Podcast 048: New Year Resolutions and Weight Management

Scott Paton: Welcome back everybody, you are listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-op podcast. I am your cohost Scott Paton along with Martin Pytela, Happy New Year, Martin!

Martin Pytela: Happy 2008 Scott.

Scott Paton: And to all of our listeners, we are wishing you a lots of vitality and good health.

Martin Pytela: Yes, that’s a good one. You know if you don’t have your health, I don’t care how rich you are, you are living a miserable life.

Scott Paton: That’s right, that’s right, and of course one of the #1 resolutions every New Year is lose weight, get more exercise, try to look good.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, improve your diet.

Scott Paton: Improve your diet.

Martin Pytela: Actually yes.

Scott Paton: So what are some of the, what’s some advice you can give our listeners and me that some small changes may be that we could make that would have huge improvements in our weight situation, in our vitality because really if you are not feeling vital and energetic how are you going to get more exercise, right or even get through the day that you got to get through regardless whether you like to exercise or not.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, you are right. I would say number 1 is, don’t make resolutions you cannot keep because that’s just going to, that’s just going to make you feel depressed and we don’t need that.

Scott Paton: That’s right.

Martin Pytela: Number 2 is, don’t make short term program changes, make life style changes, don’t just go on a two week or a three week of crash something, I am going to lose 10 pounds or 15 pounds or 20 pounds because if you don’t make a life style change what you are going to do is just lose some fat and water and then your body is going to rebel and put it back on and maybe some more. In fact the statistics as I have read it show that women who do this crash dieting end up putting 50% more weights than what they have lost back on.

Scott Paton: And you remind me of a friend of mine who in January, February and March cuts out coffee, beer and usually goes on a cleanse for like week, two weeks and drops a ton of weight and it was really sad because I saw him just after Christmas and I remember how he looked last summer and man, he looked to me like he put on 20 pounds more than before he had gone on this fast like a year ago and man,  it’s just like you said about the life style right, he has a discipline and for two or three months, eats a lot less, he is on a cleanse, he is cleaning and he is exercising a lot and everything else and then it is okay, I did it and then stops, goes back to eating the pizza, drinking the beer, having the coffee and you know two scoops of sugar and boom right back where he was now worse, so.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, it’s all back on. In fact you know our bodies are developmentally uniquely adapted to starvation. We know how to be without food when we were back when before civilization, we used to go without food for a day or two or three even or suddenly.

Scott Paton: We were foragers, so when there was no fruit on the bushes like what would you eat, right?

Martin Pytela: Yeah, he just went real skinny, real slim. So your body knows how to keep with lack of food what it does not know is how to keep with a fast food restaurant on every corner.

Scott Paton: Right, right. So what are some of the areas that you would suggest that I and our listeners look at in terms of okay, we want to make a resolution, we were few pounds overweight, we were 20 pounds over weight, we were 50 pounds over weight and okay this year I am going to handle that problem, should I just stop eating or should I stop eating certain types of food, or where would I start?

Martin Pytela: Well, my personal preference is not what you are going to deny yourself. My preference would be what are you going to focus on, you know what ever we focus on that’s what grows.  Number one, eat raw. Raw is good. Raw organic is even better, so if you have 60% to 70% of everything you eat in fresh raw uncooked, then you are automatically are going to have fewer calories and automatically going to have more enzymes and automatically are going to be just dropping fat and blubber and looking healthier, no question.

Scott Paton: And you are going to automatically know what to buy when you are in the grocery store right because.

Martin Pytela: Oh totally, stay out of the middle, just.

Scott Paton: That’s right, like the fruit loops won’t make the raw uncooked category.

Martin Pytela: It just doesn’t. No.

Scott Paton: Neither will the soup, the Campbell soups or … yeah.

Martin Pytela: Right, so here is the second problem of course, the reason that you are buying those things in the middle of the grocery store is convenience. You are buying the prepared pizza because all you have to do is just pull it out of the freezer, throw it in the oven and,

Scott Paton: I was thinking of pizza, and I couldn’t get it out of my mouth, so yes, thanks for bringing that up. That’s right.

Martin Pytela: Right.

Scott Paton: The frozen pizza is perfect.

Martin Pytela: Right, and it’s convenience, it’s quick and it’s tasty, right? Well, too bad and if that’s the thing that you eat once a week it’s not a problem, but if it’s your everyday, it’s going to be. Anyway, so the convenience is a challenge because we live busy lives and we need to find some way to make it quick and dealing with the salad is not quick. So now what do you do? Oh, call your favorite supplier of green super foods because that,

Scott Paton: I was actually thinking about a shake or a smoothie or something like that would be pretty quick.

Martin Pytela: Exactly you know almost as good as fresh is the stuff that we put together, we have it freeze, dried and carefully prepared and mixed in a bottle.

