Interview with Julie Daniluk. Author, The Hot Detox
Weight loss and keeping your weight down require a lifestyle change!
You have the power to attain your own weight goals by following these easy steps and interview with Julie Daniluk, author of The Hot Detox!
If you’d like to lose weight, I want you to begin by eliminating foods that cause inflammation and weight gain, such as foods high in sugar (or hidden sugars), gluten, and dairy. Cut down on carbohydrates and increase healthy fats and proteins in your diet.
For even faster results, combine this with morning yoga, breathing techniques that calm your nervous system, and Intermittent Fasting from after dinner ’til morning.
Track your health goals with www.carbmanager.com to keep you on top of what you’re eating, and really motivated to reach your weight loss goals.
I believe you can do this!
Here’s my list of the benefits you can gain from doing a Hot Detox:
The Benefits of Hot Detoxing:
- Great long term health commitment
- Balanced blood sugar levels
- Greater flexibility, less stiffness
- Improved digestion, e.g. reduction of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory bowel disease symptoms (IBD)
- Improved athletic performance
- Improved grip strength
- Increased interest in vegetables
- Improved kidney, liver, and gallbladder function
- Improved libido
- Improved memory, sharper focus and greater attention span
- Better moods, e.g. reduced anxiety and depression
- Improved skin texture and color, e.g. reduction in acne and eczema
- Improved thyroid function, balanced hormones
- Reduced bloating and swelling
- Reduced food sensitivities and seasonal allergies
- Reduced asthma
- Reduced inflammation in muscles and joints
- Lowered blood pressure and blood cholesterol
- Stronger hair and nails
- Stress relief
- Weight loss
Why Detox?
I’ll share with you what foods you need to let go of in a detox to lose weight, and why.
A lot of toxins are absorbed from what we eat, so cleaning up your menu is essential. I first suggest letting go of white, processed foods, such as white flour, white sugar, white dairy, and deep fried foods. These foods are the biggest culprits, and can cause serious damage to the liver and your body in general.
People often underestimate the harm done to the liver by eating deep fried foods. When you take a carbohydrate and deep fry it, you create a toxin called acrylamide, which is very bad for you. I encourage you to let go of deep fried foods altogether. Instead, add in the abundant nourishment and nutrition available in fruits and veggies, in all the colours of the rainbow! I call this ‘Eating a Rainbow’, and it’s such a great rule to live by!
Orange coloured foods produce Vitamin A in your body, which helps your skin cells regenerate. Your entire body is renewed through eating orange foods; some of the best sources include pumpkin, squash and sweet potatoes. Vitamin B can be found in all the dark leafy greens. Anything leafy such as broccoli, cabbage, kale, spinach, etc. provides an excellent source. Leafy greens are the backbone of a detox program, because they directly detoxify the body; they’re high in folate, an effective liver cleanser.
Vitamin C is found in purple and red foods, and is also a critical nutrient for your detoxification program.
I want you to eat a rainbow to really ensure that you get all the nutrients you need to move smoothly through your detox, and heal fully.
Watching Your Stress Levels
Weight loss is also related to balancing your stress levels. If your adrenals are taxed and your cortisol is high, you can begin to gain weight around your tummy. Even if you eat a very low calorie diet, this issue is common. You may even be undereating, and still noticing belly weight.
How does this happen?
In large part, stress-related weight gain results when your cortisol is far too high. For instance, imagine that you fast entirely throughout your morning, drinking several cups of coffee and not eating until lunch. Nowadays this has become commonplace, and it is actually incredibly stressful to a woman’s body; it can slow down the thyroid. I really want you to understand that if your body holds weight that won’t move, you may need to turn your focus toward healing your nervous system and adrenal glands.
Losing Weight and De-Stressing with Yoga and Breathing Practices
Practicing yoga, and incorporating some breathing exercises, chanting and humming (to soothe the nervous system) can work wonders to reduce anxiety levels and increase overall weight loss.
You can do your nervous system a huge service by incorporating a daily yoga practice. Yoga has enormous benefits, including the reduction of cortisol levels. There are many awesome yoga practices out there that can help to switch off your fight or flight response. Some great practices include gargling, humming, or chanting, which will all help to stimulate your relaxation response.
Deep breathing is especially powerful. Known as ‘pranayama’, deep breathing is a practice of exhaling at twice the length of your inhale; you inhale for a count of 10, then exhale for 20. Initially you may only be able to breath in for a 5-count, and out for 10 – many people cannot yet breathe deeply. Just stay with the practice, have patience and allow it to develop over time.
