of the Dietary Supplement and Non-Prescription Drug Consumer Protection Act. The legislation amended the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to require the reporting of serious adverse events for both over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements to the FDA.

However, creating a law and enforcing it are two different things. Companies can (and will) continue to try to avoid the negative press associated with these events.
Our recommendation at Keep Canada/Keep America Slim is to only buy Canadian government approved products. We recommend not buying products over the Internet unless you are familiar with the company and are sure of their reputation for safety.

Keep Canada Slim has a recommended line of products which we have used for more than 10 years, and would be happy to provide you with this list if you wish. We would also be willing to evaluate your current supplements, if you are taking another product. You may also wish to go to www.consumerlabs.com for recommendations.

At KCS we believe supplementation is a simple and effective way to improve your health, but quality and safety remain two serious issues. Don’t gamble with your health. Be careful of claims that sound too good to be true.

 

The Truth about Ghrelin

May 15, 2008

You may have read the article or seen a report on television recently about a so-called breakthrough in which Canadian researchers at McGill University have identified the fact that a hormone called ghrelin seems to cause people to overeat. Let me try to answer questions you may have on this issue.

Ghrelin as we mention in the Keep Canada Slim materials is only one of a number of hormones that impact our appetite, satiety, and food metabolism. It is no more or no less important than any of the others. These other hormones include insulin, serotonin, leptin, cortisol, dopamine and others.

Each one has a role to play in telling us when to eat and when to stop eating and also in helping us utilize food. When your body and your metabolism is in balance these hormones are in balance and do their job successfully. Alternatively if these hormones are out of balance your eating and fat-storing habits will be negatively affected.

In the case of ghrelin this hormone is created in our stomach and tells us that it's time to eat. Without ghrelin we might go days without food. This would not be healthy.

The articles about ghrelin, in the typical unbalanced media perspective, suggest that in the future we might have a drug that could control our ghrelin levels so that we don't want to eat. The concept would be that this drug would help us control ourselves while surrounded with all the food choices we have in the modern world. The underlying analysis is that overweight people have no self-control and are constantly gorging themselves on whatever foods pass their line of vision, apparently because of ghrelin gone wild.

All of this is wrong on several counts. First off as we know the vast majority of Canadians have tremendous willpower when they decide to go on a diet. They are not over-eating. The problem is quite the opposite - the common Canadian diet approach is to eat fewer calories than you need to maintain basic metabolic function and therefore put yourself into starvation metabolism. The result of this naturally is to initially stimulate ghrelin levels which then make us feel very hungry.

Since we are using our willpower to overcome this natural urge, we begin to create internal stress. This in turn generates cortisol, the stress hormone, which makes us want to eat more. We don’t, because we are on a diet, so next we don’t stimulate serotonin, which tells us when we have had enough. Low serotonin leads to depression and makes us feel that we are depriving ourselves when we choose not to eat. This negative association makes weight loss an unhappy prospect for most people.

If we maintain our caloric level above our basal metabolic rate level and below our maintenance level, as explained throughout the Keep Canada/Keep America Slim materials we don't over-stimulate ghrelin and therefore don't have this issue to deal with.

I hope this explains to you how dieting and chronic under-eating causes hormones to be out of balance. When people continually live on a low-calorie diet as is the case today with many adults of all ages, especially postmenopausal women, they eventually disturb hormone levels and ghrelin and the other hormones become less effective. It could to be that over time by constant dieting ghrelin is not even created in sufficient quantities to stimulate appetite. Our biggest challenge as many of you know in the Keep Canada/Keep America Slim program is to actually get our clients to eat enough food every day. None of our clients are over eating and therefore none would require a drug to reduce ghrelin levels.

In actual fact the true breakthrough in this study is the discovery that possibly ghrelin levels could be used to stimulate appetite. The first target group for this would be anorexics and people recovering from surgery who have no appetite. The second target group would be people who have conditioned their metabolism to live on a low-calorie starvation diet and are now struggling to eat sufficient calories to release starvation metabolism and achieve success with long-term weight control, such as that presented in the Keep Canada/Keep America Slim lifestyle.

And finally there is a way that you can utilize this new understanding in a positive way. One practical application of this discovery is in the explanation of why we tend to buy more food at the grocery store if we are hungry when we go shopping. The higher levels of ghrelin in our body make food more attractive and we therefore buy more than we intended, and perhaps more than we need.

So the successful application of this new discovery would be to have something to eat before you go grocery shopping. This will satisfy the ghrelin impulse and help you to have balanced hormones when you are grocery shopping, which will result in more rational purchases.

What if everyone is wrong about obesity?

January 1, 2008

Hamilton, ON: What if everyone is wrong about obesity? What if overweight people become obese because they don't eat enough food rather than because they eat too much food? What if every diet you've ever been on actually made you fatter in the long run, not thinner?

This may seem like a radical and even ridiculous idea in a food-rich society where 61% of adults are overweight and 25% of us are clinically obese but the creators of the new Keep Canada/Keep America Slim Do-It-Yourself program say everyone is looking the wrong way when it comes to understanding the growing epidemic of weight gain. As Canadians head into their annual January diet and exercise mania, it may be wise to listen to his ideas.

