Tip#1:   How Intermittent Fasting Can Help You Lose Weight And Feel Great!

Just because I use the word fasting, doesn’t mean you should stop reading.  I don’t BLAME you for not WANTING to read more, but hang in.  It’s not that scary and it is a one of the best ways to lose weight, live longer, improve brain health and prevent disease.  

Fasting has been practiced in human history as an ancient healing tradition for many, many years.  Fasting is a part of many spiritual as well as physical healing/cleansing rituals in many cultures. More and more research on fasting suggests it is a very powerful tool for improving health.

What exactly is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting is when you extend the time within a 24 hour period you don’t eat.  So when you SLEEP you are presumably not eating and you are (wait for it…..) FASTING!  If you ARE eating at 2 AM we have bigger fish to fry.  But you can take advantage of how fasting taps into FAT burning by extending this “fasting” time frame.  

TIP:  Instead of “breaking your fast” with breakfast at 8 am, push breakfast to 10 am.  

TIP: Eating dinner late makes you fatter. Move dinner earlier.  The same type and amount of food consumed after 6pm results in more weight gain than if eaten earlier. 

Why would I do this? Here are some reasons….

• Longevity — fasting improves lifespan and helps you get rid of aging, damaged cells.  But if you want to look really, really old, stop reading. 
• Heals the gut — reducing the number of times in the day that you expose your intestine to food, helps reduce gut inflammation and promotes healing.  But if you want to keep the bloat, stop reading. 
• Weight loss — fasting allows you to tap into fat burning by your energy production.  
• Can help reverse diabetes — that’s right, getting your insulin levels on track can improve your sugar balance and can lead to reversal of diabetic markers.

Is this for everyone? NOPE.

If you have certain medical conditions or take certain medications, then this is not for you without a doctor’s approval or clearance.

If you are pregnant, breast-feeding, under the age of 18, are under weight or have an eating disorder, this is not for you.

How do I do this?

• Figure out your current fasting window which is the time between when you eat dinner (let’s say 7pm) and breakfast (say 8am). This means you currently have a 13 hour fasting window.
• See if you can extend your window by an hour or two. In this example you would eat breakfast at 9 or 10 am OR eat dinner at 5 or 6 pm.
• Work your way up to a 14 to 18 hour fast for a couple of weeks and see how you feel. It may not be for you but many people do well with this.

TIP:  You can’t eat the kitchen sink during your eating window.  You should be eating the same amount of food or perhaps less if you reduce your meals from 3 to 2 meals a day

Many people end up eating less just because they only eat 2 meals a day.  But the point is your eating window isn’t your “eat with wild abandon” window

Give it a go! You may feel great and lose weight without really changing anything but meal timing. 

Tip #2:  8 Key Staples To Have In Your Kitchen For Healthy Meals

Sound too good to be true?  Well, it MAY be too good if you hate the ingredients I list.  But assuming you have my culinary palate, keeping these ingredients close by will help you eat healthier when you don’t have time to plan or shop for food.  

Why is this important?

Eating out is always going to be a poor choice from a nutrition, health, weight and financial standpoint.  Restaurants are about making money.  Part of making money is reducing costs.  Reducing costs in the restaurant business means buying cheap food to feed their customers.  So the bottom line is that you are eating poor quality food.  A couple of facts:

CAFO meat (confined animal feed lot operation) is what you find in restaurants and grocery stores. These animals are force-fed pesticide covered grains and corn (not what these animals are meant to eat), injected with growth hormone and antibiotics. Look for free-range, organic, grass-fed, hormone-free, antibiotic free, GMO free meat and poultry packed with healthy omega 3 fats.  Remember, you are what you eat. And what your food eats…

GMO, pesticide covered fruits and vegetables.  After all, these are bigger, mass produced and cheaper

Vegetable oils (corn, canola, soybean, safflower, sunflower) these refined, cheaper oils are full of omega 6 fatty acids that are inflammatory and will displace omega 3’s that are heart and brain healthy.   Polyunsaturated oils are just NOT the way to go

Here are the kitchen staples that will keep your meals options healthy. 

Eggs — the world’s most perfect food.  Hello protein, vitamin A, choline, omega 3’s (when organic and pastured) and biotin! And so versatile! Here are a few meal ideas…..

• Scramble it up and saute a side of veggies (whatever you have hanging out in the fridge– mushrooms, spinach, onion, peppers, tomatoes).  
• Throw some salsa over 2 eggs over easy or hard, poached or scrambled and add a slice of avocado on gluten free toast or sweet potato toast
• Make some egg salad and top it over your vehicle of choice — endive? Romaine or Bibb lettuce leaf? Sweet potato toast?
• Make a batch of hard-boiled eggs, peeled and ready for snacking in the fridge.

Frozen Riced Cauliflower–Frozen? Keeps for a while.  Riced? Ready to go. Cauliflower? Healthy and won’t spike your sugar and insulin levels, and most importantly takes on whatever flavor you want to add.

