With the Holiday Past Us, Get Ready to Shed

Laura Lee Carter

Okay boomers, the holidays are past us. But is the food we couldn’t resist at every holiday table? Laura Lee Carter, known as the Midlife Crisis Queen, says that while boomers might have a little more trouble these days shedding what we need to shed when the holidays are done … we have to. What she suggests won’t necessarily work for everybody, but it could help some of us!

For years we’ve heard the same old conventional wisdom: eat less and exercise more to lose weight. Baby boomers have spent billions on diet programs which actually offer them less food with even less nutrition.

New studies suggest the key to weight loss and maintenance is eating a diet that keeps our insulin levels low. The hormone insulin helps your body store fat, and makes sure it stays put. This means that if you control insulin, you control fat. It’s that simple.

Eating too much sugar (in any form!) makes you fat, by triggering insulin. It’s also linked to aging, cancer, and a compromised immune system. If you would immediately cut your sugar intake down to 10-15 grams per day (a couple of teaspoons), you would reduce your risk for illness, diabetes, and cancer. Cutting down on your body’s production of insulin is key to reducing fat production. One apple equals 12 grams of sugar. The American Heart Association recently suggested limiting sugar consumption to under six teaspoons per day.

It is also important to increase the fiber in your diet. Fiber promotes belly fat loss by creating optimum digestive health. When you do consume sugar, if you eat it with a good amount of fiber, like an apple, you ease the amount of insulin going directly into your system. Artichokes, oats, beans, and whole grain products are excellent sources of fiber. Also add a morning dose of acidophilus to your diet to promote intestinal health! Then, exercise to strengthen and tone your muscles and to relieve stress, not to look better.

I know of what I speak from personal experience. I cut out all sugar, alcohol, antibiotics, and most dairy and artificial sweeteners from my diet this past April, because of an overwhelmingly bad case of Candida overgrowth. I limited my diet to meat and vegetables and then gradually added in a few apples and blueberries. Amazingly enough, I found that I was hardly ever hungry!

I now bake my own breads and desserts so I can make them with stevia instead of sugar. I feel 1000% better, lost 20 pounds, and shed inches from my waist and thighs. The weight comes off slowly, but it does come off.

Another friend of mine, who is also in her 50′s, had terrible headaches and sinus infections with lots of antibiotics for about a year. Then she spoke to me and cut out the sugar and aspartame (in Diet Coke for example) completely. A few weeks later, she’s feeling so much better!

Learn to choose healthier snacks. Popcorn (my personal favorite) reigns supreme among whole grain snack foods, with the highest level of antioxidants. Focus on looking for whole grain snacks (the first ingredient in the list), which are rich in antioxidants.

Read more from Laura Lee Carter … click here.

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