For decades, we’ve been told that counting calories (and severely restricting them) and exercising are the best ways to lose weight. But this model is based on outdated concepts and benefits the diet industry much more than individuals trying to lose weight.
The weight-loss industry has perpetuated the myth that your metabolism and digestion act like a fire: Calories are units of energy, measured by burning food until it becomes ash and measuring how much heat is given off.
But that’s not how your body works! Your body is not a food-burning furnace, and restricting calories typically has a rebound effect, reducing your metabolic rate and making weight gain inevitable.
On top of that, the myth that calories are equal (or even relevant at all) means traditional calorie-restricting weight-loss diets deprive the body of nutrition. Intuitively you can sense that a large avocado is not the same as half a donut, even though they have a similar amount of calories.
So if restrictive diet and intense workout regimens aren’t the best road to weight loss, what is?
How Hormones Impact Weight
When you discover the myth of calories (your body is not a furnace!) and the real role of fat (it stores toxins!), everything becomes easier. Food is much more than fuel. It contains complex nutritional signals:
- Before you eat, the look and smell of food start a sensory conversation with your brain.
- When you start eating, the process of chewing and swallowing activates multiple hormones.
- As your stomach expands, it sends signals to the brain to control hunger and digestion.
- The digestive system responds with hormones that inform the brain about progress and nutrition.
- Hormones travel through the bloodstream and reach parts of the brain that control hunger. As we continue to eat, these hormones gradually change to signal that we have had enough to eat.
- After eating, the body slowly assimilates the nutrients, aided by the bacteria that digest them.
Unfortunately, we eat past the point of hormonal satiety because the nutritional, digestive, and biological signals get confused. Addictive sugar, emotional eating, fatigue, dehydration, peer pressure, and a lack of essential nutrients mean the appetite gets stuck on “ON.”
1. Eat Well to Lose Weight
Here’s the biggest “secret” for weight loss: Eating alkaline foods, approved by Dr. Sebi, will naturally result in weight loss. Putting that advice into practice isn’t always easy, though. So here are some tips to get you started eating for weight loss.
First, Eliminate Junk Food
Clean your refrigerator and pantry, and get rid of all the sugary, greasy food and snacks! Junk food describes food and drinks low in nutrients and high in calories, saturated fat, added sugar, and/or added salt. Eating too much junk food is linked to serious health problems and obesity.
Added sugar and refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, spike blood sugar rapidly, leading to hunger, cravings and increased food intake a few hours later, which can make it hard for weight loss. Added fats can lead to high blood cholesterol, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome.
Next, Surround Yourself With Healthy Food
Now, fill your pantry and fridge up with the good stuff! Keeping healthy food nearby can help prevent you from eating something unhealthy when you're hungry. The alkaline fruit, vegetables, herbs, grains, nuts, and seeds in Dr. Sebi’s Nutritional Guide will nourish, energize and sustain your body.
Eat More Fat and Fiber
Healthy fats (like those found in avocados and soft-jelly coconuts) will help you feel fuller and calmer, and reduce fat storage. It might seem counter-intuitive, but food deprivation will stop you from losing weight. It causes a stress reaction which makes the body hold on to energy resources and reduces both your mood and metabolism.
Eating more fiber also helps you feel fuller, and feeds the good bacteria responsible for doing a lot of the hard work breaking down and absorbing nutrients.
Exercise Portion Control
Controlling how much you eat can be very helpful when you're trying to lose, reach, or maintain your ideal weight. Keeping a food journal can help you realize how much you eat every day, especially if you are a mindless snacker or emotional eater.
Address Nutritional Deficiencies
A lack of nutrients will make you feel sluggish. When your body doesn’t have enough nutritional building blocks it will “slow down” to preserve energy. For example, magnesium is required for 300 biological processes involved in mood management, cellular transport and metabolism.
Micro-malnutrition also reduces the rate at which your immune system can build new cells and healthy organelles (including the mitochondria that make all your energy).
Bonus: Keep It Spicy
If you can tolerate spice, take your meals up a notch with cayenne. It contains the compound capsaicin, which gives it its heat and provides various health benefits. A June 2017 study in Bioscience Reports suggests that capsaicin increases metabolism, reduces hunger, increases feelings of fullness, and decreases calorie intake by reducing the hunger hormone ghrelin.
Ginger is also used as a natural remedy for various health conditions. An April 2018 study in Phytotherapy Research suggests that taking ginger (e.g. as a tea) reduces body weight and belly fat by increasing metabolism and fat burning while simultaneously decreasing fat absorption and appetite.
2. Hydrate and Flush
Keeping hydrated is crucial for health and weight loss. Water helps dissolve minerals and nutrients, making them more accessible to the body, as well as helping to remove waste products and keep your body's alkaline environment.
Drinking water can also boost metabolism by 24 to 30% over a period of 1 to 1.5 hours. Lastly, thirst can often be mistaken for hunger — and most of us are dehydrated. Dr. Sebi recommended a gallon of spring water every day, so start sipping!
3. Try Cold Exposure
Dutch endocrinologists found that exposure to cold temperatures (around 64 to 66 degrees Fahrenheit) can aid in weight loss by activating brown adipose tissue (BAT), a form of fat that generates heat. This causes the body to work harder to maintain warmth, resulting in increased energy output and weight loss.
Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a type of fat found in the body that is rich in mitochondria, the organelles responsible for generating energy. Unlike white adipose tissue (WAT), which stores energy in the form of fat, brown adipose tissue generates heat by burning fat.
