Guest: Dr. Mark Sherwood
Presenter: Neal Howard
Guest Bio: Mark Sherwood, Naturopathic Doctor, Author of Amazon best seller, The Quest for Wellness. Co-CEO of The Functional Medical Institute, a wellness-based medical practice in Tulsa, OK, with his wife Dr. Michele, Co-host of the Living It TV, a weekly television program with bridges the gap between Biblical principles and Eastern and Western medicine. He and his wife speak all over the world to corporations, organizations, wellness professionals, and churches with an emphasis on living in health and receipt of healing.

Segment overview: Dr Mark Sherwood, ND, discusses fat loss nutrition and the best practices to maintain health while losing weight and after losing weight.

Transcription

Health Professional Radio – Healthy Weight Loss

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Neal Howard: Hello and welcome to the program, I’m your host Neal Howard. Thank you for joining us today here on Health Professional Radio. I’d like to welcome to the studio co-CEO of the Functional Medical Institute, it’s a wellness based medical practice in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Dr. Mark Sherwood. He’s also the author of the Quest for Wellness and he’s with us in studio today to talk about fat loss nutrition and some of the best practices to maintain health while you’re losing weight and even after you’ve lost the weight, hopefully in maintaining that weight loss. Welcome to the program Mark.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Neal, thank you for having me back. I so appreciate it.

N: Glad to have you back. When we’re talking about weight loss, that is a hot topic. Many of us are well aware that I guess Oprah has signed on I guess for life with Weight Watchers and several other celebrities have gone full force in endorsing some of these weight loss programs that are out right now. You kind of have a different approach to weight loss, it’s a weight loss approach that focuses on maintaining health while you’re losing the weight and after the weight comes off.

S: That’s right Neal, the greatest mistake that people do when we’re talking about any weight loss plan is to look at the scales as your all-out measure device for success or not. And this is a valuable and important concept for people to grasp because when you look at the scale, yes you’re seeing weight go down but the real question is are you seeing muscle increase and are you seeing excess fat decrease? Those concepts are so important because body composition management is the greatest form of weight control there is as opposed to just looking at the scale weight.

N: There are different aspects involved like in weight loss as opposed to healthy weight loss. Now you define weight loss differently than most, talk about your definition of healthy weight loss.

S: Yeah, the definition of healthy weight loss is having a body composition that is equivalent to acceptable ranges that are as defined in all kinds of literature considered healthy ranges where your bio-markers are inline such as all your blood work, all your lipid panel, cholesterol, etc. The normal ranges for men are between 10 and 20% body fat, the normal ranges for women are between 18 and 28% body fat and obviously that goes a little bit on an age scale. For example for a 20 year old woman would probably push her down more towards the 18% range, when someone gets 40 I push them more to the middle of the range. In this case for the female side about 23% and when someone get nears 60 years of age or they’re about I try to target getting them that around 28%. And I find that when that happens health improves drastically, the need for medication goes done drastically, their vitality improves an incredible amount and they have this energy because they have the ability to wear the size of clothes they want, they’re not carrying around extra fat tissue and by the way every excess pound of fat is equivalent of 10 lbs. pressing down on your joints. Those are massive pieces of information to keep in mind as we improve the body composition so it should be about body composition and not solely about weight. Although weight is a measure in there, it shouldn’t be just about weight.

N: Is it always fat loss or is there a water or sometimes even muscle mass that is lost due to exercise or change in lifestyle or sometimes is there an instance where you want a little bit of your muscle to kind of go away?

S: Not really. You want to maintain as much lean muscle tissue as possible and an ideal weight loss/body composition plan will absolutely focus on just losing yellow fat as your only way that you lose and actually try to enhance muscle tissue. For example I had a person just today that in 6 months’ time she had lost 32 lbs. of fat, she gained 2 lbs. of muscle for a net 30 pound weight loss and accumulative 11.4% reduction in percent body fat. That’s kind of stuff that you want with a properly constructed body composition enhancement plan and we really changed the name from weight loss plans in our clinic to body composition adjustment because we look at weight loss there are thousands of plans out there that target that. But when that happens and people do lose weight, many times they sacrifice lean muscle tissue and that is absolutely something we do not want to do because it’s too hard to get back. I’ll give you one statistic regarding muscle tissue Neal, we lose about ½ pound of lean muscle tissue every year naturally from about 25 years of age on and that is equivalent to about a half a percent loss in the percentage of metabolic rate so as muscle tissue goes down so does our metabolism so additionally when…from metabolism…possible so that’s why muscle tissue has to be retained. And then when as we age, the worst thing that I see is folks that get on the floor or the ground and can’t get back up again. Well that’s directly related to muscle tissue and whether you weigh what someone is saying an acceptable amount or not you need to be able to move around. You need to be able to get on the floor and put their grandkids and get back up again as opposed to being in a chair and have to have someone to bring them to you.

N: Okay, so it’s not all about weight loss but maintaining a healthy body composition while the weight is coming off. How do you maintain healthy weight loss after you’ve achieved your weight loss ago?

S: Yeah, you want to convert your body to a chronic fat utilization system. What I mean about that is this we have many times thought that the body is fueled by only carbohydrates -that’s not true – they’re actually fuel by fat, carbohydrates and even some proteins. The biggest thing that we’ve done that is assigned or indicated by the Standard American Diet we call it is we have put in so many carbohydrates, therefore fueled our system only by carbohydrates where it’s being dominated by carbohydrates and we don’t have the ability to burn fat and when that happens we begin to store fat. Because we know that fat is good, it’s a fuel efficient source of energy fuel in the sense that fat each gram has 9 calories as compared to 1 gram of carbohydrate or protein respectively they have 4 calories and calories as we know are… energy for the body to operate on. When a person gets their body composition normalized, for example a male who is 40 has a 15% body fat we are fueling their system mostly from fat that we’re taking in as opposed to fat that is on the body, we’re minimizing the level of … intake from carbohydrates and we’re moderating protein … to keep weight off is this “If a person can’t keep the carbohydrate grams between 50 grams and 100 grams per day and they’re relatively active, you will not overload your system from carbohydrates therefore you will keep your system in a place or position where it can use fat as fuel.”

N: Now you’re the co-author or the author of the Quest for Wellness, are some these information or all of these information found in that publication?

S: Yes. We absolutely show a person how to do that, we give them tips to kind of avoid that. There is a wonderful plan to slowly wean yourself away from the things from the carbohydrate family that got us in trouble sugars, grains and bread predominantly.

N: And you’re also the co-CEO of the Functional Medical Institute in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Are your services offered there, do they include weight loss as well as body sculpting modalities?

S: Yes, we want both to happen the time as we said earlier and we have people come to us from all over the country whether it be in person, via phone or via Skype.

N: And where can our listeners go online and get more information about the Functional Medical Institute?

S: They’re going to go to www.fmidr.com that stands for Functional Medical Institute Doctor but fmidr.com, all kinds of information there for everyone to have.

N: Thanks Mark. You’ve been listening to Health Professional Radio, I’m your host Neal Howard in studio with Dr. Mark Sherwood, CEO of the Functional Medical Institute and also Author of the book The Quest for Wellness, He’s been in studio with us this afternoon discussing fat loss nutrition and some of the best practices for maintaining health while you lose weight as well as maintaining a healthy body structure after the weight comes off. It’s been a pleasure Mark.

S: Thank you Neal for having me, I so appreciate it.

N: Thank you. Transcripts and audio of this program are available at healthprofessionalradio.com.au and also at hpr.fm and you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.

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