Looking forward to the holidays but dreading the annual impact it’ll have next time you go to step on the scale?
From cookies to cocktails to multi-course meals, it almost feels impossible to not gain weight during this time of year. So if you’re struggling to come up with a plan for managing your weight without missing out on all of the sweets and treats, you’ll need a few key allies on your side.
Luckily, you have access to weight-friendly tools that can help you:
- Reshape your body (especially your belly)
- Stop fat from accumulating where you don’t want it
- Control appetite and cravings
- Shift your metabolism from fat storage to fat burning
- Avoid unhealthy weight gain and encourage weight loss efforts
All you need is an often overlooked vitamin coupled with two proven methods for maintaining great gut health. Paired together, this “holiday weight management kit” can help you keep your weight on track during this most tempting (and tasty) time of year.
Your Holiday Weight Management Mini Quiz
Many holiday weight-related issues can be traced back to a couple of very easy-to-manage causes... Provided you know how to deal with them, that is.
But first, you have to identify what’s getting in the way of your ideal weight goals. To help you find some clarity, take 1 minute and ask yourself the questions in the mini quiz below:
| YES | NO | |
| Is it easy for you to gain weight during the holidays? | ||
| Does it feel impossible to ignore cravings? | ||
| Do you feel like you're fighting against stubborn belly fat? | ||
| Do you feel hungry even after you eat? | ||
| Do you sometimes feel driven to eat when you aren't hungry? |
If you answered yes to any of those questions, it’s likely that you’re dealing with one or both of two common underlying issues:
- An unbalanced gut
- And/or a specific vitamin deficiency
Luckily, there’s a clear solution for helping you achieve your ideal weight:
A special trio of nutrients that can drive your healthy fat storage and optimal fat burning efforts. Impressively, these particularly potent weight management nutrients can even help you maintain your ideal weight during the holiday party season (and beyond)...
But before we dive in, let’s uncover the microscopic players inside your body that are responsible for weight success…
How Gut Bacteria Impact Your Weight
Your gut microbiome contains trillions of bacteria. In a healthy gut, a diverse population of beneficial probiotic bacteria greatly outnumber harmful pathogenic bacteria. And when your gut microbiome is teeming with probiotics, it makes weight management a breeze.
That’s because your colonies of beneficial bacteria can help you manage appetite, curb cravings, and drive healthy fat storage and burning.
But when your gut microbiome is out of balance, everything shifts. Your gut falls into a state of dysbiosis where pathogens vastly outnumber probiotics, causing huge changes in hormone signals and metabolism.
As wild as it may sound, pathogens bacteria prefer to feed on sugary, fatty foods so they send craving and hunger signals to your brain to get you to overindulge. Even more nefarious, pathogens can actually block the “I’m full” signals going from your gut to your brain, causing you to reach for more and more food.
Bottom line: An overgrowth of pathogens in your gut sets you up for a vicious cycle of craving and eating more of the food that isn’t good for you. So in order to address your weight, the best place to start is with the health of your gut bacteria...
How To Transform Your Gut To Transform Your Weight
You can tackle dysbiosis and encourage healthy balance in your gut with a specific combination of gut health power players. And when your gut microbiome has been rebooted to contain a wide variety of beneficial bacteria, it helps:
- Properly manage your hunger and satiety hormones (ghrelin and leptin)
- Supports appetite regulation
- Encourage feelings of satiety
- Promotes optimal metabolism
- Supports weight loss and fat loss
Those probiotic-driven actions make it easier to avoid weight gain and ramp up your weight loss efforts. And to reap all the ideal weight benefits, science has shown that the following cast of weight management characters can be your best allies:
Gut Power Player #1: High Quality Spore Probiotics
Spore probiotics have a distinct advantage over other types of probiotics: Nature has equipped spore bacteria with protective, endospore shells that ensure survival in extreme environments (like your stomach acid and digestive tract). This allows spore probiotics to reach your gut alive and ready to work.
Once in your gut, these potent probiotics can crowd out problematic pathogens, creating a favorable environment for a wide variety of beneficial bacteria to flourish. Spores have been shown to quickly create a healthy balance in the gut microbiome, helping create the conditions for balanced cravings and easy weight management.
