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.
