Lose Your Belly for Good
The Editors of Prevention
The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You
We are rhythmic beings (our inability to dance notwithstanding), controlled by the beat of the 20,000 nerve cells that make up our body's master clock. This tiny, wing-shaped bit of tissue sits in the hypothalamus in the center of the brain roughly above your ear. For something so small, its power is mighty: Its network of several thousand nerve cells produces a signal that maintains our bodies' 24-hour schedule. In fact, chronobiologists from the University of Murcia in Spain described this clock as the "conductor of your internal 'orchestra,' " with the musicians being all of your cells and organs.
How all this works is pretty incredible: Light enters your eyes (even when they're closed), kick-starting a process that allows your master clock to sync itself to environmental cues, such as air temperature, food availability, and physical activity. When these rhythm synchers occur on a more or less regular schedule, all is well.
But when you don't get your light cues at the appropriate times (think blasting your eyes with light from your iPhone at 11:00 p.m. or working in a dark cubicle during daylight hours), or your environmental cues go off schedule (you skip breakfast one morning, and have a Denny's Grand Slam the next), you knock your clock off its rocker.
What we now call a normal life—frenetic pace, a lack of a structured schedule, staying in darker, inside settings all day while keeping lights on all night—is not normal for your body's master clock. In fact, researchers have a name for the "new normal" that our 21st-century lives have imposed on our circadian rhythms: social jet lag.
The physical result of this new normal? For starters, weight gain.
Why You're Out of Sync
When it comes to your inner clock—actually, clocks, since your body contains tons of them—it's a challenge to visualize the miracle of timing happening on a cellular level in your body. Incredibly, every single cell within your master clock contains its own clock, and each cell synchronizes its beat with that of its neighbor cells. Think of one of those desktop toys with the swinging silver balls—you set one in motion, and they all begin to move at the same beat. Our internal beat is maintained by clock genes that produce proteins, which in turn help set off the vibrations that create our circadian rhythms.
But when they're out of sync—which is the perpetual state most of us dwell in these days—they lose their ability to keep you on a natural schedule. And one of the drawbacks is that you're more susceptible to cave in to the urge to eat even when you're not actually hungry.
"Our physiology is the same as it was 50,000 years ago, and so is our 'hardware,' " says circadian rhythm expert Akhilesh Reddy, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. And this ancient wiring makes it difficult to figure out when we're really hungry and when we should go to bed. And how does this affect your weight? If your body doesn't know it's time to sleep, it also doesn't know you shouldn't be eating. "We're more likely to gain weight when we eat food at night because we're meant to metabolize food during daylight hours," says Reddy.
When Rhythms Go Wrong
Your natural rhythms are balanced as delicately as a ballerina on her toe shoes. It doesn't take much to throw them off and short-circuit your internal chemistry. When this happens often, you're primed to gain and you also up your risks for chronic diseases and mood swings. Some of the key rhythm annihilators:
Sleep deprivation.In 2010, researchers at the University of Murcia in Spain pointed out that women who get 5 hours of sleep a night or fewer weigh nearly 7 pounds more than women who sleep 7 hours.
Random eating.We're meant to eat meals on a regular schedule, and doing so trains our bodies to get hungry only at mealtimes. Eating at random times contributes to circadian rhythm disruptions that can affect your weight.
Nighttime eating.Get the midnight munchies? You're more than four times more likely to be overweight or obese than people who don't eat at night.
Shift work.If you're a nurse, cop, or anyone who works at night and sleeps by day, studies suggest you're more likely to become obese than your day worker counterparts.
All About Belly Fat
There are two different kinds of belly fat, and the Belly Melt Diet's Body Clock Reset will prime you to demolish both. The first kind is called subcutaneous fat—the visible flab that pads your thighs and butt, makes your upper arms jiggly, and fleshes out your love handles and that spare tire around your middle. The Body Clock Reset helps you cut right through that fat.
But this program works on another level, too, reducing a more dangerous kind of fat. Visceral fat isn't obvious to the naked eye—even people who look skinny can have too much—and that can be deadly. In small amounts, it cushions and protects your internal organs. But too much can smother the heart, liver, kidneys, and other vital organs with these hormone-pumping fat cells and lead to an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, dementia, cancer, and premature death. But simple lifestyle changes—sleeping and eating well, plus regular exercise—can radically cut your visceral fat and add years to your life. Learn why syncing your circadian rhythm and other innate cycles is a surefire way to lose weight and melt belly fat for good.
Sleepy?
The top killer of a healthy circadian rhythm is lack of sleep. And if you're like most Americans, you're exhausted. Researchers say we sleep an hour less than we did 30 years ago—and a sleep-deprived society is a sick society. In 2011, a survey found that 70 million American adults have chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders.
