by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

As much as my patients know they should eat well, the concern that looms largest for many is their weight. Whatever their age and station, most women care deeply about what they look like. As a consequence, they battle with their weight, adopting any number of extreme unhealthy patterns over the course of their lifetimes to keep things “in check.”

The truth is that when your weight changes dramatically from what’s normal for you, or when it’s continually moving up or down no matter what you do to try to change it, it’s often a signal that something isn’t working right. It can be a red flag telling you you’re under physical or emotional stress of some kind — stress you might not even recognize! It could be something as simple as having too little time to eat regular meals, or it could be years of small imbalances piling up in your body until some added stress puts you over the top — it’s different for everyone.

From my point of view, whether a woman is overweight or underweight, the first thing she can do for herself is befriend her body. Women are often too critical of the weight level that their bodies find most comfortable. Whether you look in the mirror and see yourself as “too much” or “too little,” obsessing about the extra curves (or the lack of them) is a major obstacle to finding your healthy weight.

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The next hurdle to overcome is the “calories-in, calories-out” myth. Women who struggle with issues of unexpected weight change (whether it’s gain or loss) may intuitively know that something is out of balance in their bodies, but may not “hear” what her body is telling her over the social messages we get all the time. These messages tell us, If you’re gaining weight, it’s because you’re not trying hard enough to control yourself or If you’re that thin, you must have some kind of eating disorder (even as women who are every bit as thin are celebrated for their beauty on magazine covers).

For some women, stress and imbalance mean weight gain. Our bodies often hold extra weight when something is wrong — it’s a built-in protection that we evolved to ensure survival. Among our ancient ancestors, long-term stress was often related to scarcity of good food, so the body’s response of storing energy as fat could be life-saving. In the modern world, survival isn’t usually the issue, but our bodies still react as if it is. Ironically, this “life preserver” can, over the long run, threaten our health — we’ve all heard the long litany of diseases related to excess weight.

On the other end of the spectrum are the women whose core imbalance doesn’t show up in excess weight but in an unhealthy level of thinness. The body does whatever it needs to in order to maintain homeostasis, and these women are often carrying such high levels of stress, worry, and adrenal overload that they burn up everything they take in. Overly thin women struggle to provide their bodies enough nutritional support to build muscle, keep their bones strong and healthy, and fight off infections. It’s sad but true that these women are just as unhealthy, or even more unhealthy, than women carrying too much weight.

We can hold extra weight — or be unable to gain weight — during periods of hormonal imbalance, adrenal fatigue, digestive disorders, neurotransmitter imbalances, toxicity, and inflammation, just to name a few. Weight gain or loss can also be related to imbalance in our life choices. Exercising too much or too little, over — or under — emphasizing specific food groups so that we don’t have a balanced diet — even imbalances in our relationships or emotional lives can affect our weight!

Whether your goal is to lose weight or gain it, a key starting point is to recognize where your life and health are out of balance. Once you find and heal your core imbalance, your body weight will stabilize at the level that is comfortable for your body.

Tip for personal success:

Clean your colon. One of the best things you can do is to support your colon by using an occasional colon cleanse. Or add a fiber supplement, such as psyllium husks, to 8 oz. of apple juice in the morning and evening.

The happy news for many women is that achieving a natural and healthy weight is not about restricting yourself or testing your willpower. It’s about addressing any imbalances and giving your body what it needs: fresh, whole foods, plenty of restorative exercise and rest, and the foundational support of quality vitamins and minerals. Our patients and members tell us this approach beats any weight loss program or weight loss plan they’ve tried in the past.

Take a look at the information and articles we have on achieving your healthy weight, naturally. We hope your perspective on “dieting” — and eating in general — changes for the better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Nearly all of my patients ask me when we first meet, “How can I lose this weight?” A full third of these women have been on one diet or another for as long as they can remember. This habitual dieting generally keeps women at a manageable weight until they enter perimenopause and menopause.

I hear stories all the time about weight gain that suddenly appears at this time (especially around the stomach) and simply refuses to come off, no matter what my patients eat or how much they exercise. This personal history of dieting and a feeling of being out of control sends them running to the latest trendy diet, only to be disappointed again and again.

And they are not alone. At Women to Women we see patients of all ages who struggle with weight as their central health concern. In most cases, they feel guilty or angry at themselves about the way they look. They are anxious to “fix” themselves with dieting and often are willing to overlook their long-term health in trying the latest diet craze or products advertised in the media. Many of these programs just set you up for failure because they are deprivation-based and lack a maintenance program.

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From Dean Ornish to Jenny Craig to Atkins to South Beach, there have been scores of new diets promising universally quick results. There is now a “low-carb” version of our favorite snacks to take the place of the “fat-free” foods that used to be fashionable. Women are inundated daily with conflicting information about what, how much, and when to eat. Multiply that by the very real hunger signals our bodies send us, and by the comfort and enjoyment inherent in the act of eating, and who wouldn’t feel confused?

I feel that this is the perfect time to give you my thoughts on what I have come to call the “diet culture.” For I think we all are aware that just as advertisers aim product at the “youth culture” in America, there are many companies right now marketing product to those of us who are anxious to lose weight. What they won’t tell you is that only three to four percent of dieters will succeed in keeping that weight off after a year. It’s no wonder the diet industry can sell us something new every year!

There are many reasons why yo-yo and fad dieting don’t work — and may even do more harm than good. Let’s talk about them and then turn to how you can lose weight in a healthy way and keep it off permanently.

At Women to Women we consider excess weight gain to be one of many symptoms that indicate an underlying biochemical imbalance in our patients. Although fad diets address this symptom in the short term (meaning that if a person follows the plan, they will initially lose some weight), they do not address the root cause, which is often some kind of metabolic dysfunction or hormonal imbalance.

Over the years, I have seen repeatedly that dieting is not the key to long-term weight loss — the real key is a healthy metabolism supported by a balanced hormonal state.

How does a woman’s body get out of balance? The reasons are as varied and unique as each woman. Each one of us gains, loses, and maintains weight at certain points in our lives for a variety of reasons, physiological, cultural or emotional.

This simple fact is something the diet professionals aren’t anxious to reveal because it is simpler to sell us a one-size-fits-all plan. These diets may work to a degree in some people, but for a lot of women fad dieting without an understanding of their underlying biochemistry only leads to a yo-yo cycle and more weight gain.

Why is weight gain different for women?

We’ve all had the frustrating dieting experience of watching the pounds peel off our husband or mate while we struggle to lose even a few. Why do men seem to lose weight more quickly than women? Men’s bodies are trained by evolution to have strength and speed. They have a different muscle-to-fat ratio in their bodies, which makes it easier for them to speed up their metabolism and burn fat. Women, on the other hand, are hard-wired to reproduce. They keep an insulating layer of fat on their bodies that men don’t have. (Women also live longer!) In addition, fat is essential for the production and storage of reproductive hormones. Progesterone production begins with an adequate level of cholesterol in the blood. Women don’t lose weight rapidly because they are genetically programmed that way — it has nothing to do with willpower!

