Month: February 2025

Benefits of a Whole Foods Diet

Posted on by healthcoach

There are two main reasons why whole foods diets have health benefits:

  1. Whole foods displace hyperpalatable processed foods, reducing overeating (it may take a little time for your taste buds to re-adjust, but they will).

  2. Whole foods contain more nutrients (protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals) than processed foods, plus the nutrients are better absorbed.

Let’s talk tangible benefits now. 

#1: Weight management

The hyperpalatable modern diet drives overeating and weight gain. Switching to whole foods improves satiety (your feeling of fullness) and can promote weight loss, because whole foods are high in fiber and protein.. Protein and fiber are your two satiety superstars, activating satiety hormones like PYY, glucagon, and GLP-1. Drugs like Ozempic, which have risen in popularity, are synthetic versions of GLP-1 to keep you full so you eat less and lose weight. 

#2: Improved insulin function

Skipping refined carbs and sugar improves the function of insulin, a hormone that regulates your blood sugar. Better insulin function leads to better satiety, more stable energy, and reduced chronic disease risk. 

#3: Reduced inflammation

Chronic inflammation is excess immune activity in the absence of a specific disease. Higher levels of chronic inflammation are linked to heart disease, diabetes, respiratory diseases, and cancer. 

The Western diet drives chronic inflammation through multiple mechanisms, including: 

  • Elevated blood sugar from eating a lot of highly refined carbs 

  • Excess omega-6 fatty acids (vegetable oils are especially inflammatory when heated)

  • Overeating and obesity (obesity and inflammation are inextricably linked)

Switching to whole foods addresses these problems. It lowers blood sugar by reducing refined carbs, includes anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids (from fish like salmon) to balance omega-6s, and keeps you satiated to prevent overeating, which are all big wins. 

#4: Gut health

The fruits, veggies, nuts, and seeds on a whole foods diet contain fiber that improves digestion and feeds beneficial gut bacteria. In response, gut bacteria produce butyrate, a compound that fuels colon cells and reduces inflammation in the gut. The gut is an important place to focus on reducing inflammation, since 70% of your immune cells reside there.

#5: Heart health

As it turns out, the human heart does NOT like the modern diet. A 2021 review links the following cardiovascular risk factors to a highly processed diet:

  • Higher cholesterol levels

  • Impairments to gut health and the gut microbiome

  • Obesity

  • Chronic inflammation

  • Abnormal blood sugar levels and fluctuations

  • Poor insulin function

  • High blood pressure

Heart disease is the number one killer globally, and a whole food diet is a sharp tool in our longevity and vitality toolkit. 

Get Support for Sustainable Lifestyle Changes

It’s no doubt that eating less highly processed foods will have positive effects on your overall health and well-being. In reality, making the necessary changes are simple, but not easy.

If you need help making these sustainable lifestyle changes, we are here to help! At Wellness Academy USA, you can come stay a day, a week, or a month with us on beautiful Coronado Island in sunny San Diego, California to learn how to create new habits that will support health and happiness in your life!

WHAT IS A WHOLE FOOD DIET?

Posted on by healthcoach

We’ve spent most of our history eating fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, and nuts before modern food production derailed our collective health. Not only are our bodies designed to digest these unprocessed foods, but a whole food diet also brings benefits like weight loss, reduced inflammation, improved gut and heart health, and more stable energy. 

The opposite of a whole food diet is the Standard American Diet (SAD), also called the Western Diet, is an ultra-processed assortment of foods that are easy to get and keep us overfed with empty calories yet undernourished. Science suggests widespread adoption of the Western diet is what drives the American obesity crisis, leading to higher rates of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. 

Eating whole foods is part of the solution. If you prioritize foods in their natural state and avoid ultra-processed foods, you’re more than halfway to a sustainable diet for health and longevity.

A quick note on the word diet. “Diet” is commonly used to connote a restrictive way of eating for weight loss, but what it really means is just “a way of eating.” You can follow a type of diet for a list of reasons beyond weight loss goals, including for health goals, performance goals, or simply because you feel best eating a certain way.

