Sunday, 05Feb12

Rest Day

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Super Bowl Sunday

Alright NLP’ers, let’s not get to emotional today. You know that we are playing the New England Patriots. We have been working out hard all week, do we really want to destroy all the hard work we put into our bodies. No, seriously, we have to get out of that mindset that its OK to eat as much as the Brooklyn Bridge weighs, when really its not. We also have the big idea that because it’s Super Bowl Sunday, it’s the biggest excuse to eat like shit, when its really is not. I realize how pathetic this is. How did this tradition begin? There is no crossover between watching athletics and forcing food into one’s body. Will this epiphany stop you from making an annual three-pound Velveeta purchase on Super Bowl Sunday? Oh, hell no! I’ll buy that shit, try as quickly as I can to mix it with salsa and get it in the microwave before kickoff.

This doesn’t just go for football games, but most live sporting events. I don’t know why people feel the need to gorge themselves while watching an especially important sporting event, but I do, even though this is essentially like saying: “Hey, you guys out there on the field are physically fit in a manner that defies modern science, so I’ll appreciate that prowess by pouring fat into my arteries and drowning my brain cells in alcohol.” Don’t know what to make for that Super Bowl party this sunday? Well whatever you decide to bring or make for your friends and family doesn’t have to sideline anyone’s diet. Here are some healthy alternatives from Men’s Health.

Whatever you do, make our hot wings recipe. These wings are so delicious that they have the ability to instantaneously alter your life for the better—taste will seem like an entirely new and improved-upon sensation, your girlfriend will suddenly look like Minka Kelly, and the voices of your friends who showed up to your party justto root against your team will suddenly disappear until Monday morning.

2. On second thought, assign a guest to make our wings. You know how your hands and face look after you eat wings? Well that’s how your entire kitchen looks after you make them.

3. You know what is easy to make? Say, 10 of these incredible hoagies. Do as the great American Henry Ford once did: build an assembly line. As the bread splitting condiment captain, (politely) ask your girlfriend to be the meat and cheese maestro. The dog can help clean up any projectiles that may fly off the line.

4. Next to the bowl of chips and salsa, set out a bowl of extra-strength antacids. You will resist the urge to overeat, but the hot wings, beer, and chili will do to your buddys’ guts what Jason Pierre Paul plans to do to Tom Brady.

5. After the first scandalous GoDaddy.com commercial airs, taking out your smartphone and logging on “to see more” is not appropriate.

6. …unless it’s an all-guys Super Bowl party. Then stream it to the big screen.

7. Patriot wide receiver Wes Welker is a miniscule 5?9? and 185 pounds and Patriot tight end Rob Gronkowski is a refrigerator-like 6?6? and 265 pounds. Remember those facts. A guest will ask.

8. Reconsider the invite you extended to your girlfriend’s vegan pet therapist.

9. Because people unaccustomed to craft beers often don’t realize that some weigh in at over 11 percent ABV (which means a big bottle is equivalent to a bottle of wine. Read: highly irresponsible) be sure to pick beers that are under 6 percent ABV. Unless you want to play DD and drive everyone home after the game.

10. Speaking of beer. Variety is better. Buy two macros (we suggest a regular and light version), and a few different craft styles. Here are 32 ideas.

11. Never let the government plan your Super Bowl party. We can guarantee no one will come next year.

12. The Super Bowl is the only day of the year that girlfriends willfully and happily let their boyfriends wear replica sports jerseys—no questions asked. Take advantage. And while you’re at it, you know who else needs a jersey? The dog.

13. There are many fun things you can do at halftime. Watching Madonna is not one of them.

14. Skip the monotonous, mind-numbing pregame coverage and put the Puppy Bowl on the TV. You may even see a dog in a jersey.

15. Side bets on the Puppy Bowl: Highly encouraged!

16. Speaking of bets—that uncle with a serious betting problem? You’re taking a serious bet by inviting him to your party. If his team wins, he’s like the happy, lovable, funny Robin Williams in Patch Adams, but if his team doesn’t win, he’s the psychopathic Robin Williams in One Hour Photo.

