Author: Narado Zeco Powell CFT|CNS|CES

Morning Habits To Improve Fat Loss 

Welcome to another episode of The ZecoHealth Show. 

This is Weight Management Expert,  Narado Zeco Powell. 

In this weekend’s short, I have a gift for you. 

I will provide the morning secrets to jumpstart fat burn & lead to sustainable weight loss.

These proven habits, not tricks or gimmicks are backed by my three sided test, ancestral living,  scientific studies & anecdotal evidence. 

These morning habits are followed by most health gurus, including myself. 

At age 39, I maintain 12% to 14% body fat and will drop to 10% to 12% every summer. 

These habits help me stay lean and healthy all year long!

As a disclaimer, remember that these are general advice and do not make any dietary changes without discussing with a medical professional. 

So, Are you ready to transform your life?

Let’s get started:

1. Numero uno

Breathing. Most ppl do not know how to breathe. 

It is a fact that  how most of us breathe can cause us to gain weight. 

Did you know?

Let me explain.

You can either breathe to activate your sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system.

Slow, controlled diaphragmatic breathing activates your parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest nervous system. 

Why is this important?

Two main reasons are it keeps your cortisol balanced & helps you digest your food better.

So, when you operate in a parasympathetic state, you are already improving your health. 

Now when it comes to wait loss, this is a great way to train your body to use fat as a source of energy.

Rapid breathing does the opposite.  

Think about it this way 

Ever wonder why you crave sugars when you are stressed?

High cortisol leads to sugar metabolism. 

Now, this is what you do in the mornings and before eating.

Breathing in for 3 seconds,  hold for 5 then take 6 seconds to breathe out.

Do this 10 times as soon as you wake up, whenever you feel stressed and before every meal. 

The mornings are important because you get a kick or cortisol every morning to wake you up, so this technique levels your cortisol, control hunger and promote fat burn.

2. The second habit is getting morning sun.

Sunlight reacts with your adipose tissue. 

In fact, research shows that it shrinks fat cells.

Now, you only need about 15 minutes every morning, if you are dark skin, you may need a little more.

But, every couple hours, especially if you live in warmer climate, go outside for at least 10 minutes

Do this consistently and you are jump starting fat loss.

A bonus, the redlight from the rising and setting sun has other benefits for your body.

So exposure will greatly help.

Preferably outside, but during winter or fall, if you cannot go outside, just stand by the window 

Some exposure is better than none

That also goes for regular sunlight 

3. Next is walking.

Walking, especially combined with the other 2 I mention, trains your body to use fats as energy. 

You have heard me talk about endurance, specifically zone 2 training and it’s benefits. 

Walking and zone 1 to 2 training.

Most days I take at least 10k steps.

More in warmer months 

4. The last habits is eating fats

Yeah, if you are training your body to burn fat, you have to feed it fat.

Remember,  check with a medical professional before making any dietary changes & I cannot make any specific recommendations on a podcast. 

You do not have to cardio yourself to death to lose weight 

In fact excessive cardio, unless your metabolism is already flexible, leads to a sugar metabolism 

I recommend that you listen to my recent solo episodes on gut enzymes & metabolic flexibility to learn a lot more on this topic.

In short, exposing your body to fats and ketones, especially combined with the other 3 habits, you are training your body to use fats as energy. 

Remember, to burn fats, you need adequate enzymes like Lipase. 

Our bodies are very smart and it will develop adequate enzymes once we expose our bodies to fats.

For this to work, you have to temporarily shut down the glucose pathways.

The best way to do so is to start medium fat, low carb and trend toward high fat, lower carb and for some even to the point of ketosis. 

Combine all 4 habits and you can train your metabolism to become a fat metabolism, instead of a sugar metabolism. 

Last thing I will say here.

You want to cycle carbs and there are days, where you will need to carb load.

This ensures that your body maintains sufficient enzymes to break down carbs, leading to a flexible metabolism. 

Listen to that short episode that I released, I believe 3 weeks ago.

When your metabolism is flexible,  you will burn adequate macros for energy.

