What’s New in Weight Loss for 2018

January 3, 2018
Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS

Award-winning nutritionist and New York Times bestselling author.

Are you ready to be the best version of yourself?

Each year, new trends in weight loss capture our attention and become the next big thing to try, usually with a celebrity endorsement to get us excited and motivated. But results fall short, and the weight returns, leaving us looking for real solutions that work. I’ve reviewed some of the biggest trends in weight loss from 2017, and researched what I believe will be the best and brightest to help you Be Lean in 2018. Let’s get started!

Looking Back: What Made Waves in 2017

The Skinny on Fitness

Strong became the new skinny, as the focus became less on thigh gap and more on strength and endurance. 2017 saw many people up off the couch and working towards a 5K with an app for that, while others turned to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to meet their fitness goals.

These strengthening and endurance-based fitness trends were empowering and led to a better quality of life for all types of people seeking better fitness. Being able to personalize and streamline individual goals through virtual fitness coaching online, combined with these fitness trends, is invaluable progress I see continuing into 2018.

Although wearable technology like FitBit became all the rage, this is one trend I am not a fan of due to the impact of the low level EMFs (non-ionizing radiation) which has known biological impact on the heart and brain.

Food Freedom and Fats That Heal

IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) made a splash with its food freedom. This program allowed you to choose any food you wanted, as long as it fit your macronutrient profile – the amount of carbs, proteins, and fats you were allowed in a day. The positive side to this program is it eliminated the shame around “cheat foods” because essentially no food is off limits as long as it fits in your allowances for the day. The down side was watching body builders and celebrities post pics eating pop tarts or pizza to fulfill all their calories. Food freedom isn’t free – there’s a cost to pay for making nutrient-poor food choices. This program can cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies, load you with toxins, and stress your already taxed adrenals even more when combined with intense exercise. While treating yourself is, and should be, part of a healthy lifestyle, doing it with balance is the ideal goal of a good program.

The Ketogenic Diet was more popular than ever in 2017. Its emphasis on getting enough high quality fats while eating minimal carbs had people losing weight and improving their health. With over 20 studies now documenting its success with weight loss and chronic health conditions, I don’t see this diet going away any time soon. And honestly, this makes me quite happy. I started my crusade for healthy fats in the 1980s, during the heyday of the low fat diet craze. Can you believe it’s taken more than 30 years for healing fats to become the mainstay of our diets?

Going Forward: Top Trends for 2018

Fitness – The Gym Will Come To You

Personalized Functional Fitness will become a trend this year. The goal of this fitness program is to strengthen your core while gaining stability and balance. It’s the concept of training to improve joint mobility, targeting weak muscles to strengthen and balance muscle tone across the board, and stretching to release tight muscles. Virtual coaches will become more popular to guide you individually, from the privacy of your home, to your toning, shaping and weight loss success.

Intermittent Fasting

A growing body of research is showing Intermittent Fasting (IF) is one of the best ways to not just lose weight, but to improve your health – both short and long term. When you do IF, you not only lose weight, but also get the deeper benefits of better blood sugar balance, better brain health, and less inflammation. IF isn’t about cutting calories, it’s about copying the eating patterns of our ancestors, who ate their daily calories in a shorter time span, because refrigeration and reliable food storage weren’t readily available. Condensing your calorie intake into a shorter time span during the day does great things to rest, restore and repair at the cellular level during the time you aren’t eating. All these reasons and more are why I included it in my Fat Flush QuickStart program, and you’ll be seeing more about it from me all throughout 2018.

Focus on Fats and Mind Your Mitochondria

Everyone is talking about mitochondria, and the conversation is only going to get bigger. I believe we’ll see more research on these energy powerhouses and their effect on longevity. These little power plants inside each and every one of your cells are responsible for turning your food into energy and are vital to our health in every area. When mitochondria aren’t functioning optimally, your body and brain don’t perform as well, you feel sluggish, and you age faster. And what fuels your mitochondria? Healthy fats – not sugar or carbs.