• Fried Cauli Rice:  Saute onions or scallion, ginger (shredded ginger in a jar), garlic (minced garlic in a jar), diced carrot and scramble up an egg.  Mix with tamari sauce and WA-LAH.
• Curried Cauli Rice: Saute some onion and garlic, sprinkle on turmeric and curry — good to go.
• Top the cooked Cauli Rice with whatever sauce or flavor you like — Jarred pasta sauce.  Mix it with a can of black beans and salsa for a mexican flavor. Mix with cooked peas and carrots (conveniently available in your freezer for last minute dishes)

Frozen veggies and fruit

• Having frozen veggies or fruit allows you to make a soup, stew or smoothie at a moment’s notice.  Or any other meal involving veggies and fruit.  At the moment I can’t necessarily think of other meals that involve these items, but I’m told that these are helpful.  
• Oh, and here’s a helpful tip. Bananas about to go bad? Peel and freeze them for your smoothies.  I have like 300 frozen bananas in my freezer, just waiting for a smoothie…..I’m not the biggest smoothie fan at the moment because I once added so many items to my smoothie (like literally 29 separate things that have no business being in the same nutribullet together) I wanted to throw up and haven’t gone back. 
• 2019 is the “Year of the Smoothie” so those bananas are going to come in real handy!   The moral of the story — don’t add too much to a smoothie.  It’s a smoothie, people, you can’t expect it to turn you into a completely new and improved human.  
• How to build a smoothie — because even though I won’t touch it with a 10 foot nutribullet, they ARE super great meal replacements and healthy
  • FAT: add 2 Tablespoons.  Healthy fats will not make you fat.  It’s a myth. In fact, FAT is the only macronutrient that DOESN’T trigger insulin, which IS related to making fat.  Coconut oil, coconut milk, avocados, nuts, avocado oil,  olive oil, ghee, organic grass fed butter if you are okay with dairy, nut butters like almond or peanut butters.
  • PROTEIN: I would add a clean top of the line powdered protein with a flavor you like (chocolate is my favorite)
  • CARB: careful here.  Having an ALL fruit smoothie is a sugar bomb.  So start with something green and leafy (spinach, romaine, mixed leafy greens), add some berries, the least sugary fruit (½ to ¾ cup) and a half banana (the frozen ones we just discussed) for sweetness
  • FLAVOR BOOST:  cinnamon, vanilla extract, nutmeg, cocoa powder, stevia if you must add a lot of sweetness without the sugar, waist expanding, inflammation promoting impact. 
  • LIQUID BASE: almond milk, coconut milk, water – all good vehicles for your smoothie
  • BOOSTS: chia, flax, hemp — fiber boosts that help your gut bacteria flourish.  That’s a good thing by the way. AND WA-LAH!!!
  • BLEND until smooth

Chicken or Vegetable broth in shelf stable carton

• A great thing to have on hand for whipping up a soup with leftover or frozen veggies. I will admit that I’ve never “whipped” up anything, but WERE I to whip something up, soup would top the list.
• Use as a base for anything you want to cook — can cook your cauli rice in this or regular rice or quinoa to give it a nice base flavor.  Can cook chicken or fish in this on the stove top to reduce oil cooking.
• You can poach stuff in this.  You know. The stuff you poach.  

Almond milk in a shelf stable carton

• Looking to limit cow’s milk dairy?  So most human people are not meant to eat cow’s milk dairy.  After all, it is specifically meant for baby calves to fatten them up.  Would you like to be a veal?  Nothing against a veal, but not really what I aspire to become.   Cow’s milk often inflames people — causes stomach and intestinal issues (like IBS, reflux, bloating), skin issues like eczema and acne, and likely makes allergies and asthma worse.  And moooooooo…
• Having shelf stable almond milk means you always have something for your healthy smoothies and don’t have to turn to cow’s milk yogurt or milk.  

Canned Beans

• Black beans, pinto beans, chick peas — whatever you like — cook them in your carton of shelf stable chicken broth.  See? It’s handy!
• Use this on the side of your huevos rancheros–I really wish I could use “huevos rancheros” in my daily conversations…it’s so sassy!!!
• These are great to cook as a side dish or to add to salads
• You COULD food process these guys for hummus or dips but, I would never do this.  As soon as a food processor is involved, I’m tapping out.

Rotisserie Chicken

• Having a cooked chicken at the ready is wildly helpful
• Salad Topper: add shredded chicken for your protein source
• Reheat in oven and coat with some BBQ sauce if you like
• Asian stir fry with shredded chicken
• Throw into a soup (you’d think I eat soups 3 times a day)…..
• Make  a pulled pork dish with shredded chicken instead. Add the BBQ sauce as needed. 

And the last thing to have are condiments….this stuff doesn’t really go bad, so have them available.  Please check expiration dates. I personally feel like those are just suggestions, but as a physician, I feel obligated to tell you to follow them.  I don’t.  But you should. 

• Salsa
• Pesto
• Olives
• Minced garlic
• Minced ginger
• Canned Wild Salmon (okay, so this may NOT be a condiment, but you should have this available for a nice protein source and it’s not so high in mercury)
• Tamari sauce (tastes like soy sauce, gives you a little umami to give any other boring sauce a kick and is gluten free if you are in that zone)
• Ketchup or Catsup (Really? Who spells it this way?)
• Mayo (I like paleo friendly mayo from primal kitchen — no soybean oil which is bad for you — only avocado oil, and no weird ingredients)
• Almond butter or Peanut butter (natural and unsweetened)
• Chia and Flax seeds for your smoothies.  Remember, flax goes bad once it is ground up so if you are REALLY bad ass, buy them whole, and grind up a batch in a coffee grinder and keep refrigerated for a few weeks.  Use as needed.
• Jarred pasta sauce — Rao’s is nice.  I don’t think organic is necessary since regular tomatoes aren’t on the dirty dozen list (top 12 fruits and veggies with the most pesticides).  I use the dirty dozen list as a guide for what to buy and eat organically.  Grape and cherry tomatoes ARE on the list. FYI. 

So, those are my “8 things”……I may not have been exactly accurate, but who would read the 407 things you should have in your kitchen  to have healthy meals all week long?  No one.

Please Share the Health if you liked what you read.!!!

For more information about my wellness programs and my practice, check out my website www.drsadaty.com.  Look! You are already here!

Ready for the legal disclaimer? Information offered here is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. As with any health recommendation, please contact your doctor to be sure any changes you wish to consider are safe for you!