Improve Your Health & Lose Weight with Kim Shapira: Rational Wellness Podcast 338

View the Show Notes For This Episode

Kim Shapira discusses How to Improve Your Health and Lose Weight with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

1:26  Some of the biggest challenges that clients have when trying to lose weight include that they do not listen to what's going on inside their own body.  You need to be mindful and use your rational mind, which knows that food is fuel. Our irrational mind thinks food is comfort, joy, entertainment, the enemy, fun. 

6:08  In order to figure out which foods are good for us, Kim likes to run the Everywell Food Sensitivity panel, which is done by pricking your own finger at home and sending it in and this test is reasonably priced.

10:56  Kim has six rules for eating and the first one is to only eat when you're hungry. And she also recommends the 15 minute rule so that you learn to eat slowly and that is to only eat no more than half of your food in 15 minutes by putting half as much food on your fork or spoon, put your fork down between bites, and chew your food many more times than you are used to, and eating slowly.  It takes about 15 minutes from the time we start eating for the hormone leptin to be secreted that helps tell us that we are satiated. After 15 minutes you can check in with yourself and see if you are satisfied or not yet.  Many of us today are eating so quickly and frequently and so much that we don't really know what being hungry is.  We are hard wired to be afraid of being hungry, since this means that our survival is at risk.  But in the modern world where food is readily available, we should get used to being hungry and it is important to be hungry every 2 to 4 hours.  If you are not hungry every 2 to 4 hours, your body fat is too high or you overate your last meal.   

18:40  Emotional triggers.  Early in our lives we tend to develop our own individual emotional triggers, which take us out of our rational mind into your irrational mind. This leads to emotional eating. We flip from from thinking about food as fuel to food as comfort or food as fun.  When we have a thought that food is a good idea, which should scan our body and take some deep breaths and figure out if we're really hungry or just wanting to eat for an emotional reason.

20:19  Hormones.  There are a number of hormones that play a role in regulating appetite, including ghrelin, leptin, insulin, and cortisol.  When our tank actually gets a little low, ghrelin sends a signal to the brain telling us it is time to start focusing on the next meal. When we eat slowly, we give leptin a chance to tell our brain that we're satisfied. When we respond to stress incorrectly, such as the stress from either lack of sleep, too much sleep, alcohol, or food choices that are inflaming your body, the way that your nervous system is responds can cause our cortisol, our sex hormones, and our blood sugar to get out of whack.  This is when we tend to store excess energy as fat.  We need to work on meditation and mindfulness and long walks and listening to high vibration music and singing and humming and having more joy in our life, so we can relax our nervous system so we can say to our body, "We're actually safe. We're safe right now. You are safe to carry on. We do not need to store that way."

24:24  Exercise.  When it comes to exercise, Kim recommends getting 10,000 steps per day, which is common recommendation.  We need to work on muscle strength, muscle endurance, and balance. 

Kim Shapira is a dietician with a BA in Kinesiology from Tulane and a Masters degree in Human Metabolism and Clinical Nutrition from Boston University and author of This is What You’re Really Hungry For: Six Simple Rules to Transform Your Relationship with Food to Become your Healthiest Self.   Her website is KimShapiraMethod.com.  

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.  Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111. Dr. Weitz is also available for video or phone consultations.