Ask Alaina: Q&A

In this week's episode, I'm answering your questions! Listen in to hear my answers about health, faith, the enneagram, and a few other random topics thrown in too, just for fun!

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Questions from this week’s episode:

What’s your favorite thing to teach?

Favorite worship song and why?

If you could trade places with anyone who would it be and why? 

What’s your opinion on probiotics? Real food vs supplement? 

What are some ways to incorporate good fats into your diet (not a fan of avocados)?

When people say “do your own research” what does that mean? Google? Pubmed? 

What is your enneagram number?

If you could shout one thing that the whole world would hear, what would it be?

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006 - Part 2: The Top Four Reasons Women Struggle To Lose Weight - Misleading Health Myths

Hi friends! Today we will be continuing with part two of our month-long series on The Top Four Reasons Women Struggle to Lose Weight. 

Today’s topic is misleading health myths and oh my - there are so many of them! Today I’m just going to cover a few of the ones that I encounter often when working with a client and how these myths could be getting in the way of your weight loss progress.

If you haven’t already listened to part one of this series, please go back and start there! The info in that episode helps to build a solid foundation and also ensures that you understand where my heart and intention is with this series.

Let’s get into talking about misleading health myths! 

These are so common and understandably so... The nutrition and health world is constantly changing and just like anything else is subject to all the advertising fads and trends. This can make it so difficult to tell what is actually true and supported by the most up-to-date research. Unless you have had nutritional training (heck, sometimes even when you have) there’s not much of a constant point of reference or a trusted source of truth to base your decisions off of. For my family, I like to use a simple rule that helps me decide whether a health theory or new trend is good for us or maybe something I need to research more. I like to think of it this way: If the main ingredients of that item or product are made by God or come from the earth (for the purpose of eating) then it likely has a purpose in our diet and is good for us. If it’s something that has been manufactured or processed in a factory or industry, then I think twice. That doesn’t mean that I don’t eat it or use it, but I don’t just blindly accept it either.

Myth # 1 - Eating Fat Is Bad For You

One of the health myths that I encounter the most is a perfect example of following this rule. And that is the myth that eating fat is bad for you and should avoid it. Ugh… if only we could go back in time and tell the nutrition experts of the 60s that this simply isn’t true! In their defense, this was the best research they had at the time, but now there is so much research that proves that eating the right kinds of fats are not only good for us but are also absolutely vital for our health!

In studies comparing a high-fat diet, identical in calorie count, to a high-sugar diet, they found totally different effects on metabolism. The higher-fat diet caused people to burn an extra 300 calories a day (that’s like going for a 45 min run, without actually running)! These studies show that dietary fat actually speeds up your metabolism, while sugar slows it down. Not only does consuming healthy forms of fat speed up your metabolism, but it also helps to keep you full longer and helps to reduce cravings! 

In addition, eating healthy fats (like polyunsaturated, monounsaturated and even most quality-sourced saturated fats) has a long list of health benefits like reducing bad cholesterol (LDL) and increasing the good cholesterol (HDL), reducing inflammation in the body, fueling your brain (which is made up of 60% fat, by the way) and building stronger hair, nails and clearer skin. One of the most important things that consuming healthy fats does is to help balance our hormones. Fat is absolutely essential for hormone production in the body and also allows for the absorption of essential fat-soluble vitamins (like A, D, E, and K), which are all needed for hormone balance. 

I could go on and on, but as you can see thinking that including fat in your diet will make you gain weight or make you unhealthy couldn’t be further from the truth! Do make sure you are thinking about the quality of the source of the fats you are eating and avoiding inflammatory ones like trans fats and other inflammatory oils like canola. 

A few examples of healthy fats to include in your meals are things like avocados and avocado oil, coconut oil and butter, olive oil, flax seeds, chia seeds, salmon, pasture-raised eggs, nuts, and nut-butters.  As far as how much, a good general rule is about 2 Tbsp per meal (1 Tbsp is about the size of your thumb).