Additionally, the erratic hormonal fluctuations that can occur in perimenopause and menopause may cause weight gain and a change in body shape in some women. This is due to vacillating levels of estrogens and progesterone. For more detailed information on these changes, please visit our library of articles – there are many that further explain this phenomenon. Some women report experiencing strong food cravings at this time, which can be a symptom of declining progesterone levels. Once hormone levels reach a new equilibrium it becomes easier to lose extra weight.

What if you’ve tried everything and still can’t lose weight?

In my years of experience, I have seen a few underlying conditions in my patients that make losing weight on a popular diet plan particularly difficult. Here is a summary of these problems.

Adrenal fatigue: We touch on the intricate link between weight and the adrenal glands in our article “Natural Weight Loss,” but because adrenal depletion is so widespread, and because adrenal health so critical to losing stubborn pounds, I want to include at the top of this list. The adrenals release an important hormone called cortisol, which is often described as the stress hormone and is related to adrenaline, the more familiar adrenal hormone, and to your serotonin levels (see below). Too-high or too-low levels of cortisol in the blood can be a major cause of weight gain and the inability to lose that unwanted weight. For more information on adrenal function and adrenal exhaustion, see our extensive list of articles in our Adrenal Health section.

Carbohydrate sensitivity: While carbohydrates are an absolutely necessary component of a balanced diet, many of us become increasingly sensitive to them as we grow older. Over consumption of simple carbohydrates (like those found in white bread, candy, soda, white rice, and many breakfast cereals) creates a rollercoaster effect on your appetite: you feel energized and sated for a little while as your insulin spikes, only to crash a few hours later when your blood sugar drops precipitously. This low blood sugar triggers the brain to send out hunger signals again, which can cause you to overeat and gain weight. For some of us, this rollercoaster feels like a gentle ride. Others who are more sensitive experience steeper crests and valleys. If this sensitivity is not treated with a diet lower in carbohydrates and sugar, it can evolve into excessive weight gain and a larger metabolic concern called insulin resistance, a pre-diabetic condition in which cells becomes inured to insulin and the pancreas is triggered to produce ever-increasing levels. For more information, see our articles on insulin resistance.

Depleted serotonin: Serotonin is just one of a host of neurotransmitters secreted by the brain that regulate mood, attention, and energy levels. Ongoing stress can deplete our serotonin reserves, leading to intense food cravings — particularly for the refined carbohydrates that when eaten mimic the sense of well-being created by serotonin. In some women, this state of serotonin depletion becomes chronic. Persistent low serotonin levels lead to plummeting energy levels — particularly in the late afternoon — bouts of depression, and compulsive eating. Low serotonin levels can be detected through testing. To learn more about raising serotonin levels naturally, read our article on Antidepressants.

Yeast or intestinal parasites: Colonies of excessive Candida (yeast), bacteria, or intestinal parasites in the digestive tract can make it very difficult to lose weight. Many doctors do not test for these organisms. There are several tests you can order to determine whether you have parasites. For women who have yeast overgrowth, eliminating yeast and sugars for a period of time can restore balance to the digestive tract, allowing weight loss to occur naturally. Women often need to use supplements or probiotics to eradicate the yeast or parasites, but once this is accomplished they begin to lose the unwanted weight.

Food allergies: Similarly, allergies and sensitivities to certain foods can create a dysfunctional metabolism. Frequently these sensitivities crop up in adulthood and manifest themselves in easily overlooked ways, for example, stomach and intestinal upset, headaches, insomnia, lethargy, joint aches, and rashes. If we suspect a patient has a food sensitivity, we recommend an elimination diet. We eliminate potential allergens for two weeks, then reintroduce them for a day and test for reactions. If reactions do occur we recommend staying away from the offending food for at least four months and then cautiously reintroducing it.

Sometimes a patient will present with only one of these nagging weight gain factors; more often women will have a combination. Most of my patients had no idea that their bodies were out of balance until they began to feel symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. In many of my patients, I find that their metabolism is frozen from years of fad dieting. Once they modify their diets and get further treatment customized to their particular issues, their metabolism heals and they are able to lose weight — gradually, safely and permanently.

My concern with fad diets

Popular diets do work for some people. However, I remind my patients that studies show the average weight loss after one year on some of these diets is just five pounds — and that includes men! Still, we keep trying. At any point in time, 44% of the women in this country are on some kind of aggressive diet.

And still more information keeps coming. There is increasing evidence that weight loss is linked with having a ready supply of calcium and vitamin D in our systems. There is also a controversial connection promoting human growth hormone (hGH) and the ability to put on lean muscle mass. Much needs to be learned before we can say for sure how these elements factor into our own biology, but it is interesting to note how rapidly our knowledge is growing.

So what does work? I have found through years of my patients’ — and my own — trials and tribulations that paying attention to a woman’s individual body chemistry and her emotional history leads to successful, long-term health and weight loss.

Still, there are many women out there who may not have immediate access to alternative healthcare professionals and are unsuccessfully trying to lose weight. For those women experimenting with over-the-counter diets, I’ve provided an overview of what I see as pros and cons of the most popular choices available.

In general, I prefer those diets that encourage a balanced ratio of protein, fat and carbohydrates in every meal. I am more inclined to suggest the Schwarzbein Principle I and II or the Metabolic Typing diets because, along with their balanced food plan, they advance the concept that each person has different factors that contribute to their ability to lose weight.

Putting it all into perspective

My point of view results from 27 years of experience with women and weight, and it is rooted in the belief that eating well and often is a necessary, enjoyable, and healthful act. Over the years we have adapted our Lifestyle and Nutritional Guidelines to reflect the healthful eating and lifestyle habits that lead a majority of women to hormonal balance, sustained weight loss, and overall well-being.

Learn to accept yourself for who you are and ultimately love yourself, because the body you have is the most valuable house you’ll ever own. Your personal blueprint is a treasure map to natural weight loss and lifelong health that no popular or radical diet can ever replicate. Whenever you are at odds with your own best interests on dieting, I hope you will revisit our article on natural weight loss and the nutrition and lifestyle guidelines for a refresher.

A time of Thanksgiving and peace

At Women to Women we try to keep the ideas of moderation and mindfulness in focus when we approach any choice, be it food, exercise, commitments, or work. While we do recommend watching what you eat, we think it is more important to encourage you to listen to your body. Get to know yourself. Learn what triggers your cravings. For many women, outgrowing a few bad habits (like drinking soda pop) or starting to exercise can be the catalyst for positive change in the rest of their lives. We want you to first and foremost get nutrition and enjoyment out of every meal, then to concern yourself with any extra pounds.

As the holidays approach, I encourage you to enjoy your turkey and vegetables and leave the guilt behind. Have your piece of pie (remember to eat some protein with it), then take a nice walk around the block with a friend or relative and share a laugh or a memory. Balance is something we can create in all aspects of our lives, and in the process, guess what? We can lose weight, gain perspective and, certainly, look ahead to many years of good health.

By Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

How core imbalances can affect your weight and health

• What’s behind The Core Balance Diet?
• Extra! Extra! Healthcare practitioner heals herself
• Fad diets are popular — but they don’t work
• Toxic weight and stress
• Determining your individual imbalance
• Clearing the path to Core Balance

Oh, the things women do to lose weight: bizarre foods, starvation diets, excessive exercise — you name it, they’ve tried it. But as a healthcare provider — and a woman who’s struggled with weight issues — I know that achieving your optimal weight is only possible when you are healthy, and your internal systems have a consistent supply of everything they need to function well. In my new book, The Core Balance Diet, I give you the blueprint for doing both.

Core balance occurs when your body, mind, and all your internal systems are able to engage in their natural, nonstop “conversation”, with information zipping efficiently back and forth between them.

When you experience core balance, your body’s communication system runs like a top and responds as necessary to input — directing your organ systems to process food, fight infection, tend to emotional needs, and perform thousands of other tasks constantly throughout your day, usually without you even noticing.

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Core Balance is beautiful

“Core Balance is an ideal state that occurs when your biochemistry and metabolism are functioning well, and your core physiology and emotional health are balanced. Your body easily maintains a natural, optimal weight and you feel energized, clear, and fit. Life is good, you look great, and you’re on top of the world”.

But when you have an imbalance, your glorious internal conversation is disrupted and information needed to maintain healthy function can’t get through. If the imbalance is long-term, your physical health will eventually be affected, perhaps seriously. Your appearance will reflect your imbalance and one of the most visible consequences is toxic weight — that extra weight your body holds on to, no matter what you do.

But believe it or not, this stubborn, toxic weight — which drives so many of us crazy — has a bright side. It’s a wake-up call, a signal from your body that you have an internal imbalance that needs attention, sooner rather than later. Happily, when you restore balance, often just by tweaking your diet and lifestyle and maintaining those changes, the weight will come off for good.

What’s behind The Core Balance Diet?

So how do you develop an internal imbalance? It happens when the physical, emotional, and spiritual demands being made on you outweigh the support provided. These types of imbalance can be responsible for any number of physical symptoms and conditions, including excess weight.

Over the years, I’ve been able to identify clear patterns in patients with health and weight problems, both of which are common during menopause. At first, these issues may seem unconnected, but as I’ve dug deeper, I’ve learned that both health and weight problems can often be traced directly to core imbalances within one or more of the body’s systems.

Using scientific and experiential research, I’ve decoded the main core imbalances affecting many of my patients. But the really good news is that I’ve used the principles of functional medicine to create and prescribe effective solutions to reverse these imbalances.

And remarkably, when your imbalance is resolved and physical health is restored, that stubborn toxic weight begins to disappear, almost as an afterthought. It’s the most welcome “side effect” you’ll ever have.

Extra! Extra! Healthcare practitioner heals herself

I actually have the inside scoop on regaining core balance for health and weight loss because I’ve fought my own battle of the bulge over the years. The truth is I used to be as much as 40 pounds overweight, a number that has fluctuated over the years. Until relatively recently, I never felt I was living at my optimal healthy weight.

Even as I practiced functional medicine and embarked on the exciting and rewarding career of co-founding the Women to Women Clinic, I just couldn’t lose what amounted to about 15 pounds of toxic weight. Then a series of events — both physical and emotional — pushed me to my personal tipping point, and I gained even more weight, a frightening extra 20 pounds!

As you can read in my book, my story has a happy ending. I began to eat the right foods, and removed the ones that didn’t agree with my biochemistry. I had all the mercury-laden fillings removed from my teeth, and learned how to guard against toxins. I continued to exercise regularly, as I have my entire life, and I began to feel healthier and more in balance. But for me, the last key to losing my toxic weight was being able to face my deeply entrenched emotional issues.

When I could finally do the necessary work to heal emotionally, I was able to integrate all the aspects of myself. At last, I felt “whole” and balanced on a core level. Not only was this an incredible relief, but lo and behold — that toxic weight practically melted away, and has never come back.

I understand the urgent battle that many of my patients — and readers — have been waging with toxic weight. The true motivation for The Core Balance Diet is to provide you with practical tools to help you heal your body so you can lose your toxic weight once and for all.

Fad diets are popular — but they don’t work

If you’re reading this, you probably have intimate knowledge of popular weight loss methods andfad diets, and you know they usually aren’t effective. Most trendy diets focus on calorie-counting and rigid portion sizes. Fad diets also commonly recommend a rate of weight loss that is simply too fast to be healthy, so the results are nearly impossible to maintain.

Fad diets don’t work because they…

• Focus on weight loss instead of physical health.
• Rely on deprivation, calorie-counting, and portion restriction.
• Don’t stress the importance of physical activity.
• Promote an unhealthy rate of weight loss.
• Overlook emotional wellness.
• Fail to recommend setting up a support network.

These diets have vague or nonexistent guidelines for exercise, but they also ignore the importance of the dieter’s emotional history. This is particularly troublesome because both a woman’s toxic weight and her eating patterns can often be deeply connected to her subconscious feelings and emotional past.

If you are a regular, compulsive overeater, of course you will gain weight, but the real question is, why do you eat too much? The root cause is sometimes physiological, such as a food allergy or a serotonin deficiency. But it may also have something to do with your emotional history. I know from years of clinical and personal experience that emotional healing is necessary for healthy weight management. But it’s usually just one of a number of contributing factors, the most important of which will be restoring your core balance.

One well-proven feature of successful weight loss is that it occurs more consistently when a woman has the social support she needs to lose weight and keep it off over the long haul. In fact, losing toxic weight may be downright impossible without emotional support. Even with ample instruction, you may still need someone to help you through the rough spots.

But I think most fad diets fail because they don’t acknowledge that your extra weight accumulated for a reason — and it isn’t that you eat too much. Again, the real cause of your toxic weight may be a physical imbalance that must be resolved. Once you reverse a core imbalance and restore health, your body will finally be able to let go of the extra pounds.

Toxic weight and stress

At Women to Women, we always talk to our patients about stress — how to figure out where it’s coming from, and how to manage it. Obviously, stress affects your emotional health, but does it have anything to do with gaining and retaining weight? You bet!

When you experience stress — emotional or physical — it triggers a series of physiological reactions generated by the release of powerful chemicals, particularly cortisol, which send your body into survival mode. A surge of cortisol puts you on alert and tells your body to prepare for the emergency, in part by slowing your digestion.

But your body can’t tell the difference between real threats and other types of high level stress, so it responds to both the same way. When you stay stressed for long periods, you learn to live that way. Your body stays chronically stressed, never returning to “normal,” and you stockpile food calories as fat. To make matters worse, women often eat more during stressful times, compounding any weight problem.

Clearly, chronic stress is one of the major root causes of core imbalances. Other contributors are poor nutrition, lack of exercise, environmental toxins, emotional burdens, hormone shifts, inadequate detoxification, altered neurotransmitter status, GI issues, inflammation, and impaired adrenal function. All of these stressors interfere with your internal conversation, which causes your organ systems to go haywire. This is why healing your imbalance should be the first item on your weight-loss agenda.

Is your toxic weight a result of one of these imbalances?

