Spending Too Much Time at the Gym but Not Enough Time in the Kitchen

How important is meal planning [6] and preparing meals at home? Doesn't going to the gym negate the need to plan meals and worry about calories? Dr. Gioffre says "they are equally important and both need to be considered for a balanced, healthy lifestyle." Exercising keeps us healthy, stimulates our metabolism, boosts our mood and immune system [7], and inspires other healthy choices (like deciding not to grab a doughnut from the break room).

With that said, "you can't put C.R.A.P (completely refined and processed) food into the body." Foods like sugar and refined grains spike insulin, which stores fat, makes you tired, and increases inflammation, which in turn, makes you less likely to want to exercise. So the two go hand in hand.

Dr. Gioffre recommends doing a small amount of exercise daily and eating his version of 80/20 — eating alkaline foods [8] 80 percent of the time and acid-forming foods no more than 20 percent of the time. Alkaline foods include leafy green veggies, broccoli, avocado, berries, walnuts, legumes, bone broth, and coconut oil. Acidic foods [9] include meat, processed foods, refined sugar and flours, and caffeine.

Eating 6 or More Times a Day

Dr. Gioffre has a word for eating six or more times a day [10] — grazing. He says, "When you graze and eat every couple hours [11], your body stimulates the release of insulin to reduce the glucose levels in your blood, and insulin makes you store fat and is also the primary driver to chronic inflammation." Chronic inflammation not only makes you feel tired, it also slows down your metabolism and eventually sets you up for chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

When you shift to eating three meals per day, with time in between eating, insulin levels drop [12], and without sugar to burn for energy, what does your body turn to — FAT! "When you tap into these fat-storing calories, you gain energy and lose weight rapidly."

Saving Calories

If you skip breakfast and lunch to save calories for dinner, restricting your body's daily calorie intake that much will actually slow down your metabolism, making it harder for you to lose weight [13]. This is different that practicing intermittent fasting [14] (IF), which Dr. Gioffre is a huge fan of.

When you're doing IF [15], you still consume all your daily calories, you just do it in a shorter eating window, such as eight hours (noon until 8 p.m.) [16]. When your body is in this fasted state, it first uses up all its glucose for energy, then moves to your fat. Insulin levels are also kept low, which triggers your body to use your stored fat for fuel [17].

Thinking Eating Fat Makes You Fat

Dr. Gioffre says, "The decades of scare tactics from the sugar industry were successful at giving fat a bad name and making it the enemy to weight loss." We need fat in our diet, and the right kinds of fat can actually help us lose weight because they satiate our appetites [18] and "boost our metabolism."

Daryl suggests having seven to 10 servings of healthy fats [19] a day. Choose avocados, raw nuts such as almonds, macadamias, and pecans, and raw seeds such as chia, hemp, and flax. Skip the vegetable oils and go for olive, coconut [20], and avocado oil (one tablespoon of oil is one serving).

Eating "Diet" Foods

If you see "sugar-free" or "diet" (as in diet soda [21]) on a label, don't be fooled! When sugar is removed, artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose are usually added. They actually stimulate your appetite and increase your cravings for sugar and carbohydrates, so you may end up eating more throughout the day, which doesn't help with weight loss.

The same goes for foods that say "low-carb," or "fat-free." Sugar, sodium, and processed junk is often found in the list of ingredients to add back in the flavour, making these foods not only less healthy, but they leave you hungry so you end up eating more. Stick to whole, unprocessed foods.