As we age, it may seem that eating “whatever we want” while maintaining a healthy weight becomes a thing of the past.  When we get older, our resting metabolic rate -which reflects your body’s needs at rest — drops about one to two percent every decade, which in turn affects how much we can eat without gaining excess weight. The bottom line is, none of us can eat anything and everything we may have previously enjoyed like we used to.  There’s a scientific reason why: As we get older, our bodies don’t respond the same way to weight loss efforts. The rate at which your body burns calories — called resting metabolic rate — reflects your body’s needs at rest. However, this rate drops about one to two percent every decade, thus making it easier to pack on the pounds as we age. However, there is no need to just ‘give up’ in despair!   In our new blog, NJ Diet discusses the topic of aging and weight gain, and will explain the ways to prevent the extra pounds from creeping up.  Getting older and maintaining a healthy weight doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds!

Why We Gain Weight As We Age

Additionally, both men and women undergo changes in hormone levels as part of aging that help explain why middle age causes significant weight gain in most adults.

• For women, menopause (occurring most often between ages 45 and 55) causes a significant drop in estrogen that can cause weight gain in your belly.  Weight gain can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes.
• In men, the significant drop in testosterone as they age (which gradually declines around age 40) causes issues with regulating fat distribution and loss of muscle strength and mass.  The decline in testosterone can make the body less effective at burning calories.

According to the CDC, when you hit your 30s, you start losing muscle mass, which can greatly affect how well your body burns calories. In this decade, both men and women start losing muscle mass at the rate of three to five percent per decade. In our 40 and 50s, some weight gain may seem to be unavoidable.  Hormones—or their absence—may play a role, but middle-age weight gain can be attributed to diminishing muscle mass, and also that you may not be as active as you’ve gotten older.  Since muscle helps boost your metabolism and as it disappears, your ability to burn calories slows. In our 60s, there may be some promising news!  Studies show that age-related weight gain slows down and plateaus by the time you’re in your 60s.   However, the issue may remain that you need to lose the pounds you’ve gained over your 30s, 40s, and 50s!   Weight loss is one thing that doesn’t get easier with age, and those in their 60s may find it’s tougher to shed fat. Your body doesn’t need as many calories as it used to, you need to be more active.  But aging may have caused pain issues that is hindering daily exercise, so you may not be as active as you should be.

How To Maintain A Healthy Weight At Any Age

It is not impossible to lose weight as we age.  By increasing exercise, focusing on strength training, you will burn calories.  Additionally, focusing on healthy foods such as daily servings of veggies, dairy, fruits and nuts and lean proteins is a great way to start. Sleeping less than six hours or more than eight hours a night were also linked to middle-age weight gain, so getting enough sleep is vital to maintaining a healthy weight.

** Before getting started with any program, it is important to consult with your doctor, especially if you’re on any medications or have any pain.

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  NJ Diet utilizes DNA testing to determine your ideal diet and workout plan. Using blood work, hair and saliva sample, patients typically lose 20-50 pounds in only 40 days. In addition, you will see that dieting is only one component of our program. Our program is also a detoxification and hormone balancing program – where the side effect is weight loss, but the end result is better overall health and well being.

We welcome the opportunity for you to have a consultation at NJ Diet.

A consultation is normally $99, but by registering on our website it will only cost $27! 

Our program is not only aimed at promoting healthy weight loss, but aims to improve your total wellness. Each of our client’s specific needs for vitamins and supplements are assessed, plus many more metabolic factors are genetically tested to make sure you succeed on our program — not just for temporary weight loss, but to maintain good health for life!  

Losing weight is as much a mental battle as it is a physical one, and letting emotions affect your eating habits will not provide you with the long-term success you desire. For successful weight loss and wellness, we need to make sure our bodies and minds work together, which means overcoming some common mental blocks on your weight loss journey.

Luckily, you can overcome many of the most common mental obstacles that may be hurting your weight loss success, and in turn start to see more positive results!

In our new blog, NJ Diet shares how to mentally prepare yourself when embarking on a weight loss program, and how to identify and overcome the obstacles that you may face along the way.