An August 2016 review in Best Practice and Research Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism suggests that we can make more BAT cells with cold exposure. This is why ice baths are becoming increasingly popular. The cold-water immersion uses up heat energy and encourages your body to make more BAT, ginger also encourages the WAT to BAT conversion.
4. Move More
Try to move every day, even if it's only a 10-minute walk after meals. Doing exercise is an excellent way to burn calories and improve your physical and mental health. Invite a friend so you can keep yourself accountable. This way it will be easier for you to reach or maintain your ideal weight.
5. Avoid Obesogens
Obesogens are chemicals that can cause weight gain by altering the body's regulatory mechanisms for fat storage and metabolism. This occurs via multiple pathways, including:
- Increasing the number of fat cells (adipocytes)
- Increasing the size of fat cells and the amount of fat stored
- Altering hormonal pathways that control fat cell development
- Changing hormones regulating appetite, satiety, and food preferences
- Altering the basal metabolic rate (BMR), baseline amount of calories your body burns simply existing
- Disrupting energy balance to favor fat storage
- Altering insulin sensitivity and lipid metabolism
A March 2023 study in animal models found that exposure to persistent organic pollutants, phthalates, and bisphenol A (BPA) is contributing to the increasing rates of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes, especially in young people.
Eating organic, avoiding plastics, and supporting your body’s natural detox pathways will help remove the obesogens promoting fat storage and slowing down your metabolism.
6. Stress Less
Health-related stress alone impacts nearly half the adult population (46%), and stress and weight gain are closely related. Stress (from an emergency event or, more likely, continued pressure) increases the hormone cortisol. This drives an increase in appetite and cravings for sweet foods.
When we are feeling stressed, the body wants to “save” not “spend” the stored energy and will devote mental resources to staying alive, not learning how to creatively thrive. We simply don’t feel like socializing, exercising, or eating healthy foods, and neither does the body.
But meditation and mindfulness induce a state of calm, which has been shown to reduce weight and improve body composition, per a September 2019 study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
7. Be Better About Bedtime
Not getting enough sleep affects your ability to make healthy decisions, as it reduces activity in the brain's frontal lobe responsible for regulating impulse control. When tired, the brain's reward centers turn to food to make you feel better, leading to increased cravings and larger portion sizes.
Sleep deprivation also increases the hormone cortisol, which causes the body to store more fat. Just four nights of disturbed sleep can reduce insulin sensitivity by 30%, which causes you to feel hungrier and less satisfied after meals, per a January 2009 study.
Sleep is like food for the brain, and when deprived, you will seek energy from food and then convert it into fat!
8. Maximize Mitochondria
Mitochondria play a crucial role in fat loss, as they’re responsible for converting the energy from food into a form that cells can use. They are the ‘power plants’ of our cells, producing 90% of the energy that sustains bodily functions, according to February 2018 research in PLoS One.
To use fat for fuel, fatty acids must be mobilized and transported to the mitochondria. Increasing the number of mitochondria, or making mitochondria work more efficiently, will help you burn more fat.
Mitochondria originate from bacteria and replicate independently, which means that you can increase their numbers within cells (mitochondrial density) and ‘train’ them to work more efficiently. Eating healthy fats, such as medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) found in coconut products, makes mitochondria work harder and encourages them to reproduce.
9. Sweat It Out in the Sauna
Sauna sessions can help with weight loss by increasing your heart rate and causing you to sweat. This increased heart rate can be similar to the effects of moderate-intensity exercise, which in turn burns fat.
Sweating is also an excellent form of detoxing, getting rid of those obesogenic chemicals and heavy metals. Regular sauna sessions decrease appetite and reduce inflammatory joint pain, which makes it easier to enjoy movement.
10. Bring on the Bile
Bile is a fluid produced by the liver that aids in the digestion of lipids in the small intestine. Bile assists in detoxification, it transports toxins from the liver and helps maintain microbial balance. Bile deficiency can lead to issues with breaking down dietary fats, endocrine imbalances, and digestive symptoms.
Proper hydration is essential for liver detoxification and bile production. Bitter foods, like approved dark leafy greens, arugula, apples, ginger, and dandelion all stimulate bile production. Secondary bile acids, made by your good bacteria, increase weight loss and improve metabolism.
11. Commit to a Cleanse
The average adult has two pounds of parasites in the gut and body tissues. These pounds of parasites will drain your energy and even make you put on weight, win-win for your appetite and waistline when you cleanse them out!
In addition to parasites, your bowels are holding onto a few pounds of putrid and stagnant waste, bad bacteria, yeast, mucus, and much more. Years of decaying and rotting matter are stuck to the intestinal walls. It prevents nutrients being absorbed and gives off inflammatory endotoxins. Dr. Sebi repeatedly informed us about the importance of internal cleansing and dedicated himself to developing the most potent detoxifying and cleansing agents.
And the process of weight loss also releases toxins. When fat cells are used for fuel, toxins are emptied out of “safe storage” and released into the bloodstream. Unless they are removed, these toxins cause inflammation, which reduces mental energy, makes us feel cranky, and ensures weight-loss is miserable.
Weight loss can be accelerated by actively removing the toxins that are driving weight-gain. Cleansing the body using powerful herbal products is a reliable way to reduce toxicity.
Dr. Sebi’s 21-Day Detox Package support weight loss by:
- Removing toxins that drive weight gain
- Reducing cytokines disrupts digestion
- Increasing nutrient absorption in the gut
- Feeding bacteria that process nutrients
- Elevating feel-good neurotransmitters
- Replacing essential micronutrients
- Eliminating addictive cravings
- Supporting a healthy metabolism
- Ensuring you feel nutritionally full
