Many people have trouble maintaining their weight at a healthy level. Obesity levels are skyrocketing in the U.S. Many of the unwanted conditions that decrease quality and longevity of lifespan are associated with obesity.
Dieting is often started enthusiastically only to find that the weight doesn’t stay off and you often gain more weight back than when you started.
This is the so called Yo-Yo diet syndrome. Lose, Gain, Lose and Gain. It’s a vicious cycle that must be broken.
Calorie Restriction
The problem with calorie restriction is: it triggers your bodies starvation physiology which will stubbornly cause you to hold onto fat stores. Diets tend to fail in the long term because they do not address why you gained the weight in the first place. Caloric restriction is relatively insignificant compared to fat storing and fat burning hormones. Since fat storing hormones are the key to permanent weight loss we will focus on them.
Your Fat Storing Hormones are:
- Insulin
- Estrogen
- Cortisol
Insulin is made by the pancreas in an effort to get your digested meal which is now in the form of glucose into your cells so it can be used for energy production.
When your diet contains excessive carbohydrates which causes your pancreas to overproduce insulin over time this high insulin level causes your cells to become resistant to letting glucose into the cells.
The glucose must go somewhere so the body stores it as fat for future use. However as long as your insulin level stays high you body will not be able to mobilize stored fat and turn it into usable energy.
As if that isn’t bad enough; you are not getting the energy production your body needs. You crave more carbohydrates. It’s a vicious cycle. The term for this phenomenon is insulin resistance.
Estrogen is made by the ovaries and the adrenal gland. If your estrogen is high or only high in relation to progesterone or your retained fluids, you will have mood issues such as insomnia and not be able to lose weight.
Cortisol is made by the adrenal gland and is produced in response to stress. This could be physical stress from ongoing pain. or chemical stress due to an inflammatory condition, or even emotional stress. All these stresses raise cortisol levels. As your cortisol raises your blood sugar often follows, then you are back in the storing fat mode again.
In order to address this key hormonal imbalance, proper lab testing must be done to determine what glands are involved and what hormones need balancing. Both can be easily done.
Once your glands and hormones are doing what they are supposed to do, your weight will easily start reducing without feeling hungry! So the key principal is: you have to get healthy first, then weight loss will be easy!
With our guidance and your lifestyle changes you can lose weight and more importantly keep it off!