For 4 decades, I have been teaching anyone and everyone about the amazing health benefits of eating all the right fats. Because of the increasing popularity of the ketogenic diet and the new awareness of mitochondrial health, I believe this year’s trends will lead to more high-fat products available in the grocery store, and fat will become recognized as the superstar nutrient it always has been. My favorite fat right now is hempseed oil, a metabolic rock star with its 3:1 ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fats—it doesn’t get any more perfect than that! Hempseeds are 60 percent linoleic acid, a very important Omega-6 fat for maintaining your body’s all-important cell membranes, as well as being rich in fat-busting GLA.

You can read more about healthy fats in my New Fat Flush Plan, and join us for the Fat Flush QuickStart 2-week Challenge that starts January 8, 2018!

Bitters Build Better Bile and Suppress Sugar Cravings

Bitter foods and drinks are going to be an emerging star for losing weight, beating sugar cravings, and better overall digestion. Bile is crucial for breaking down fat and burning it for energy, and also plays a vital role in detox. Because bitters boost bile flow, they help your body burn fat instead of storing it. Bitters also feed “skinny bugs” – the healthy bacteria that help you lose weight, and decrease “fat bacteria” – the bugs that cause you to keep weight on. Bitters improve digestion and absorption, reduce acid reflux and prevent constipation. What’s not to love?

Bitter foods and drinks include watercress, arugula, cabbage, orange peel, ginger, and everyone’s favorite – coffee!

You Can Have Your Coffee and Chocolate – and Lose Weight Faster!

When it comes to weight loss, coffee and chocolate have gotten a bad rap. I predict all that changes in 2018 in light of recent research. In fact, both are important components of my QuickStart Coffee/Energy Blaster.

Coffee is loaded with antioxidants and bitter, and when consumed in moderation, it can speed up your fat-burning metabolism and support your overall health. When coffee is combined with 2 of the nutrients in my Weight Loss Formula, they work together synergistically to rev up your fat-burning metabolism to shed pounds even more quickly, without negative effects.

Women who drink coffee have lower death rates from cardiovascular disease. The latest research also shows coffee drinkers have fewer digestive issues and lower rates of type 2 diabetes, Parkinsons, MS, and liver cancer. Coffee drinkers also tend to live longer and have healthier brains.

Cacao, the purest and most elemental form of chocolate, is one of the richest food sources of natural antioxidants, with 20 times the antioxidant power of blueberries. Cacao is rich in calcium, magnesium, iron, sulfur, B vitamins, protein, fiber, and essential fatty acids. In addition to being a nutrient powerhouse, it contains neurotransmitters like theobromine and phenylethylamine (PEA), and boosts serotonin, making you feel content, happy, and full faster from the foods you eat.

Gut Health – DNA Tells All

If you have weight gain, bowel issues, depression, ADHD, insomnia, dark circles under your eyes, grind your teeth at night, or problems with hair, skin or nails, your gut health may be to blame. The health of your microbiome – the trillions of microorganisms housed inside your body – has a major impact on the health of your body as a whole. For years, I’ve explained the role of bacteria in weight loss and how to grow “skinny bugs” instead of “fat bacteria.”

New testing is on the horizon to find out if your microbiome is causing your weight gain. Using the technology the National Institutes of Health (NIH) used to sequence the human microbiome, DNA testing has become available to anyone who wants to know more about their gut health. In the past, we’ve had to rely on cultures and microscopic analysis to identify gut microbes. Unfortunately, many are missed using this method. For 2018, I will be working with UNI KEY Health to make the GI-MAP test from Diagnostic Solutions Lab available for anyone to have done. I believe we’ll see this empowering trend from other holistic practitioners and nutritionists as well.

Biohacking Womens Health

As a holistic health pioneer and a woman, I’m claiming this trend for women, to optimize our biology. Too many of us are living lives that don’t make us feel good and I want to change that. I wrote a recent blog on technology advances in birth control, and continued this trend in my women’s hormone-balancing diet hacks in Before the Change.