"Think carefully," says author Lee Fairbanks "if it was as simple as just eating less and exercising more wouldn't we be the thinnest nation in the world? After all we spend some $4 billion a year on weight loss programs. Ask any overweight person and they will tell you they've lost a lot of weight - sometimes even hundreds of pounds - on diets. But they gained it all back and are now fatter than ever."

Fairbanks, a member of the Canadian Obesity Network, explains this apparent paradox by suggesting that the human body has unique survival mechanisms that we don't understand yet - but adds that we don't need science to prove what we can see and experience first hand.

"If you speak to obesity researchers, they will tell you that we can't explain how the body reacts to dieting," he says. "We don't really know why someone can lose 10 pounds in a week on a calorie restricted diet but only one pound the next week on the same diet. Or why a person's weight can stabilize at an obese level even though they are consuming dramatically less calories than science has proven their body needs. People would lose weight at a steady rate and keep it off if these approaches worked, but they don't."

Fairbanks says that after 10 years in the weight loss industry his message is finally reaching the medical community. The general public however continues to embrace programs that make them fatter.

"Most doctors recognize that the traditional approaches they have recommended in the past simply don't work, but they are at a loss as to where to turn next. Most doctors today refuse to recommend any diets because they have seen the results - their patients get fatter. Most assume that fat people are over-eating on a daily basis, but our consulting proves this is not the case. There is a fundamental flaw in virtually every diet and that is that people simply eat too little while they are trying to lose weight."

Patti Cannon, Education Director for Keep Canada/Keep America Slim (KCS) says that 99% of KCS clients are asked to eat more food than they are currently consuming on a daily basis in order to lose weight and keep it off. Cannon said she has included everything she offers to private clients in the new comprehensive do-it-yourself educational program that was launched today. Until now the complete Keep Canada/Keep America Slim program was only available through certified consultants and health and wellness offices.

"Most obese people and many overweight people live in a constant state of calorie deprivation in a vain attempt to stay slim," she says. "Unfortunately the result of this constant dieting is that they become fatter and fatter."

Fairbanks is critical of virtually all commercial diet programs and especially those known as 'medically supervised'.

"I used to think that 'medically supervised' meant that patients were getting special programs based on superior science that was not available to the rest of us, but that's not the case. Medically supervised actually means that you are exposing yourself to serious health risks by starvation dieting, so you need a doctor to monitor these events as they occur. What we find in Canada however, is that almost all dieters put themselves on 'medically supervised' levels of calories, but without medical support. Let me be clear about this. Overweight people become obese by going on diets. They also put their health at risk"

A 2007 Rutgers University study showed that post-menopausal women lose 3% of their bone mass every 6 months on a low-calorie diet. Low calorie diets are defined as diets that restrict calories to less than the amount required for basic metabolic function. This can range from 1200 to 2000 calories, depending on the goal weight of the individual. It is well-documented that people on diets lose muscle mass as well as fat. Anorexics often die of heart failure, due to the loss of heart muscle tissue.

"Statistics show that more than 50% of Canadians trying to lose weight create their own program based on random collections of fact and fallacies," says Fairbanks. "This is one very good reason why 95% of people who lose weight gain it back. With this new comprehensive program people will have a step-by-step template to follow, and one that they can review over and over again until they truly understand what works and what doesn't."

Keep Canada/Keep America Slim began in 1997 and was first published in book form in 2001. The new program includes the third edition of the book, a four CD set audio book, a cookbook, a food guide, a workbook, a DVD and three months website tracking on www.keepcanadaslim.com.

"The DVD, audio book and website are enormous enhancements to our program," explained Fairbanks. "The DVD includes more than two hours of easily understood presentations of key principles and advice as well as one hour of shopping tips with real food plus a bonus hour of information that goes beyond weight loss towards optimum health. There is no system in Canada that can match it as an educational program."

Fairbanks says the KCS program is "weight control for smart people," whereas everyone else is following "dieting for dummies."

Unlike fad diets, support for the program has been widespread throughout the wellness industry.

"It's really quite remarkable," says Dr. Albert Scales of St Catharines. "I have seen amazing results in my office. In most cases people had given up hope of ever gaining control of their weight, but the KCS program works for everyone. I encourage everyone who has been a victim of the yo-yo diet industry to try the Keep Canada/Keep America Slim approach."

Fairbanks describes his book as a 180-degree turn for the weight loss industry. "The sad thing is that losing weight and keeping it off is so easy once you know the facts, but despite a mountain of information Canadians are not making the right choices when it comes to weight control," he says. "Experience tells us that you can't just eat less and exercise more, and yet 1,000,000 Canadians try exactly that strategy every January. It's time people started to realize that the old ways don't work. It's time for a new approach."

The Keep Canada/Keep America Slim Do-It-Yourself program is available on the website at www.keepcanadaslim.com. and at consulting centres in St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Burlington, Brantford, London, Strathroy, Belmont, Windsor, Woodstock, Perth, Smith Falls, Toronto, Simcoe, Winnipeg and Calgary.