How NOT Taking Fish Oil is Making you Overweight and Lazy

25 Jan How NOT Taking Fish Oil is Making you Overweight and Lazy

Have you ever taken ibuprofen to reduce inflammation from an achy joint? I’m going to explain to you how you’re probably eating foods that increase the same components that ibuprofen tries to get rid of in the first place. But more importantly, how fixing that is going to make you leaner (and smarter), which leads to more confidence in the office, in the gym, and at home.

First and foremost, don’t rely on supplements. Seriously, there is a reason why I only truly recommend a few vitamins and supplements, and they are ones that truly optimize your life, not rely on false claims of bigger muscles and better sex.

Then there is the other side of the coin. Those that don’t feel supplements are necessary and that all nutrients should come from the diet. In theory, it would be amazing if all of our food was so pure and nutrient-rich that we could enjoy the yumminess while still obtaining everything we need for optimum brainpower and performance. Combating this with one supplement is tough, but you can definitely get a head start with fish oil

Get my Cheat Sheet for Supplements Here

What You May be Shocked to Know

Our brains and our bodies run on a balance of omega 3s (fish oils) and omega 6s (canola oils, etc). They each have their jobs, but in short, we require more from omega 3s then we do from omega 6s. Our bodies thrive on a 1:2 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. In reality, most of us consume about a 17:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3. You can see immediately how this throws off the balance within our bodies. The truth is, we probably don’t even know what it feels like to be truly optimized with a positive omega 3 balance. And if we DID find that positive balance, we would be ridiculously more productive and LEANER.

Imagine being able to recover from a workout that normally makes you drained and sore. Think about if your body could process sugar without wreaking havoc on your organs and causing inflammation that makes you fatigued. But most of all, think about what it would mean to be leaner and SMARTER at the same time.

Fish-Oil Will Make you Leaner

When it comes time to be the best in business, how you look plays a part. An unmotivated professional with a dead-fish handshake is more than likely not going to close the deal. So what good is your brain power if you can’t back it up with the confidence that is reflective of a pinnacle of health.

Fish oil comes to the rescue again. There’s a reason it’s my top supplement. It finds the perfect harmony between brain and body.

Reduced Cortisol Means Better Business and a Better Mid-Section

Supplementation with fish oil will decrease your cortisol levels, plain and simple. This alone is going to drastically change how your body stores its energy (1). You see, when we are stressed out and cortisol levels are higher, our bodies tend to store fat in preparation for survival. This alone can be a tremendous cause of poor body composition, especially in highly stressed individuals that spend a lot of time behind a desk (i.e. business people).

Fight your Genetics

Fish oil also is shown to suppress the lipogenic genes that are responsible for fat gain. This could literally mean that if you have a genetic predisposition to gaining some extra fat around the middle, fish oil could begin stopping that in it’s tracks.

Get in Touch with your Sensitive Side… to Sugar

Most of us don’t process sugar well. Our bodies are resistant to the insulin response and that leaves sugar to float around in our blood stream and get converted to fat by the liver. Not only does supplementing with fish oil help reduce the fats that are being converted by the liver (2), it actually helps us become more sensitive to sugar in the first place. What this means to you as someone that needs brain energy, is that you’ll need less of a bad thing to get you that quick fix of energy, leaving you more room to eat the right fats that’ll make you perform better.

So How do you Take It?

Some of it is going to depend on your diet and your region that you live in. Candidly, if you’re someone that lives in the middle of a country, not close to the sea, you’re going to more than likely need more in the way of omega 3s simply because you’re not getting them from your natural diet.

To begin reallocating the sources of fat that your body runs on, you need to get it into a positive balance of omega-3s to omega-6s. So start with about 1,000mg of high quality fish oil 3x per day and monitor how you feel. Some suggest going even higher, in fact, depending on your specific goals, I sometimes recommend much higher, which you can learn more about in my supplement cheat sheet here.

Remember, supplements are just that, a supplement, and it is always best to try your hardest to get your vitamins and minerals from the diet, but when it comes to getting optimal results, you can’t rely on the poor quality of much of our food sources. If you’d like my cheat sheet to my 3 all time “can’t live without” vitamins and how to take them, you can check that out here.

• Noreen EE, Sass MJ, Crowe ML, Pabon VA, Brandauer J, Averill LK. Effects of supplemental fish oil on resting metabolic rate, body composition, and salivary cortisol in healthy adults. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2010;7:31. doi:10.1186/1550-2783-7-31.
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21924882