The Roots of Sugar Cravings

As we evolved, sugar cravings were useful to encourage our ancestors to eat sugary foods (like fruit) and fatten up for times of famine. Humans even evolved a “mutation” that helped them store sugar as fat, which provided a survival advantage, so now every human being is born with it!

The end goal is to avoid packaged and refined foods high in sugar, vegetable oils (soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, etc.), and ingredients you can’t pronounce. These foods are often ultra-processed and addictive, and they dominate the Standard American Diet.

How to Get Started with a Whole Foods Diet

Following a whole foods diet doesn’t require a doctoral dissertation. You know more than enough by now to get started: Avoid processed and hyperpalatable foods, eat when you’re hungry, consume fiber-rich plants, and get enough protein to maintain muscle mass.

One diet doesn’t fit all, so don’t force it if a particular approach isn’t working for your body. Just focus on the whole foods we’re wired to eat, and you’ll fare well in the long run.

Get Support for Sustainable Lifestyle Changes

The Bottom Line: Eating less highly processed foods will have positive effects on your overall health and well-being. If you need help making these sustainable lifestyle changes, we are here to help!

At Wellness Academy USA, you can come stay a day, a week, or a month with us on beautiful Coronado Island in sunny San Diego, California to learn how to create new habits that will support health and happiness in your life!

How to Tame Sugar Cravings

Posted on by healthcoach

Most people know a high-sugar diet isn’t healthy — it’s linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, cavities, and many other health problems. But that doesn’t make eating less sugar any easier. We’re wired to crave the sugary, hyperpatable treats, so eliminating sugar is hard.

While we can’t rewire our brains to stop craving sugar altogether, we can lower the volume on those cravings. It helps to understand the root causes and triggers, and then let that psychology plus a little science inform the environmental, habitual, and diet changes we can make to reduce the cravings.

The Details of a Whole Foods Diet

As we evolved, sugar cravings were useful to encourage our ancestors to eat sugary foods (like fruit) and fatten up for times of famine. Humans even evolved a “mutation” that helped them store sugar as fat, which provided a survival advantage, so now every human being is born with it! 

While our genes haven’t changed much since Paleolithic times, our lifestyles and environments have shifted dramatically. We’re now surrounded by sugar-laden foods and drinks, allowing us to constantly indulge sugar cravings and store fat reserves many of us won’t ever need to tap into.

Let’s look at four physiological and psychological mechanisms make us crave and overeat sugar.

#1: Dopamine

Dopamine is a chemical that gives you a pleasurable feeling. Your brain releases it as a reward to reinforce (and motivate) “positive” actions and behaviors. The body rewards us with a high dose of dopamine when we consume sugar, motivating us to keep eating sugar and store up for leaner times.

#2: Blood sugar spikes and dips

Consuming refined carbs and sugar spikes blood sugar, and what goes up must come down. “Carb cravings” and “sugar cravings” are not exactly the same thing, but they’re close. Sugar is a type of carb, and it’s processed in the body quickly, leading to those blood sugar spikes. Other refined carbs like pasta, white rice, and bagels can cause similar blood sugar fluctuations and cravings, so a lot of this article applies to those “traditional” carb cravings as well. More complex carbs like fruits and vegetables contain fiber that decreases the blood sugar effects and reduces cravings. 

#3: Hyperpalatability

Sugar is one of three ingredients (along with fat and salt) that makes a food hyperpalatable, or super-stimulating to our tastebuds. We’re wired to crave hyperpalatable foods (again, to stock up on the calories), so we overeat them. 

Sugar’s hyperpalatability is why food manufacturers put sugar in everything: soups, sauces, dressings, sugar-sweetened beverages, and more. The more we’re driven to eat these processed foods, the more we’ll buy. In fact, sugary drinks alone may be the single most significant driver of the obesity crisis.

It’s also worth noting that sugar calories don’t fill you up. People who eat sugar before a meal consume the same amount of calories afterward as folks who ate a zero-calorie snack before — leading to eating more calories overall.