Digestive
A digestive imbalance can lead directly to system-wide inflammation which in turn may be connected to insulin resistance and additional accumulation of fat tissue. Inflammation can also affect your ability to absorb nutrients properly. Digestive imbalance often plays a role in food sensitivities which can cause us to crave those same foods, and eat them in excess.

Hormonal
The food we eat influences our hormonal balance on a daily basis and can create a cyclical pattern that generates toxic weight gain. Chronic stress raises levels of key hormones, like insulin and cortisol, and can cause you to eat more and gain weight. Sometimes, even the fat on your body can alter your hormonal balance and trigger additional weight gain — a true vicious cycle which is common during perimenopause and menopause.

Adrenal
Your adrenal glands are responsible for the fight-or-flight response at the center of your survival instinct. Today, this response is activated far too often, which interferes with your body’s never-ending quest to be in balance. If high level stress continues unabated, cortisol begins to take control of your body’s physical actions which can lead to both overeating, abdominal weight gain, and more. A full 85% of the women I see in my practice suffer from adrenal fatigue by the time they reach menopause, which leads to low energy periods when women often make unhealthy food choices.

Neurotransmitter
To put it simply, your individual brain chemistry can cause you to gain weight and prevent you from losing it. Neurotransmitters carry information that influences feelings — including mood, hunger, satiety (feeling satisfied), and cravings. A neurotransmitter imbalance is another condition that can cause you to crave certain foods, and eat them obsessively.

Inflammation
Inflammation is necessary as a short-term immune response for healing wounds and countering infection. It’s an essential, sometimes life-saving function of your immune system. But over-activation of this healing response — often triggered by a pro-inflammatory diet, among other things — leads to chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation has become a major source of internal imbalance. Inflammatory imbalance can cause obesity and toxic weight gain because it can be traced directly to insulin resistance, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.

Detoxification
A detoxification imbalance often leads to accumulation of toxins in fat tissue, which makes losing weight especially problematic. Poor nutrition and unhealthy lifestyle just magnify the problem. Some toxins can even act like hormones in the body and cause additional fat build-up.

Determining your individual imbalance

Every woman is different — physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. And we each have our own “balancing act”, a singular combination of factors influencing core health. The balls you have in the air might include your work, running a household, raising children, caring for your parents, and community service. But each woman has a combination of physical factors to balance as well, ranging from genetics and metabolism, to environmental exposure and health history — infections, surgeries, allergies, anxiety disorders, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders — and all the symptoms those conditions create.

In The Core Balance Diet, I include a detailed questionnaire to help you diagram your own personal juggling act. This can help you identify which of the six major metabolic imbalances is shaping your physical health and causing you to retain toxic weight. And just so you know, it isn’t uncommon for women to suffer from more than one imbalance.

Clearing the path to Core Balance

The five T’s of Core Balance:

1. Tune in to your body.
2. Turn down stress.
3. Treat yourself to healthy foods.
4. Tune out negativity.
5. Take care of mind, body, and spirit.

The brilliant silver lining behind the cloud of imbalance is that you can use it as an early warning to get on the road to regaining core balance and dropping that toxic weight. You will also be losing inches — and your shape and silhouette will reflect that beautifully!

Your first steps will be to identify the core imbalances most affecting your health, make imbalance-specific adjustments to your diet and lifestyle, and add in high-quality nutritional supplementation targeted for your imbalance.

When it comes to healing core imbalances, one size does not fit all. The Core Balance Diet offers detailed prescriptions for each imbalance, with careful instructions and guidelines for the stages of the rebalancing process. In the book, you’ll find separate food protocols for each imbalance that include easy-to-follow, day-by-day meal plans.

To help you prepare, you can start by considering these general recommendations:

• Eat natural, whole foods. Stay away from refined sugars and carbs, processed foods, additives and engineered ingredients (high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats). The book has customized eating plans for each imbalance that are easy to follow and implement.
• Hydrate your body every day. Drink pure, filtered water, bottled mineral water or herbal teas.
• De-stress! This is a multi-step process, accomplished a little at a time. You need to be able to recognize stress before you can reduce or eliminate it. Taking a thoughtful inventory of the stressors in your life is the best place to start. Read our philosophy on making changes in your life for further guidance.
• Attend to your emotional needs. Sometimes this is the most complicated aspect of regaining core balance and health. There are suggestions in the book to help you begin what can be the most rewarding “work” you will ever do.
• Cultivate spiritual health and practice self-care. Learning more about how to identify and meet your spiritual needs can have dramatic effects on your health. Check the book for ideas about creating and practicing a self-care ritual.
• Get up and move. Start with any type of physical activity and advance toward a varied exercise routine that works for you. Exercising (even just a little) a few times a week is essential for a successful weight-loss program.
• Sleep more. Inadequate sleep is correlated with obesity and other weight issues. Plus, your body performs its most important repair and rebuilding tasks during nighttime sleep. You may have to go to bed earlier, but the extra rest can improve your core health exponentially.

The gift of Core Balance

As you consider regaining the balance in your life, remember that you can’t take care of others, do your job — or lose weight — until your body gets the support it needs to meet the demands being made of it.

Many of my patients develop core imbalances without any idea of how they happened. But with a little detective work, you can use The Core Balance Diet to help you find the pieces to the puzzle of your individual imbalance. From there, a few key changes can help tip the balance back in your favor, so you feel better, look better, and can finally lose that toxic weight.

For me, staying in balance is a matter of checking in with my “four corners” — physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. And I practice my self-care ritual regularly, no matter what. Remember, there is only one you and it’s important to celebrate your individuality every day— no matter what you weigh.

28 Days to Boost Your Metabolism And Lose Weight For Good

Is your weight gain making you miserable? Have you noticed that you’re packing on pounds in unpleasant places? Or is the scale-and the way you feel about yourself-just stuck, no matter how much you diet or exercise? If you’ve struggled without success to lose weight and keep it off, there’s always a reason, and – surprise! – it probably has little to do with how hard you try or how many calories you count.

The Core Balance Diet is a breakthrough plan designed to restore your body’s equilibrium and return you to a healthy, sustainable weight. Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP draws upon decades of experience, both her patients’ and her own, to help you:

• Learn simple lifestyle changes and smart nutrition choices that will show you how to tune in to your body and identify your fundamental obstacles to weight loss.
• Adopt a customized two-week program geared at restoring your Core Balance and shedding those toxic pounds once and for all.
• Enjoy delicious recipes made from whole foods that give your body the support it needs to heal.
• Explore underlying issues and emotional patterns that may be getting in your way.

The Core Balance Diet  heralds a whole new chapter in weight loss, proving how easy it is to work with your body and the right foods – not against them – to rid yourself of weight and unhealthy habits for good. Within a month, you’ll be on your way to a lean, fit, and balanced body that is ready to support you – and look great – for the rest of your life.

Order it now at Hay House

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

• How stress can make us gain weight
• Number one for your adrenal health: Eat!
• Pacing yourself to promote healing

Too often, women and their healthcare practitioners think weight loss is all about cutting calories and exercising more. But I have several patients who’ve tried these avenues with no success. The majority of women I see at my practice are genuinely trying to do everything “right” for their health. They exercise regularly, eat well, take their supplements, and so on. But many are frustrated with their weight gain and haven’t lost a pound. They’re literally desperate when they come to me — and trust me, I know how they feel, because I’ve been there!