 Becoming Mentally Ready To Lose Weight

Identify Your “Emotional Eating” Triggers

Stress eating can trigger your brain, making you think you need to eat when you’re feeling highly emotional, upset or overwhelmed. To avoid beginning this harmful cycle, you need to identify what causes your stress or emotional eating and how to stop it before it starts. When you are feeling stressed, try to acknowledge these moments and use a distraction other than overeating.  You can keep a journal to track what triggers your stress and write down the positive coping methods that work for you—such as walking, reading, or engaging in any hobby. If you’re into yoga, you can quickly overcome one of the toughest mental obstacles by practicing this healthy, natural way to reduce your stress.

Recognize How Stress Leads To Overeating

Today our lives are hectic and demanding, making it almost impossible to not feel stressed at some point during the day.  Unfortunately, stress not only triggers overeating, it also can makes our food taste better.  When we eat something delicious, an opioid release is triggered in the brain, making us want to eat more. Stress can trigger this same opioid release, causing compulsive overeating if not identified.   In addition, cortisol — the hormone our body releases when we’re stressed — can be responsible for improving the way our food tastes and increasing feelings of satisfaction we get from stress-related eating.

Thus, stress can make it more difficult to lose weight.  While a stressful event may reduce your appetite in the short term due to the release of an appetite-suppressing hormone, if stress is consistent and cortisol kicks in, your appetite will increase.  Similarly, stress may also encourage your body to store more fat. Research has shown that even among those without weight issues, high levels of stress and cortisol are linked to abdominal fat, which may increase your risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Acknowledge How Your Mind Affects Your Health

Because stress can have far-reaching impacts on your health and well-being, it’s important to understand what those impacts are—and how you can help minimize them. Some people may recover from stress quickly, while others may find themselves overwhelmed by it.  Inevitably, stress can take a toll on your body and mind.

If you are constantly affected by a stressful lifestyle, you may begin to experience physical symptoms, such as headaches, muscle aches and digestive issues; or psychological ones, including anger and sadness.  Moreover, chronic stress could seriously affect your health by causing problems with your heart, immunity, and digestive issues.

Tips On Conquering Your Mental Blocks When Dieting

Sometimes just the very thought of being on a diet just seems overwhelming. You might feel as though you don’t have the motivation or will power to lose weight, but really what keeps you from diet success is what is already in your head.

When it comes to losing weight, your biggest issue may just be that you don’t know how to make a healthy lifestyle work for you. Crash diets, counting calories and intense fitness regimens may be temporary fixes to a long-term solution and can lead to a series of mental obstacles to overcome. If you want to really lose weight and keep it off, you need to create a foundation for your healthy eating and fitness habits with a support system to maintain them in the long run.

When you begin a weight loss journey, it’s often easy to build motivation as the pounds initially start to drop off.  But when your weight loss slows down, the question ”why can’t I lose weight ” is one frequently asked.

Moving past a weight loss plateau usually requires a combination of efforts, and sometimes individuals cannot lose weight due to some surprising ‘diet mistakes’ — which can actually lead to weight gain!

Luckily, plateaus are very common and it IS possible to get past them and get the scale moving down again!  In our article below, NJ Diet shares some of the most common reasons your scale may not be budging, and how you can keep your motivation going when it comes to weight loss success!

Reasons You May Not Be Dropping Pounds

Elimination Of Entire Food Groups

Swearing off entire food groups — like no grains, meat, or carbs for example —  can work for many people initially, because when you restrict your intake of specific foods, you are naturally going to restrict your intake in general — which in turn, leads to weight loss.

However, what people often forget is that by eliminating specific food groups, they are also eliminating the nutrients that go along with those food groups — such as the fiber in grains or the vitamins and minerals in fruit.

Cutting out too many specific food groups often isn’t sustainable, so you’re more likely to give up and gain any weight back you may have lost. Cutting out foods like sugar, alcohol, and carbs can also make you feel so deprived that you won’t be able to control those natural cravings, forcing you to overindulge. You’ll end up consuming way more calories than you would normally, which can make the scale numbers go up. Elimination of food groups is not how you sustainably lose weight, and may in fact it sets you up for failure.  When you put a food group as ‘off limits’ and never allow yourself to have it, you’re more likely to inevitably overeat it !