17. Acceptable toppings for nachos include: jack cheese, pepper jack cheese, cheddar cheese, grilled steak and/or chicken, beans, sour cream, onions, tomatoes, any type of fresh or roasted peppers, guacamole, fresh salsa. Unacceptable toppings include: Velveeta or any other nuclear waste colored cheese product and any canned chili that is visually indistinguishable from dog food.

18. Cook early. If you’re still in the kitchen when the game starts, no one is getting up to grab you a spatula, or an oven mitt, or help you put out that fire on the stove. No one.

19. With Tim Tebow out of the running, 40 percent of the people at your Super Bowl party don’t really care about the game. They’ve come to eat your food and drink your beer. Serve them everything they could ever want, with a hefty serving of spite and passive aggression on the side.

20. But if any of those people “Tebow,” cut them off from all food and drink. Tebow doesn’t eat unhealthy food and he sure doesn’t do much beer drinking, so guess what—neither shall Tebowers. -Psalm 3:67

21. Dancing like Victor Cruz? Totally acceptable.

Enjoy the game!

Saturday, 04Feb12

Pre-Super Bowl Get Down

This is going to help you burn those chicken wings, pizza, 6 footers and whatever other junk you can cram into your cranial cavity. Make smart choices like vegetable platters or tofu chips (yea right).

This is a 60 second work /20 second recovery timed sets for 3 rounds with 1 minute rest between

• TRX reverse flyes
• Landmine Reverse Lunges
• KB Snatch pulls
• Band Sprints & Block
• MB Bounding w/ Mtn Climbers (5l/5r)
• 180 Slam Ball

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Athletes ROD

Starter:

4 rounds of: 20 sec of work 10 recovery… stay on each one for 4 rounds then move on

• Recline overhead pulls
• Goblet squats 
• DB push press
• Resisted Kettlebell swings with thin bands
• Plank jacks

Finisher:

20/10 x 10 rounds of this couplet (10 minute set) rest for 1 minute after 5 rounds then continue.

• Slam ball
• Burpees

Friday, 03Feb12

TGIF

First Round

• Burpee & a half x 60 seconds
• KB swings x 60 seconds
• Mtn. Climbers x 60 seconds
• Diamond Sit-ups x 60 seconds
• DB Thrusters x 60 seconds

In rounds 2-3-4 all above movements will be done at 45 sec, 30 sec, 15 sec… respectively. There will be rest in between rounds respective to the times of rounds. 1st round 60 sec rest… 2nd round 45 sec rest and so on

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 Raw Juice Therapy

By Grata Young

Raw juice therapy is a method of treatment of disease through an exclusive diet of juices of fruits and vegetables. It is also known as juice fasting. It is the most effective way to restore health and rejuvenate the body.

During raw juice therapy, the eliminative and cleansing capacity of the organs of elimination, namely lungs, liver, kidneys and the skin, is greatly increased and masses of accumulated metabolic waste and toxins are quickly eliminated. It affords a physiological rest to the digestive  and assimilative organs. After the juice fasting or raw juice therapy, the digestion of food and the utilisation of nutrients is vastly improved.

An exclusive diet of raw juices of fruits and vegetables results in much faster recovery from diseases and more effective cleansing and regeneration of the tissues than the fasting on pure water. Dr. Ragnar Berg, a world-renowned authority on nutriton and biochemistry observes:

“During fasting the body burns up and excretes huge amounts of accumulated wastes. We can help this cleansing process by drinking alkaline juices instead of water while fasting. I have supervised many fasts and made extensive examinations and tests of fasting patients, and I am convinced that drinking alkali-forming fruit and vegetable juices, instead of water, during fasting will increase the healing effect of fasting. Elimination of uric acid and other inorganic acids will be accelerated. And sugars in juices will strengthen the heart. Juice fasting is, therefore, the best form of fasting.”

