5 Things to Address if You Want to Lose Weight That’s Not Cutting Calories & Excessive Exercise
Losing weight can be stressful, frustrating, and you may feel like the weight is just “stuck” on you. But truth be told, weight loss isn’t about just cutting calories or excessive exercise. Sometimes this can actually cause the even more difficulty losing those stubborn pounds. There may actually be other imbalances happening in the body causing inflammation, fat storage, toxin build up, water retention, and more! It’s so important to use a holistic lens when it comes to weight loss.
Other things to look at and address:
Thyroid - When the thyroid gland in underactive and produces a reduced amount of hormones, this can cause weight gain in a person by decreasing the body's metabolism.
Cortisol levels - Cortisol is our body’s stress hormone that is produced by the adrenal glands. And when we are chronically stressed, resulting in high cortisol levels, our body will quickly mobilize energy production from stored carbohydrates and fats thinking we need this energy to run away from and/or stay and fight our body’s perceived threats. But since our modern living causes a lot of people to be stuck in this fight-or-flight response, your body will store this extra “energy” as fat since in reality we don’t need the energy to run away or fight constantly. Elevated cortisol can also cause food cravings which may also lead to overeating and therefor weight gain.
Blood sugar levels - When there is a lot of excess blood sugar in our blood stream, it signals our body to put that excess sugar in storage which is often our liver and muscles. But when those storages are full and we still have excess blood sugar, our bodies will start to store it as fat which causes weight gain.
Estrogen and Progesterone - when these two sex hormones are imbalanced in the body, this can cause weight gain. High levels of estrogen can cause bloating, water retention, and weight gain around the hip area. Both high or low levels of progesterone can also cause weight gain. There needs to be a delicate balance of these hormones.
Gut health - addressing our gut health is key to weight management. If there is an overgrowth of yeast or bacteria and/or an imbalance of the gut flora, this causes a dysbiosis of your gut microbiome. This can then cause inflammation, weight gain, changes in appetite, and decreased digestion and absorption of your food.
Prioritizing the foundations of health is also imperative when it comes to losing weight and then maintaining your weight. Addressing nutrition, sleep, exercise, nervous system regulation, and toxic burden will help to create a balanced internal environment so that the things listed above don’t get thrown back out of balance.
If you feel like the weight is “stuck”, I want to encourage you to keep digging and figure out the “why”. This is what I do with my clients as a health coach. We address the foundations of health along with using functional medicine at-home lab testing to find imbalances in the body that could be impacting their weight loss goals. We then work together to address those imbalances while building lasting habits to create a full body transformation. To learn more about my health coaching services you can check out my website or contact me via email.