Restricting Calories Drastically

Reducing your daily calorie intake drastically can sound like the easiest way of losing weight, and while a calorie deficit is vital weight loss, you cannot go too low.  When you reduce calories too severely, your body will send signals to conserve calories, and in turn this slows down your metabolism.

Eating too little- for too long – not only constantly making you feel hungry and irritable, it can send signals to your body to conserve calories which lowers your metabolism, making weight loss nearly impossible. Never eat below your resting metabolic rate (the calories your body burns at rest) for a long period of time, as it can actually put your body into starvation mode! Eating well-balanced meals and snacks, with an emphasis on protein, healthy fats, and fiber.

Get Enough Sleep

Getting proper rest can improve every aspect of your life — including the number on the scale. Research shows that sleep deprivation can lead to weight gain!  Sleep is essential, both for mental acuity and to help your body recover from working out, but it can be hard to get enough good sleep. Besides making time for that 7-8 hours of shuteye, ensure you’re getting quality sleep by evaluating your sleep environment and looking at your habits for things that could be decreasing sleep quality.

Take Care Of Mental Health

Mental health can affect you in many ways, including your diet and weight.  Anxiety and stress can change your hormones, and if you are experiencing depression it can cause someone to withdraw from others and not take care of themselves.  These mental health factor have huge impact and can cause problems if you are trying to lose weight

Evaluate how you can address any mental health issues you may be experiencing by seeing your doctor or seeking out a therapist, Doing what is best for your mental health will in turn lead to physical results, as well.

Know When To See Your Physician

In some cases, underlying conditions that your doctor can treat or help you manage may be the reason why you’re not losing weight. Keep a food diary and bring it to your doctor to see if they have any insight into why you aren’t able to drop the pounds.  Your doctor should look at your full medical history and evaluate any prescription medications you’re taking, which can also be affecting your weight loss, such as antibiotics or antidepressants.

Eating Too Many “Diet” Foods

Just because a food is listed as “low-fat,” “no sugar,” or “diet” doesn’t necessarily make the product healthy! While you may lose weight initially, “diet” foods tend to be more expensive and inevitably our body doesn’t recognize them as food.  In fact, if you replace whole foods with artificial ‘diet’ items, it can lead to increased inflammation in your intestines and other issues throughout your body. For instance, “fat-free” foods are often high in sugar or salt to replace flavor, and “sugar-free” foods contain chemicals, so your body actually feels more hungry since you’re not giving it the nutrition it craves. This means eating these foods can actually cause weight gain, so they’re best avoided.

How To Break Through A Plateau

Exercise

Yes, you can lose weight on a diet plan without exercising — however, exercise not only accelerates weight loss, it’s good for you!  Try walking, biking or simply climbing several flights of stairs a few times each day.  And if you already enjoying working out, merely increase the duration and/or intensity of your normal exercise program.  An exercise class, new sport, or even a personal trainer can help you break through a weight loss plateau.

Increase Your Protein

Choosing higher, lean Proteins are a great way to rev up your weight loss.  A protein serving can range from seven to 17 grams so incorporate things like lean beef, chicken, pork and seafood.  There are many ways to eat natural food and increase your protein intake, and in turn feel fuller and see results with weight loss.

Stay Hydrated!

We’ve all heard how important H2O is when it comes to shedding pounds. It helps to suppress appetite, so you’re less likely to overeat. But that’s not all: When you’re dehydrated, your kidneys can’t function properly, so the body turns to the liver for additional support. Because the liver is working so hard, more of the fat you consume is stored, rather than burned off.

Stop Weighing Yourself

Weight fluctuates day-to-day due to changes in the weight of bone, fluid, muscle and fat. When you’re dieting and exercising regularly, these factors are changing all the time.  It is recommended that you weight yourself only 1x a week to get a real feel for how your body is reacting to your weight loss plan .  In addition, take measurements weekly since you may be losing inches even if the scale says you’re not losing any weight.