Why does too-little sleep lead to weight gain? Much of the answer is linked to your hormones, which are cued by light and sleep and, yes, work on a natural cycle.
Hunger and Hormones
Your hormones have a rhythm, too. Hormones are chemicals secreted by the endocrine glands; they have specific effects on various tissues in your body.
Some influence your appetite, your metabolism, and your sleep/wake cycle. Lack of sleep, which stresses your body, can upend the way these hormones work. Knowing how these hormones operate can help you work with them, not against them, and empower your success with the Belly Melt Diet plan. A quick guide:
Cortisol, the stress hormone. Under stress, it relocates body fat to the fat cell deposits deep inside the abdomen. Can you say, "Bring on the belly fat"?
Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, tells you it's chow time and steers you to high-calorie foods. Not getting enough sleep triggers your body to create more ghrelin.
Leptin, the starvation hormone, is key to long-term regulation of body weight. At proper levels, leptin tells you you're full, regulating body weight by signaling the amount of fat you store. But leptin can also thwart aggressive dieting.
Melatonin, the sleep hormone, plays a key role maintaining circadian rhythms. Even a little light lessens the flow of melatonin at night when you need it most— which means poor sleep.
The takeaway: Lack of sleep throws off your hormones, making you defenseless against another piece of cake. Out of whack, these hormones can sabotage your weight loss efforts by telling your body to hold on to stubborn belly fat, even when you're eating well. It's a vicious cycle.
It's Not Your Fault
The message of Belly Melt: These cycles are running the show in terms of your weight. But the frenetic way we live our lives today, plus the ways we try to lose weight, work against these rhythms. Being tired helps you hang on to your weight, and starving yourself only kicks your hormones into overdrive and sends you into the arms of a Big Mac. You can't fight your body and win.
But there's good news: You can work with these cycles to make weight loss easier. You can harness your body's natural rhythms to steamroll your belly, energize your life, and feel great.
Use the cycles to your advantage. The Belly Melt Diet is broken down into three components: resetting your body's circadian rhythm, realigning your eating patterns with what your body needs at the right times, and reestablishing your fitness routine to maximize effectiveness—work out smarter, not harder. Everything about the program is designed to break the cycle of weight gain by getting your body back in touch with its natural rhythm.
Once you put yourself on a schedule that works in harmony with your internal rhythms, you'll discover the weight you lose on this program will stay lost—for good.
Copyright © 2011 by Rodale Inc.
We are rhythmic beings (our inability to dance notwithstanding), controlled by the beat of the 20,000 nerve cells that make up our body's master clock. This tiny, wing-shaped bit of tissue sits in the hypothalamus in the center of the brain roughly above your ear. For something so small, its power is mighty: Its network of several thousand nerve cells produces a signal that maintains our bodies' 24-hour schedule. In fact, chronobiologists from the University of Murcia in Spain described this clock as the "conductor of your internal 'orchestra,' " with the musicians being all of your cells and organs.
How all this works is pretty incredible: Light enters your eyes (even when they're closed), kick-starting a process that allows your master clock to sync itself to environmental cues, such as air temperature, food availability, and physical activity. When these rhythm synchers occur on a more or less regular schedule, all is well.
But when you don't get your light cues at the appropriate times (think blasting your eyes with light from your iPhone at 11:00 p.m. or working in a dark cubicle during daylight hours), or your environmental cues go off schedule (you skip breakfast one morning, and have a Denny's Grand Slam the next), you knock your clock off its rocker.
What we now call a normal life—frenetic pace, a lack of a structured schedule, staying in darker, inside settings all day while keeping lights on all night—is not normal for your body's master clock. In fact, researchers have a name for the "new normal" that our 21st-century lives have imposed on our circadian rhythms: social jet lag.
The physical result of this new normal? For starters, weight gain.
More online from Rodale books:
Discover The Belly Melt Diet Today and Lose 8 Pounds in 72 HoursWhen it comes to your inner clock—actually, clocks, since your body contains tons of them—it's a challenge to visualize the miracle of timing happening on a cellular level in your body. Incredibly, every single cell within your master clock contains its own clock, and each cell synchronizes its beat with that of its neighbor cells. Think of one of those desktop toys with the swinging silver balls—you set one in motion, and they all begin to move at the same beat. Our internal beat is maintained by clock genes that produce proteins, which in turn help set off the vibrations that create our circadian rhythms.
But when they're out of sync—which is the perpetual state most of us dwell in these days—they lose their ability to keep you on a natural schedule. And one of the drawbacks is that you're more susceptible to cave in to the urge to eat even when you're not actually hungry.
"Our physiology is the same as it was 50,000 years ago, and so is our 'hardware,' " says circadian rhythm expert Akhilesh Reddy, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. And this ancient wiring makes it difficult to figure out when we're really hungry and when we should go to bed. And how does this affect your weight? If your body doesn't know it's time to sleep, it also doesn't know you shouldn't be eating. "We're more likely to gain weight when we eat food at night because we're meant to metabolize food during daylight hours," says Reddy.
