Happy Friday Everyone! Welcome back to another Friday Blog. Today I want to talk about calories and why we gain unwanted weight. We've been told it's an energy balance problem - calories in vs. calories out - if we are eating a 2,000-calorie diet and we are gaining weight, we must cut our calories to around 1,500 and exercise. Eat less, exercise more. But is this true? Let's delve in.

What is a calorie? The definition is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1-degree Celsius. They've measured this in a bomb-calorimeter. We know that 1 gram of carbohydrates or protein is equivalent to 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat is equivalent to 9 calories. Okay, but does our body work like a bomb-calorimeter? The food industry wants you to believe it does, because it puts the onus on the individual. It's your own fault you're fat - you are lazy and aren't working off the "calories." However, the answer is an emphatic NO. We can all understand that 100 calories of Coca-Cola do NOT have the same effect as 100 calories of broccoli, right? The truth is Big Food addicts us to their products through sugar and chemicals that light up the addictive center in our brain - the nucleus accumbens - the reward center. We reach for that chip, cookie, snack and get a dopamine hit. We are severely impacted by this abnormal food environment - primarily because it ISN'T food - and our body doesn't know what to do with it. That's right, Cheetos is not real food. What we eat matters - because food is information. When we eat a meal, the macronutrients and micronutrients should be in sufficient quantity to meet several critical criteria:

• make energy to power our body - this requires fat, protein and fiber, vitamins and minerals, but not glucose. Your body can make glucose out of other things.
• build muscle to move our body - this requires a signal to the body with adequate amino acids, particularly leucine - protein required is .7-1.0g/lb. of ideal body weight. If you are 130# 40yo female, you'll need 91g-130g protein per day to prevent muscle loss.
• build new structural tissues - what you eat becomes your tissues. If you eat chemically treated low-quality food, you'll build low-quality structures inside.
• repair damaged tissues - requires fat, protein, vitamins, minerals, microbiome (fiber)
• remove waste and toxins - requires fat, protein, vitamins, minerals, microbiome (fiber)

Let's compare two breakfasts. At first glance, you would see the omelet as high calorie and could make you gain weight - if the calories in/calories out is true. But what does your body DO with this information? 

Breakfast #1 is under 500 calories. We've been taught this is a good goal to shoot for. But we need to look closer. Where are these calories coming from and what are they DOING? The majority of calories is coming from carbohydrates - the load is very high with net carbs at 99 (total carbohydrates - fiber). Fat is very low at 1g - we are unable to repair cell membranes, brain/neurological tissue or stimulate burning of stored fat. Protein at 10g is too low to stimulate protein synthesis. We require .7-1.0g of protein per pound of ideal body weight. If you are a teenager, you need about 20-30g to stimulate protein synthesis - whereas an adult will need at least 30-40g of protein to stimulate protein synthesis. 

This meal is going to cause a huge spike in blood sugar and stimulate a strong insulin response - driving fat storage, triglyceride formation and weight-gain. We are most sensitive to sugar after fasting all night. This huge blood sugar spike is often followed by a low - a too-low drop in blood sugar - leaving us hypoglycemic and feeling anxious, craving more food and carbs after about 2-3 hours. Many of us experience "hanger" and feel this negative emotion until we finally eat again. This affects our mood, brain function and energy levels. Insulin (the storage hormone) can stay elevated all day when you eat this way. How many of us are starting our day and/or sending our children off to school like this? When you consider other negative impacts, such as the amylopectin-A found in both the oats and the whole wheat toast it is easy to see how things can go wrong. Amylopectin is made up of many glucose units that are branched out and can be rapidly absorbed - causing a rapid spike in blood sugar. Now follow with that glass of orange juice.

The glass of orange juice is virtually liquid sugar (from about 4 oranges) that will get absorbed rapidly (due to fiber being removed), driving blood sugar up fast. It is also high in fructose - that goes straight to the liver for metabolizing, driving visceral fat and triglyceride formation. Fructose goes straight from the small intestine to the liver via the portal vein, where it is metabolized much like alcohol. In fact, it depletes energy in the cell leading to cellular dysfunction. It poisons our mitochondria. THIS is how our children are getting fatty liver disease without having touched a sip of alcohol. You may think orange juice has vitamin C - okay, there is some - but vitamin C and glucose compete for absorption in the gut. High carbohydrate loads inhibit the transport of vitamin C into cells - so we don't even reap the benefits of the vitamin C in the orange juice due to the sugar load being so high. Further, orange juice loses its vitamin C rapidly after a few days. How many days was it sitting on the store shelf before you brought it home? Hard to know. Better to eat an orange.