A healthy gut full of probiotics can make it much easier for you to handle tempting holiday fare without overdoing it… help support a well-functioning metabolism that burns more calories… and allows you to sidestep the holiday pitfalls of packing on “pounds of good cheer” around your waist.
Gut Power Player #2: Targeted Prebiotics
Prebiotics nourish only the beneficial bacteria in your gut, helping you keep your microbiome in healthy balance. But their weight management benefits don’t stop there.
In addition to promoting a well-balanced gut bacteria, intelligent prebiotics (that know how to steer clear of pathogens) help increase short chain fatty acid (SCFA) production by probiotic gut bacteria.
SCFAs such as butyrate and acetate play key roles in appetite regulation, metabolism management, and craving control.
You’ll find many different types of prebiotics on the market, but they don’t all provide the same benefits. So when it comes to maintaining your ideal weight, you want to make sure you choose the right prebiotics. Here what the research reveals:
- GOS (galactooligosaccharides) have been shown to help balance appetite and food intake in overweight adults
- FOS (fructooligosaccharides) are known to help balance weight, BMI, and body fat percentage in college students
- XOS (xylooligosaccharides) can help balance blood sugar and cholesterol levels – two important factors for healthy weight management and overall wellness
Bottom line: The right prebiotics can help you hit your weight goals by keeping your gut microbiome strong and healthy.
Gut Power Player #3: Naturally Fermented Vitamin K2
Most people don’t know this, but there’s an oft-overlooked vitamin that can help you reshape your body and stop fat from hanging onto your worst trouble spots. It works by changing the way your body processes fat and sugar – and that can make all the difference.
Vitamin K2 unlocks important hormones like osteocalcin that manage fat mass and body weight. And when you’re getting enough of this essential vitamin, the results can be amazing. In one clinical study, researchers found that people who consumed the recommended daily amount:
- Lost weight
- Lowered their BMI (body mass index)
- Maintained a healthy weight over a longer period of time
- Saw a decrease in hard-to-target abdominal fat
Another clinical trial found that postmenopausal women who took vitamin K2 saw dramatic body reshaping results.The women in the K2 group enjoyed a significant decrease in their belly fat… while the women in the placebo group gained belly fat over the three-year study period.
Unfortunately, if you’re living in the western world, it’s hard to get enough vitamin K2 through diet alone. The foods offering the most potent dose are a pungent Japanese dish known as natto (fermented bean paste), and organ mean (such as beef liver.) This is likely the reason why a whopping 97% of westerners are K2-deficient. That’s why, to hit the target amount of 320 mcg of vitamin K2, your best bet may be to supplement.
If you choose supplementation, use the following as a guide for sourcing the best vitamin K2:
- Stability is a common issue for most vitamin K2 supplements, meaning many brands will deteriorate quickly on the shelf. To avoid an unstable product, look for supplements formulated with MenaquinGold®, which ensures maximum stability.
- Only buy from reputable companies that put all of the necessary nutritional information on their labels
- Concentration levels of K2 can vary, so choose your supplements carefully and be sure that you are getting 320 mcg
- Look for Pharmaceutical Grade products - these are guaranteed to be at minimum 99% pure
Just Thrive Core Health Products
Your Healthy Holiday Weight Management Kit
Sometimes you need a little extra support to help you maintain your ideal body weight. And that’s especially true when you’re surrounded by delicious holiday temptations at every turn.
The Just Thrive Healthy Holiday Weight Management Kit helps support your weight management efforts with:
Just Thrive Vitamin K2-7, which provides 320 mcg of pharmaceutical grade vitamin K2-7 along with its three necessary cofactors: vitamin K1, magnesium, and zinc.
Just Thrive Probiotics, which delivers 4 clinically studied spore probiotics including:
- Bacillus coagulans
- Bacillus subtilis HU58
- Bacillus clausii
- Bacillus indicus HU36
Just Thrive Precision PREbiotics, which contains 3 well-researched prebiotics: GOS, FOS, and XOS.
Enjoy a healthy holiday season with Just Thrive.
