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Hormonal Excellence
Optimal metabolism begins and ends with hormonal excellence. Have you ever heard yourself say, “It’s not me, it’s my hormones,” or, “It’s not me, it’s my metabolism”? There is a good chance you were right, especially when it comes to weight gain and how you burn fat. Hormones play a role in every physiological process in your body, including how well your metabolism works. Hormones are always trying to maintain balance and harmony in your system - that’s their job. Knowing how to use food as a powerful activator to support your hormones is key to supporting robust metabolism and optimal weight loss, and it’s something you’ll be doing automatically by following the nutrisystem plan. The basic fat-burning principles - eating well, eating often, exercising, and minimizing stress - help to maintain a steady hormonal balance, which in turn strengthens your metabolism even more. They’re all interlinked.
Your body is designed to respond to the foods you eat and create a hormonal response to meet its needs, much like the workings of a finely tuned machine. Knowing this, through good eating habits and a well-rounded approach to weight loss, you can empower yourself and your body chemistry to become a fat-burning metabolic miracle.
Your Choices, Your Metabolism
Consider this: After you eat a meal containing a large amount of carbohydrates or fat, your metabolic rate usually increases about 4 percent. By contrast, after you consume a meal containing optimal amounts of protein and lowglycemic carbohydrates, your metabolic rate usually begins to increase within 1 hour, reaches a maximum of about 30 percent above normal, and stays there, burning, as long as 3 to 12 hours. You can control your metabolism and burn more fat if you nourish yourself well every day.
Timing Is Everything
Your eating schedule is crucial when it comes to increasing your metabolism, and it all has to do with preventing a state of low blood sugar. This happens after a high-glycemic carbohydrate meal is eaten, causing blood sugar levels to first rise, then decline too quickly. As you know, this is caused by an excess of insulin being released and too much sugar is drawn out of the blood, which then causes blood sugar levels to fall below normal and causes fat to be stored. Symptoms of low blood sugar include uncontrollable hunger, moodiness, anxiety, shakiness, perspiration, lack of energy, mental confusion, anger, and more. This continuous state can also be a forerunner to type 2 diabetes, a disease that often goes hand-in-hand with obesity. The secret to avoiding low blood sugar lies in eating nourishing foods, including low-glycemic carbohydrates, every 3 to 4 hours, and that’s what the nutrisystem diet recommends.
When you’re on the nutrisystem diet, there are two ways you can go when it comes to managing your meal plan. The first meal plan option you have is to prepare all of the foods on the nutrisystem plan on your own, buying as many whole foods as possible and preparing everything as fresh as possible. You’ll be cooking up healthy dishes and can rely on many of the recipes to ensure a healthy, balanced diet. For those of you able and willing to do this, I say go for it. Your body, your mind, and your metabolism will thank you for the fresh, wholesome foods. But let’s face it - many of us are just too busy to prepare five healthy meals a day. Finding the time, let alone the energy, to do all that is a challenge and you might not eat on time. This diet has a solution for you, too.
If you lead a busy lifestyle and have a million and one things to do every day, don’t despair.You can still get the great balance of healthy, low-glycemic foods about every few hours with ready-to-go prepared diet foods.You can get everything from breakfasts to lunch and dinner entrees - even great-tasting snacks and desserts to fill in the gaps - and it’s all healthy, balanced, and immediately ready to go. It’s all portable, so you can take your meals with you wherever you go, and there are almost a hundred different meals and desserts available. All are based on a low-glycemic index and offer optimal levels of protein and fats to help your body burn fat best. You simply combine them with fresh fruits and vegetables and your plan is ready to go.
For years thousands of people have had success eating prepared diet meals, because along with tasting great, they do one other thing very well - they keep you prepared. NutriSystem truly takes the work out of weight loss. They do all the prep work, all the calorie counting, glycemicindex measuring, and portion control for you. All you need to do is remember to eat every few hours, and bam - you kick your metabolism into high gear. Or you can do a combination meal plan, preparing some meals yourself and eating prepared diet meals at other times when you’re busy. The choice is up to you.
But whichever meal plan you utilize - cooking whole foods on your own based on the nutrisystem diet meal plan, or buying the prepared foods - by eating every few hours, you’ll avoid low blood sugar levels and hunger and you’ll keep your metabolism burning strong.