Ep. 116 My Top 6 Books For Releasing Excess Fat

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Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shade Podcast. I'm Paula Parker. I am a coach and I specialize in weight loss, meaning food and body. So I just want to let you know that there is a demolition project going on across the street. So if there is any banging, if you hear that in the background my apologies, but that's what that is about.

Today, I want to talk about some books that have really helped me. I recently went through Well, I was going to say the books on my shelf, but actually it was a big stack of books on the floor. Let's be real. But it's a good time. I don't know. I just felt like it was a good time to go through my books.

It's always a good time to go through your books and give away the ones that are no longer serving you and hold on to the ones that you think you actually might reference again. These are books that I'm definitely holding on to because I do reference them on a somewhat regular basis. depending. So I'm going to go through them because they might be gifts that you will gift yourself if you feel compelled to do that or coming up on the holiday season or ones that you might find helpful on your own journey.

They're ones that I always recommend to my clients. Okay, so In no particular order, the first one you may have heard me talk about before, it's the Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. So this book explains how eating to manage your insulin is more effective at fat loss than just eating less and moving more or counting calories and focusing on a calorie restricted diet.

Here's what I took away from it. One, the biggest thing was that I finally understood Why none of my past more calorie focused diets and heavy restriction, why that never worked. And this for me was just such a relief. It gave me hope because I realized, Oh, you know what? I've just been working with a really terrible strategy, right?

It was always destined to fail. So. Here's an example he uses in the book, which I'll share because I think this can really help you understand why you've been struggling if you've been very calorie focused. Okay, so I'm not going to be like reading from all of the books, but I will share this particular story.

Okay. So he talks about the limitations of calorie restriction diets and he says, okay, assume that prior to dieting, a woman eats and burns 2000 calories per day. And then following her doctor's order, she's adopts a calorie restricted portion controlled, don't we love portion control, low fat diet, reducing her intake by 500 calories a day.

So quickly her total energy expenditure also drops by 500 calories. Calories per day if not a little bit more basically what that means is your metabolism drops to 1, 500 right instead of 2, 000 It goes to 1, 500. That's your energy expenditure. So she feels lousy tired cold Hungry irritable and depressed but you know, this is when we white knuckle it and we stick through it She thinks that things will improve so she sticks with it Initially, she loses weight, but as her body's caloric intake goes up Expenditure decreases.

To match her lowered intake, her weight plateaus. So her dietary compliance is good, but one year later, things have not improved. Can we relate to this? Her weight slowly creeps back up, even though she eats the same number of calories. So imagine you're able to stick with it and eat only 1, 500 calories a day.

You're sticking with it and your weight is starting to creep up. So he says, tired of feeling so lousy, she abandons the failed diet and resumes eating 2, 000 calories per day. Or as we know, sometimes more, right? Cause we get into screw it. He says, since her metabolism has slowed to an output of only 1, 500 calories per day, all her weight comes rushing back as fat.

Those around her silently accuse. Oh, I don't really appreciate this. This is like, He goes, he says, those around her silently accuse her of lacking willpower, like, thank you, we really didn't need that, okay, but her weight gain is not her failure, or her regain, rather, is not her failure. Instead, it's to be expected.

Okay. So all of this in terms of calories is a reason why I'm not too calorie focused. Okay. Because with me become too calorie focused, it's just not the most effective way to release weight. It can be helpful in terms of, of course, you're going to release weight if you go from, you know, 3000 calories to 1500.

Yeah. But that's not, it doesn't paint the whole story. And I think that illustration really shows us where the pitfalls of calorie counting is. Okay. So the second point I got from this book is instead of calorie counting he explains how we can eat to manage our insulin, which is insulin is the fat storage hormone.

And that is really the way to go to sum that up for you. It means essentially eating a diet that has adequate fat, protein, vegetables, and whole grains. And it limits what you eat. Or it reduces sugar, flour, artificial sweeteners and no snacking. So he says no snacking because remember every time we eat our insulin is going to go up.

Insulin is a storage hormone. So when you eat insulin is released and it stores your food on your body as fat. When there is no food, meaning you're not snacking, insulin levels fall and then your fat burning gets turned on. Okay, it also means allowing your body to use its stored fat for energy instead of getting energy from food all the time So your body will use up all the glycogen from food for energy and when that rent when that runs out So let's say you do like a longer fast or you do like 13 hours at least, it will create glycogen from your stored fat reserves.