Overcome your stress by keeping up with these fantastic practices, and I guarantee it will help you to switch off that fight or flight response!
Intermittent Fasting
For those with more serious health issues, I am a big fan of trying on the practice of intermittent fasting. The best way to implement intermittent fasting is to fast overnight; I don’t recommend the common unhealthy practice of fasting all morning, or skipping meals during the day. Simply stop eating by five or six o’clock at night and fast through until your morning breakfast. Your body will be allowed to truly rest, find equilibrium, and burn more fat as calories used for fuel.
How does intermittent fasting work?
After twelve hours of fasting, your body often begins to make your own ketones; it releases fat and repurposes it into ketone bodies. These ketone bodies are then burned in the body as fuel.
Intermittent fasting is a powerful and healing practice for weight loss. As I approached menopause, I started to have some weight gain, and so did my sister. The two of us really adopted this practice together: A rule of ‘no eating at night’ helped us avoid all that late night snacking. In the end it helped us get back to our high school weight. I stepped on the scale and was 128 lbs again, which is really hard to do at 50. So yes, intermittent fasting is absolutely doable!
Sometimes when you’re tired, it can be too easy to nibble or even binge on late night treats and comfort foods, causing unnecessary weight gain and hormonal imbalance. Using a fasting app for support, such as “Zero”, can really help you to mentally ‘turn off’, and stop eating in the evening.
Do yoga and breathing practices really reduce your cortisol?
Absolutely. They really do reduce your cortisol!
I think if you were to do a lot of yoga in the morning and begin intermittent fasting at night, that would be a great extra boost towards weight loss. Intermittent fasting has helped so many of my clients. I’ve helped people with very stubborn weight gain lose 50 pounds. Yes, it’s truly possible!
Another important point I want to mention about late night eating is that at the same time you eat ice cream or frozen yogurt late at night, the melatonin in your body is trying to express itself. Your sleep hormones rise around 7:00 or 8:00 at night, and these will actually trump your insulin.
That melatonin trumps insulin is very late-breaking science – as recent as last month – so this is not included in any of my books. When melatonin suppresses your insulin sensitivity you will not be utilizing your calories; you will not be delivering those calories to your mitochondria and will be unable to burn them as fuel. Instead, the calories in the form of sugars will stay outside your cells and start to attack your cells, creating a lot of inflammation.
If you experience a lot of inflammation from night to day, you’re going to have a higher chance at weight gain. Why? Because – let’s face it – one of the key factors in weight gain is inflammation. If you have uncontrolled inflammation, don’t be surprised if that’s when weight gain starts to manifest in your waistline.
If people want to learn more about yoga, breathing, and lifestyle practices, my brother Yogi Shambu is an incredible resource: www.shambunata.com
Would you suggest celery juicing?
Yes, because celery juicing is unbelievably low in carbohydrates and very detoxifying. But I would also say great things about any green juice. You could switch it up by adding lots of lemon juice and a few drops of stevia, which will make the food medicine go down much better.
Ketones
Another important potential for weight loss is increasing your ketone levels. Maintaining good ketone levels provides you with stable mental clarity and relaxation benefits.
The only way to produce your own ketones is by pushing yourself into a state of ketosis by living without insulin spiking carbohydrates, which is very hard to do.
As an alternative, you can buy and consume ketones on a carbohydrate diet as a supplement called ‘therapeutic ketones’. Therapeutic ketones also really help you lose weight. They taste great and give you piles of energy.
Ketones have been incredibly helpful for my family, and for my personal performance.
What are therapeutic ketones exactly? And how do you take them?
Well, therapeutic ketones come in a wonderful tasting powder that contains a type of ketone called beta hydroxybutyrate, or BHB.
These ketones are amazing for weight loss because they switch off your cravings for carbohydrates and fuel your brain. If you take ketones, you won’t need late night snacking to keep productive or working into the evening.
Therapeutic ketones give you fuel with no weight gain, in addition to mental clarity. No word of a lie! I will take a ketone package and then not look up from my work again for three hours. They are almost like a natural remedy for ADHD, providing focus. They also keep you away from carbohydrates because they’re a second fuel. My favourite product can be found at https://riseup.shopketo.com/ca.
What is the one practice that would help people lose weight?
