Sleep is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle, especially when you’re trying to lose weight. A good night’s sleep repairs cellular damage, improves mental focus, boosts immunity and helps facilitate weight loss. Together with diet and exercise, sleep provides the foundation of your long-term health and wellness—it can prevent heart disease, promote healing and prevent excess weight gain. Every good weight loss specialist will tell you that sleep is critical to achieving long-term results.

Just like diet affects quality of sleep, how much you sleep impacts your diet.

Sleep-Deprivation Stimulates Appetite

When you’re not getting adequate sleep, you’re more likely to overeat and snack. This is because sleep affects two critical hormones that regulate hunger: ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin, which is produced by cells within the digestive tract, signals the brain that you’re hungry, increases consumption and promotes fat storage. Leptin, often referred to as the “satiety hormone,” inhi...

Whether you’re working with a nutrition coach or dieting on your own, the holidays can be a challenging time of year. Holiday meals and parties offer lots of temptation in the form of sugar-laden treats, alcohol and heavy meals. The good news is, with a little bit of forethought and willpower, you can enjoy your holidays without sacrifice and still stay on track with your weight loss.

Here are 6 strategies for keeping holiday weight gain at bay.

1. Load Up on Lean Protein

Eat lean protein-rich meals every day to keep you fuller longer and help build muscle mass. This is important for weight loss because the greater our body’s muscle mass, the more calories we burn on a daily basis.

2. Don’t Bank Calories

Many dieters get in the habit of skipping meals to “save up” the calories for events and holiday parties by skipping meals. This is a bad practice and not one I recommend as a nutrition coach and weight loss specialist—it slows down your metabolism and sets you up for a binge-fest...

Weight loss is all about the journey. There are times when the pounds come off a little faster in the beginning, and then progress stalls. This frustrating obstacle is the dreaded weight loss plateau—a time when the pounds no longer melt away even though you’re dieting and exercising. As a weight loss coach, it’s a common issue clients complain to me about. It’s actually a normal part of the process because, as you lose weight, you’re also shedding lean muscle. When lean muscle mass deceases, your metabolism slows down.

While plateaus are frustrating and seem difficult to break through, don’t get discouraged. There are several strategies to help you break through and start seeing results again.

Reduce Carb Intake

Decreasing carb consumption can help you overcome a plateau. Low-carb diets often help control hunger, promote satiety and boost the production of ketones, which have been shown to decrease appetite. As a result, you’ll eat less without feeling hungry or deprived, making it...

Intermittent fasting has become a go-to for losing weight, breaking through weight loss plateaus and boosting overall health. It’s different than a diet—it’s a pattern of eating. Intermittent fasting doesn’t change what you eat; it changes how and when you eat. This makes it an excellent complement to actual diets.

Intermittent fasting offers many benefits. It helps banish belly fat, improves body composition and promotes cellular repair, while reducing inflammation and oxidative stress. Intermittent fasting can also reduce insulin resistance, which decreases the risk of Type 2 Diabetes. Some early research in rats shows that intermittent fasting, through caloric restriction, may even extend lifespan.

Intermittent fasting is basically an extension of the “fasting” period that takes place when we sleep. It’s easy to implement and modify for almost any lifestyle. Its popularity has prompted the development of several different protocols. They are all effective methods— it’s up to you t...

Thanksgiving is around the corner—and along with it, loads of temptation. Research shows that, on average, Americans eat somewhere between 3000 and 4500 calories during Thanksgiving dinner. That’s more than a pound! The bad news is, this kind of overindulgence wreaks havoc on your metabolism and can set the stage for weight gain during the holiday season. When you spend so much time and effort to exercise, follow a healthy diet and work with a nutrition mindset coach, it doesn’t make sense to blow it all on Thanksgiving.

The good news is, you don’t have to derail your efforts this holiday. Follow these strategies to keep your waistline in check while still enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend.

1. Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate

Proper hydration will keep energy levels high, while helping to regulate blood sugar levels and keep cravings in check. Often times, we mistake thirst for hunger—if you’re drinking enough water, you won’t have to worry about that.