As juices are extracted from plants and fruits, they process definite medicinal properties. Specific juices are beneficial in specific conditions. Besides specific medicinal virtues, raw fruit and vegetable juices have an extraordinary revitalising and rejuvenative effect on all the organs, glands and functions of the body.

Thursday, 02Feb12

 X-treme ROD

This will be a 45 second work / 20 second recovery for 3 rounds with a 1 minute rest in between

• Reclines
• Dynamax Log throws
• Evil Jumps
• Side to Side Step Ups w/ DB’s in hand
• Elevated Plank Climbers
• KB Cleans Long Cycle (3r/l)

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Ready for Anything Training!!!!!

This class is a 1 hour ass kicking circuit that will leave you in a puddle of sweat.

Your cardiorespiratory and muscle strength will benefit from our motivational, challenging and fun circuit training set to energetic music.

Let’s see what you’ve got!!!!

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Hey everyone, there’s a great supplement out there for when those of you have a sucky day.

Coach D takes it all the time… for when life throws you those little curves.

Wednesday, 01Feb12

• 5 burpees
• 10 kettlebell snatches 5/r-5/l or snatch pulls
• 15 mountain climbers ( two legs is 1 rep)
• 20 kettlebell swings

Tuesday, 31Jan12

No Boxing Tonight… so get over it. 

Tuesday Takeover

This is 3 rounds of 6 exercises 45 seconds work and 15 seconds rest or as we will call it from now on recovery, with a 1 minute rest in between rounds. If you think about it for a minute, that is exactly what your body is doing. It’s recovering from the previous round to continue exercising to the end.

• Snatch Pull with a Squat Thrust
• Bent Over Alternating Row (change hands at each rep)
• Super Plank Climber (plank climber with a pushup)
• KB Stand-Kneel-Stand (right)
• KB Stand-Kneel-Stand (left)
• KB Swing

Today’s Instructor will be our very own Nancy Cofrancesco. She will be guiding you through your fitness journey. She has proven her competency as a trainer for NLP and we want to thank her for her efforts.

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Athlete ROD

This is 4 rounds of 5 exercises 45 seconds work and 15 seconds recovery

• Reclines
• Box Jumps
• Mtn. Climbers
• Burpees
• DB Hang Squat Cleans

All these exercises should be set up in 5 rows with each row dedicated to each exercise. The class is broken down to even amounts of teams and set up at each row of exercises when done each team will rotate to the next exercise.

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It’s 141 days till summer…. will you be ready?

 or  

      or        Just Saying…

Monday, 30Jan12

Manic Monday

5 rounds of 30 work/15 rest at each station. Complete all five rounds at each station before moving on to the next.  Take 1 minute rest between each station.

• Knees to Elbows (at pullup station)
• Slam Ball
• DB Thrusters
• KB Cleans (5 r/l)
• KB High Pulls
• DB Lunges (DB side to shoulder height at ea. lunge)

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It’s one month in to the year, how are you doing on those New Years goals? Whats your game plan, action items, challenges, rewards? Not sure? Come see what we are doing at Next Level Performance and see why we are changing the game when it comes getting fit Mentally and Physically!

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The Dark Side of Vitamin water

Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?

Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage.

Is any harm being done by this marketing ploy? After all, some might say consumers are at least getting some vitamins, and there isn’t as much sugar in vitaminwater as there is in regular Coke.

True. But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now leads to more medical costs than smoking.

How many people with weight problems have consumed products like vitaminwater in the mistaken belief that the product was nutritionally positive and carried no caloric consequences? How many have thought that consuming vitaminwater was a smart choice from a weight-loss perspective? The very name “vitaminwater” suggests that the product is simply water with added nutrients, disguising the fact that it’s actually full of added sugar.

The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25 percent of their calories from liquids. In 2009, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate beverages that contain added sugar.
Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in its vitaminwater line, paying basketball stars, including Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, to appear in ads that emphatically state that these products are a healthy way for consumers to hydrate. When Lebron James held his much ballyhooed TV special to announce his decision to join the Miami Heat, many corporations paid millions in an attempt to capitalize on the event. But it was vitaminwater that had the most prominent role throughout the show.