Scott Paton: So one of the things with some green super food, I think this is kind of an important and we may have mentioned it before, but I don’t think we can mention it enough is when you take like the raw vegetables and fruits that go in to a super food powder most places like the benefit of it is getting, one of the benefits of it is getting the enzymes right. You want to have that as a living food and a lot of places that produce green powder that you mix up, do they not grind it in you know like it’s mass production and it’s pretty harsh and the temperature gets kind of high.

Martin Pytela: Right, yeah that was one of a key elements of the Exsula Superfoods that we manufacture is that we actually take the care to not destroy the enzymes in them, anything that’s heated over 105 Fahrenheit is affected anything that’s over 140 is dead. So, if you are not careful in the grinding you can just over heat it and you still end up with the nutrients.  If you look at the label, if you look at the label of a 100 grams of almonds that are raw you will see the same list of ingredients as 100 grams of almonds that are toasted or roasted.

Scott Paton: Right.

Martin Pytela: And yet if you take the roasted almonds and plant them there will be no almond trees growing out of that. There will be different tastes, the nutrients, I mean it’s all acidifying to the body and it’s essentially dead weight, the minerals are still there, but the life force is gone.

Scott Paton: And that’s one of the keys right as we want to, we want to be able to augment our life force with the life force of the plants, that’s why we eat them, right.

Martin Pytela: That’s right, yes.

Scott Paton: That’s why animals eat plants right taking life force from one place to another place to another place and moving it all through the system and,

Martin Pytela: Yeah, it’s, it’s quite amazing actually sorry to interrupt you, that the amazing thing is that it’s actually bacteria that are living on the roots of plants that are enabling the plants to take up minerals from soil and the sun light and the CO2 and it’s converting all of that into the living enzymatic proteins that we end up ingesting and using for our own existence.

Scott Paton: That’s interesting because when you say that, you say that bacteria is doing it and it is so causing us to be living and what do we take to do take penicillin to kill the bacteria we can.

Martin Pytela: Yes, oh never mind penicillin, just chlorinated water to start from.

Scott Paton: Yeah chlorinated water, it’s kind of backwards.

Martin Pytela: Well,  the civilized world is a wonderful thing, it has prevented awful illnesses like cholera and,

Scott Paton: Polio.

Martin Pytela: Yeah polio and all of that, so the hygiene is a good thing, but too much of the hygiene is a bad thing.

Scott Paton: Just moderation, right.

Martin Pytela: Yeah balanced.

Scott Paton: So another issue when it comes, I am going to focus, get us back on this New Year’s resolution thing about losing weight, one of the things people say is well, stop eating so much fat, right. There, you got a really good, we have got a really good product that I quite enjoy and I gave it to one of my … I showed it to one of my friends who is in to bodybuilding and all that sort of stuff and his comment on it was, well the fat content in this is way too high and my automatic reaction was to say well this is like different fat than when you go have onion rings or french fries or a hamburger, but I really think that that’s an issue a lot of people could be  thinking the wrong way and then causing more harm to their body because they cut out all fats when there are certain fats that they really need to have in order for their body to work properly and of course what we are really talking about when we are losing weight is our body getting to where it’s working at an optimum level right, which is a healthy level as supposed to just the thin level.

Martin Pytela: Right, well what you have mentioned fats, there is an important word essential fatty acids. And fatty acids, well those are all fats are actually acids and all fats are actually acidifying, but some of them are essential and the essential ones are again in seeds, nuts, these are the oil things that we normally would produce oils out of like safflower, sunflower, canola or whatever oils that you use, they originally contain these essential fatty acids, but the oils that are on grocery store shelves do not because these things are rancidifying at fairly low temperatures. Some of them are liquid at freezer temperatures, some of them are liquid at room temperatures, but the most important thing is that they are, let me say it this way. If the fat or the plant oil, vegetable oil is on a grocery store shelf in a clear light glass, all of the stuff that is in the essential fat category has been taken out of it.

Scott Paton: And these essential fatty acids are things like that, like they are in our brain, they help us to think better, they are in our nerves, so.

Martin Pytela: Yeah.

Scott Paton: They lubricate our joints, right.

Martin Pytela: Yes, yes … but the most, yeah, most importantly, I am sorry to interrupt again.

Scott Paton: That’s alright.

Martin Pytela: I just keep having all these thoughts, I should learn to keep quiet. I think I will make that my annual or New Year’s resolution, is let the guy finish a sentence, what do you think?

Scott Paton: I want to hear what you have to say.

Martin Pytela: Okay, well about the essential fatty acids, the most important thing is that they hold back inflammation and they actually make your skin look good and that was one of the things that I noticed on this body builder friend of yours is that his skin was not in top shape.

Scott Paton: Yes, it was blotchy and red in places.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, he is a wonderful looking fellow and all of that but he has got issues with his skin and you can see that the inflammation is there and he is probably in some amount of pain now and will be more as he progresses.

