Dr. Nicole Fujiyama helps adults heal their autoimmune diseases and get back to livin’ life!
As a naturopathic doctor, Dr. Nicole does more than just push supplements. With a combination of natural therapies and traditional Chinese medicine, she supports her clients by addressing all the lifestyle & environmental factors that unknowingly trigger autoimmune diseases and are often the root causes. This tends to go unaddressed by conventional medicine, but Dr. Nicole believes that this is exactly where huge health transformations can be found and it is within each client’s power to change these factors and put their autoimmune disease into remission!
Dr. Nicole attended Bastyr University in Seattle, WA & her private practice is located in Torrance, CA.
First, let’s talk about what happens when you eat carbs
For most of us, our bodies prefer carbs for energy & can break them down easily
At first, it circulates glucose in our blood, then stores above what it needs in our liver & muscles
Anything above what it stores, it converts to fat
Can you see what having more muscle can allow you to store more carbs? So it doesn’t go to fat storage
That is another reason why I stress the importance of weight training
Also, our bodies store around 4 times more carbs than our liver
Now, let talk timing
Since our bodies prefer carbs for quick & explosive work, i.e anerobic work, it is best to eat carbs prior & post workouts
In fact, if you do not carb up and use carbs for recovery, you can likely burn muscle, which is a no no
This is something you can play with.
An easy guide is, if you feel flat before a workout, eat some carbs, but eat slowly, or you will likely overeat
My bodybuilding friends & I always talk about our preworkout snacks
After training, have a good meal, including some complex carbs to promote recovery
Then other good time to eat carbs is before sleep
Feeding your brain with glucose promotes good sleep quality
I always tell my clients to not fall asleep in intense fat burn
Just a little glucose can help you get sleepy & sleep better
It can be small like honey & apple cider vinegar or a fruit.
Do not fall for that nonsense that if you eat carbs at night, you will gain weight
There are nights where I carb load with at least 100 grams
Now I do not do that all the time & I am extremely metabolically flexible
In fact, according to Lumen my metabolic flexibility is 19.5 out of 21
You have heard me talk about Lumen, it is the only breathalyzer on the market than reads your metabolism & gives you nutrition guidance to train your metabolism to become flexible, so you can use different macros for energy, instead of store them
In this week’s episode of The ZecoHealth Show, I sit with The Gut-Brain Holistic Nutritionist Riley Romazko.
In this episode we discuss the gut-brain connection, guthealth & weightloss, acid reflux, GERD & more!
Her bio is below
I’m Riley, your Gut-Brain Holistic Nutritionist. I have a Bachelors (BSK) in Kinesiology, minor in Dietetics, and an Associates in Nutritional Sciences (ASN). I’m a Certified Holistic Nutritionist (CHN), Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA), and Certified Personal Trainer (CPT). My hobby is researching the latest on gut health and challenging the medical community on common misconceptions.
I got into this field due to my own health issues. I’ve suffered with IBS, gastritis, hiatal hernia, LPR, dysbiosis, severe TMJD, psoriasis, interstitial cystitis, hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue, and to top it off, cervical dystonia, which really affected my life negatively. Through my years of experience and research, I learned that everything revolved around a healthy gut. That’s why I’m here today to help people resolve their gut issues and get back to health.
Welcome to another episode of The ZecoHealth Show. This is Weight Management Expert, Narado Zeco Powell
In this episode I sit with Sonia Magruder
We discuss clean nutrition, toxins, weight-loss & more.
Sonia Magruder is an integrative nutrition health coach, who is passionate about helping others practice better self care through health education and nutrition. After a personal health journey, Sonia transitioned from being a stressed out, full-time, successful real estate broker to following her passion for helping others get healthier as well as helping many build their own organic nutrition business. She now has an organization that is over 53,000 strong.
Welcome to another weekend episode of The ZecoHealth Show.
This is Weight Management Expert, Narado Zeco Powell
In this weekend’s short, I will explain the benefits & downfalls of Intermittent Fasting when it comes to weight management & health.
At the end I will give you some recommendations to properly implement a fasting protocol to lose weight.
So, let’s get started.
Let’s begin with a definition
What is Intermittent Fasting?
According to Healthline
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating.
It doesn’t specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them.
In this respect, it’s not a diet in the conventional sense but more accurately described as an eating pattern.
This definition is spot on.
I will add that there are different ways to fast, i.e water fasts, dry fasts, dinner to dinner fasts.
As long as you are purposely condensing your feeding windows, you are fasting.
Now that we know what it, let’s discuss the possible benefits:
When you fast, several things happen in your body on the cellular and molecular level. I.e your body adjusts hormone levels to make stored body fat more accessible.
Fasting can reduce insulin resistance by lowering blood sugar & fasting insulin levels.
Your cells also initiate important repair processes and change the expression of genes. (Epigenetics)
The levels of growth hormone skyrocket, increasing as much as 5-fold. This has benefits for fat loss and muscle gain, to name a few.
When fasted, your cells initiate cellular repair processes. This includes autophagy, where cells digest and remove old and dysfunctional proteins that build up inside cells.