The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, alleges that vitaminwater labels and advertising are filled with “deceptive and unsubstantiated claims.” In his recent 55-page ruling, Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York), wrote, “At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage.” Noting that the soft drink giant wasn’t claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds, the judge wrote that, “Accordingly, I must accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true.”

I still can’t get over the bizarre audacity of Coke’s legal case. Forced to defend themselves in court, they are acknowledging that vitaminwater isn’t a healthy product. But they are arguing that advertising it as such isn’t false advertising, because no could possibly believe such a ridiculous claim.

I guess that’s why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising the product, saying it will keep you “healthy as a horse,” and will bring about a “healthy state of physical and mental well-being.”

Why do we allow companies like Coca-Cola to tell us that drinking a bottle of sugar water with a few added water-soluble vitamins is a legitimate way to meet our nutritional needs?

Here’s what I suggest: If you’re looking for a healthy and far less expensive way to hydrate, try drinking water. If you want to flavor the water you drink, try adding the juice of a lemon and a small amount of honey or maple syrup to a quart of water. Another alternative is to mix one part lemonade or fruit juice to three or four parts water. Or drink green tea, hot or chilled, adding lemon and a small amount of sweetener if you like. If you want to jazz it up, try one-half fruit juice, one-half carbonated water.

If your tap water tastes bad or you suspect it might contain lead or other contaminants, get a water filter that fits under the sink or attaches to the tap.

And it’s probably not the best idea to rely on a soft drink company for your vitamins and other essential nutrients. A plant-strong diet with lots of vegetables and fruits will provide you with what you need far more reliably, far more consistently — and far more honestly.

Sunday, 29Jan12

Rest Day

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Intermittent fasting, whey protein, and weight loss?

For those of us who’re looking to lose weight, a recent study published in the British Journal of Nutrition might offer some hope.  Losing weight is never easy as it requires a lifelong commitment to changes in dietary habits as well as activity level.

Years ago, I read a book by Greg LeMond, the former three-time Tour de France winner.  I loosely recall him mentioning something about you can’t lose weight by sitting on your couch eating hot-fudge Sundaes.

Conventional wisdom being the usual edict of calories in and calories out holds true for the most part.  However, some recent research suggest that intermittent fasting might offer an unconventional weight loss strategy.

Though I’m not going to bother citing a reference here, the Body for Life book by Bill Phillips was probably the first mention of the often promulgated advice of 6 small meals per day.  The purported benefit of this meal plan was that it would prevent your metabolism from slowing down while also keeping you in an anabolic state for those who engage in resistance training.

For most people, if you’ve ever tried the eat 6 small meals per day method, you probably find that you end up getting used to never feeling hungry.  After awhile, chances are you lose discipline over portion control and the next thing you know it leads to simply eating too much and too often.

Not wanting to stop at my intuitive feelings over the meal frequency myth, I found a very recent review study that has debunked this myth.  A review published in the Journal of Nutritionmade the following conclusion:

Taken together, these findings suggest that increased eating frequency (>3 eating occasions/d) has minimal, if any, impact on appetite control and food intake, whereas reduced eating frequency(<3 eating occasions/d) negatively effects appetite control.

Okay, so this review only addresses the effect of meal frequency on appetite control and food intake, what about weight loss?  From a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, they found that meal frequency had NO benefit on promoting weight loss in obesity subjects on a calories restricted diet:

We conclude that increasing MF (meal frequency) does not promote greater body weight loss under the conditions described in the present study.

Intermittent Fasting?

Contrary to this diet regime, a recent study published in the International Journal of Obesitysuggest that intermittent fasting can not only be effective for lowering insulin resistance, blood pressure, and cholesterol, but also promotes weight loss.  This and other studies in this area contradict the fear that your metabolism will ‘slow down’ causing you to gain weight if you don’t eat 6 small meals per day.  In fact, intermittent fasting was more effective than calorie restriction at reducing insulin resistance in this particular study.