This is the magic of maintaining a healthy body weight. 

Check out Lumen. 

It is the only breathalyzer on the market that reads your metabolism.

It determines if you are burning fats or carbs at any given time, follow the flexibility of your metabolism, while giving you personalized nutrition guidelines so you can develop a flexible metabolism. 

The website is lumen.me & use code zecohealth for 10% off..

Trust me, it is worth it, especially if you have tried every diet known to man.

Here it is. 

Change your habits and let’s crush 2022 fam!

In this week’s episode of The ZecoHealth Show, I sit with Emotional Eating Expert Tricia Nelson.

Tricia Nelson is an internationally acclaimed author, transformational speaker and emotional eating expert. She has been featured on dozens of radio and television networks, including FOX, NBC, CBS, KTLA and Discovery Health.

Born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, Tricia’s own struggles began in early childhood, where she attempted to cope with life’s stresses and emotional pain by overeating and other destructive behaviors. Continuing into adolescence, she began binge drinking, and eventually gained more than 50 pounds. After years of experimentation with 12-step programs, therapy and self-help books, Tricia finally hit a spiritual and emotional bottom.

Tricia attended Amherst College and began her career working at the Seattle Art Museum. While in Seattle she began working with a spiritual healer who helped her recognize and heal the root causes of her addictions. By creating a lifestyle steeped in positive self-care, self-love and improved self-esteem, Tricia was able to stop drinking and overeating. She has maintained a fifty-pound weight loss for over 30 years now.

Tricia has spent the past three decades studying the root causes of emotional eating. She shares her findings in workshops and retreats both in person and online. Many doctors, psychologists and other health practitioners benefit from her insight about what drives people to overeat and how to stop.

Tricia’s bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now, is available through Amazon.

Keto vs Metabolic Flexibility 

Welcome to another weekend episode of The ZecoHealth Show.

In this weekends short, I will explain the benefits and downsides of ketosis and metabolic flexibility for sustainable weight management 

By the end of this episode you will have a better understanding of your metabolism and will have more information to make changes so you can eat food you love while burning bodyfat.

Let’s start with keto.

 I do not think of keto as a fad diet and it has many benefits.

So let’s begin by explaining what they are:

1. High fat diets like keto will aid your body to develop adequate enzymes like lipase to break down fat.

Most ppl who are overweight, especially if you eat a western diet that is higher in sugars and carbs have more amylase and other enzymes to break down carbs and sugars, but not enough enzymes to break down carbs.

If this is you, I recommend a gradual approach, instead of jumping into a high fat or keto diet. 

Reason being that if you lack adequate fat burning enzymes then your body will store most of the fat you eat.

2. Keto diet can train your body to break down fats or use ketones for endurance training 

Once you are able to eat a high fat diet or in ketosis then it can improve how you perform in aerobic and endurance training.

Endurance training,  as long as you do not cross the anerobic zone, promotes fat utilization.

In fact here is a guide, zone 2 training is ideal for using fats and is the most ideal training in a fasted state 

Zone 2 comes down to your heart rate

The math is .60 to 75 of your max heart rate 

You can either do the math and stay in that zone or get a watch that tracks hr%. My SUUNTO watch does and I believe Apple does too.

3. Keto diet is generally a low inflammation diet.

Reason being that glucose uses mitochondria pathway 1, 3 4 & 5. While fat uses mitochondria pathway 2 which is a lower inflammation pathway. 

Lower inflammation is always better for your gut, anything better for your gut it better for your health and of course energy and your body’s ability to burn fat.

Now let’s talk about Metabolic Flexibility :

First, let’s explain what it is.

Unlike keto, being metabolically flexible means your body can burn fats or carbs as needed for energy. 

This is so important because if you want to maintain a healthy body weight, your body needs to be able to burn both nutrients efficiently.

This means your body can adapt to energy demands.

For example, my body primarily burns fat when I am sleeping, I know this because I take a test every morning using Lumen

On the other hand my body uses carbs to fuel my anaerobic workouts. Again I know this based on my Lumen readings.