The increase in yearly consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) rose from "10.8 gallons per person in 1950 to 49.3 gallons per person in 2000" that's nearly a gallon per person per week! HOLY MOLY! "The industry continues to find new ways to increase liquid sugar consumption by constantly adding new products, be they in fruit juice, energy drinks, vitamin waters, protein waters, sports drinks, and hundreds of new options." How many of our teenagers are asking for that Starbucks Frappuccino? These drinks have ~ 60g of sugar per drink. That's 15 teaspoons of sugar in liquid form - fast absorbing, that will hit your bloodstream rapidly. Would you really scoop 15 teaspoons of sugar into ANY drink or coffee at home? Did you know that consuming one sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) per day increases your risk of diabetes by 29%? WHAT?!!! "Drinking two 16-ounce SSBs per day for 6 months induced features of the metabolic syndrome and fatty liver." Many high school kids have that sugary Starbucks drink in the morning, then have pizza and soda with their friends later. 

Homeostasis demands that our body maintain about 1 teaspoon (4g) of sugar in the blood at all times. How much of a sugar load are we actually putting on our body when we eat breakfast #1? There are nearly 25 teaspoons of sugar in this meal - and you haven't even added a banana, brown sugar, or honey! OMG! You can see where this is going. This is not good. No wonder we can't handle stress and kids can't concentrate and tend to act out. Their bodies are in distress - in a state of fight or flight trying to handle the high sugar load - much of which is getting turned into triglycerides or stored as visceral fat by the liver - leading to insulin-resistance, weight-gain and obesity. Triglycerides damage blood vessels and cause high blood pressure and organ damage over time - visceral fat suffocates our organs.

Mitochondria use oxygen to burn glucose to provide ~ 36 ATP (energy)/molecule of glucose - but they are overwhelmed with a load like this, become damaged and can't keep up. The level of ROS (reactive oxygen species) goes up, which drives inflammation. Some of the glucose can get shunted to fermentation - which only provides 2 ATP/molecule of glucose. We wonder why we are so tired. Fermentation drives acidification of the microenvironment causing damage to tissue (think ceviche). This severely damages our proteins and DNA and can trigger the onset of cancers. This breakfast is severely lacking in nutritional balance, low in energy (ATP), drives hormonal imbalance, fat storage, chronic disease and obesity. We haven't even addressed the oats themselves - oats have a super high affinity for glyphosate. Most are sprayed with glyphosate prior to harvest. Even if the oats are organic, if the oats were stored in a facility close to wheat that has been desiccated with glyphosate prior to harvest, the oats will take up a high glyphosate load. Quaker Oats, General Mills, and Cheerios test high in glyphosate, for example. This presents its own metabolic issues. This meal does not give our body the correct information to complete the requirements of building muscle and new tissue, making enzymes, repairing and building new cells and new membranes and fueling our brain. 

Breakfast #2 is higher in calories at 660, but consists of fat, protein, and fiber. The fat stimulates fatty acid oxidation - we get 128 ATP/molecule of fat (vs 36 ATP for glucose) which gives us way more energy and ketones - fuel to run our brain! The level of healthy fat is high enough to repair cell membranes, neurological tissue and fuel our brain. Our mitochondria use oxygen to burn glucose (sugar-burner system) or fat (fat-burner system) as fuel - ketones burn cleaner. When you are in the fat-burning system and no glucose is coming in, your body will start burning stored fat. Protein at 32g is in adequate amounts to stimulate protein synthesis and net carbs are only 5g. Those 5g will likely be devoured in the gut by your microbiome and never hit your liver. Remember a teaspoon is 4g, so we are NOT spiking blood sugar and triggering a huge insulin response. This meal will stabilize blood sugar, enhance brain function, give us loads of energy, keep us satiated and heal our body.

In January of 2020, when I began taking my 4Tbs HP-EVOO shot every morning, I couldn't understand how I dropped 10 lbs without trying - when I was consuming nearly 500 calories in EVOO BEFORE I even had coffee! After digging into the research and understanding what information I was giving my body, it makes perfect sense that my body got rid of what it didn't need - I ended up losing 50lbs that year. Check out my journey in blog # 22.