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Could adrenal fatigue be causing your weight problem?

• Do you feel bone tired during the day, only to perk up at night?
• Do you tend to nod off at the movies, at meetings, or while reading during the daytime?
• Do you love to snack in the evening and frequently stay up late into the night?
• Do you feel hungry, confused, or shaky when under pressure during the day?
• Do you habitually rely on caffeine and high-carb snacks to boost your flagging energy?
• Have you noticed a “spare tire” growing larger and larger around your waist each year?
• Are you eating modestly and exercising, but still not losing weight?

If you answered to yes to two or more of the above, adrenal fatigue could lie at the core of your weight gain.

These patients are always surprised when I ask them about the stress in their lives, and they want to know, What does stress have to do with weight gain?

With years of chronic stress the adrenal glands — which govern our stress response, help balance a woman’s blood sugar, and regulate many other of our body’s processes — can become imbalanced, leading to cortisol dominance or deficiency, insulin resistance, and unwanted weight gain. When this happens, it doesn’t matter how many calories you cut from your diet. The body is in crisis mode and is preparing for a famine. To do this, it clings to every calorie and packs it away in case the need arises.

Many women with adrenal imbalance feel like exhaustion is just their natural state of being. Some depend on caffeine and high-carb snacks to get through the day. Others can barely get out of bed. Our adrenal glands are fundamental to our health, and when they are out of balance, the body prepares for disaster the best way it knows how — by storing calories. Genetically, some of us are more predisposed to this than others. But the good news is that if we heal the adrenals, stubborn pounds often fall away without too much effort, and our energy returns.

Take a closer look at your adrenal glands and find out about solutions for healing yours — and finally getting rid of that stubborn weight. Read more with our articles on adrenal health.

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Like so many of my patients, for years I tried one low-fat, low-cholesterol diet after another. But after failing to lose weight — and feeling pretty bad despite my “healthy diet” — I did a panel of blood tests on myself. The results were shocking.

That fateful day was 25 years ago. It began my personal search for the truth about cholesterol and fat. What I learned at first surprised me, but now makes perfect sense. And I’ve proven it all in practice, both personally and with thousands of patients.

What surprises me today is that there is still so much confusion about cholesterol and fat. Over 70% of my new patients are still afraid of eating fat — any fat. They think eating fat will make them fat and raise their cholesterol. They think a low-fat diet will help them lose weight and help prevent heart disease.

Unfortunately, none of that is true. In fact the opposite may be true, especially for women. So let me share with you what I tell my new patients about cholesterol and fat. You may be in for a surprise.

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Don’t feel guilty about cholesterol and fat

In my low-fat phase, I always used to feel guilty about enjoying fatty foods. But I learned that the human body is hard-wired by evolution to crave cholesterol and fat — so don’t feel guilty!

You crave cholesterol and fat because they’re essential to your health. When you eat real cholesterol and fat, you regulate insulin levels and trigger enzymes that convert food into energy. Cholesterol from food modulates your body’s internal cholesterol production and protects liver function.

What are essential fatty acids (EFA’s)?

Before we get into the role of fat in the body, let’s touch upon the most important type of fat you need to feed yourself. Without a doubt, essential fatty acids are just that — essential. They cannot be synthesized in the body and must come from dietary sources. However, while only two of the fatty acids are technically “essential”, all omega-3 fatty acids are in critically short supply in the average American diet for the following reasons.

Some fatty acids, in particular the omega-3s, lower triglycerides and soothe inflammation, helping the liver convert pro-inflammatory blood acids like homocysteine into anti-inflammatory agents. The omega-6s generally play a pro-inflammatory role, but there is evidence that at least one omega-6 fatty acid (gamma linolenic acid, or GLA), found in black current and evening primrose oils, also prevents negative inflammatory effects. Without getting into the biochemistry in too much detail, what is important to note here is that your body works as a seamless, well-greased system when the ratio of one type of fatty acid to another is in balance.

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Few of us are really aware of how many Splenda® products there are in the supermarkets. We’ve been told that this artificial sweetener is different from all the past failures — Sweet’N Low®, NutraSweet®, etc. — and according to the claims, that Splenda is the perfect sugar substitute: as sweet as sugar, but no calories; as sweet as sugar, but no surge in insulin; as sweet as sugar, but no side effects or long-term health damage.

“Low–sugar” or “sugar–free” is a welcome trend, given the health hazards of all the sugar in the average diet. But of the hundreds of new diet foods that constantly appear, most will use Splenda as a sugar substitute. This is important because for tens of millions of women, their diet soda or artificially-sweetened food is a keystone of what they think are healthy nutrition and food choices — both for themselves and for their families.

On the other side of the argument are responsible experts who say that Splenda is unsafe — the latest in a succession of artificial sweeteners that claim at first to be healthy, only later to be proven to be full of side effects. These authorities say that Splenda has more in common with DDT than with food.

What do we believe? We think that our regulatory system doesn’t do a good enough job ensuring our long-term safety. We’re concerned about the bigger picture, too — the dependence on sweets in the American diet to make us feel good — whether those sweets are satisfied by sugar or artificial sweeteners like Splenda. And we are especially sensitive to the women who can benefit from using artificial sweeteners as a bridge to a better life with healthier nutrition.

What should you think about artificial sweeteners? We want you to be fully informed about the dangers of Splenda (which isn’t what food marketers want!) so you can make the best choices for yourself and for your family. So let’s make sure you are.

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Splenda — the public health experiment

“Low–sugar” is the successor to the “low–carb” craze, even though they are essentially the same thing. According to the New York Times, by the end of this summer 11% of the food items on supermarket shelves will be labeled “reduced sugar” — most of those targeted at kids and their health-conscious moms. Sales in granulated sugar have dropped four percent in the past six months. What’s behind this trend? Splenda.

Products featuring Splenda are perceived as “natural” because even the FDA’s press release about sucralose parrots the claim that “it is made from sugar” — an assertion disputed by the Sugar Association, which is suing Splenda’s manufacturer, McNeil Nutritionals.

The FDA has no definition for “natural,” so please bear with us for a biochemistry moment. Splenda is the trade name for sucralose, a synthetic compound stumbled upon in 1976 by scientists in Britain seeking a new pesticide formulation. It is true that the Splenda molecule is comprised of sucrose (sugar) — except that three of the hydroxyl groups in the molecule have been replaced by three chlorine atoms.

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Over the years I’m sure I’ve lost over 100 pounds — the same 10 pounds, 10 times! And so many of my patients tell me the same thing, I wonder how many American women (and their daughters) are on a diet on any given day. We spend billions of dollars a year on diets and weight loss products, yet nearly two-thirds of us are overweight — a trend that’s steadily inching upwards along with our waistlines!

Never mind that all these weight loss efforts don’t work, we are putting ourselves through hell to get nowhere. I’ve seen women willing to sacrifice just about anything to lose weight – even their health and well-being. But when I tell women I have a solution for them that doesn’t involve suffering or a magical pill, many say, “Oh, come on, Marcelle, can I really lose weight the natural way?”