Lumen is the first product on the market that reads the state of your metabolism and gives you nutrition recommendations to improve the flexibility of your metabolism.

I recommend it to almost everyone. 

You can get it at https://lumen.me/ and use code zecohealth for 10% off their services.

Now, let’s talk ways to make your metabolism flexibile:

1. You need to know if you are primarily a fat or sugar burner.

 There are couple ways to do this. As I mention above you can get Lumen because it takes the guessing out of it. 

You can so listen episode 45, it is a short on gut enzymes and metabolic flexibility.

 It guides you on how to know if you are a sugar or carb burner.

2. If you are a sugar burner, then you want to think of a diet to temporarily shut down the glucose pathway. 

This usually means a medium fat, low carb diet while tending toward a keto friendly diet. 

As I mention earlier, do not jump into a high fat diet if you are a sugar burner since you yet do not have enough enzymes to break down fat for energy.

3. Do not stay on a high fat diet, but cycle

I see this alot with individuals who have been on keto for a while. 

You will lose many of the enzymes to break down carbs.

Your body is very smart & if you do not feed it carbs, it will produce less of those enzymes. 

Lumen has a fantastic approach to this and based on your readings will recommend carb load days so you can maintain those enzymes. 

Again the website is https://lumen.me/ & use code zecohealth for 10% off their services. 

However, you do not need Lumen to have a flexible metabolism,  but again, it reads the state of your metabolism and takes the guessing out of the equation. 

4. You can carb cycle

Regardless of being a sugar or fat burner, you want to fuel with carbs for workouts that pass the anerobic threshold. 

Examples are weight training or high intensity workouts. 

For quick burse of energy your body prefers glucose so fueling up before your workouts will give you energy to crush your workouts

This doesn’t take much. 

Especially on my high fat days, I usually drink a serving of liquid-iv 10 to 15 minutes prior. 

It fuels me with glucose and it has a great mixture of electrolytes to aid muscle performance and recovery. 

You can get Liquid-iv @ https://www.liquid-iv.com/ and use code zecohealth for 25% off. 

So, now you can see that you can use carbs for quick burst or demanding workouts while fats for endurance and low intensity work.

Training your metabolism to be more flexible. 

In summary, as you can see, there are benefits to ketosis or high fat diets and it can even help you along the road to a flexible metabolism, however, training your metabolism to respond to energy demands by burning the right nutrients for fuel is the most sustainable habit to manage your body weight.

In this week’s episode of The ZecoHealth Show I sit with Lumen Metabolic Coach Maria Fox.

In this episode we discuss metabolic flexibility, keto diet, fatloss, weight training and much more!

Maria Fox is senior policing leader in the UK having served as a police officer since 1994 in two police forces in the UK.  During that time she has undertaken many challenging roles but finds her work incredibly rewarding and has enjoyed leading teams to serve their local communities.  

Maria holds a BA Honours degree in Theology and Religious Studies from Manchester University and a public service MBA.  She spent many of her formative years playing a number of competitive sports at club and county level – netball, hockey, football, tennis were particular favourites and into adulthood added ski ing and cycling to her repertoire.  During her early 40s Maria qualified as a registered exercise professional in the fitness industry specialising in indoor cycle programmes eg Stages power, flight, Les Mills RPM and Sprint and ICG My ride. Despite being very sporty, Maria unashamedly shares about her battle with weight gain from her teenage years and how this had been a source of great frustration to her.  Genetics certainly have played a role in this with sensitivities to fats, carbs, slow metabolic response, and a propensity for stress related obesity and low appetite control.  

During 2020 Maria suffered a combination of physical and mental health symptoms [thrombophlebitis, DVT, ECG irregularities, acute peri menopausal stress and obesity] which led to a “burn out” episode and chronic fatigue symptoms in October 2020.  

It was at this point that Maria had invested in a lumen device to try and navigate her health back on track.  Lumen provided Maria with the necessary structure to plot a course with small daily decisions based on metabolic feedback as she sought to recover mentally and physically.   

