Do you exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet only to find that you can’t lose the weight you’d like or can’t keep it off? This is a common struggle that so many people face.
There are many reasons why your body is wanting to hold onto extra fat. Once you know what they are, you can work to address the causes and the fat will more easily begin to melt away. Here are the top 5:
Stress – we are all under too much stress these days, typically it’s a combination of mental, emotional, physical or chemical stressors. Stress causes cortisol to spike. Whenever cortisol spikes all of our other hormones begin to fall out of balance as well. Stress tells the body to prioritize the fight/flight/freeze mode. Once our sympathetic nervous system is stimulated in this way, our body no longer prioritizes both digestion and reproduction. Our digestive system shuts down and doesn’t metabolize food well. All of our sex hormones also plummet resulting in decreased muscle mass and libido. This causes us to hold onto fat and gain weight.
Nutrient Deficiencies – in our world of ready to eat, processed food, it is super common for us to suffer nutrient deficiencies. Studies show that whenever our body does not meet its daily need for both protein intake and potassium intake, it will continue to crave and search out food to try to meet those needs. The problem is that processed foods are very low in nutrients, so we end up eating a lot of extra calories while still not meeting our nutrient needs. While every body has slightly different needs for amounts of protein, fat and carbs in order to run most efficiently, studies show that most people do not get enough protein and potassium on a regular basis. When we do get enough, we naturally consume less calories without even trying and we feel satiated.
Blood Sugar Imbalances – again going back to a diet of processed foods, so many of us eat foods that spike our blood sugar. When our blood sugar spikes on a regular basis our insulin, the hormone that keeps our blood sugar steady, gets tired of working as hard and becomes less effective. We call this insulin resistance. The result is excess calories being quickly stored as body fat in order to shield the blood from prolonged high blood sugar.
Toxins – the world is full of chemicals, mold, heavy metals and even parasites. We are all exposed everyday to numerous versions of these toxins. The body is very smart though. Since these toxins would cause serious damage to our organs, the body will work very hard to quickly store the toxins away in body fat and our bones. Since body fat can keep increasing, fat stores are the easiest place for the body to store away these toxins, shielding your brain and organs from the ill effects.
Lack of Proper Exercise – this last one is often where I see the most resistance with clients. Many people favor doing a lot of cardio because they think it is the answer to burning calories and thus losing weight. However, cardio also stimulates a cortisol spike which can result in weight loss resistance. The better option in weight training. Since aging and hormone imbalances cause us to lose muscle mass, we need to do regular, heavy weightlifting to promote increased muscles mass. The more muscle we have on our bodies means that we have more calorie burning capacity, since muscle burns calories even while at rest. The result is an increase in our metabolic rate which helps us to burn more fat.
These are 5 of the most common reasons, but we could also spend time discussing other factors such as trans fats, seed oils, and lack of sleep…information for another day.
If you wonder which of these your body is struggling with, functional lab testing will help us uncover your health puzzle pieces so that we can address your root causes. Losing body fat and maintaining a healthy body weight is within your reach. You just need to correct methods.
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