And you will know because you'll start to release weight. Your clothes will feel looser and the scale will go down. So you know, you know that you are not just using energy from food, you're using energy from your body fat. Okay, third point that I got from this book is that in this book you learn about the body's weight set point So he says obesity is not caused by an excess of calories per se But instead by a body set point that is too high Because of a hormonal imbalance in the body And I mentioned, you know, a little bit about hormones when, in referring to insulin, but he also goes into, you know, ghrelin and leptin and more ho hormones that have to do with weight loss.

So just to recap what your weight set point is and I did do a podcast on that so you can look into that Your body likes homeostasis, which is the case for your weight and body temperature So it can be easily understood with body temperature. Our body's average temperature is 37 degrees If we go above or below that, the body will do everything in its power to get us back to that normal temperature.

If we are hot, it will sweat to cool down. If we are cold, it will shiver or create goose bumps to keep warm. Okay? So, the body, your body's weight set point is the same. This is why if you have the flu and you're not eating, but then you go back to eating normally, you, you're not overeating, but you will gain any weight that you lost, right?

It's because the body wants to maintain that homeostasis. So, do you, should you get this book, should you read this book, I would say read it if you like to understand a little bit more about the science of fat loss. You'll get more on those hormone information like ghrelin, leptin, insulin. It's heavy on the nuts and bolts of fat loss, less on the psychology part of things, but read it if you're, you know, if you're a bit hung up on calories and you can't imagine life without thinking of food as numbers, but you would really.

like to have that for yourself, you would really love to live in that world, then I would recommend this book for you. Okay, number two. Number two is kind of along the similar line of fat loss and science of fat loss. So this one is called The Glucose Revolution, and she's a French name, so I'm probably mispronouncing it, but it's Jessie, Jessie I'm terrible.

I'm Canadian. I really should be able to speak some French and I speak nothing. Languages is just not a skill. I can barely speak English. Okay, so this This book is similar because it's science based, but it's very, very reader friendly, okay? It's all about how to level out your blood sugar, which is so great for weight loss because again, you're working with your hormones here.

So here's what I took away from it. It's essentially really practical tips when it comes to eating to lower your blood sugar response. Like she talks about the value of having apple cider vinegar, really any vinegar, but apple cider vinegar is more palatable than other vinegars before or after you're eating.

So within 20 minutes, so 20 minutes before your meal or 20 minutes after it's still effective because it has an effect in which sugar and starch in particular are are transformed into glucose more slowly and the glucose hits our system more softly. So this can be you know, one tablespoon in water and you drink that 20 minutes before or within 20 minutes before, or it just might be vinegar in your salad dressing.

So she also talks about eating foods in a particular order to offset those changes. Blood sugar spikes. So she says, eat your vegetables first and your carbohydrates last really easy to do in most in, you know, North American culture, we typically eat a starter salad, and we typically have dessert at the end of our meal.

So pretty intuitive. They're pretty easy in terms of What our culture supports. One more thing too, if you don't like apple cider vinegar is you can do lemon or lime juice, like freshly squeezed, but you'll need three times the amount. So instead of one tablespoon, you'll need three tablespoons. Make sure also, I would say, drink it back quickly.

Don't sip on it. Otherwise your dentist will be, you'll have some high dentist bills. Let's put it that way. Okay. And number three, she talks about a carb sugar ratio. So processed foods, I mean, yes, are we ideally eating only whole grains and whole foods? Yes, absolutely. But especially if you have kids, you're going to be eating some processed food, right?

So here's a little tip that I really loved from this book, which is grab something in your pantry that you eat often or that you feed your kids often, check the label to see the ingredients. Thanks. Thanks. Is sugar in the top five? If so, is there at least one gram of fiber each five grams of total carbohydrate?

So I'll say that again, because I needed it whenever there's numbers, like I needed to hear it a couple times, right? So one gram of fiber for every five grams of total carbohydrate. So you're looking at a one to five ratio. This makes an acceptable glucose curve versus a spike. Okay. So if we have Less fiber than that, then you're going to see more of a spike.

