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How To Lose Weight By Eating More And Exercising Less

How To Lose Weight By Eating More And Exercising Less

A lot of health and dietary advice out there will tell you to “eat less and exercise more”. And today, I’m going to suggest something pretty bold to you…Eat more, and exercise less.

This advice is founded in my years of research about what I call your body’s FAT Programs, which are your body’s survival programs that cause you to gain weight. Understanding how to work with your body’s survival programs (rather than fighting them) will allow you to lose weight in a much more sustainable way.

So let’s look deeper into my advice to eat more and exercise less. Let’s explore that first part…

EAT MORE:

eat more
When I say eat more, I’m really talking about eating more healthy foods. That is, getting more nutrition into your body. Many of us are nutritionally starved. This type of starvation can cause chronic junk food cravings.

Also, modern day processed foods cause inflammation and digestive issues, both of which activate your FAT programs. By adding more healthy foods, you will be nourishing your body, reducing inflammation and healing your digestion.

The focus for us is always on adding. Over time, you’ll experience less junk food cravings and you’ll become more efficient at burning fat. At the Gabriel Method, we always suggest to eat more nutritious, wholesome foods and focus on what I call the Gabriel Method Big 3:

  • Live Foods Like – Green leafy veggies, fermented veggies, sprouts and cruciferous veggies.
  • Omega 3’s: Found in sources like chia seeds and oil, cold water fish, hemp oil, and flax oil.
  • Protein: Grass fed, organically farmed meats, eggs and wild caught fish.

Eating less without adding healthy foods puts your body into fat storage mode because there is a perceived danger of starving. This is the opposite of what we want to communicate to our bodies for weight loss. So start by eating more, and focusing on adding in the Big 3 food items. You may not lose weight overnight by following this approach, but over time, you will have less hunger and junk food cravings and once you do start losing weight it will be very sustainable.

Now let’s look at the second piece of advice…

EXERCISE LESS:

EXERCISE LESS
Most people get really stressed with the concept of eating less, and exercising more. For many of us, we don’t enjoy exercise, because it’s been ingrained in our minds that we have to exercise for 1 hour at least 6-7 times a week for any changes to be made.

This type of over exercising can lead to a phenomenon called ‘overtraining’. And overtraining causes your cortisol levels to be elevated, which causes junk food cravings and leptin and insulin resistance – all leading to an activation of your FAT programs.

At The Gabriel Method, we use exercise to transform your body from the inside out, working on a hormonal level, not a caloric level. So the first hormone we need to address is the cortisol that is being dumped in your body from stress and overtraining. By exercising less, but exercising right, you can lower stress levels and turn off the FAT programs. Remember, it’s not about burning more calories, it’s about creating a hormonal response that is conducive to weight loss.

When you exercise the right way you can activate what I call the “Get Thin or Get Eaten” response. This is a genetic adaptation that forces our bodies to be lean and fit, in order to escape from predators. It’s a survival response that you can tap into. And when you tap into it right, your body works with you to actually help you lose weight. Think about it – 10,000 years ago, being light, agile, and fast was necessary for your survival so you could escape predators, hunt and stay alive.

When you activate this response, you are communicating to your body that being thin is not only important, but imperative to your survival.

What I’ve discovered, is that activating this “Get Thin or Get Eaten” response before a workout helps me maximize my results, in a fraction of the time. You can use visualization and guided imagery to help activate this response, even before your workout starts. Your survival brain doesn’t know the difference between a real or an imagined experience, so you can use visualization in a very targeted way.

You can use the “Get Thin or Get Eaten” visualization further down on this page. I’ve also made it available for download, so you can put it on your phone and take it with you where ever, whenever.

I activate this favorable hormonal response, by using visualization…

Before I go for a run on the beach or go out for a bike ride, I love to listen to this visualization to get my mind in a peak-playful-intensity place where that wonderful biochemical change can take place.

Working with your body and enjoying the process of change is what The Gabriel Method is all about.

Now I realize that this approach flies directly in the face of the pop health dietary advice that tells us we should simply “eat less and exercise more.” But when you move away from the traditional paradigm toward a more holistic, mind-body approach, you quickly realize that this pop health advice isn’t working for anyone.

Try This Way of Exercise:
15 minutes of Visualization + 15 Minutes of Movement

So give it a try yourself. One day this week set aside 30 minutes; 15 minutes to listen to this meditation, and then 15 minute to do some sort of body movement. That could be going for a walk, going for a jog, doing some yoga at home, running after your kids, or perhaps a bike ride.

Also when you exercise have a few brief moments of intense movement. Maybe sprint for 20-30 seconds 3 or 4 times during the workout and rest at least 48 hours before your next exercise session.

