Top 10 Weight Loss Questions Answered

Yuri Elkaim Interviewed by Bruce Townsend

by: Yuri Elkaim, BPHE, CK, RHN
www.myFitterU.com

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Yuri Elkaim: My goal with the book was to write it for the average person who wanted to be healthier and perhaps transition into raw foods. I did not want to write recipes that require 48 hours in a dehydrator. A lot of raw food books out there promote dehydration recipes. They are great recipes, but they just take too long!

I wanted to create raw food recipes that take less than 10 minutes to prepare. There are 120 recipes that are in the book that take less than 10 minutes to make and they taste amazing. The key to raw foods whether you are making chocolate mousse for breakfast or dinner or whenever, is that the nutrient value in the foods is so incredible that if you had chocolate mousse for breakfast it would beat out bacon and eggs any day and it wouldn’t give you the spike in blood sugar and insulin and all that either. When you look at the breakdown of the foods that are in it, everything balances out.

Because those foods are rich in food enzymes, they are not actually stored in the body as other cooked foods are. The body recognizes how to utilize and digest raw foods. When you cook and kill foods, your body has a tough time recognizing and digesting them and it takes a lot more energy to do both. A lot of food is stored as fat because the body just doesn’t know what to do with it and you get tired and lethargic. You can make smoothies, a salad, a wrap, or snacks all raw. There are tons of ideas in the book that can suit anyone’s lifestyle. The goal is not to become a raw foodist.

The goal is to slowly but surely adopt more raw foods into your diet so that you have more healthy options. Instead of a typical breakfast cereal, you can make a blueberry cereal which I make with fresh blueberries, shredded coconut, walnuts, and some almond or rice milk. I will top is off with some ground flax seeds and some flax seed oil. That is a healthier cereal than any food company will ever market to you. When you understand what commercial cereals do to your body and how they make you feel, it’s day and night.

Bruce Townsend: It satisfies the palate too. In the past I have gotten teased by people who don’t realize what my lifestyle is like. They think I’m home eating alfalfa all the time as if I were a horse! The recipes that you have are tasty. You are not going to feel as if you are food deprived. The book has a lot more than recipes too. It is very educational. You talk about alkalinity and acidosis, and give a lot of information on switching to a raw foods diet as well. To get a copy of the book you can head to www.eatingforenergy.ca. There is a lot more to the book than we can cover here in this interview. The next question is “I am 46 years old and have hypothyroidism. Is intense exercise harmful and does raw food have any negative impact on this condition? I have read that it can cause goiters.” I have never heard of raw food causing goiters before. Have you, Yuri?

Yuri Elkaim: Personally I have never heard of that but I do know that in their raw form, certain foods have an impact on thyroid function. There are certain foods that are called goitrogenic foods. If you have an underactive thyroid then there are a few foods that you will want to steam or lightly cook.

Just off the top of my head they are garlic, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, strawberries, spinach, radishes, millet, etc. Google goitrogenic foods if you want to find out the rest. Soy is something that you should avoid altogether. Is has very strong goitrogenic properties so if you have a thyroid issue you will want to avoid soy.

The only way soy should be consumed by humans is in its fermented form. Miso and Tempeh are a lot better for you than soy milk and tofu. The cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, etc., those are high in goitrogens. In their raw form, a lot of people have a tough time digesting them, so just lightly steam them to soften them up a bit and that will take care of the issue.

If you do have an underactive thyroid, that means your metabolism has slowed down and you will have a tougher time losing weight initially because you are working uphill. If the thyroid is hyperactive then you are going to burn fuel all the time. If it is sluggish then you are going to have to do more work. Other than that, raw foods are really great. Again, just do a simple Google search to get the full list and then lightly steam any goitrogenic foods before you eat them. This way you can preserve the majority of their vitamins and minerals.

