Stephen Adele on Living Healthier

As CEO of iSatori Technologies LLC and editor in chief of Real SOLUTIONS magazine, Stephen Adele knows a lot about healthy living. His company offers dietary supplements, nutritional plans and intelligent training programs to help people look and feel better. The quarterly magazine focuses on giving people smart nutrition, lifestyle and training strategies. Here, Adele talks about the best way to tailor your nutrition to live a healthier lifestyle.

What is your definition of health?

My definition of health, and it may differ from others, is that [health is a] very interesting concept that you can’t really measure. Do you feel healthy and look healthy? People can look healthy and not be healthy; likewise, people can feel healthy and not look fit. For me, I feel health is when you’re feeling and living optimally. When you just feel good, you’re confident and you feel like you look good. You have a definition of what you always think you should look like. When you’re meeting that, you’re going to feel good about the way you look.

What are the best and worst diet programs?

Many popular fad diets tell you that carbohydrates are the enemy, yet how do you eliminate carbs unless you eat only protein and fat? To solve that dilemma, the food industry created a loophole labeling concept called “net impact carbs.” In calculating carbohydrates for the required package labeling, they replace some of the carbs with substances that your body cannot process, such as fiber and sorbitol (sugar alcohol). Since the FDA doesn’t include those substances when calculating carbohydrates, they aren’t included in the net carb count. But those additives still have calories, and excess calories cause weight gain. You’d be better off eating less food and more real carbohydrates.

The best diet plans follow sound nutritional guidelines. They focus more on portion sizes than on eliminating macronutrients like carbohydrates, proteins or fats. Good examples are the diet plans that recommend eating balanced meals. Fad plans like the Atkins and South Beach diets promise a quick fix, but I kind of shrug my shoulders and tell people to try it if they want, but they won’t last long.

What’s the difference between people who lose weight and keep it off and people who gain it back?

Successful people are really no different from unsuccessful people. But successful people follow successful habits and unsuccessful people follow unsuccessful habits. Unsuccessful people find excuses. Successful people make a concrete decision that enough is enough. Unsuccessful people cannot decide when the right time is to make a change. Successful people make an open announcement to at least one person other than themselves that they’re going to change the way they look and feel. That’s important. People who have a support group are four times more likely to succeed. Unsuccessful people try to keep it a secret because they’re so scared they’ll fail.

Do diet pills work?

Pharmaceutical drugs have their place; they’ve saved a lot of lives. But when it concerns weight loss, I advise people to resort to diet and exercise first. Try incorporating practical measures first, and not just for a few weeks. If that doesn’t work, some drugs have proven useful. Stimulant drugs may suppress your appetite, but as soon as you stop taking them, you quickly make up for all those lost days of eating. Another drug product, which comes from crab shells, claims to absorb and excrete up to seven times its weight in fat. However, it comes with a long list of side effects that can injure your health. Bottom line—there’s no quick fix. You can’t just eat what you want and then take a pill.

What about supplements?

Since I sell, manufacture and market dietary supplements, you’d probably expect me to say, “It’s all about the supplement,” but I won’t. A supplement is just that: a supplement to your diet, training and lifestyle. Supplements can help you achieve results when they’re integrated with proper training, planning and knowledge. Sadly, there will always be people who want the magic pill, and there will always be companies that advertise a quick fix.

To tell whether a supplement can back up its claims, look for “the gold standard” of clinical research: independent, double-blind, placebo-control, randomized studies. This is the same type of testing pharmaceutical companies use. For example, on our weight loss supplement called Lean System 7, an independent research firm in Minnesota studied 45 slightly overweight but otherwise healthy adults (male and female) during an eight-week program. One group took a flour placebo and one group took Lean System 7. Both groups followed the same nutritional and exercise programs (walking three days a week). The tests showed that Lean System 7 helped people achieve their results three times faster than the placebo and was just as safe as the placebo. Show me another supplement company that can provide you with the same thing. Most can’t, because they won’t invest in testing; they just spend their money on marketing.

What’s the next big trend in food and nutrition?

I believe all foods, maybe in five years, will be marked with an insignia that states the glycemic index of that food. The glycemic index is a scale that compares the effects of food to the effects of table sugar. If you ate a tablespoon of sugar, you would have certain changes in your blood sugar and insulin levels. If you understand the glycemic index and how to use it to your advantage, you’ll know which foods to eat and which foods to stay away from.

For more information about Stephen Adele, visit www.realsolutionsmag.com.