One helpful practice is to do a 3-day food diary, where you reflect on exactly what you’re eating. Next, I’d ask you – is your carbohydrate intake higher than your proteins?
If you don’t want to try keto dieting, we need to keep your fat, proteins, and carbs in balance if you’re trying to lose weight. You never want your carbohydrates to trump your protein and fats, because when those carbs crawl up too high, your insulin increases. When your insulin goes up, your cortisol often is high, too, and you end up with stomach weight gain.
If you can choose a fat-fuelled diet, you don’t necessarily need to go ketogenic either. Try on a fat-fueled, high protein, moderate to low carb diet and add in additional therapeutic ketones; this is how to maintain a regular diet and still experience the ketone benefits. I have stuck to this kind of diet for years with a lot of success.
Do you like nutritional shake products like Isagenix?
No – trying to stick to a fixed Isagenix plan is extremely difficult because it’s so restrictive that it doesn’t feel normal. You end up being on a diet and then you binge-diet-binge, which doesn’t work for losing weight, or for a healthy eating psychology. It’s really important to have a realistic look at that.
How do you keep on track with what you eat as part of a healthy lifestyle?
What we’re really talking about here are some new solutions for weight loss. After working with hundreds and hundreds of clients, I began to see repetitive patterns; weight gain has a lot to do with stress levels, and a lot to do with hidden carbohydrates.
I’m often shocked that people don’t honestly keep track of what they are eating. They’ll tell me, “I know I’m eating super healthy. Look how healthy I’m eating! I run my food choices through this diet software and the software doesn’t lie.” Then I go and look myself, and ask them – Do you realize that your carbs are 65 percent of your diet? And they’ll respond, “Like – what? I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
I also recommend staying absolutely hydrated. Drinking plenty of hydrating fluids will truly help you pare back on your carbohydrate intake as well.
You may want to consider trying a food journal app that can record your macronutrients. Track your macronutrients so that you will know how much protein you are eating. My favourite app is carbmanger.com.
When you journal your food in the app, it provides you with very precise amounts to select from. So, for example, you might eat 1 cup of soup in a log, and you can select this option when it automatically comes up. The app shows you how many carbs and how much protein or fat is in every food item that you eat.
If there is a barcode on what you’re eating, you can just scan the barcode and the product will be in the system, because they’ve got tens of thousands of people all tracking what they eat there. The app has got this massive system that lists any packaged food – anything with a barcode!
Using an app is one way to really stay in control and on top of what you are eating.
How do you eat well on the go?
When you are on the run, I would totally recommend buying a very high protein bar that is free of refined sugar. My favourite bar is called the Paleo Bar by Julian Bakery. The Paleo bar is available in Canada, and it tastes incredible. I just carry those in my purse, and they’re absolutely fantastic. The pure protein they contain is the same amount of protein as eating three eggs, and the bar has no sugar in it.
Also, there’s a lot of controversy around eating too much dairy. Dairy turns a baby calf into a 1,000 pound creature within a year; it causes a LOT of growth. So dairy is especially not good if you’re trying to lose weight.
I recommend choosing milk alternatives. Drinking unsweetened almond, coconut, or cashew milk is a much better option. You will get virtually no carbohydrates at all. And I promise you’ll be able to stay away from both the sugar and the weight gain!
Could I just sweeten non-dairy milk with honey or should I use stevia?
I wouldn’t use honey, because honey is higher in sugar. Use a low carbohydrate sweetener, such as Stevia or Monk Fruit, to avoid the insulin spikes that prevent fat loss. Monk Fruit is another sweetener that’s zero calorie and delicious.
What would you tell someone just starting out if they could only handle taking the first step?
I would say – just increase the veggies in your diet that we know reduce inflammation. If you would like help with that, simply download my free anti-inflammatory food pyramid and guide at: https://www.juliedaniluk.com/mthfoodpyramid
About Julie Daniluk, RHN, NNCP
Julie is a Registered Nutritionist and host of Healthy Gourmet, a reality cooking show aired in over 70 countries.
A highly-sought-after anti-inflammatory health expert and speaker, she is the award-winning author of 3 bestselling books. After graduating from both The Canadian School of Natural Nutrition and the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, she studied culinary arts at George Brown College, herbalism at Emerson Herbal College, and life coaching with Tony Robbins. Be sure to check out her Meals That Heal Thrive Tribe online community at JulieDaniluk.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube @JulieDaniluk