Track Your Food

You may think you are eating the correct portion sizes, but sometimes it is easy to lose track of how much you are consuming on any average day.  By weighing food, controlling portions carefully and tracking everything that goes in our mouth, you can help break through a plateau. By consistently recording what you eat in a journal or fitness/weight loss tracker or app, you will often see better weight loss success results.

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There is no one “good” or “bad” way to diet — just that  moderation is key! Learn to incorporate all foods into your balanced diet, and as long as you use some of the tips posted above, you will achieve results!

It’s important to remember that every person’s body loses weight at a different pace; some lose weight at a more rapid rate, others slower, but it really doesn’t make a difference as long as the weight is coming off!  Most importantly, concentrating on becoming healthier and your overall wellness is key — and in turn, weight loss will happen.  Keep the emphasis on healthy habits—eating properly with portion control and exercising, and the scale will show some results!

The NJ Diet program is a specialized program utilizes DNA testing to determine your ideal diet and workout plan, taking into account your eating behavior. We use personalized genetic testing can also used by any of your health care providers to help make critical decisions regarding your health. 

We welcome the opportunity for you to have a consultation at NJ Diet!

A consultation is normally $99, but by registering on our website it will only cost $27!  

Our program is not only aimed at promoting healthy weight loss, but aims to improve your total wellness. Each of our client’s specific needs for vitamins and supplements are assessed, plus many more metabolic factors are genetically tested to make sure you succeed on our program — not just for temporary weight loss, but to maintain good health for life!

Ways to Jump-Start Weight Loss This Fall

Weight Loss Roadblocks To Avoid This Fall

Plan Ahead 

The kids are back to school, but the extra-curricular activities and lack of free time starts adding up. Work is busier, and the rush to get ahead at work before the holiday season hits makes schedules feel extra-hectic. Many find this season a tough time to stick to a diet and exercise plan when you have so much to do, and trying to prepare a healthy dinner when time is super-limited becomes daunting!

There are simple solutions you can embrace, however.  Grabbing a pre-made meal when you just don’t have the time to cook is one idea.  Most supermarkets carry prepared rotisserie chickens and pre-cut veggies that get a healthy meal on the table in minutes.  As for how to plan fitting in fitness, you need to schedule it along with all your other activities!  Schedule in gym time, block out an hour for a bike ride, hike or a walk.  Putting it into your calendar and sticking to it will keep you more accountable.

Fall Festivities = Food Temptations

Fall weight loss may seem impossible feat – what with the endless amounts of candy leading up to Halloween, the pumpkin breads, cider donuts, apple pies any many other carb-filled treats.  A simple trip to the farm to go pumpkin picking can sometimes turn into the temptation of eating all the wrong types of foods that do not fit into a healthy diet or eating plan!

Instead, focus your fall activities on getting active and enjoying the weather by apple and pumpkin picking. Spending the afternoons walking around and enjoying the brisk air and fall foliage.  There are many ways to be festive this season without making it a food fail!

Daylight Savings Shouldn’t Get You Down

In November, most of us “fall back,” — that is, we get one extra hour of sleep as we switch the clocks back an hour. While the goal should be to get more sleep, in fact our sleep can be disturbed for up to a week or more after the time change. We may sleep less, get up earlier, wake up in the middle of the night and even have trouble getting to sleep — and sleep deprivation has been proven to lead to weight gain. To beat these fall weight loss traps, try to adjust your internal body clock by going to bed a little earlier, and avoiding alcohol and caffeinated beverages four to six hours before bedtime.  Trying to keep sleep schedules on the weekends is also a great way to adjust to the time change.

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As you can see, there are many ways that fall is a great time to get healthier, focus on wellness and lose weight. Autumn is an ideal season to jump-start healthy eating and exercise programs. Routines are ideal for helping people find time to fit in fitness, prepare healthier meals and make sure they take care of their own personal health needs.  And the cool crisp weather is nature’s invitation to be outside!

So don’t wait until the New Year to get started on the “new you,” or else you’re missing out on the best season for getting on track.  By establishing a trim-down routine now, you’ll be well-equipped to handle the unhealthy holiday hurdles that will be here before you know it!