Okay, so now we’ve established that eating frequently won’t suppress your appetite , reduce your energy intake, or help you lose more weight.  If you want to improve your insulin resistance and lose weight, intermittent fasting is an option worth considering (in consultation with a health professional).  What if you just want to suppress your appetite to help you lose weight, is there anything that works?

Effects of whey protein on suppressing appetite:

Speaking of losing weight…  Another recent study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, found that there’s a dose-response effect for drinking a whey protein beverage 90 minutes prior to eating.  Participants in this study, however, were already within a healthy weight range (BMI 19-25, both men and women).

In this study, the participants drank a 400 ml  [400 calorie] beverage 90 minutes prior to eating an ad libitum test meal.  In addition to a placebo beverage containing flavored water, they were also randomized to a 400 calorie beverage containing 12.5, 25, or 50% of the calories from whey protein.

Energy intake after preload:

• placebo – 987 Calories
• 12.5% protein beverage – 841 Calories
• 25% protein beverage – 808 Calories
• 50% protein beverage – 681 Calories

From this data, consuming a whey protein beverage prior to large meals, particularly dinner, may be beneficial for those looking to reduce their appetite and lose weight.

Saturday, 28Jan12

Cusick Crusher

I love the 15/15 work/rest ratio. So lets do it again for 20 mins or 10 rounds whichever makes you feel better…of

• KB Swings
• Mountain climbers
• DB Thrusters
• DB Renegade Rows

 Something to think about if your a runner.

Friday, 27Jan12

Fantabulous Friday

15 seconds work / 15 seconds rest for 20 mins (10 rounds) with no rest between of the following.

• Reclines
• Half burpees
• Front Squats
• KB Deadlift jumps

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This is for you Jennifer !!

Losing Weight with Hypothyroidism

How an Underactive Thyroid Can Affect Weight Loss

Many hypothyroid patients struggle with an inability to lose weight. At first, if you’d gained weight before your thyroid problem is diagnosed, you were probably told you’d be able to lose it more easily — or perhaps you were even told you’d lose all the extra weight — once you started on your thyroid hormone replacement.

So you take your thyroid hormone, and the weight doesn’t come off.

Later, despite “normal” TSH levels, and lower-calorie, low-fat diets and exercise, you find yourself still gaining, or not losing weight. You may also have high cholesterol levels. The doctor then tells you that your weight problem doesn’t have anything to do with your thyroid.

Some of this site’s visitors have reported to me that they were on a 900-calorie a day diet, walking 3 miles a day, and not losing weight, and the doctor says, “well, you just must be eating too much.”

What thyroid patients need to know more about are three factors that are likely at work for many of us with a difficulty losing weight — a changed metabolic “set point,” changes in brain chemistry due to illness and stress, and insulin resistance.

Metabolic Set Point

According to Dr. Lou Aronne, author of the best-selling Weigh Less Live Longer, when you begin to take in too many calories, you have a small weight gain. Then, in order to maintain your set point weight, “your metabolism speeds up to process the excess calories, your appetite decreases, and some of the newly gained weight drops off.” He calls this metabolic resistance.

Dr. Aronne believes that every person’s body has what is called a weight “set point.” Just like your body works to maintain a temperature “set point” of 98.6, it also appears to work toward maintaining a particular weight “set point.”

His theory is that in people with a chronic weight problem, the body puts up only modest metabolic resistance to weight gain. If you continue to take in more calories than you burn, the metabolic resistance loses strength, and your body then establishes a new, higher weight set point.

What this means is, if several years ago, as a woman at 5’7? and 160 pounds you needed 2500 calories a day to maintain your weight, and now, after a diagnosis of hypothyroidism and a steady weight gain, at 210 pounds, you need 2800 calories to maintain your weight, if you dropped your calories back to 2500, would you lose the extra 50 pounds? No, as you reduce your calories and lose weight, your metabolic rate slows down, and according to Dr. Aronne, you’d probably only drop to around 197 pounds, although you’d be consuming the same number of calories as another woman of the same height who’s stayed steady at 160 pounds.