So I thought that was super helpful. Hopefully that helps you too. You might want to read this book or get this book. If you want an easy read, you want a little science, but really you want some real practical tips so you can implement right away to give your weight loss strategy an edge. So you already are eating really healthy, but this is just going to like crank it up a notch.

If you want really to go into that fat optimization mode. Okay, let's go to book number three. We're gonna take a little departure from the fat loss science and move into emotions This book is atlas of the heart came out a few years ago now, of course, it's by Brene Brown So brief summary, this is essentially how I look at it a textbook for emotions.

That's actually accessible And also pragmatic. So it's usable. This information is usable. So I want to give you a flavor of what's in the book. She talks about what is the difference between disappointed and discouraged. Because they can feel similar, right? They're close cousins. She says disappointed is it didn't work out how I wanted.

That's the past, okay? It didn't work out how I wanted. Discouraged is I'm losing my confidence and enthusiasm about any future effort. So I'm losing the motivation and confidence to keep going. So discouraged is more about the future. What about resignation? How does resignation fall into this? So resignation is I've now lost my confidence and enthusiasm about future efforts.

I've now lost the motivation and confidence to keep going. This is when we quit. Right? The big quit when it comes to weight loss. Before I move on, what about frustration and anger? Again, I'm pulling all of this from the book. I'm going to paraphrase a little bit here, but she says frustration sometimes overlaps with anger.

Both anger and frustration can result in weight loss. When desired outcome is blocked. Okay, so this is kind of a fancy way of saying like, listen, you get angry and you get frustrated when the scale doesn't go down. So you've been doing all the things you've been saying no to yourself and the scale has not budged.

The main difference is that with frustration, we don't think we can fix the situation. Well, with anger, we feel that there is something that we can do. And I think this explains why when we get frustrated with our weight, we say, screw it and overeat. Yeah. Whereas if we get angry, we actually have more activation energy to pull from.

We're driven to keep going. But anger is merely a catalyst, right? It's like a stick that motivates you. Holding onto it as motivation is exhausting and it's toxic. So it's an emotion that we need to transform into something else, something life affirming. Like courage, change, compassion, agency. I really liked this book because it helped me name and understand emotions.

Remember, everything you eat, or you don't eat, you're able to allow that craving, that all of that is driven by emotion. So not only that, oftentimes. It's how we are relating to an emotion that has triggered a suggestion of food, because we don't know how to handle that emotional vibration in the body. We don't know how to handle the FOMO, the boredom, the unease, the anxiety.

So our brain offers up food as a suggestion to cope. So the more you can understand your emotions, the more you will be able to work with them, understand them instead of being at the mercy of them, mercy of feeling them, feeling that vibrational frequency. And then of course, reacting to them by overeating.

So read it. If you have spent the majority of your life, ignoring, avoiding, or being mystified by what you were feeling, it can be hard to pinpoint. A name, you know, the name of an emotion, the exact emotion you are experiencing. So having terms and definitions and understanding can really help. Get this book, gift it to yourself if you recognize some emotional eating is going on and you are really ready to learn about emotions and understand your emotional world.

If you eat from boredom, if you feel jealous of your friend who's always been naturally thin and eats whatever she wants, if you think giving. Terms to some of what's going on inside of you can be helpful. If you give some language to it, then I would recommend getting this book. It's a great one. This next book I'm going to talk about encapsulates a little bit of both.

So we're looking at more weight loss strategy and then also the emotional component. This book is called How to Lose Weight for the Last Time by Katrina Ubell MD. Ubell's U B E L L. Okay, so the tagline to this book is brain based solutions for permanent weight loss. So Katrina is a coach who did the same coach training that I did.

And she specializes in working with doctors who want to release weight. So I would say her book is the closest proximity to my process that I've personally come across. So she uses the hunger scale in a slightly different way. And I satiation at all. There are definitely differences. In, in what she has in the book and what I do, but if you are a real DIY person and you like my approach on this podcast, I really think you will love this book.

It's an easy read. It covers the physiology of fat loss and the emotional attachment to food. So lots of practical tools in there when it comes to food journaling, weighing yourself, setting weight loss goals. She doesn't recommend longer, fast. It's like over 24 hours, which is contrary to some of the other books that I've, I'll be talking about in this podcast.