One more thing to add to the myth about fat is that if it’s true that healthy fats are good for your health, then it’s also true that all the “low-fat” and “diet” foods and drinks out there are not good for you. When in doubt, refer back to the basic rule that I mentioned in the beginning. Look at the label - are there a bunch of words you can’t pronounce or understand? Is it super low in fat but high in sugar? If so, it’s not a good choice! 

Myth # 2 - All Calories Are Created Equal

No… just no! I think if most of us really took a minute to think this myth through, we would see it for exactly that! All calories are not created equally and therefore will have different effects on the body. You will never get the same amount of nutrients, feeling of satiety, or energy from a can of coke as you will from eating an apple with almond butter, even though they are almost the exact same amount of calories.

Our intake of food is about so much more than calories, which is why I feel that a hyper-focus on calories alone can often do more harm than good! When your main goal is just to stay under a certain calorie count for the day, it becomes easy to lose sight of focusing on quality. The calorie-focused mentality can also cause us to mistakenly think that the key to losing weight is to just always burn more calories than you consume. As a matter of fact, I used to think that! I wouldn’t have any problem at all eating those donuts or that bag of chips, as long as I knew that I was going to go “work it off” later. But, the truth is that our bodies are way more complex than a math equation and our food is more than just calories and flavors! Food is information telling our cells what to do! It is actual fuel for our bodies! Whether we like it or not, everything we eat affects our hormones, our brains, and our metabolism. We have to be more concerned about the quality of the calories we consume, instead of the quantity.

Myth # 3 - The More You Exercise, The Thinner You Will Be

Without question, exercise is a foundational component of good health. There are numerous benefits to our health from regularly moving our bodies - things like lowering chronic inflammation, improving mood and memory, strengthening muscles and bones, increasing energy levels, improving sleep quality, increasing metabolism and many more. But just like in so many other areas, balance is key in exercise too! As we are now learning, more may not always be better when it comes to exercise - especially for women and especially if you struggle with hormone imbalance.

It may seem like common sense to try to work out as much as possible when you are trying to lose weight, especially when you’re working toward a goal like balancing your hormones or improving your fertility. But doing things like two-a-day workouts or multiple hour-long cardio sessions can tip the scale of benefit versus risk. As I just mentioned, regular, moderate exercise actually helps to lower inflammation and overall reduces levels of stress hormones, like cortisol,  in the body. But when you crossover into “over-training”, the opposite starts to take place and you start to have elevated cortisol levels in the body for a prolonged amount of time. If cortisol levels are chronically high, it can increase hormones like testosterone and subsequently estrogen, while also decreasing hormones like progesterone. This can quickly have a domino effect and start to cause things like irregular cycles, acne, increased appetite, extreme fatigue, and blood sugar dysregulation. These are things you certainly don’t want to deal with. 

So, I say all of this, just to say just be mindful of your workouts - both the frequency and the intensity! You want a good balance! 

I often recommend to my clients, especially when they are just starting to get back into exercising regularly, or they are already dealing with some hormone issue or inflammatory disease, to shoot for a goal of just moving their bodies for 30 minutes a day! This can be walking, jogging, weight-training, HIIT style workouts, barre, yoga - really whatever you enjoy! Picking something that you enjoy and won’t dread, will increase the likelihood that you will actually do it. Ask a friend to join you, if that will help you stay accountable and feel more motivated, but just don’t go to any extremes. Remind yourself that the point of exercising is to move your body, to increase oxygen and nutrients to your tissues, to help calm stress and inflammation, and ultimately to help your body to be strong and to function well. 

I hope that this episode has helped to clear up any of these myths that you might have been taught and will help remove potential roadblocks on your way to moving your health forward in the area of weight loss!

Please remember that sign-ups are open for my Fall Group Coaching Sessions that will start in September! If you feel like you need some extra support and accountability to reach your health goals, this is a great opportunity for you to not only work with me but also to be a part of a community of women all working on similar goals! Sign-ups will be open until September 1st, but spots are limited, so make sure you get your spot!