Fast forward 7 months and Maria had lost 50lb, returned to work in policing and was supporting others in the Lumen community with their own health journeys.  By September Maria, now on the fitness performance track within Lumen, had lost a total of 60lb since starting her journey.  She enrolled on Lumen’s metabolic coaching course and was certified as a Lumen metabolic coach during October 2021.  She has recently been appointed as a lead group expert in the Lumen community which has over 17000 members currently and Lumen recently published a guide she developed over Christmas  2021 to help new users on their health journey.  

Maria is developing her expertise in health and wellbeing as she studies to become a qualified personal trainer with level 4 nutrition and specialising in obesity in order to help others who find themselves with the weight gain/loss battle.  She hopes to pursue a second career, beyond policing, in health and wellbeing, as she inspires others on their health and fitness journeys.  Since she discovered Lumen, the battle with weight gain appears to be over as she now experiences what she describes a “transformed” metabolism.   

You can follow Maria on instagram @mariafoxwellness 

Subscribe to her on you tube: 

https://www.youtube.com/c/MariaFoxWellness

Use code FOX for 15% off Lumen @ https://lumen.me/

Welcome to a other weekend episode of The ZecoHealth Show 

This is Weight Management Expert, Narado Zeco Powell 

As promised I will release a short & sweet episode every weekend, addressing any topic that is important for you to understand going into the coming week. 

Today, I will talk about genes & weight management 

In the last episode, I sat with the CEO of Self Decode Joe Cohen

His software gives you personalized health recommendations based on your genes 

Today, I am going to dip a little deeper to explain why this is important 

It really comes down to a newer branch of science called Epigenetics. 

Even now, I get comments like, “you do not understand,  you have never been my weight” 

Or

“You were raised in Jamaica & you were skinny as a kid”

I will not lie to you, yes, I was a skinny kid, in fact I was malnourished & serverly underweight 

When I was 16 I weighed 113 pounds at 5 foot 11.

For everyone, weight management looks different, by the way you should recognize that I say weight management,  not weight loss. 

Here, we focus on long term solutions to manage & maintain a healthy bodyweight 

According to the dictionary

“In biology, a gene is a basic unit of heredity and a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that encodes the synthesis of a gene product, either RNA or protein.”

What does that mean?

Simply put, a gene is unit in your DNA that takes instruction.

I am reading a fantastic book right now by Dr. Catherine Shannahan called Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food.

This book is a great read if you really want to understand the roles your genes play in your health. 

She goes further with this definition:

She states that you genes make up only 2% of your DNA.

Think about that? What about the other 98?

Well that is where Epigenetics come in.

Epigenetics explains how our lifestyle & nutrition impacts the instruction given to our genes  

So yeah, you can turn some genes on or off based on your decisions.

The next time you think, well, I am overweight because everyone in my family is. 

Please stop & ask yourself  “do you & ppl in your family eat similar foods? Were you active as a child or even now? Do you take medicine? When I say medicine that includes over the counter”

I am not saying you should not take over the counter medicines, but caution, there are reasons why they have side effects.

To sum up: the habits you learn in the ZecoHealth Show are designed to help you provide the right instructions to your genes so you are healthier and are better at managing your bodyweight. 

Do not forget to subscribe because this Tuesday, I will release the interview with Lumen Metabolic Coach Maria Fox.

At age 51, she lost 70 pounds through the magic of Metabolic Flexibility.

This is a another branch of Epigenetics. Giving your genes instruction to promote fatloss.

Subscribe, share this show & enjoy the rest of your weekend. 

In this episode of The ZecoHealth Show I sit with the CEO of Self Decode Joe Cohen. His company uses a software that gives you personalized health recommendations based on your genes & labs. In this episode we discuss how this software works, the impact our genes have on our health, weight-loss, energy levels & much more!

Joe Cohen won the genetic lottery of bad genes. Frustrated by the lack of good information and tools, he decided to embark on a journey of self-experimentation and self-learning to improve his health – something that has since become known as “biohacking”.

