How to lose weight without dieting or exercise, or gimmicky pills.

Does this sound too good to be true?  I bet it does, and I bet you’re quite skeptical of this claim, but if I have piqued your interest then keep reading.  If you are not interested in understanding how this works and just want the steps to follow, skip to the end where I list 7 strategies.

How many different diets have you tried?  How many different types of exercise regimes have you started and given up on?  For the last several decades if not longer, people have cycled through hundreds of different ways of eating as each new idea comes to light stating there’s finally a breakthrough way to lose weight and keep it off.  These claims are often made based on some bit of research that has surfaced, from keto, low carb, paleo, carnivore, vegan to emphasis placed on the microbiome or intermittent fasting.  The exercise realm also has a variety of ideas on what is best, from HIIT to CrossFit among the most recent.

Now I am not saying that exercise and nutrition do not play a role in maintaining a healthy weight, however, it is not at the top of the list of importance.   To understand why I am saying this we will have to look a little deeper at how our body works.

Most of our understanding of human physiology today, comes from our education system, which teaches that our physical body runs like a machine.   It is constructed of parts that work together through metabolic and anabolic pathways via biochemical reactions.  Now in the words of Dr. Jack Kruse, this is a half truth, and half truths often lead to full lies.  So why am I saying this is a half truth?  The reason I can make this claim is because this is not the entire story, in fact, it is actually the tail end of the story. 

So where do we begin?

This is a story of how we are entangled with, and are a part of nature.  We have been led to believe that we are separate from nature, but we are not, and our biology follows the same laws.  Human beings have evolved from amphibians and as we left the oceans, we brought the water inside of us.  We are anywhere from 50-90% water, by weight, depending on what stage of life we are at.  As far as molecular count is concerned, we are actually 99% water molecules, so out of every 100 molecules in our body, 99 are H20 ( water ).  The reason I am emphasizing this, is because water’s role inside of us is of greater importance than is generally understood.

As we continued to evolve as a species, there was one constant that was needed for the sustenance of life, and that was, and still is the sun.  Natural light from the sun shapes life, without it, life as we know it cannot exist.  If we circle back around to the programmed idea that food is our main source of energy for existence, most people understand that food is grown through the process of photosynthesis.    Plants use light, water and carbon dioxide to produce sugar ( glucose ) and oxygen.  Animals then eat this sugar and through a multitude of pathways and reactions, using oxygen and light, the photosynthetic pathway is reversed, producing water, carbon dioxide, energy and heat, and this is called cellular respiration.

I know you have read a lot so far and I haven’t gotten to the juicy information I professed in the title, don’t worry I am getting there, I just had to set you up to understand certain things first, as the more you understand, the easier the strategies will be to implement.

Ok, let’s talk about food now.  Most of us understand that food is necessary for us to extract energy from to run all of the functions in our body to live.  If we look at what takes place with food biochemically we are not going deep enough.  This food is broken down into carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, and that’s about as far as most people get.  When we take it a step further, these substrates are broken down into intermediaries that funnel into and  through cycles in the mitochondria.  The last step in this process uses what is called, the electron transport chain.  Read that again, ELECTRON transport chain.  Ultimately, food is broken down into electrons that are passed through 4 proteins and one motor at the end which churns out ATP ( adenosine triphosphate ), which is understood to be used as energy.  This is now being challenged, but that discussion is for another time.

 So what we really need as inputs to our body to produce energy are electrons.

 We can garner electrons from sources other than food, such as:

1) Grounding or earthing ( the earth is a repository of electrons )

2) Sunlight ( UV ) hitting our skin via the photoelectric effect ( Einstein’s Nobel prize winning discovery )

3) Sunlight also creating electrons using melanin ( the colour pigment in skin ) to charge separate water.  What this means is water is split into molecular oxygen ( O2 ) and molecular hydrogen ( H2), which leaves free electrons which are then able to be used. 

4) Movement through the piezoelectric effect ( mechanical force being transmuted into electricity )

5) Ingesting electron rich water, typically found in spring and glacial melt waters.

After all of this, you might still be asking, how does this help me lose weight?  Bare with me, I must explain a little more about light, specifically natural sunlight versus the artificial light that most of us spend the majority of our time exposed to.  I promise I will wrap this up so it can be understood and with some easy to implement strategies.

Life on earth has evolved with the natural light of the sun as the majority of our lighting environment.  We also had moonlight and firelight as well but these were not as physiologically impactful.  With the advent of the electric light bulb at the end of the 19th century, human beings began using artificial light which changed how human beings could live.  It allowed us to live indoors and it also put us out of sync with the day/night rhythms, also called our circadian rhythm.

The lightbulbs have changed over time from the incandescent, to fluorescent, halogen, and LED’s, but what all of the artificial lights have in common, which is different from natural light, is they do not contain all of the wavelengths that are encompassed in sunlight.  Other major differences are that artificial light has a static temperature, lux ( brightness ), intensity, blend, and no varying amounts of colours throughout the day.  Lightbulbs are not the only source of this artificial light, we now have technology which is an enormous detrimental problem for our health.  Now what does this have to do with our health, and in particular our weight?  Let me explain.