She, the reason is she thinks it can easily lead to diet mentality. And I agree. Okay. So I think that's true. And I think that you can also work through that if you have the right support and the right mindset around it. All right. Okay, next book is gonna be a little bit of a departure here. Okay, it's gonna maybe be a little bit of surprise But it's the grief recovery handbook and this is by John W James and Russell Friedman The tagline here is the action program for moving beyond death divorce and other losses including health Career and Faith.

All right, so now I bet you were not expecting a book on grief to help you lose weight. I got this book, this was actually a recommendation from my sister, and I got it when my dog, my sweet little dog Huxley, passed away. And I thought it was so helpful, and when I was reading it, I was like, wow, this can be useful in lots of areas of life.

So one reason I chose it was because every one of us We'll experience grief at some point and many of us have already experienced grief many times already. It can cause so much emotional pain that we turn to food to cope with that pain. I don't know how many clients have come to me and said, the reason I put on all of this weight was because my mother passed away.

The reason I put on all this weight is because I went through this grieving process, right? And I gained all of my weight during that time. So instead of doing that, we really need more tools to help us through the grief. And I'll share this little, I'm not going to read from it, but I will share this little two question quiz that they offer right in the beginning.

If you are wondering, when do I begin to recover? Rather, when should I focus on recovering from my grief, or you can think about it as any emotional pain. So, two questions. One, if you fell down and gashed your leg and blood was pouring out, would you immediately seek medical attention? The obvious answer is yes.

So number two, if circumstances and events conspired to break your heart, would you seek attention immediately or would you allow yourself to bleed to death emotionally? Pick one. Okay. So this book is about recovery from loss specifically, and you may have some losses that you're not even aware of, or you might have some coming up.

when you give up food to cope. Okay. So you might have some losses that you're not even aware of on this weight loss journey. Let's talk about it. When you finally realize That you are powerful enough to stop overeating, there can be a grief about the years lost to being overweight and dieting. All the life that you missed out on because you thought you were maybe too fat to do it, or you didn't deserve it, right?

You didn't deserve those things in life. You were putting them off until you release the weight, or you didn't want to be seen. You like legit didn't go to things, especially social things, because you felt uncomfortable in your body. You felt uncomfortable in your clothes. Or, the lost time to overeating, what you could have accomplished had you not been so distracted with food, overeating, exercise, and trying to lose weight, okay?

So there's a lost, a sense of lost time. There's also a grief when your over desire for food goes away, when you don't want more food than your body needs. Then, you can imagine a situation in which you have a hard day, and your brain might even offer up the idea of food. Eating a giant bowl of popcorn, or just ordering pizza and eating most of it, and watching shows, and just escaping.

And yet, even though your brain offers that, you don't want to do it. You legit don't want that. You don't feel the desire to do that. You genuinely don't want to do that. So, now what? That used to be a way of feeling different of escaping pain, receiving temporary relief and pleasure. It was effective in that way.

It was temporary, but it was effective temporarily. Now there's a loss that that's gone. So this book is about recovery. It says recovery from loss. is achieved by a series of small and correct choices made by the griever. So the book is really helpful in terms of guiding you through that. Now, did we cover all of this in coaching?

Yeah, you could just coach with me and we would cover all of this. But if you are thinking, you know what, I think I have some grief work that I am up for doing, then I would highly recommend that you choose this book. All right. And I'll maybe just go over all of the, I'll put all of the titles of the books in the show notes so you can reference them there and I'll just maybe go over them quickly at the end as well.

Okay. So get this book. If you've experienced any loss, if you are finding you have regrets, remorse, are feeling badly about any, you know, so called wasted time in brackets, or you're starting to lower your desire for food, you're reducing that over desire and there's a grief and sadness that comes with that.

That you're not getting the same amount of pleasure, relaxation, entertainment from food that you used to, and there's some loss there. All right. Okay, last one. Last one is Fast Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz. P E L Z. The tagline here is a woman's guide to using the healing power of fasting to burn fat, boost energy, and balance hormones.