When Rhythms Go Wrong
Your natural rhythms are balanced as delicately as a ballerina on her toe shoes. It doesn't take much to throw them off and short-circuit your internal chemistry. When this happens often, you're primed to gain and you also up your risks for chronic diseases and mood swings. Some of the key rhythm annihilators:
Sleep deprivation.In 2010, researchers at the University of Murcia in Spain pointed out that women who get 5 hours of sleep a night or fewer weigh nearly 7 pounds more than women who sleep 7 hours.
Random eating.We're meant to eat meals on a regular schedule, and doing so trains our bodies to get hungry only at mealtimes. Eating at random times contributes to circadian rhythm disruptions that can affect your weight.
Nighttime eating.Get the midnight munchies? You're more than four times more likely to be overweight or obese than people who don't eat at night.
Shift work.If you're a nurse, cop, or anyone who works at night and sleeps by day, studies suggest you're more likely to become obese than your day worker counterparts.
All About Belly Fat
There are two different kinds of belly fat, and the Belly Melt Diet's Body Clock Reset will prime you to demolish both. The first kind is called subcutaneous fat—the visible flab that pads your thighs and butt, makes your upper arms jiggly, and fleshes out your love handles and that spare tire around your middle. The Body Clock Reset helps you cut right through that fat.
But this program works on another level, too, reducing a more dangerous kind of fat. Visceral fat isn't obvious to the naked eye—even people who look skinny can have too much—and that can be deadly. In small amounts, it cushions and protects your internal organs. But too much can smother the heart, liver, kidneys, and other vital organs with these hormone-pumping fat cells and lead to an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, dementia, cancer, and premature death. But simple lifestyle changes—sleeping and eating well, plus regular exercise—can radically cut your visceral fat and add years to your life. Learn why syncing your circadian rhythm and other innate cycles is a surefire way to lose weight and melt belly fat for good.
Sleepy?
The top killer of a healthy circadian rhythm is lack of sleep. And if you're like most Americans, you're exhausted. Researchers say we sleep an hour less than we did 30 years ago—and a sleep-deprived society is a sick society. In 2011, a survey found that 70 million American adults have chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders.
Why does too-little sleep lead to weight gain? Much of the answer is linked to your hormones, which are cued by light and sleep and, yes, work on a natural cycle.
Hunger and Hormones
Your hormones have a rhythm, too. Hormones are chemicals secreted by the endocrine glands; they have specific effects on various tissues in your body.
Some influence your appetite, your metabolism, and your sleep/wake cycle. Lack of sleep, which stresses your body, can upend the way these hormones work. Knowing how these hormones operate can help you work with them, not against them, and empower your success with the Belly Melt Diet plan. A quick guide:
Cortisol, the stress hormone. Under stress, it relocates body fat to the fat cell deposits deep inside the abdomen. Can you say, "Bring on the belly fat"?
Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, tells you it's chow time and steers you to high-calorie foods. Not getting enough sleep triggers your body to create more ghrelin.
Leptin, the starvation hormone, is key to long-term regulation of body weight. At proper levels, leptin tells you you're full, regulating body weight by signaling the amount of fat you store. But leptin can also thwart aggressive dieting.
Melatonin, the sleep hormone, plays a key role maintaining circadian rhythms. Even a little light lessens the flow of melatonin at night when you need it most— which means poor sleep.
The takeaway: Lack of sleep throws off your hormones, making you defenseless against another piece of cake. Out of whack, these hormones can sabotage your weight loss efforts by telling your body to hold on to stubborn belly fat, even when you're eating well. It's a vicious cycle.
It's Not Your Fault
The message of Belly Melt: These cycles are running the show in terms of your weight. But the frenetic way we live our lives today, plus the ways we try to lose weight, work against these rhythms. Being tired helps you hang on to your weight, and starving yourself only kicks your hormones into overdrive and sends you into the arms of a Big Mac. You can't fight your body and win.
But there's good news: You can work with these cycles to make weight loss easier. You can harness your body's natural rhythms to steamroll your belly, energize your life, and feel great.
Use the cycles to your advantage. The Belly Melt Diet is broken down into three components: resetting your body's circadian rhythm, realigning your eating patterns with what your body needs at the right times, and reestablishing your fitness routine to maximize effectiveness—work out smarter, not harder. Everything about the program is designed to break the cycle of weight gain by getting your body back in touch with its natural rhythm.
Once you put yourself on a schedule that works in harmony with your internal rhythms, you'll discover the weight you lose on this program will stay lost—for good.
Copyright © 2011 by Rodale Inc.