The answer, I assure you, is “Yes!” I wholeheartedly believe you can lose weight, and that you can do it naturally without starving yourself, without eating food that doesn’t resemble food, without gimmicks, drugs or fad diets. You can do it and create balance, health, and well-being in your life while you’re at it.

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Overcoming weight loss resistance

These are the systemic imbalances I see most often undermine weight loss efforts and create weight loss resistance:

• Hormonal
• Adrenal
• Thyroid
• Neurotransmitter

I’ve worked hard on this issue in my practice, and in over 25 years of clinical experience, I’ve developed a highly effective way to help women unravel the stubborn knot of issues surrounding unwanted excess weight. There are five essential areas to address:

1. Systemic imbalances
2. Raw materials (such as enough pure water and real, natural food that contains vitamins and minerals your body can use)
3. Exercise
4. Emotions
5. Restoration

Weight loss in one word:  balance

Think of your body like your home. When everything is running smoothly in my house, I can create delicious meals in a well-organized kitchen, I can entertain and enjoy my guests, I can feel the sunlight beaming through the windows, I feel at peace yet poised to resolve a crisis if one should arise, I feel spontaneous and generous.

Even my family seems to get along better when the house is in order. This is also true of our bodies. When all the major systems are in balance, we not only feel good, but our adrenal glands are able to protect us, our hormones relay their messages smoothly, our digestive system can adequately nourish us, and we can efficiently get rid of or “detoxify” the things we don’t need. All of our systems depend on one another and if one is out of balance, the others can suffer, making weight loss a miserable uphill battle.

Discovering if you have a systemic imbalance in your body may be the missing piece to your weight loss puzzle. Whether it’s hormonal imbalance, adrenal dysfunction, neurotransmitter, digestive, inflammatory, or detoxification system imbalance, correcting it is key to natural and lasting weight loss — and to your overall health. Because once your body is restored to its natural balance, excess weight will come off.

Getting the right raw materials — nutrients your body can put to good use

Most of us were raised to think that if we only ate less and exercised more, we could easily lose weight. I found out the hard way that the calories in/calories out concept just doesn’t work for everyone. When I was just 19, I joined Weight Watchers to lose weight and followed all the rules — counting calories religiously and exercising vigorously — but only lost a half pound! It wasn’t until years later, after learning that I was gluten-sensitive that I was able to solve my personal weight loss puzzle.

No doubt we’ll continue to hear that it all comes down to calories and will-power. But the reality is, if you eat 1,200 calories of junk versus 1,200 calories of balanced nutrition, the messages your body receives are drastically different — no matter how much you exercise. Make that a lifelong pattern and over time — no matter what the Twinkie diet guru says — it’s going to make a huge difference to your wellness and your waistline.

Avocado & Pear Dip

Adapted from The Core Balance Diet

• 2 fresh ripe avocados, peeled and mashed
• 1 fresh ripe pear, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 fresh green onions, white and green parts finely chopped

Mix all ingredients until well-combined, season to taste, and serve.

What’s more, you can have the discipline of a saint, but if you are sensitive to a certain food and continue to eat it — whether knowingly or unknowingly — you are perpetuating a whole cascade of negative messaging throughout your body that contributes further to weight gain and illness.

But all this is just the start of why relying on restricting calories to lose weight can get you into trouble down the road. Food is a form of information, so the kinds of calories you eat really do matter. Make them worthwhile and eat as well as you can 85% of the time. This leaves room to treat yourself every once in a while. Here’s how to be sure you get the right raw materials:

• Strive to eat whole, natural foods. Load up on vegetables and fruit, emphasize plant-based proteins like nuts and legumes, use whole grains in moderation rather than refined flours and sugars, and select high-quality meat and fish — the less processed the better.
• Help your metabolism operate at full capacity with a high-quality multivitamin/mineral complex and a combination of nutrients to specifically support your metabolism and burn fat. This micronutrient and phytonutrient support will help ensure that your cellular pathways are continually supplied to function well each day.
• Explore herbal formulas to help you get to the bottom of your weight loss resistance. If you have tried everything to lose weight, you may have a systemic imbalance blocking you from your best natural weight. Look into targeted phytotherapeutic herbs to bring your body back into balance.
• Drink plenty of filtered spring water, mineral water, or freshly brewed or iced herbal tea or green tea each day, to help flush any built-up “clutter” from your system.

Exercise in any way that feels good to you

Just as supplying your body with the right raw materials helps weight loss efforts and benefits overall health and longevity, so does exercise – but there’s no need to knock yourself dead to get results. My patients are so sick and tired of hearing they should join a gym or make time every day for aerobic exercise.

For more information, see our articles on healthy weight, metabolism, and hunger hormones.

I just have two guidelines for exercise: try to fit some in four times a week and for goodness sake, do something you love to do! There are so many ways to exercise — some women I know fold exercise into their daily routines by biking or walking to work or playing with their children, while others prefer to set a specific time aside from their busy lives to exercise. Whether you go dancing with your partner, climb trails with your kids, train at the gym, attend a yoga class, or simply take a walk with your dog, exercise is a wonderful component to natural weight loss and essential for keeping it off.

For those who are already in the habit, consider bursting — taking your heart rate way up with increased physical exertion — a few times throughout your workout to get maximum benefits.

Sound nutrition combined with regular physical activity automatically keeps our body weight at a healthy set point: a predetermined body fat ratio within a 10–15-pound range. Your metabolism is designed to vigorously defend your set point by speeding up or slowing down if its thresholds are threatened.

Pay homage to your past and present emotional health

We often subconsciously equate food with love, and turn to the warmth of a hot meal or a lift from something sweet. I’ve seen hundreds of women whose weight loss issues stem back to childhood relationships with food and the family members that served it. These layers run deep, and may very well change the neurochemistry of the brain if unhealthy connections between food and love are reinforced over the years. This issue is so profound that I’ve written several articles about emotional eating, with suggestions to help you move past these blocks.

Another important piece to the natural weight loss puzzle is having adequate support. I’ve heard so many success stories from women who start their new weight loss program with a friend. They share recipe ideas, talk about what works and what doesn’t, and find encouragement when they need it. And it helps to know someone is there for you, someone who not only knows how to listen, but also who has the experience and training to help you with your personal weight loss challenges.

Restoration — refill your cup daily!

The fast-paced lifestyles women lead these days offer us very little down time. This can be a set-up for weight gain, even for those of us who love being on the go. We all need between six and eight hours of sleep every night to heal from the stress of the day. The reason this matters for natural weight loss has much to do with your adrenal glands. Please take the time to read our many articles about your adrenal health.

Start your transformation now

You don’t have to wait until you lose weight to alter the way you look and feel. If you can, treat yourself to a couple new pieces of clothing — they don’t have to be big-ticket items — just things that make you feel wonderful the moment you put them on.

Give away any clothing that doesn’t make you feel good. Consider a trip to the hair salon or a restorative massage or retreat.

The better you feel, the more likely you are to stick with your natural weight loss plan. Even such small changes can provide the momentum you need to make bigger ones!

