Reasons behind why you might be struggling with weight loss.

Eating less, intermittent fasting, low calorie, low carbohydrate diets and endless hours in the gym might help in the short term but you will eventually find yourself at a weight loss plateau wondering what’s gone wrong and why the weight isn’t shifting.  

More importantly they are NOT sustainable! 

These diets don’t address the underlying reason why you are unable to lose weight or keep the weight off. 

Below are some possible root causes for why you might not be shifting that stubborn body fat….

Stress

The stress response is a process to release stored blood sugar in to the body to create energy to react to the stressor. Chronic stress external or internal can cause our body to release so much blood sugar that there isn’t room to store it back in the liver or be used by the cells, instead it gets stored in adipose tissue as fat. 

Your Liver 

Each day it cleans toxins from our blood, breaks down fats, alcohol and medications, controls blood sugar and hormone levels and much more.

The liver normally removes and breaks down most toxins from your bloodstream. This includes toxins mentioned above but also naturally occurring by-products from chemical and hormonal interactions in our body such as estrogen. Breaking down toxins creates by products that can not only damage or make the liver sluggish but also leave these disruptive toxins circulating in our body. These toxins are stored in the fat tissue to protect the rest of the body from potential damage. It then start to swell and retain water. This results in the appearance that we are carrying more weight when actually the solution is to support the liver in detoxification. 

Toxins

Pollution, heavy metals, tap water, pesticides. cosmetics, chemicals. For example - Xenoestrogens are a group of chemicals all of the above. They directly bind to estrogen receptors, stronger than actual estrogen, causing excessive estrogen-like effects in the body. This is occurs in men as well as women. Toxins also inhibit the livers ability to detoxify. 

Sleep

Proper sleep becomes essential for optimal nourishment. Sleep patterns affect how your body detoxifies, responds to stress as well as how it repairs and heals itself. Poor sleep can effect thyroid, blood sugar regulation, cortisol levels and also increase hunger and food cravings. 

Inflammation

Is an immune system response. This inflammation can cause the stress response causing excess insulin to be stored in adipose (fat) tissue. What’s interesting about inflammation is that the more inflammation we have we gain more weight. What happens when we gain more weight? We have more inflammation. Inflammation also causes more estrogen production. 

Estrogen dominance

Can be from inflammation, toxins, medications, stress response or a combination. Hormone dominance doesn’t always mean a high level of hormone. It could be that the ratio is off.  For example progesterone levels can drop because it’s a hormone along side cholesterol that is required to make cortisol for the stress response. In chronic stress you will see progesterone levels drop and estrogen levels remain the same thus creating an estrogen dominance. 

The higher levels or endogenous estrogen we have = more inflammation. The more inflammation = more weight gain. 

Conventional blood tests will look at these hormones in isolation but wont compare the ratio. So as a result- your hormone levels come back as ‘normal’ or ‘in range’

Gut health

Stressors like pathogens, leaky gut and imbalanced Microbiome can trigger the stress response and inflammation causing excess insulin to be stored in adipose (fat) tissue. 

Poor absorption. 

If your digestion is compromised, you will have a tough time absorbing all of the vitamins and minerals required to support other functions in the body such as thyroid (metabolism), the immune system and our ability to reduce inflammation 

The answer is to address and rebalance the root causes and your environment. 

Option 1. would be to spend endless hours trawling doctor google and confusing yourself out of any type of action or spending a ton of money on another diet or magic pill that still doesn’t get you anywhere 

Option 2. Enrolling the help of a coach (like me) to work with you to uncover the underlying issues, understand them and create a clear concise roadmap for you to take control of the things that might be holding you back on your weight loss journey. Get in touch if you’d like to chat about what working with me might entail.