Okay, so we're circling back a little bit. Reasons why I liked this book. One, the biggest one is it really normalizes fasting, especially if you, she does a ton of stuff on YouTube and it really normalizes longer fasting. It's not some sort of fringe thing that seems weird. Okay. She really normalizes it.

It really got me inspired to fast, not only for weight loss, also for all the health benefits. So if you like to geek out on the science and health and that really motivates you, this is a good book for that. It includes a 30 day reset that gives you a fasting schedule based on your cycle. So if you're menstruating, this is very helpful.

If you don't have a cycle anymore, you can use it as a schedule anyway. So that you have some variability with your fasting. So you can just start on day one whenever you want. I also liked it because I learned that my protocol, which is essentially how I'm eating, when I'm eating, what I'm eating, how much I'm eating, how that can work best for my body and my mind when it's based on the rhythms of my body, so based on my cycle.

And this makes sense because I'm working with my own physiology. When I'm matching how I'm eating with the influx of my hormones, it makes fasting so much easier. And there's variation and flexibility built right into it. So if you are menstruating, your fast should be shorter at ovulation the week before your period.

And to give you a general idea, I'll go through this kind of 30 day reset, okay? So days 1 to 10 is a window where you can do longer fasts. So that might be 13 to 72, and you're eating more like a keto diet, so high protein, high fat, super low carb. Days 11 to 15, you want to introduce more complex carbohydrates.

You want to be doing the starches, the rice, those kinds of things, and you're doing 13 to 15 hour fasts. Fast is such a hard word for me to say. Okay, so I'm just gonna say fasting. Okay, days 16 to 19, you're back to doing longer fasting. So you're eating more keto friendly again, and then days 20 to 30, you reverse back to complex carbs, and you're not doing any fasting at all.

This is when I got more serious about the fasting that I was doing. And I really started to, on those days, according to my cycle, I removed cream from my coffee. So I had for years been doing what you would think of as intermittent fasting, but I'd always had cream in my coffee. And so I wasn't technically fasting.

I had to do some, you know, self coaching on that, but I got there in the end and that really made a difference for me. And then the last thing is she talks about how to measure ketones and blood sugar using a device and so she goes into that in the book. I'm going to probably do another podcast episode on this because I have been using that device as well just to monitor my own ketones and my glucose level.

So I'm excited to share that with you. But she does go into that in the book. I use what's called a keto mojo. So that's Keto, K E T O M O J O. Not that expensive. I think, hmm, how much was it? I can't remember. Maybe a hundred bucks for the whole system. But if you're interested in measuring your ketones and blood sugar, you just do a little pinprick on your finger and that's how you measure it.

Super easy to use. If you want to get really accurate results about how you're eating and how it's affecting your body, because that is going to be, you know, they talk about bio individuality, it's going to be dependent on your body. and on the way that you've been eating and that changes over time.

So it's really helpful to get those readings. Again, I'm going to be doing a little bit more on that. I won't get into that today, but you might want to get this fasting like a girl book. If you want to try fasting, if you want to do longer fasting, if you want to feel inspired to do it, it's also very helpful to focus by getting this book.

I would say it's an easy read as well. This book doesn't offer much in the way of psychological support. to avoid that diet mentality that we can get into when we start doing these fasts. So I think if you have had a history of yo yo dieting, you'll just want to make sure that you do have some sort of support.

Mindy does have a program. She has an online program. It's like, there's like a coaching component to it, group coaching component that you can look into. I haven't done it myself. I don't really know much about it. I didn't feel like I needed that. So I didn't really do a deep dive on it, but you could check that out or work with some other coach or therapist just to help support you so that it doesn't become yet another thing that's like all or nothing and triggering any kind of diet mentality because we know how, how much suffering that can really cause.

Okay. So let's go over the books really quickly again so that you have them and you can just decide, do you want to get one of these for yourself? Okay, we went through the Obesity Code, we talked about the Glucose Revolution, we talked about Atlas of the Heart, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time, the Grief Recovery Handbook, and Fast Like a Girl.

And if you decide that you want to read any of these, or if you, If you have any books that you think I should read, please let me know. You can send me a message on Instagram at mindful underscore shape, or you can send me an email. It's Paula at mindful shape. com. I would love to hear. Okay. Thanks. Bye.