Winter has arrived and this year so far it's been cold and wet. We have much less sunlight and the weather is just miserable. With less time outdoors we become sedentary and our immune system is depleted. Flu season is in full swing and to top things off many of us tend to gain weight and go through some form of depression this time of year.
Re-aligning our biological or neural pathways is one of the most powerful things people experience when they go through the transformation process. And it happens, of course, whether you know about it or not. I believe that being consciously aware of the process can be an advantage, especially in terms of “relapse prevention.” In this context, I’ll say relapse is completely falling back into old and unhealthy eating habits.
Think of it this way – the old circuitry in our brains is like a dry river bed. It’s always there, and as long as you’re consciously diverting the energy flow in a new direction, it’ll remain inactive. However, if we drift back into our old style of thinking, coping and behaving, slowly but surely, it’ll eventually get to a point where it’s like a damn bursts and the energy of those past patterns and it’s like water gushing through the river bed again. When this happens, the pull of those cravings and thoughts may even be stronger than they were before. Anyone who’s yo-yo dieted, losing weight for a few months, only to fall back into unhealthy eating habits, and subsequently gaining all the weight back and more, has first-hand experience of this.
The good news is, there’s a solution and a sustainable one at that.
Albert Einstein said," The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results".
Once we realize that what we did before we started with the diet and the training is what got us where we were before in the first place, we can understand that we can not go back to that same place or we end up right back where we started and in some people even worse than before.
DO NOT SET TIME LIMITS ON YOUR GOALS OR YOU WILL FALL RIGHT BACK INTO THE SAME OLD ROUTINE ONCE YOU'VE FINISHED THAT TIME FRAME!!!
Please understand you did not get in the shape you're in overnight and you can't permanently fix it overnight either.
When I work with people who are seemingly stuck in any unhealthy pattern, one of my first recommendations is to get moving with high-intensity interval training. Intense, interval training has been scientifically shown to double, even triple, the amount of fat the body burns, compared to longer duration (an hour or more) of moderate intensity exercise. It does this by boosting mitochondria size and number within cells and that can dramatically increase the oxidation and metabolism of stored body-fat for many hours after your workout is over. That means the ”calories burned” reading on exercise equipment is very under reported. What we really want is to burn more fat calories all day not just while we are doing our workout.
Another one of the powerful benefits of intense interval training is that is releases healthy amounts of neurotransmitters called catecholamines (dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine), which satisfy the primary reward centers of the brain, boost energy and further accelerate fat loss. These reward centers all too often become chemically depleted by our modern way of life (inactivity, high stress levels, all work no play lifestyles). When neurotransmitter levels burn out, it can make us vulnerable to bad habits like binge eating.
Another fact is many of us get caught up taking fat burners and become chemically dependent of these products because they too will stimulate neurotransmitters as well. Sad thing is once you stop taking them you fall right back into the same old trap and that's if your training or not. Remember anytime you place a chemical in the body it will have side effects.
More good news: Intense training also increases endorphin and serotonin levels (which make the brain happy); so much so, that over a period of a few months, it is more effective in treating depression than the most widely prescribed (212 million prescriptions written last year) anti-depressant drugs. And what do you know, the intense exercise no side effects which can’t be said for the prescription drugs.
Once our bodies start responding hormonally and we start to feel the positive effects of our efforts we can easily establish new habits that will keep us in shape and motivated to continue. Remember the body adapts to its environment. Remove the toxic fast foods and sugar from your diet and push your body to its limits and you will see results that will amaze you.
The biggest obstacle to overcome is to kick the addiction of sugar and it's harmful effects on the body. As I mentioned in several articles in the past, L-Glutamine taken before every meal and a healthy dose before bed time will also aid you in overcoming the sugar addiction and cravings for other foods. Now combine proper nutrition along with intense interval training and you are fueling your body and your brain for success.
So here’s my recommendation: If you want to flip the switch from an unhealthy to a healthy appetite and enjoy all the benefits which come with that, be sure to incorporate high-intensity interval training into your training program. It will help you break free from old patterns and crazy cravings. It will also help you create new ones. And that, in turn, will help you enjoy improved results that you can sustain for a long, long time.
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