If you’ve read my blogs before you’ll know my belief that you need to get healthy, to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy!!! When your bodily systems are properly balanced, your body’s fat levels normalise. So how do you normalise your bodily systems, get healthy and lose body fat?
I have heard so many times on TV and also from Doctors and nutritionists, ”all you need to do to eat well and be healthy is to eat a balanced diet”.
This would seem to the majority of the public that this is a good advice.
On first glance it is. It is certainly not advised to eat junk, although some ‘experts’ advise people to eat it occasionally.
Firstly, I don’t believe there is ‘a’ balanced diet, but an individualised diet right for each specific person and their biochemical individuality.
Let’s assume that you are eating a perfect diet for you. Does this mean you are going to maximise your health and lose weight assuming you are leading a healthy lifestyle? Well, not necessarily.
Many health professionals will advise that supplements are unnecessary to be healthy. I would agree that this might be the case in a very small proportion of the population. In addition, many of the supplements readily available are of poor quality.
Many supplements are indeed synthetic and cause inflammation and can cause more harm than good. In addition to this, supplements are given out in a ‘this for that’, allopathic approach that does nothing to heal the person as a whole and can cause just as many imbalances as it is trying to balance.
There are a number of reasons why you might consider supplementing your diet to get healthy and lose body fat:
- If your diet is deficient in nutrients
- If your digestive system is not functioning as it should
- If you have or have had infections
- If you hormonal system is out of balance
Is your Diet Deficient?
If you eat a diet that is 100% organic (with wild fish) and it has no contaminants in, is always fresh, and hasn’t been stored in plastic or metal and hasn’t travelled more than 200 miles to get to you and you don’t cook it. Then it might still have the optimum level of nutrients in it.
If all the above factors are not in place, then you probably need to consider supplementing.
Is Your Digestive System Functioning as it Should?
There are very few people today who have a good functioning digestive system. If you suffer from constipation, have less than one bowel movement a day, diarrhoea, flatulence, slow colon transit time or fast colon transit time, athlete’s foot, eczema, asthma, acne, psoriasis, depression, mood swings, arthritis, an auto-immune disease, lethargy or chronic fatigue, chances are you have a less than optimal digestive system.
However, there are many people who have no symptoms what so ever and still have major digestive problems. It’s almost a daily occurrence for me to receive laboratory test results of clients with a ‘leaky gut’, a stressed liver, oxidative stress, fungal and/or bacterial overgrowth and/or a parasite infection.
Most people think they would know if they have these problems, but most don’t. So tell me, how is just eating right going to solve these problems?
If the digestive system is not functioning as it should, it needs a little help to get it back to normal.
Do you Have Infections?
Most people would say, “No, I don’t have an infection”. Most people aren’t aware that they are made of 100 trillion cells and that only 10 trillion of them are human cells. The rest are fungus, bacteria, viruses and parasites. We all have some level of fungus and bacteria. It’s only when we have high quantities of the wrong kind that they cause damage.
Often times, medical conditions are wrongly diagnosed when in fact the patient has an infection that has gone undetected.
I spend a lot of my working week helping people overcome fungal, bacterial and parasite problems. Eating a balanced diet will only feed your internal guests!
Are Your Hormones Balanced?
Today, it is almost impossible to find someone living in the western world with a balanced hormonal system. Due to the modern constant stresses and toxic environment we live in today, our poor old hormonal systems are all out of whack, which can easily lead to excess body fat.
Commonly, I see people with Adrenal Fatigue. This is when the person has been under stress (internal or external) for some time and the normal hormonal pathways have been disrupted to keep cranking out stress hormones (cortisol). This leaves little raw materials for the growth and repair side of our hormonal systems, particularly our sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen, which will reduce your metabolic rate and increase the chances of increasing body fat.
So How Can Supplementing Help?
As an absolute baseline, the following supplements can be very beneficial:
- A good natural multi-vitamin that is formulated in line with your metabolic type®. Here in the UK, I recommend a supplement called Synergy Com. Synergy Com comes in three different formulas depending on your metabolic type®. By taking a good multi-vitamin, you are greatly improving the chances that your cells are receiving all the nutrients they need to function properly.
- Fish oils have been indicated to help with brain function, mood, emotional stability, lower heart disease risk, reduce arthritic pain through it’s anti-inflammatory properties, lower LDL cholesterol (probably through it’s anti-inflammatory properties), hormone production and help to reduce symptoms in Crohn’s disease and irritable bowel conditions.So why not just eat more fish? Today, our oceans and rivers are highly contaminated with nuclear fall out, industrial waste and heavy metals. Therefore, the fish’s livers (where the oil comes from) contain these contaminants. However, a fish oil supplement with the most advanced refining procedures is able to ‘clean up’ the oils so they are cleaner than the original fish itself. I currently recommend Pharmax Finest Fish Oil in capsule from. It is cold processed using an enzymatic process and doesn’t contain PCBs, heavy metals or rancid oils.Beware, most store bought fish oils contain these contaminants, alcohol and are often rancid by the time you get them home.
- Once food enters your stomach, it needs to be broken down and any bugs ingested need to be destroyed. Hydrochloric acid (HCL) is produced in the stomach and helps to break down proteins and kills any invaders. It is common today for people to have low levels of HCL and are therefore less able to break down proteins and kill off unwanted invaders.For most, supplementing with HCL is required to be able to effectively break down proteins so you are able to benefit fully from the nutrients it provides. Low HCL (hypochloridia) can also cause acid reflux, which is often mis-diagnosed for too much HCL (hyperchloridia). This is often treated with ant-acids, which only makes the condition worse.There are some people who do have hyperchloridia and therefore, should not supplement with HCL, but it is quite rare. People with a compromised oesophageal mucosal barrier should also avoid HCL supplementation.
- Once food enters the small intestine, it needs to be broken down further before the nutrients can be assimilated into the blood stream. Digestive enzymes complete this process. However, people often do not have adequate amounts of enzymes due to less an optimal functioning pancreas and a damaged small intestine. This results in nutrients not being absorbed and therefore wasted.I currently recommend Enzigest, which comes in three formulas depending on your metabolic type®. The different enzymes, protease, lipase and amylase are formulated in proportion with your ratios of proteins, fats and carbohydrates respectively for maximum affects.
Other Supplements
Other supplements are often essential, depending on the person. For instance, if you have a bacterial overgrowth, then it would be wise to use a good pro biotic. I currently suggest a three-stage formula and Stage One is called ‘Super Natant’. Super Natant is followed by two further phases, finishing with a maintenance dose.
For someone who needs to repair their small intestine, they can use supplements like ‘Mucosa Max’ and L-Glutamine. With a damaged small intestine, you won’t be able to assimilate all the nutrients from the food.
There are also supplements that can be used to help with a toxic liver, oxidative stress, help with fungal overgrowths, bad bacteria and parasite infections, help to support the adrenal glands (adrenal fatigue) and to help balance the hormonal system (some of which require a prescription in the EU).
Ultimately, before supplementing, it is advised that you find out what your body needs. As Paul Chek often says, “Without assessing you’re guessing”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to guess when it comes to my health or the health of my clients. If you can only do one test, the test I would recommend is to know your metabolic type®.