2. Limit the Libations

Avoid empty...

Exercise plays a key role in both your weight loss efforts and overall health. But when you travel for your job or are always on the go, it can be difficult to fit a workout in. The good news is, you don’t need a lot of time or a gym to get in a great workout that will help transform your body. There are inexpensive, easy-to-use tools that can help you get in shape: resistance bands.

Regardless of your fitness level, you can find ways to exercise with resistance bands that keep your muscles challenged and build endurance without putting too much pressure on your joints.

Here are a few excellent resistance band exercises to get you started. Strive to do three to four sets of 12-15 reps of each exercise, several times a week.

1. Biceps Curl

Sit down somewhere—on a chair, stairs or your heels. Put the resistance band underneath one of your knees. Using the hand on the same side of your body, pull your hand upwards, towards your shoulder. Keep the upper part of your arm stationary thro...

Did you know that half of all American adults regularly take a multivitamin or another vitamin or mineral supplement? This means that over $12 billion per year is being spent on multivitamins as people try to improve their health. But is it a waste of money?

If you take a multivitamin, it’s probably because you want to do everything you can to maintain your health.

But it's important to research these products as they are not created equal. I like to go directly to the company website and research the ingredients for quality. For example, does it contain clean ingredients, and are they in optimal form for the body to absorb? I think of a multivitamin as the body's insurance policy, as we often don’t get what we need from food.

What are multivitamins?

Multivitamins are supplements and have several different names, including multi-minerals, multis, multiples, or simply vitamins. You can get them in tablets, capsules, powders, liquids, and chewable gummies. Most of them are taken at ...

Whether you like cardio, bodyweight exercises, lifting weights, or you aren’t really into working out, your regime is likely to have changed recently. With gyms, closing, opening, then in some places closing again, it’s made it harder for you to stick to an exercise plan.

The good news is that it’s possible to work out and get benefits without equipment. Great if you’ve been trying to maintain your physical fitness. Not so good if you’ve been using that as an excuse!

 Whether you like to exercise or not, the bottom line is it’s good for your mental and physical well being to get 30 minutes of activity in a day.  It may be hard to fit into your busy schedule, but there are options. Plus, exercise is cumulative.

While bodybuilders may say you need heavy weights to build strength, your body is an excellent piece of work out equipment. You can use your body to build muscle and burn fat with the power of gravity. There is no excuse not to sweat just because you don’t have a barbell in h...

It can be very uncomfortable if you eat food that makes your belly bloat. You may not have had a big meal, but if the food you have eaten triggers you to swell up in your stomach, you feel like you have eaten three times as much as you should have.

Some of the other symptoms you may have with belly bloat can include heartburn, a loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, and pain or discomfort in your stomach. You may also struggle with constipation or diarrhea as a result of bloating and gas. And along with the gas, you can also have belching and flatulence. So all in all, not very pleasant! 

One thing to point out here is, if you have severe symptoms continuously, you may want to check whether you have a food intolerance. This could be lactose intolerance (an issue with milk), a gluten allergy (a protein found in wheat), or celiac disease.

You may also have a gut disorder, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or Crohn’s disease. These can cause frequent bloating. Crohn’s disease causes...

I'm sure you've been there. You're feeling stressed and anxious. And you've reached for the ice cream or a bar of chocolate and mindlessly plowed your way through it. Or you've been trying to hit a deadline and grabbed the easiest food you could find – insert 'fast' in front of that! Then you've chowed down, taking mouthfuls between typing. 

Maybe you've just had the worst possible day. So you reach for that bottle of wine and pour yourself one glass, which soon turns into three. 

You aren't alone! Eating and drinking for comfort when you are stressed or anxious is the go-to comfort for so many people. But the problem is when you are dealing with a prolonged period of stress, seeking solace in the refrigerator is ultimately not going to make you feel any better. And it's a massive whammy for you when it comes to your weight gain.

Added to that, stress and anxiety by its very nature can have implications on your body and weight. Did you know it can make you hold onto fat, and it inte...