Scott Paton: Well and he also had problems with his knees.

Martin Pytela: Already.

Scott Paton: Yeah, so if I am, if I want to have like well lubricated joints and no inflammation in the joints and I really require an optimum amount of essential fatty acids.

Martin Pytela: Yes, yeah … the ALA, CLA, GLA all of these acids that you can buy in a health food store as a supplement they come from mostly they come from seeds, but they are quickly rancidifying. Now what we do at Exsula is we actually grind them directly with antioxidants. So that when they are put inside of our products, they don’t go rancid and they will be there.

Scott Paton: Cool. I noticed on the Life Enthusiast co-op website that you have got a little of section about what essential fatty acids can do for you and I would like to just take a second and read off this short list because I think it’s pretty interesting. So what essential fatty acids can do for you, inhibit harmful and painful inflammation, aid in the prevention of arthritis. Reduce blood pressure, reduce the growth rate of breast cancer, regulate your heart, gastro-intestinal and kidney functions, lower cholesterol, arteriosclerosis and blood clot formation. So helping heart disease and stroke and help in eczema and psoriasis two hard words for me to say and the eczema and the psoriasis that tends to be the skin stuff right.

Martin Pytela: Exactly.

Scott Paton: So if you have got, like if you have got flaky skin or dry skin or itchy skin or anything like, or blotches on your skin, then what you really, one of the things that you need to be concerned about is the amount of essential fatty acids that you are getting because that’s the symptom that you may not be getting enough.

Martin Pytela: That’s exactly that.

Scott Paton: Right, the one that blew my mind was reducing blood pressure, I had no idea that …

Martin Pytela: Well that’s back in the cycle of the cholesterol and inflammation and the elasticity of the arteries.

Scott Paton: Oh right. And I guess like when you think of leather right in the old days when you had leather or whatever, they would oil the leather down to keep it soft and smooth and everything right.

Martin Pytela: Exactly.

Scott Paton: And if you think of your skin is that leather and if you don’t have that nice oil that you can rub in to the leather happening in your skin then it’s going to get cracked and dry and old and …

Martin Pytela: Sand paper.

Scott Paton: Sand paper and dehydrated and everything else.

Martin Pytela: Exactly.

Scott Paton: So that’s a great clue to where people are at right.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, so you know if you are already at that stage you probably need to apply the essential fatty acids topically and we have Emu oil for people who are not concerned about being vegan, but if you are vegan, then you need to go with something like flax oil or hemp oil or we have a great product from Eva Piantoni called Scargone which is the plant essential fatty acids in a wonderful formulation and most everybody who has used it just loves it. Too bad she named it’s Scargone, it should have been called wrinklegone.

Scott Paton: Yeah, yeah. So getting, okay so getting back to you know the weight loss if people need to be aware of what type of fats they are eating because they are eating the wrong type that’s just basically going to go on their thighs and their stomach right.

Martin Pytela: Well, the wrong kind of fat will create the inflammation. The worst culprit is the trans fat which is the fat that have been hydrogenated. These are the hard margarine type is the worst example of it. All of the crackers up until just recently have been using hydrogenated vegetable oils. I mean if you read the ingredients there, anything where it is just hydrogenated anything, it’s just deadly. This is exactly the opposite of the good fats.

Scott Paton: Yeah, hydrogenation ruins the nutritional value of all the vegetable oils right.

Martin Pytela: Yes, well that’s because you kill the essential fatty acids and you saturate them right. Yeah.

Scott Paton: Right.

Martin Pytela: Yeah and then the next thing, the next thing of course is the animal fats which aren’t all that great for you and then the next accident happens when you actually heat the fats in frying, that causes them to go from nutrition to carcinogen instead …

Scott Paton: All of that little butter in our pan and frying eggs is not a problem.

Martin Pytela: It’s not as much of a problem as it is if you put some on your margarine on your bun.

Scott Paton: Okay.

Martin Pytela: Yes, you can take a pound of butter or a table spoon full of margarine and it will cause about the same amount of damage.

Scott Paton: But the other oil that people talk about a lot is coconut oil, I am just kind of curious to,

Martin Pytela: Well coconut oil, there are four really good oils that don’t seem to cause damage to the human body. The Mediterranean culture had the olive oil, extra virgin olive oil is just the ticket, the more northern culture had butter, they didn’t have the olives, but the butter, you know raw uncooked butter really works and then the tropical cultures, they had the either coconut or palm oil. Both of those are actually quite non-harmful to the human body and in fact you could actually heat the coconut oil, fry on it without it causing you too much damage. So yeah, everybody should take a spoonful of coconut oil everyday.

Scott Paton: Cool.