Everything about our biology is literally sculpted by light.  We have visual photoreceptors in our eyes that most of us know about that see colour and black and white, cones and rods.  What is less commonly known is that we have, what are called, non visual photoreceptors.  These receptors are in our eyes, our cornea and retina, and throughout our body including our skin, fat tissue, blood vessels, and many hormones and proteins also receive and ferry light to different locations.  I want to focus on one particular photoreceptor called Melanopsin, which is a blue light receptor found in our retina, skin, fat, and blood vessels.  As blue light from the sun enters our eyes and hits special cells in the retina with Melanopsin, a signal is sent to our brain to start producing cortisol.  There is a lot of detail to this pathway which I will not be going into now, as it’s an entire topic on its own.  The importance of this signalling is, it lets our brain know that it is daytime and all of the daytime functions should begin.  This includes mental acuity, exercise, digestion, hormonal release for metabolism and energy production, and glucose and insulin release.  I want to emphasize here this last point, as it is key to this article. 

In our natural environment, with the sunrise we have a blend of blue and red light, to gently signal the production of some of things listed above.  As the day moves on, the intensity, temperature and lux of blue increases to its peak at solar noon, and then wanes as the day heads towards sunset, after which there is no longer any blue light in the sky.  With artificial light and most technology, the major wavelength emitted is blue at  around 455 nm.  Its temperature, lux, and intensity signals to the brain that it is solar noon every single time your eyes and skin see it.  Part of the problem with this is there is no red to balance the blue, as red is always present in nature.  Blue light is not inherently bad, as it is necessary for our biology to function, but seeing it in isolation at the wrong times of day creates chaos in our physiology.   Chaos in our body equals inflammation, which ultimately leads to disease. 

Ok, so how does this lead to weight gain?  It is actually very simple.  Blue light signals cortisol production, as well as glucose and insulin release.  We are designed to have this take place during daylight hours under natural lighting.  When we mess with this by using technology outside of these times we cause a myriad of problems, one of which is excess glucose and insulin release.  This leads to weight gain, and what’s worse, is you are not even eating any food!  You can literally gain weight without a bite of food, by just using artificial lighting, especially at the wrong times of day.  This is the take home point!

Now think about all of the ways your life is influenced by this light, which I also like to term, junk light.  When you wake up in your home, you turn on lights to be able to see, in particular when it’s dark outside.  If you go to the gym to exercise, you are under LED or fluorescent lighting, which defeats the purpose of this healthy plan.  You may be working in an office that has no open windows and you are under artificial lights and in front of a screen all day.  Then when you leave work to drive home, you are met with LED headlights on most vehicles, and arrive home at certain times of the year in the dark, to turn on lights so you can see.  Winding down for the evening you may watch some television, or work on you computer or use your phone.  An important point I want to add here as well, is that although we may think we are getting natural light in through windows, most modern windows let all the blue light through but block 40-60 % of the balancing red, and block all UV light.  So we get an excess of blue light by the mere fact of living indoors. 

So what can you do?  Here is a list to start.  This is by no means comprehensive, however, I invite you to start implementing some of these in your daily life, and if you are starting to see benefits and would like to know more,  I can certainly work with you further.

1. SEE AM SUNRISE directly on naked eyes, no glasses, contacts, or sunglasses.  You only have to be outside, you do not have to be looking at the sun, it does not matter if there are buildings or mountains in the way, the light will get in.  As far as amount of time is concerned, the more the better, as little as 30 seconds up to realistically 10-20 min if possible. 

2. WEAR BLUE BLOCKING GLASSES when on technology especially.  There are daytime    blockers and nighttime ones.  We do not want to block all blue light during the day as blue light is necessary as explained earlier, however we do not want excessive blue light  which is emitted from screens and artificial lighting.  There are several companies which I would recommend and I will list them at the end.   After sunset, the nighttime blue blockers should be worn, except when driving.  Since they block all blue light they can make you tired, so I suggest wearing the daytime ones for driving at night in the dark.  If you wake up when it is still dark outside, wear the nighttime ones until sunrise and let your naked eyes see natural light as its signal to start the day.

3. OPEN WINDOWS WHEN AND WHERE YOU ARE ABLE.  Since light is both a particle and a wave, and natural light is not polarized, when you open a window or door the light with all of the frequencies can flood the room you are in.  You can even do this in your car, even if it’s open just a crack.

4. EAT FOOD BETWEEN SUNRISE AND SUNSET.  The blue light of the day is when your digestion is optimal.  Once it’s dark outside, the daytime processes slow down as the     nighttime ones prepare to get to work.  Eat breakfast within 30-60 min of waking up, and dinner before dark, optimally several hours before going to bed.

5. BLUE LIGHT BLOCKING SCREENS ON PHONES AND COMPUTERS.  There are blue light blocking screen protectors for phones and computers.  There is also software for computers to change the blue light being emitted depending on the time of day.  Again, will list this information at the end.

6. CHANGE YOUR SCREEN COLOUR TO RED.  For phones this is an easy change to make, and should especially be done while it’s dark out, after sunset and before sunrise. Youtube has videos on how to do this for iPhones and androids.

7. SWAP YOUR LED BULBS BACK TO INCANDESCENT AND/OR USE SOME RED.  Incandescent at least have a good amount of red to balance the blue, however be aware the blue is still affecting the blue light receptor, Melanopsin.  If you have some red bulbs for after sunset, Melanopsin is not activated.

Hopefully now you understand the significance of blue light, and for the purposes of this article how that can lead to weight gain, and the inability to lose stubborn weight.  I want to empower you with the above strategies to get started, that can help you turn this around and lose some weight without doing any exercise or changing your diet.  Again, I want to reiterate though that this is an important adjunct for your health, and that nutrition and exercise indeed still play a role.

For more information find me on Facebook @Rachel Maurice, or on Instagram @rachel_maurice_md