This is probably the mysterious factor at play when we see someone who apparently eats even more than we do, but maintains a lower weight level, or conversely, the person who swears they don’t eat that much, but gains weight, or stays heavier.

Dr. Aronne believes you can’t completely eliminate the metabolic resistance, but a slow steady approach to dieting helps to minimize it. Also, a key way to increase metabolism is through exercise.

Changes in Brain Chemistry

Hunger is intricately tied to your brain chemistry. According to Dr. Aronne, your hypothalamus senses you need energy, and issues the brain neurotransmitter neuropeptide Y (NPY) with the message “eat carbohydrates.” The surge of NPY is what you experience as “hunger,” Once the hypothalamus senses you’ve eaten enough carbohydrates, it releases serotonin to tell the body, “enough carbohydrates.”

But this system can be dramatically altered by several factors, all of which can be present in chronic thyroid disease:

• Your metabolism is too slow for the appetite level set by your brain. Thyroid disease slows down the metabolism. What your brain perceives as appropriate food intake levels can then exceed your body’s metabolism, creating weight gain.
• Your body is under stress, which interferes with the neurotransmitter functions, and is known to reduce the release of serotonin. In fact, part of the success of the recently recalled diet drugs fen-phen was the fact that they increase serotonin and create a “feeling of fullness.”

Dealing with brain chemistry, and helping to stimulate serotonin can be dealt with in several ways in addition to taking traditional anti-depressant drugs. Alternative medicine guru Andrew Weil, M.D., author of bestsellers Spontaneous Healing,, and Eight Weeks to Optimum Health believes that the natural alternatives to boosting serotonin include aerobic exercise. Dr. Weil recommends at least 30 minutes of some vigorous aerobic activity at least five times a week. Dr. Weil also recommends the herbal treatment called St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum). More information on Dr. Weil’s natural recommendations for dealing with serotonin are featured at his website.

Insulin Resistance

Insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas. When you eat foods that contain carbohydrates (which make up the majority of most of our diets), your body converts the carbohydrates into simple sugars.  These sugars enter the blood, becoming “blood sugar.” Your pancreas then releases insulin to stimulate the cells to take in the blood sugar and store it as an energy reserve, returning blood sugar levels to a normal level.

Carbohydrates can be “simple,” high-glycemic carbohydrates such as pasta, bread, sugar, white flour and cakes, or “complex” lower-glycemic carbohydrates, like vegetables and whole grains.

Current theory claims that sugars and starches are far easily broken down than in our more prehistoric past, and today, many of us simply do not need and cannot process the amounts of carbohydrates that are considered “normal” by current dietary standards. For an estimated 25% of the population, eating what appears to be a “normal amount” of carbohydrates in fact raises blood sugar to excessive levels.  The pancreas responds by increasing the secretion of insulin to the level where it will drive down blood sugar. For this group, consistently eating too many carbohydrates — but remember, what is too many for this group is not necessarily too many for the average person — creates a situation called “insulin resistance.”

Insulin resistance means that cells have become less responsive to the effects of insulin. So your body has to produce more and more insulin in order to maintain normal blood sugar levels. The insulin can also remain in your blood in higher concentrations. This is known as hyperinsulinemia.

In addition to those who seem to have a lowered need for carbohydrates, some people simply eat too many carbohydrates. Today’s low-fat diets emphasize more and more pasta, bagels, Snackwells, and sugary fat-free products, and most of these are high-glycemic carbohydrates. Basic over-consumption of  high-glycemic foods carbohydrates can also trigger insulin resistance and overweight.

If you are insulin resistant, eating carbohydrates can make you crave more carbohydrates. You’ll gain weight more easily, and have difficulty losing it. It is estimated that 25 percent of the general population — and 75 percent of overweight people — are insulin resistant.

High insulin levels can stimulate your appetite, making you feel even hungrier than normal for carbohydrate rich food, while lowering the amount of sugar your body burns as energy, and making your cells even better at storing fat, and even worse at removing fat.