Martin Pytela: I couldn’t praise it enough you know like in my smoothie, I add a table spoonful of hemp oil and a teaspoon full of coconut oil everyday just because I need to be lubricated.

Scott Paton: Right, cool.

Martin Pytela: In fact there was this really cool experiment, though it’s not an experiment, it was an attempt, some farmers brought in coconut fat to fatten their hogs and so they started feeding them this coconut fat and the hogs were getting skinny.

Scott Paton: Oh is that right?

Martin Pytela: Oh yeah, they were not putting on weight, they were becoming slimmer and that’s because of the function of the essential fatty acids that the coconut oil is rich in as supposed to the wrong kind of fats that you would find in other plants.

Scott Paton: So the key is to make sure that you have got properly processed coconut oil or olive oil right.

Martin Pytela: Yeah.

Scott Paton: I am sure that, like you said if you go to this local grocery store and there is a big bottle of coconut oil sitting on the shelf and it’s been there for six months, chances are that may not be the best type of coconut oil put in your body.

Martin Pytela: Well, what you are looking for is the labeled extra virgin because it’s extracted without wrecking it with using too much heat. Yeah.

Scott Paton: Cool, how neat.

Martin Pytela: Okay, so about the dieting business, don’t diet change your life style. about the nutrients, fats are actually necessary, the essential fats are necessary for you to lose weight on. So you need to add the good fats to your diet, the foods that put the most weight on you are carbohydrates, starches and sugars. So if you do want to change a life style in any way, switch to eating more raw foods, raw vegetables, raw fruits and stay away from wheat, pasta, potatoes, all of the stuff that tastes so good, but adds mostly calories without nutrition.

Scott Paton: And you would include doughnuts in that too probably right.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, I would have to, yeah.

Scott Paton: Oh darn.

Martin Pytela: My biggest, you know the top of the list if you are going to give up any one thing soda pops, you know second thing is sweetening with sugar, you know refined sugar, third thing refined white flour, those are the things that really do the most damage to your body, nutritionally.

Scott Paton: So if I wanted to get the greens in that, I have a busy life style, I am always rushing away, doing this, doing that. You had mentioned ZoeTein earlier is would that be a good thing to make a shake or make a drink.

Martin Pytela: But it was specific, it was specifically formulated for convenience, you know it’s an all in one product, all you have to do is take a tablespoon full of that and put it in a glass of some liquid, water, juice, whatever you like. You drink it, this is enough to actually keep you going and it’s a meal replacement, you can add it to a smoothie like you can add an apple or banana or what ever makes you feel fuller if you want to do that, but essentially what’s in there is great protein value essential fats, vitamins, anti-oxidants, minerals, all of the right stuffs is in there.

Scott Paton: So it will help you to build muscle?

Martin Pytela: Yes, it will convert, help you convert fat in to muscle.

Scott Paton: Because one of the big things that people need to be able to do is increase their metabolism right so that they are getting, they are burning off more energy because we live a fairly sedentary life most of us.

Martin Pytela: Right.

Scott Paton: And if it helps build muscle then that’s going to help, if you start on the upwards spiral instead of the downwards spiral.

Martin Pytela: Exactly, yeah we put sea plant minerals into the ZoeTein which stimulates your thyroid which cranks up your metabolic rates, so even when you are sitting and breathing, it’s burning off more energy.

Scott Paton: Neat. So you are going to have a lots of energy and your body fats going to head down.

Martin Pytela: Exactly, and it’s convenient, so you know if you are having the life style like you and I have where there is only 24 hours a day and 36 hours worth of work to be done, yeah, you need to find some way to do convenient, quick and easy food and this is the way to do it.

Scott Paton: Excellent. All right, well I think Martin that’s a good place for us to wind up this particular podcast episode and I want to thank you very much for taking time out of your busy day, it’s New Year’s day today, so I know that you want to spend more time with your family as do I and I appreciate you taking time to be with us today. Any last words as far as helping people keep their New Year’s resolutions before we sign off?

Martin Pytela: Folks, just make it simple, don’t make silly promises, just make a life style change and honestly turn to us, we can help. It sounds corny but we are restoring vitality to you and to the planet, thank you.

Scott Paton: Thanks Martin. If you want to listen to more podcast you can head over to lifeenthusiast.podomatic.com. They are all listed there, and if you go there as well, I will have links to some of the products that we discussed in this particular podcast or you could head over to www.life-enthusiast.com and if someone wanted to find out more information about the ZoeTein for example Martin, where would they go?

Martin Pytela: Well, right on the website life-enthusiast.com, we have just added a search tool to the site. So type Z-O-E-T-E-I-N.

Scott Paton: It will take you right there.

Martin Pytela: It will find it right away.

Scott Paton: So happy New Year Martin.

Martin Pytela: Happy New Year Scott and everyone who is listening, thank you for being with us.

Scott Paton: Talk to you next time, bye bye.