Reasons 3 & 5 are why there are animal studies that show that fasting can prevent cancer. The key word is can.
There are other benefits of Intermittent fasting like improving brain health & the list goes on & on.
I mean weight-loss, muscle gain, cellular repair, these all sound amazing.
No wonder why Intermittent Fasting is the main trend in health & fitness.
Just like anything else, there are possible downsides, so let’s discuss them:
Hunger & Cravings
Headaches & lightweight
Digestive Issues
Mood Swings
Fatigue
Weight Gain
These happen for a few reasons, but the main ones are fasting too long, hormonal imbalances, nutrition deficiency & metabolic inflexibility.
Let me explain, if you fast for too long, you will put your body under undue stress, raising your cortisol levels.
If you have been listening to me, you know the issues that chronic cortisol levels cause.
Hormonal issues like drop in thyroid T3 hormone which is crucial for energy.
If you are diabetic, especially if you are not being monitored by a health or medical professional, your blood sugar may drop to dangerous levels.
Excessive fasting can lead to nutrient deficiencies.
In short, we need food.
When we starve our bodies, it will give priority to the large processes i.e our heart, while starving our smaller processes, which can shorten our lives.
Think about it like a car where the engine and large mechanisms still work.
The car still runs well, but not optimally, until the issues with the small mechanisms stop holding up and it impacts the large ones and the car dies or you have to take it to the shop.
Now, let’s discuss metabolic flexibility & gut enzymes.
If you have been following The ZecoHealth Show, by now you know about gut enzymes & how they are connected to the flexibility of your metabolism & fat loss.
If not go back and listen to my recent episodes in the following order:
Introduction to Gut Enzymes & Metabolic Flexibility
Keto vs Metabolic Flexibility
Metabolic Flexibility with Lumen Metabolic Coach Maria Fox
Long story short, if you are not metabolically flexible, especially if you have a sugar metabolism, you will less likely burn fat, but you can stress your body and your blood sugar will drop to unsafe levels.
This is the perfect spot to disuss Lumen.
It is the only breathelizer on the market that reads if you are burning fat or carbs, gives you a score to determine the flexibility of your metabolism.
Based on the flexibility of your metabolism, they provide nutriention macro guidance so your body can develop adequate enzymes to break down fats or carbs as needed.
This magic of being metabolically flexible, leads to improved metabolic health and sustainable weightloss.
I highly recommend Lumen and their services.
Go to lumen and use code zecohealth for 10% off all their services.
The link to lumen is in the shownotes & the description of the podcast.
Lastly, here are ways to implement a fasting protocol to promote fatloss.
It begins with habits around fasting:
Reduce stress.
Stress promotes a sugar metabolism because it raises cortisol.
Habits like diaphragmatic breathing, slow breathing & meditation.
If you have not, listen to the solo episode titled, Morning Habits To Jumpstart Fatburn to learn how to implement these habits.
Start with a shorter window.
Do not jump into long fasts, especially if you have a sugar metabolism.
Start at the low end and slowly increase.
Fasting windows for men & women are different
I recommend 12 to 14 hours of fasting for women, but 14 to 16 for men.
Again starting at the low end so 12 for women and 14 for men.
Remember I am referring to daily fasts here and be mindful if you have health issuss
Train your metabolism to be metabolically flexible.
As your body shifts from a sugar to fat metabolism, it will become better at breaking down it’s own body fat for fuel.
Remember to look into lumen and use code zecohealth for 10% off their services.
Once you are metabolically flexible and you can consistently fast at the height of your window, 14 hours for women & 16 for men, then you can have a weekly 24 hour or dinner to dinner fast.
I would say you can try dinner to dinner fasting after about 2 months of consistently fasting at the height of your window.
At the point your metabolism operating efficiently.
In this week’s episode I sit with Dr. Latania Booker.
In this episode we discuss nutrients, movement, stress, biology & other factors that impact your health & fitness.
Latania Booker, MD, a Texas, is a board certified Internal Medicine doctor. She has been practicing medicine since earning her Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 2009. She completed her internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at the Houston Methodist Hospital in the world renowned Texas Medical Center.
Shortly after completing her residency training, Dr. Booker gained further training and experience in Occupational Medicine and Urgent Care while operating as the clinic medical director for a large Occupational Medicine practice. After a few years, she decided to transition back into hospital based medicine and care for acutely ill patients. After years of caring for the sickest patients in one of the most prestigious hospitals in Houston, Dr. Booker decided to shift her focus to wellness.
Dr. Booker is a marathoner who is passionate about fitness and nutrition. After learning how to improve her own personal health and athletic performance, she decided that she wanted to make a change in the way she approached caring for her patients and switched her focus from treating chronic disease using prescriptions to disease prevention using movement and nutrition. She believes that she can use simple lifestyle modifications to help patients manage common diseases such as osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic inflammatory illnesses. Her objective is to help patients learn to eat a nutritious diet that supports health at the cellular level and provide movement solutions so that patients can be more active and have more vitality.
“My goal is to help my patients live their healthiest lives with fewer prescription medications, fewer physical limitations and less burden of chronic disease”.
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:
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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 ketofriendly 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.
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.
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.
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.