You don’t want to cook them for hours. Some other foods you can implement to improve your thyroid functioning are seaweeds. Any sea vegetable is amazing: kelp, nori, dulse, wakame, arame, etc. Anything from the sea is huge for thyroid functioning because they are so high in iodine. Our diets are so deficient because our soils have been stripped of minerals, iodine being one of them. One serving of kelp contains 2000% of your daily intake of iodine. Iodine is important because it is the main mineral needed to produce the thyroid hormone. You can make nori wraps and stuff them with avocado and other vegetables. That is one of the recipes that I make often. The other thing you can do with kelp or dulse is grind them in a coffee grinder and use them as seasoning over your soups and salads. That is a great way to get in natural sodium other than salt and add some flavour to your dishes. Another food you can eat if you have a thyroid problem is the Brazil nut. They are the highest source of selenium and selenium is the other important mineral needed for thyroid function. You only need 1-2 Brazil nuts per day to get the selenium you need. Remember, your overall diet is the most important thing. You can’t eat McDonalds every day. Your overall diet must be healthy, and then add in the sea vegetables on top of that. Exercise doesn’t harm the thyroid. If anything, it helps it and supports it like everything else.

Bruce Townsend: Excellent. Move the blood. Almost every disease or congestion is something and to get minerals, vitamins, and nutrients to an area, whether it is an organ or a gland, exercise is necessary even when you are taking in good nutrition. The next question we have is “How do I break this compulsion to eat?” This question could be related to emotions but there could also be a nutritional or physical component to food compulsions too, can’t there?

Yuri Elkaim: Yes. This is an area that is pretty deep and I think hypnosis is great for this kind of stuff because it gets to the deeper issues. But I think from a nutritional perspective, you just have to be a bit more conscious.

Why are you craving that food? Is it because you are bored and not stimulated? Is it because you are conditioned to have a certain thing at a certain time or after a meal? Are you conditioned to have dessert after dinner or have a little treat in the afternoon? We have been conditioned by way we were raised and how we developed over the years. Be more conscious as to why you are thinking and behaving in certain ways and why you feel compelled to eat. That is a big first step. One of the things you could do is keep a food journal.

Write down all of your cravings. Write down what you have eaten during the day. Write down how you feel. Has something gone wrong? Most of us tend to turn to food when things are not going well as an emotional safety net. Some of the things that you can do from a nutritional perspective to help overcome that is, first of all: breathe.

Breathing is huge. Most of us do not breathe properly. If you feel compelled to eat, just close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths. Fill your diaphragm and your upper lungs straight up into the collar bone.

Visualize how you want to be. Do you want to be the person who is known to eat chocolate cake all the time or do you want to be the healthy and fit individual that you visualize yourself to be. How do you identify yourself? This is a really important concept. If we identify ourselves as that person who eats chocolate cake every day and who is happy-go-lucky, whatever.

We can switch that identity. It takes a bit of time. If you can switch how you perceive yourself then you can start to make some radical changes. For instance, when I started to perceive myself and identify myself as a professional athlete, as much as I don’t like to label things that label alone made some pretty dramatic changes in what I did. It changed how I worked out and how I ate, even though I know now that what I ate was not so good.

If you identify with a rock and roll star, you are going to do a whole bunch of stuff and maybe you won’t make the healthiest choices. So how you identify yourself is really important and I encourage everyone who is reading this to think of themselves as how they want to be ideally. What is the ideal you? How would you act accordingly? When you have these compulsions to eat, or do whatever it is, ask yourself if the action fits the bill and if it doesn’t than that is probably not the best choice. Deep breathing and visualization can help. Drinking water can also help because water has been shown to reduce the appetite by up to 25% and reduce cravings. A lot of the time when you are craving food, you are actually just thirsty.

So grab a glass of water. The other thing that can help is to get busy. Do something that you are passionate about and keep yourself occupied. Try not to associate sitting on the couch with eating certain treats. If you are going to sit on the couch for long periods of time you might as well get used to eating veggies and some good snacks as opposed to ice cream and other foods that will start to create an association with things like eating chocolate. Those are just a couple tricks that I have up my sleeve for binging.

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