Then come back here and let me know what you think of the visualization. Many of our coaching clients love this new perspective towards movement and exercise, and consequently are able to start shedding the weight much easier -AND MOST IMPORTANTLY – they are able to keep it off. I hope you enjoy it as well, and start achieving the permanent, sustained weight loss you desire.

Workout Visulization

Download Visualization

get thin or get eatern

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Why 1 Minute of Intense Exercise Can Be as Good As 45 Minutes of Cardio

Why 1 Minute of Intense Exercise Can Be as Good As 45 Minutes of Cardio

A study recently came out showing that one minute of intense exercise gives similar health benefits to that of 45 minutes of cardio.

There’s a reason for this, and it’s something I’ve been talking about for years. I call it the ‘get thin or get eaten’ body adaptation.

1 minute excercise

Activate Your “Get Thin or Get Eaten Adaptation”

The most effective approach to weight loss is convincing your body to want to be thin. Of course that begs the question; just HOW do you do that? And the answer is; your body will want to be thin if it deems that being thin is the safest thing from a ‘survival’ perspective.

One big secret to losing weight is knowing that the body stores fat for survival purposes. If your body thinks that it can just sit around and survive, it will. However, if you trick your body into thinking that sometimes it might get chased by a tiger, then it will respond hormonally, leaning towards a thin, lean physique.

When we were living in wildly hostile environments thousands of years ago, we were living outdoors, hungry and cold a lot of the time. We needed fat for survival. Fat kept us warm and protected from famine when there wasn’t enough to eat. Fat is, in fact, our friend. Fat is a body survival mechanism. But there are other living environments from thousands of years ago that we lived in, where fat was not conducive to survival. It wasn’t helping you in any way, shape or form.

What About Hot Environments?

Imagine, you’re living outdoors and you’re in a tropical, warm environment. When you’re in a tropical, warm environment, it’s warm all the time, so you don’t need fat to keep you warm. Food is abundant. There are fruits and animal proteins, nuts and seeds. You can have all you want. It’s all healthy, live, real foods, good for your digestion, it’s anti-inflammatory, it’s nourishing, it’s got proteins, healthy fats, and it’s all nutrientially perfect from a dietary point of view. In this situation, while you can have as much as you want, you don’t need fat to protect you against any kind of famine and you don’t need any fat stores to keep you warm

Using Short Term Acute Stress To Lose Weight

Let’s imagine in that hot environment, there were predators, and every once in a while one of them came out and chased you. If you weren’t lightning fast for 10, 20, 30 seconds, and outran everybody else, you were dead. And if you are faster than everybody else in a 10-second sprint or a 20-second sprint, you will survive.

That is called short-term acute stress. Short-term acute stresses have differing effects on the body than long-term, chronic, low-grade stresses.

A famine is an example of a long-term, chronic, low-grade stress. It causes hormonal changes that cause you to gain weight. Most of the stresses in our environment are long-term, chronic, low-grade stresses.

A short-term, acute stress is the exact opposite. Short-term, acute stresses reverse hormonal problems like leptin and insulin resistance. They make your body more sensitive to these very important fat-regulating hormones, and it makes it much easier to lose weight.

Get Fast or Get Eaten

If you had to run away from a predator that was intent on eating you, your body would get the message very quickly that if you weren’t fast you were dead, and you activate what I call the get thin or get eaten adaptation. Then, as far as your body is concerned, survival is more important than storing fat. This hormonal shift turns your body into a fat shedding machine.

1 Minute of Intense Exercise

You can trick you body into thinking it needs to be prepared for being chased by a predator with one minute, intense exercises. Those 45 minute cardio workouts will never nudge your hormones into the weight loss potential like 1 minute intense exercise does.

If that predator came out of nowhere and started chasing you, you wouldn’t go for a 45-minute cardio walk. You would sprint 10, 20 seconds, life or death style. That’s the type of exercise I’ve advocated for years. The 1 minute intense workout is the best kind of exercise to really make your body want to be thin.

It’s never been about calories in versus calories out. Weight loss is really about making the hormonal switch in your body. You may only burn a few hundred calories in these 1 minute intense workouts, but you will make hormonal changes and send the message to the survival brain that you need to be thin in order to survive.

Visualization is Vital

Your survival brain doesn’t know the difference between a real and an imagined experience, so you can use that to your advantage when you’re exercising. One of the best things you can do when you’re sprinting is to visualize that either you’re being chased by something or that you’re chasing something. Either way you’re communicating to your body that the reason you’re moving so fast is for survival reasons and that will activate the Get Thin Or Get Eaten Adaptation.

Practice even a couple of times per week and in no time flat your body will get the message that you need to be thin and fit for survival reasons. You change your body on a hormonal level and your body to want to be thin.

Short-term, periodic, intense exercise is the best way to convince your body to be thin to survive. Half the job’s done once you understand exactly what’s going on and how to get your body to once again want to be fit.