I’m starting 2018 with my revolutionary Fat Flush QuickStart program, and the QuickStart Coffee/Energy Blaster won’t just help you wake up in the morning, but will wake up your fat-burning metabolism, boost your energy and increase mental clarity and stamina. And this isn’t all I have up my sleeve – I’ve got a new book coming out this summer that will guide you into optimal health with a Radical Metabolism.

Learn more about Fat Flush QuickStart here >>

Related Articles and Podcasts

Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS, is an award-winning New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books including The Fat Flush Plan series and her latest book, Radical Metabolism. She’s been rewriting the rules of nutrition for more than 40 years and is internationally recognized as a pioneer in the field of diet, detox and women’s health issues. 

For a FREE daily dose of tips and strategies for maintaining healthy weight, conquering insomnia, and much more…check out my Radical Health Tips.

I’d like to meet and greet you on my Facebook groups, so won’t you check us out at the Radical Metabolism RevolutionFat Flush Nation, or my Inner Circle!

13 Comments

  1. Linda

    I’m so excited to start the Quickstart! I’ve already tried the coffee/cacao energy drink and it is delicious!

    Reply
  2. Laura P

    Thank you, Linda. WE agree!

    Reply
  3. Pauline S

    I purchased the QuickStart, but had a PC problem, so was not able to click “RETURN TO MERCHANT”. Can you simply email me the download?
    Transaction ID: 93T80164AL891310N

    Reply
    • Team ALG

      Oops — we just saw this — are you OK?

      Reply
  4. Sandy Kuti

    Very informative blog and will be useful for me when it comes to diet and exercise. Keeping the weight off is the challenge for sure. Thanks for the info ?

    Reply
  5. Marc G.

    Thank you Ann to share this information, interested to learn more about quickstart program, I will have a look. I’m always looking for new programs.

    Reply
  6. Florian

    Really really good stuff. If you serious about. But losing weight have to be easy on the body and brain. And also fun to do. My mum had success with this method. So maybe it will work for you. Give it a try and see how you feel. http://bit.ly/2EVYZ60

    Reply
  7. 228 Worker

    Yes the coffee Energy seems like a great thing to try. but i know this red detox tea works wonders if you have the habit of eating when you get bored, this tea stops those cravings. and really helps you lose weight its truly awesome its worth your time try it out for your self.

    Reply
  8. rrashad

    Article provided excellent information on weight loss and diet! I was amazed to discover that coffee and chocolate produces weight loss results. Just sharing,for those who are interested in “removing dangerous belly fat” I recommend this product, I found it to be effective. Good Luck! https://goo.gl/muioLr

    Reply
  9. Robert Garrett

    Great information, I really enjoyed reading the articles listed. there are many hints on health that are very important and timely in the age that we live.

    Reply
  10. Claudia Rowe

    Hi ALG. Thank you for the 1000th time for your program. Saved my life (literally). On the gut biome front, I have a bit of a cheeky request. Would you consider assessing and mapping Clostridium Ramosum as part of the diagnostic test you’re developing? Here’s why: Clostridium ramosum promotes high-fat diet-induced obesity in gnotobiotic mouse models.
    Woting A1, Pfeiffer N1, Loh G1, Klaus S2, Blaut M3.

    I’ve had chronically high leptin levels (45 – 48. Normal range 3 – 12 ) for 12 years despite following the FFP and find chronic fasting the only way to control my weight. I’m out of ideas at this stage and wonder if this pathogen is causing the weight gain. Pretty long bow, I know. The human gut project has neither an acceptable level for this pathogen nor do they collect data on it.

    Anyway, just a thought. Yours in desperation, Claudia!

    Reply
  11. Anna

    Hi Ann, great to learn that coffee and chocolate produces weight loss results. That releases some of my stress when drinking coffee and eating chocolates. But I particularly like the idea of intermittent fasting (IF) because I’ve been practicing this and getting good weight loss results.

    Reply
  12. AustinFitness

    Thanks for sharing this information and really you are my inspiration.

    Reply

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