Joe developed a biohacker’s ultimate resource website, http://www.selfhacked.com, he then moved on to successfully create SelfDecode, a fundamental biotech software platform for DNA and lab-based health recommendations.

Today, Joe leads a team of trained scientists, MDs, PhDs and skilled engineers at SelfDecode to help thousands of people take their health into their own hands with holistic and natural recommendations based on their own health data.

You can contact Joe on his Instagram

http://www.instagram.com/mrbiohacker

The website for Self Decode is

https://selfdecode.com/

Happy New Year & welcome to The ZecoHealth Show

This Weight Management Expert Narado Zeco Powell

Going forward I will release 2 episodes a week. 

An interview every Tuesday

And a solo show every Saturday

This is the first solo show in that rotation

These solos will be short, recap the highlights of the last interview, address a particular hot topic & more.

In this week’s short, I will get into gut enzymes & body weight because I mentioned it in the last episode.

Weight management often comes down to having the right enzymes

Let me explain.

I will discuss three enzymes here

Protease- Breaking down protein

Lipase- Breaking down fats 

Amylase- Breaking down carbs

If you do not have adequate enzymes, instead of breaking down certain nutrients for fuel, your body may store it, deposit it in your organs, etc.

When it comes to losing fat, lipase and amylase are probably the most important players.

If you have enough of these enzymes, your metabolism will be able to break down fats and carbs as needed. 

This is the magic of metabolic flexibility.

How do you have the right enzymes?

Well, step 1 is knowing what gut enzymes you primarily have?

You do not have to take a test to figure that out.

Here is a simple guide:

1. What foods did your parents primarily eat? 

High carbs, then there is a chance you have high Amylase

High fat, then there is a chance you have high Lipase

2. What foods do you primarily eat? 

Same idea, fats- Lipase

Carbs- Amylase

3. How do you feel when you eat fats or carbs?

If fats make you uncomfortable, then you may lack adequate enzymes to break them down

If carbs, make you uncomfortable, well, you get the idea

Also keep in mind there may be allergies like gluten, nuts, etc. 

I will not get deeper into gut enzymes, but want to give you a taste. I  will discuss more in future episodes, in fact I will release an episode in 2 weeks with Lumen Metabolic Coach Maria Fox. 

In that episode we will discuss gut enzymes, metabolic flexibility & more

In the coming episode, I sit with the CEO of Self Decode, Joe Cohen.

His software gives you personalized health recommendations based on your genes

Subscribe because you do not want to miss that one. 

Enjoy your weekend fam.

In this episode of The ZecoHealth Show, I sit with Heart Nutritionist, Michelle Routhenstein.

In this episode we discuss, Non- Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD), Keto Diet, habits that lead to fat accumulation & much more

Michelle Routhenstein is a Preventive Cardiology Dietitian, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, and Certified Diabetes Educator who specializes in heart disease management and prevention. She holds a Master of Science Degree in Clinical Nutrition, and has completed her nutrition dietetic training residency at New York University.

She has over 10 years of experience counseling individuals and families on chronic disease prevention and management through personalized, science based nutrition and lifestyle medicine. She has a thriving nutrition counseling and consulting private practice, in which she sees clients in her New York City office and virtually. She is also the Chief Medical Officer for Lapis Health, overseeing science based behavior change on a digital therapeutics designed for reversing heart disease in the black community. She published a cookbook called the Truly Easy Heart Healthy Cookbook.

To contact Michelle, you can visit her at www.entirelynourished.com, or on Instagram at Heart.Health.Nutritionist. 

She is a registered Nutritionist & Certified Health Coach. She is passionate about helping women and men transform their weight, health and life by focusing on nutrition, coaching, fitness and gut health.

Her mission in life is to change the way people view food and to help then break away from constant yo-yo dieting. She wants to change people’s focus from eating for weight to eating for health, helping them become the person they most want to be and be confident in their own skin. She believes if you take the time to take care of yourself from within, it will set you on a path to optimal health

In this episode, we talk about the connection with guthealth and weight-loss, foods that can improve guthealth and much more!