Your body needs to feel safe — emotionally and physically — in order to shed the extra padding it’s using to “protect” itself. Imbalanced adrenal glands (the glands involved in our fight or flight response, hormonal balance, blood sugar, and more) are a physical effect of our high-stress lives. I’m the first to admit it’s difficult to slow down, to sleep, and restore ourselves the way we are meant to, and this means stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol run high, putting our adrenal glands in constant crisis mode. When stress hormones are high, the body feels anything but safe, and holds onto to fat in preparation for crisis.

Restoration is a very personal thing. What refills your cup may very well drain that of your friend or sister. Make a list of the things that help you feel more rested, relaxed, and at peace in your life, and try to practice at least one thing on your list every day. Naps count!

Come home to your body

Over the years I’ve learned that trying to apply the same old equation to every situation usually ends with women feeling badly about themselves. I sincerely believe that if women understand how to support the unique needs of their bodies, there should be no hindrance to naturally maintaining a healthy weight throughout their lives.

I hope you can get off the dieting merry-go-round and embrace our natural solution to weight loss. Above all, I encourage you to accept yourself for who you are right now — not the woman you once were or the one you hope to be. No matter what the scale says, let yourself be beautiful today!

It’s hot, and you’re thirsty, and if you are like most Americans the first drink you reach for will be a soda pop — a carbonated soft drink. If you’re worried about your sugar or caloric intake, your choice will likely be a diet soda. Companies have spent billions of dollars convincing all of us that diet soda is the healthier, lighter choice — that all we have to lose is the calories, ergo the weight. And since so many of us are struggling with weight gain, who can blame us if diet soda seems like a dream come true?

But in my experience, it’s actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing, fooling women into thinking they are doing something good for their bodies when they are actually sabotaging their own best efforts.

Diet soda may not have the sugar or calories of regular soda, but it’s chock-full of other health-draining chemicals, like caffeine, artificial sweeteners, sodium and phosphoric acid. This is even more concerning when parents give their growing — and chemically vulnerable — children diet soda in a noble effort to avoid sugar.

And while I admit that diet soda may have its uses in the short term — particularly if you are dealing with a sugar addiction — I encourage you to resist it as your default beverage, especially if you are trying to lose weight. Different studies have been flying around on this subject, but a majority show that diet soda may actually set you up to gain even more weight.

If you really want to do something good for your body and your BMI, exchange that can of diet soda for a cool glass of filtered water. If this sounds like deprivation to you, I can sympathize. Let’s discuss diet soda and how you can begin to give it less of a starring role in your nutrition.

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America’s love of soda

Americans buy and consume a tremendous amount of soda. According to Beverage Digest, overall sales of soda (sugar and diet) were 10.2 billion cases in 2005; that rounds out to be about 828 eight-ounce servings a year (or 2-½ servings per day) for every man woman and child. And that number is actually down from 849 last year, mostly due to the rise in energy drinks — which come with their own concerns. As a population, soda is our mainstay: caloric, non-caloric and “reduced-calorie”. Stand in the soda aisle of the supermarket and just try to count all the varieties — it’s staggering.

A regular 12-ounce soda contains the equivalent of nine teaspoons of sugar, usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup. Imagine drinking a 12-ounce glass of iced tea with nine teaspoons of sugar stirred into it, or eating nine teaspoons of sugar, one after another? That’s essentially what people do when they drink a sugared soda. It is liquid candy, ruthlessly advertised and manufactured to give our jaded taste buds an even sweeter sensation.

Is it any wonder that we are gaining unprecedented amounts of weight and even our children are developing type 2 diabetes? We have the dubious distinction of being the most overweight of all economically developed nations. With statistics like these, who wouldn’t believe that choosing a diet soda is the healthier choice? But consider this: we are also the number-one consumer of artificial sweeteners in the world.

No one can deny that a diet soda has fewer calories than a regular soda. If you get a disproportionate amount of your daily caloric intake from soda and then you switch to diet soda, you may lose weight. But I emphasize the word may, because it appears that artificial sweeteners can actually set us up to gain more weight.

The myth of artificial sweeteners and weight loss

There are many different views in this matter, but a host of scientists agree that artificial sweeteners may interact with our body’s sense of sugar satisfaction.

Some experts are now exploring the possibility that artificial sweeteners confuse our taste buds and all those brain measures of satiety upon which we base what we eat. Specifically, Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio have recently completed compilations of data that provided surprising results.

Fowler and her team studied more than 1500 people between the ages of 25 and 64, looking at whether each consumed regular or diet soft drinks. It was no surprise to find a correlation between the daily consumption of multiple cans of all soft drinks and obesity — which they did. But, as Fowler noted, “What was surprising was when we looked at people only drinking diet soft drinks; their risk of obesity was even higher” [than that of those drinking regular soft drinks]. In fact, Fowler found that for each can of diet soft drink consumed per day, the risk of obesity went up by 41%.

Other studies have found different variations, but a distinct pattern is emerging. Certain data indicate that the body learns to predict caloric intake by the taste and texture of certain foods. When artificial sweeteners are introduced into the mix, our body sends the appropriate sweet signals to the brain but never delivers the sugar punch.

The diet soda trade-off game

No expert is presuming that the diet sodas themselves are making people gain weight. But there does seem to be some connection, and what is being further explored is the idea that by offering our tastes buds something that seems sweet, and seems to signal other parts of our bodies that glucose sugars are on the way, we set ourselves up for cravings — to which we eventually and often unknowingly, give in. In other words, consuming artificial sweeteners that seem real just might be setting us up to eat more later on.

This supposition has been borne out in a study conducted on rats at Purdue University. Professors Terry Davidson and Susan Swithers found that rats that were fed artificial sweeteners consistently ate more than the group fed high-calorie sweeteners.

Of course, there’s also the possibility of our complicity in this trade-off, something Fowler and other researchers readily acknowledge. If we cut 150 calories here by opting for the diet soda instead of the sugared one, we may give ourselves permission for a little splurge along the way. (Think about how many times you’ve witnessed someone putting Sweet’n’Low in their coffee while tucking into an extravagant dessert.)

What’s more, the 150 calories and nine teaspoons of sugar you forego in a diet soda are replaced with a host of other additives enlisted to make the beverage taste good and still provide a boost.

The extras you get — and really don’t want

With diet drinks, not only do you miss out on any nutrients provided by the real sugars your body might find useful if consumed in reasonable quantities, you also get a laundry list of suspicious ingredients that work against your body’s effort to maintain healthy balance.

Foremost among these is caffeine. Many of the diet drinks are cola-based or otherwise have caffeine added. It’s part of the mix created by manufacturers to make soft drinks — particularly diet soft drinks — seem more substantial. Yes, it gives you a sugar-like “boost”, or seems to, but that caffeine buzz really isn’t giving your body anything it needs. And the complications of caffeine consumption and addiction are legion, with fatigue, chronic anxiety, insomnia, and worsening symptoms of hormonal imbalance topping the list.