#4: Habit​

Rituals dictate our eating patterns. If you eat a cookie every night at the same time, the force of habit will stimulate cravings as the clock approaches the appointed hour. The more you consume a flavor or taste (especially a something sweet), the more you crave it.

6 Ways to Eat Less Sugar

Understanding the roots of sugar cravings helps you take steps to reduce them. The first tip below is the most difficult to implement, but also the most essential. 

#1: Stop the influx of sugar

Getting off the wheel of sugar intake breaks the dependency. Eliminating sugar won’t necessarily be easy because sugar-withdrawal symptoms are a real thing. But don’t give up – give it a day or two, and stay hydrated with water and electrolytes to ensure dehydration or electrolyte deficiencies aren’t causing your symptoms. 

#2: Eat less carbs

Carbohydrates (especially sugar) are quick energy. When carbs are available, your body preferentially burns them over fat. Eating a low-carb diet trains the body to burn fat for fuel, reducing your body’s reliance on carbs. 

#3: Get enough protein

Speaking of hunger, protein is the most satiating macronutrient (calorie for calorie). It triggers hormones that make you feel full and stay full. As such, high-protein diets are well-documented to reduce overall calorie intake and promote weight loss. As protein intake rises, sugar cravings should fall. 

#4: Better sleep habits

If you aren’t sleeping well, sugar will be irresistible. Why? Short sleep increases hunger and impairs impulse control. Aim for 7-9 hours per night and your body will thank you.

#5: Mind your environment

Proximity and convenience matters. If you’re surrounded by sugar, you’ll eat sugar. If you’re not, you won’t. Ideally, keep sugary foods out of the house so that it requires effort and intention to go get it.

#6: Ride it out

It’s a universal truth that no system, organism, or process stays stable over time. This insight applies to life, emotions, aches, pains, and food cravings. They ebb, flow, and stabilize throughout the day — even when you don’t eat!

Researchers have found 36-hour and 12-hour fasts affect levels of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, roughly equally. In other words, hunger doesn’t increase infinitely. So, if you’re craving carbs, hang in there, and don’t fuel the urge by eating more sugar, as the intensity will subside.

Get Support for Sustainable Lifestyle Changes

The Bottom Line: Eating less sugar will have positive effects on your overall health and well-being. If you need help making these sustainable lifestyle changes, we are here to help! At Wellness Academy USA, you can come stay a day, a week, or a month with us on beautiful Coronado Island in sunny San Diego, California to learn how to create new habits that will support health and happiness in your life!

How to Enhance Your Natural Beauty by Improving Blood Flow

Posted on by healthcoach

To enhance natural beauty rapidly, focus on healthy lifestyle habits like regular physical activity, a balanced diet, adequate hydration, proper skincare routines (including cleansing, exfoliating, sunscreen use, etc.), as well as maintaining good sleep hygiene.

Research has pinpointed that all of these contribute to a radiant complexion, however, it’s found that one of the leading causes of aging is due to the decline of “microcirculation” throughout the body as we age.

The microcirculation comprises blood vessels that are too small to be seen by the naked eye, that is, the smallest resistance arteries, arterioles, capillaries, and venules. Arterioles are mainly implicated in the regulation of blood flow and tissue perfusion, while capillaries are the site of oxygen and nutritional exchange.

The statistics show that in this modern age, by the time you’ve celebrated your 20th birthday, you’ve already lost 40% of your microcirculation to your skin. When someone reaches 40 years old, there’s nearly an 80% chance of having compromised microcirculation, and as a result, increased inflammation throughout the body.

To add insult to injury in regard to the aging process, 8-12% of your body’s capability to make essential elements like antioxidants, collagen, etc. to fight the signs of aging, is lost every decade you’re alive!

So how do you increase microcirculation to your skin?

The number one recommendation for increasing circulation is simple, easy and free.

You guessed it – WALKING!

Come train with us for a day, a week, or a month at our regenerative medical clinic on Coronado Island or throughout San Diego, California. If you’re unable to visit us in person, we also offer a very effective remote health & wellness coaching program. Please contact us for details or to answer any questions. Let’s make this year your best yet!

www.WellnessAcademyUSA.com
(619) 607-3432