The bottom line is fat doesn't make you fat. Sugar makes you fat. That being said, you want the fat you put into your body to be the right kind of fat - healthy fat - olive, avocado, fish, grassfed butter and Ghee, coconut, and grassfed, pasture-raised animal fats. These fats heal and enhance cell membrane function. Trans- fats and seed oils (vegetable oils) are inflammatory and destroy or inhibit cell membrane function. Did you know the half-life of seed oils is 680 days - and that it can take up to 7 years for these to get OUT of your membranes and body? Stop putting them in! The membrane literally becomes stiff, red, swollen and inflamed. Nutrients can't get in and toxins can't get out. The cell will either die, become a senescent cell, or convert to a cancer cell. When you go out to eat, most restaurants are using these bad oils to fry food in repeatedly for months. Then these oils get filtered, deodorized and bleached to be use again...WHAT??!!! Don't hesitate to ask what oil is used in the dressing and ask for olive oil. I like to pack a small sample size bottle of HP-EVOO in my purse to have on my salad.

Okay - now that we have an understanding of how our body handles different macros and their importance, you can see clearly that it is NOT about calories in/ calories out, but what information you're giving your body. Source out the best highest quality foods, shop your local farmer's market and get to know your farmer - you wouldn't put corrupted information into your computer - and you wouldn't put the wrong fuel into your car engine - why would you put "non-food" (Cheetos) in your body? 

The problem with our current food system is that they are putting chemicals, fructose, sugar and bad seed oils in everything - with the intent of addicting us to their "food" that by definition is NOT FOOD. They are allowed to list sugars by other names - and there are >100 - so that it appears that sugar is not the first ingredient, when it actually is. You'll see maltodextrin, maltose, dextrose, sucrose, rice syrup, corn syrup, fructose, high fructose corn syrup and many more. Look for these ingredients in your supplements too. MANY of these chemicals fall under the category of obesogens - chemicals that make you fat - by disrupting normal metabolic processes in the body - blocking or modifying hormonal activity, detoxification, driving appetite and blocking the satiety hormone, driving fat deposition, affect future generations and many more nefarious activities. They can literally hijack stem cells that should become bone in children and turn them into fat cells instead. WHAT?!!! They are also everywhere, not just in food - in beauty and body products, plastics, pharmaceuticals, clothing, water and air. 

HP-EVOO (high polyphenol extra virgin olive oil) - Polyphenols in EVOO are powerful anti-inflammatory molecules that feed our microbiome, mitochondria, support literally every part of the body in a dose-dependent manner. The more you consume, the better your body can function. EVOO heals cell membranes, heals linings of tissues, enhances absorption of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients in food and optimizes cellular function and energy production. It can enhance mitochondrial biogenesis (making new mitochondria), mitochondrial uncoupling, selectively kill pathogens, enhance digestion and combat disease processes at the root. 

So, until next time my friends…Drink, Drizzle, Digest HP-EVOO at least 4T raw daily, - use more for cooking and drizzling/pouring onto your food - eat the rainbow of organic or wild-sourced or organic veggies (7-9 C) and low-glycemic fruits (to get the rainbow of gut microbes!) - eat wild-caught, pasture-raised, grass-fed - get plenty of sunshine - supplement magnesium, zinc, vitamin D3 + K2 - get your trace minerals and electrolytes with good sea salt - Celtic is hand-harvested and Himalayan was formed before plastics - eat foods high in lutein - drink your body weight in oz of water - get a good pre/probiotic - consume digestible and indigestible fiber for your gut microbes - adaptogens (such as mushrooms) and methylation donors (kale, beets, spinach, cruciferous, lion’s mane…), marjoram, rosemary, oregano, parsley and other herbs to detox, enhance overall health and reverse aging and disease - exercise your body and mind - add a few minutes of mindful meditation to your day to combat stress - take a hot Epsom salt bath and follow with a cold shower/ice plunge - practice “earthing” as an anti-inflammatory - remove EMF (electromagnetic frequency) devices and blue light - use IR (infrared) from incandescent lighting, non-toxic candle or light a fire to enhance sleep and...turn off the light!!   #HP-EVOO