When you’re creating this excess insulin, it also prevents your body from using its stored fat for energy.  Hence, your insulin response to excess carbos causes you to gain weight, or you cannot lose weight.

The weight problems are not the worst aspect of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance may set up a whole syndrome of other serious health problems. For example, insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia, which tend to go together, are often precursors of diabetes. And insulin resistance is also associated with a substantially increased risk of coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

Insulin Resistance and Thyroid Disease

It seems likely that hypothyroidism, with its penchant for slowing down everything else in our systems right down to our cells, slows down our body’s ability to process carbohydrates and our cell’s ability to absorb blood sugar. Hence, the carbohydrates we could eat pre-thyroid problems now are too much for our systems to handle. So excess carbohydrates equals excess insulin equals excess weight. Plus, the fun side effects of blood sugar swings (tiredness, dizziness, fatigue, exhaustion, hunger, etc.) that we may be mistaking as thyroid symptoms and our doctors say can’t possibly be.

Any illness — such as the chronic thyroid problems we all face — also creates physical stress. And stress raises cortisol levels. And increased cortisol increases insulin levels. (I know my cortisol was through the roof last time the doctor checked. She had no idea why.) More insulin means increased chance of insulin resistance.

There’s also a vicious circle aspect to this. The liver mediates between the activities of the insulin-releasing pancreas and the adrenal and thyroid glands, which are supposed to “tell” the liver to release glucose. If the adrenals and thyroid aren’t working properly on the “telling” end, or if the liver is sluggish, stressed out, or toxic, and not working on the “receiving” end, the system goes out of balance. Either way, the result is elevated excess insulin. And ultimately, if your adrenal glands are stronger than your pancreas, this can potentially lead to diabetes. If your pancreas is the stronger organ, which is more common, then you get fatigue, lowered body temperature, and low blood sugar (hypoglycemia).

All these factors mean that insulin resistance is probably even more of a factor for overweight people with hypothyroidism than for the general population.

How to Lose Weight and Fight Insulin Resistance

Weight loss is the most important method of eliminating insulin resistance. So it’s one of those chicken and egg situations. The less you weigh, the less insulin resistant you will be. But insulin resistance makes it difficult to lose weight.

So, for people who are insulin resistant, one of the only effective methods is by eating a low fat, low carbohydrate, protein sufficient diet. This means that in addition to the usual restrictions of a low-fat diet, you also need to seriously limit intake of sugar and starches, cutting back on pasta, rice, potatoes, white flour breads, cereal, corn, peas, sweet potatoes, desserts, dairy products, meats, and fruit with a high sugar content.

You may feel frustrated that there’s nothing left to eat. But you need to rethink your eating habits, shifting to a diet of chicken, turkey, fish, non-starchy vegetables, legumes, and certain grains. And for those who are insulin resistant, once you start eating this way, you’ll find it easier, as your carbohydrate cravings will subside dramatically.

Exercise

Finally, according to Jean-Pierre Despres, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Physical Education and Director of the Lipid Research Center at Laval University Hospital in Quebec, “Exercise is probably the best medication on the market to treat insulin resistance syndrome.” “Our studies show that low intensity, prolonged exercise — such as a daily brisk walk of 45 minutes to an hour — will substantially reduce insulin levels,” says Dr. Despres.

This article was adapted from the book, The Thyroid Diet, by Mary Shomon

Mary Shomon, About.com’s Thyroid Guide since 1997, is a nationally-known patient advocate and best-selling author of 10 books on health, including “The Thyroid Hormone Breakthrough: Overcoming Sexual and Hormonal Problems at Every Age,” “The Thyroid Diet: Manage Your Metabolism for Lasting Weight Loss,” “Living Well With Hypothyroidism: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Tell You…That You Need to Know,” “Living Well With Graves’ Disease and Hyperthyroidism,” “Living Well With Autoimmune Disease,” and “Living Well With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.”  Click here for more information on Mary Shomon.

http://www.lowthyroidhelp.com/hypothyroid_diet.html