Additionally, caffeine is a diuretic, so while you may be thinking that a diet soda quenches your thirst and helps keep you hydrated, the opposite is true. Diet soda often contains sodium, which exacerbates thirst, while the caffeine causes you to lose fluid.

All carbonated sodas also contain calcium-leaching phosphoric acid, and so much acid in your system can tilt your pH balance to an unhealthy level. Healthy detoxification takes place in a slightly alkaline environment. Too much acidity will sabotage the detox process.

If you think I’m being an alarmist, try this experiment: Fill a glass with soda, diet or regular, and drop a nail into the glass. Watch it over the course of an hour or two. You’ll find that the soda eats away at the nail in a surprisingly short amount of time. Now think of what it can do to living stomach tissue!

In Eastern medicine, overconsumption of soda — particularly diet soda — is considered to be highly corrosive to the GI tract and the root of many digestive disorders. This is particularly troubling to me when it comes to children, because their bodies are still maturing.

When is diet soda okay?

At my practice, I sanction the short-term consumption of diet soda when a patient is used to drinking several sugared sodas a day and has a real sugar addiction. The only other scenarios in which I find soda drinking to be the lesser of two evils is when you are traveling in areas where the drinking water is unsafe or when you are sick to your stomach. The old wives tale rings true for some: Coke and ginger ale do help soothe nausea.

In the case of sugar addiction, weaning off of sugar with the help of diet soda and other artificial sweeteners can really help — but you may still have to deal with an addiction to caffeine. This is a short-term solution; my ultimate goal is to switch all my patients over to water and decaffeinated herbal teas as their go-to beverages of choice.

Another useful substitute, particularly for children, is to dilute 1–2 ounces of fruit juice with carbonated mineral water, slowly decreasing the amount of fruit juice. Weaning yourself and your family from soda is really weaning them from the taste of sweet. No one is discounting how difficult this can be, but substituting diet soda won’t do the trick. It actually encourages the taste for sweet! Sugar itself is a fact of life — it runs all living things. But just as I recommend eating foods that closely resemble their original form, I also encourage you to drink naturally sweetened beverages — and always in moderation.

Xylitol — a good alternative

My medical experience shows without a doubt that naturally occurring sugars are better choices than refined sugar and artificial sweeteners because they are metabolized. I am very enthusiastic about the polyalcohol sugar xylitol, also called wood sugar or birch sugar. It has long been used in Europe and Asia as a popular sweetener, and is popular with diabetics. Many sugarless gums are sweetened with xylitol because it helps prevent tooth decay and, perhaps, bone loss (There is a study in Finland looking at xylitol as a preventative for osteoporosis). Xylitol has about half the calories of sugar (3 calories per teaspoon) but it tastes sweeter, so you’ll use less. However, it doesn’t tweak the insulin receptors and contains some nutritive qualities — much like maple syrup.

I also use stevia, but some of my patients have found they don’t like the taste. The point is, there are other healthy alternatives out there. Opt for a natural sweetener and you may find you have fewer cravings!

On the other hand, if you are like so many women and you simply can’t live without diet soda, have you thought of asking yourself why?

Breaking the diet soda habit

If you hardly ever drink soda or sweeten your beverages, I think it is fine — even preferable — to use real sugar or drink the occasional Coke. This can even be therapeutic if you have an upset stomach. If you must allow your children to have the occasional soda, I think “the real thing” is best here, too.

But, if you find you have a habit of reaching for a diet drink, you could be driven by the caffeine, or it could be a behavioral habit, the sort of thing where grabbing that soda is what you do when you stop to gas-up the car or take a break from work. But the physiological addiction to caffeine is very real, and habits can feed one another.

I encourage you to see your choice of beverages as an opportunity to tune in to your body. Chances are, if you have any degree of dependency on sugared or diet drinks, your body is sending you mixed signals and you react with mixed responses. So, the next time you reach for a soda, take a moment and think first: What can I drink to best serve my body’s needs?

It may be time to make a transition to the best of all possible drinks: water. With the hectic schedule so many of us keep, it’s possible that when you think you want a diet soda or sugary drink (or for that matter, an alcoholic beverage), you are simply thirsty.

Sometimes we forget how refreshing and satisfying a glass of cool water can be, particularly if your system is accustomed to drinks with all sorts of other ingredients. Water is also the key to weight loss. It not only hydrates all of the body’s systems, but it cleanses the body of toxins. (In fact, it’s probably flushing out some of the things left over from processing ingested artificial sweeteners!)

Water may not be all your body’s asking for when you reach for that diet drink. Are you hungry? Hungry is okay — we all need to eat. Even if you are trying to lose weight or otherwise monitoring your calorie intake, when you are hungry a healthy body will tell you so, and you should not be afraid to listen. Many of my patients are surprised to find that when they eat more of the right foods, they lose weight.

The bad, the better, the best — and balance

Here are a few strategies toward more healthful choices:

1. One of the most fundamental strategies you can take to help your body deal with the demands placed on it by diet soda is to take a daily multivitamin, enriched with calcium, magnesium and essential fatty acids. Recognize that if you are trying to lose weight and eat a balanced diet, a multivitamin will serve you tremendously in your efforts. In modern life it is practically impossible to eat sufficient food to get the nutrients you need without overloading on calories — unless you happen to be a long-distance runner by profession or avocation. Most important, any weight loss you do achieve will cause you to release toxins stored in body fat, so you need to be sure to get the balancing vitamins and stay well-hydrated to wash those toxins away.
2. Look for products sweetened with what are called sugar alcohols, particularly xylitol.
3. Don’t skip meals and substitute a diet soda. It just doesn’t make any sense. You run the risk of eating more later on, and you really haven’t given your body any of the nutrients it needs.
4. Consider delving further into when and why you turn to diet or caffeinated drinks. What else is going on in your life? Are there factors driving your dietary choices that have nothing to do with what you eat? Are you tired or stressed out? Do you habitually pair drinking soda with some other activity? Are you eating or drinking sodas because you’re bored? For purely social reasons? One sure way to find answers to these questions is to try going without diet drinks and caffeine for a couple weeks, while tracking how you feel.
5. Drink at least eight 8-oz glasses of filtered water per day — sparkling or “still”, but at least half should be still. Try drinking half your body weight in pounds, but in ounces of water (if you aren’t extremely overweight). A 140-pound woman would drink 70 ounces of filtered water per day for weight loss. After a few days, you may find that with more water on board your craving for diet soda softens and slips away.

Consider what diet really means

The word “diet” means what constitutes the usual food and drink of a person or animal. For me, the most important part of that sentence is “usual” — not “diet”.  To sustain a healthy weight and a healthy body, you need to support your body’s natural balance. Chemicals and caffeine don’t do this, no matter what the soda manufacturers tell you.

If you find that you like the occasional sugared or diet soda, don’t be too hard on yourself. Try following the 80/20 rule: if you’re healthy and making smart choices most of the time, the occasional indulgence is perfectly fine. We all do the best we can for ourselves and families; the key is to make the “best” the “usual” — and avoid sodas as part of your daily routine. So take a few steps away from the habit of diet soda and see how you feel. Have a glass of cool clear water, then see if you really want that soda. Your vibrant health may be all the reward you need.