What your excess weight means and 6 ways to lose it
Weight gain and weight loss plateaus are common and frustrating.
Perhaps you’ve tried everything and nothing works? Or you’ve lost weight but can’t keep it off? Or you’ve lost some weight but can’t lose the rest? This was me too, but now I'm losing weight for good without dieting.
Weight gain and loss is much more complex than simply calories in and calories out. Here are some of the main nutritional reasons why you might not be losing weight and how to overcome them.
1. Nutritional Deficiencies
Many people’s diets don’t provide enough necessary nutrients. Either our food lacks them because it’s processed or grown in a poor environment, or the food and supplements we consume strip our bodies of them. Plenty of people are calorie rich and nutrient poor. In fact, part of the reason we overeat is because we lack the nutrients our body needs to function properly.
Common deficiencies you may have are important minerals like magnesium and zinc, the key Vitamins A, E, C and D, and anti-inflammatory as well as blood-sugar controlling Omega-3 Fats. These deficiencies can lead to poor metabolism or inefficient chemical reactions and use of energy in your body.
Eating real food that is nutrient dense and properly prepared can reset your metabolism and support your overall health. Food can be medicine.
2. Gut Imbalances
Our bodies are 90% bacteria and 10% us, so we’re interdependent. Our gut is where we break down, absorb and even make nutrients, and some of this is down to our gut bacteria. Put these things together and you can see why good gut bacteria is vital.
Science tells us our gut bacteria plays a major role in our weight and how we use energy. Some bacteria takes more energy from your food which leads to weight gain, while other bacteria uses less energy from your food leading to weight loss.
Also, some bacteria can trigger inflammation causing leaky gut, while others are anti-inflammatory. No matter how many calories you consume, inflammation can cause insulin resistance and diabetes, independent of your caloric intake. These health conditions stop weight loss and cause weight gain.
Eating whole, unprocessed and unrefined foods i.e. nothing from a packet, including lots of fibre rich vegetables and some nuts and seeds to feed your good bacteria; giving up sugar and refined carbohydrates that inflame your gut; replacing inflammatory processed vegetable oils with healthy fats like olive oil, butter and coconut oil, salmon and nuts; and eating fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi and miso to increase your gut bugs are all ways of promoting a healthy gut. Find our more about gut-healing foods here or learn about how your gut works here.
3. Poor sleep
Studies show that a lack of quality sleep correlates with obesity, hypertension and other health problems that are linked to our metabolism, like Type 2 diabetes.
This is because a lack of sleep can significantly slow the metabolism down, meaning your body uses less energy for basic tasks like breathing and eating (BMR). A lack of sleep also boosts your hunger, while at the same time slowing the rate at which you burn calories.
Develop good sleep habits, like turning off TV and electronics an hour before sleep, reducing or cutting out caffeine, and developing a bedtime routing that helps you switch off from the day.
Sleeplessness can be a sign of blood sugar problems and many other healthy issues, which diet and nutritional therapy can help address. More about that here.
4. Belly fat
Fat cells called adipose tissue – the kind that pads your belly and creates a muffin top – produce inflammatory molecules that cause weight gain and chronic disease like cancer, heart disease, asthma, insulin resistance and diabetes, autoimmunity and dementia.
This is because they act like a hormone and drive hunger, while also switching off your hunger-suppressing hormones. The resulting weight gain then promotes more inflammation in a vicious cycle.
A real food diet and nutritional therapy to lower blood sugar and bring balance back to your body can reduce this type of fat and support weight loss.
5. Environmental toxins
In the modern environment, we’re exposed to a lot of toxins, including in our food and self-care products.
These toxins – also called obesogens – like plastics, metals like mercury, arsenic and lead, pesticides, BPA, flame retardants and other chemicals (over 80,000 have been created since the 1940s), interfere with metabolism and can cause weight gain, again despite a healthy calorie intake. This is because obesogens can disrupt the normal development and balance of fat usage.
Other environmental factors that can trigger weight-gain by creating inflammation, and are again separate to your calorie intake, include infections such as viruses, mould, food allergens and a poor diet.
Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins and ensure your body can detoxify efficiently. There are many reason for why this might not happen and your body may need targeted support. You can find out more about how reduce your toxic intake here, but eating chemical and heavy metal free foods, eating cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, boy choy and onions, replacing self-care and cleaning products with natural ones, drinking clean water and sweating regularly are a good starting point for lowering your toxic exposure and helping your body eliminate better.
6. Reduce stress
Ongoing stress can contribute to obesity for many reasons.
First, you’re more likely to eat comfort foods when stressed. Second, chronic stress ramps up your stress hormones, which makes you crave sugar, stores belly fat and prevents you from using existing body fat. Third, stress impacts your gut, causing imbalances that promote inflammation and sugar cravings. Once again, this is part of a vicious cycle.
If possible, learn to prioritise. But if you can’t eliminate stress, adjust your perception and manage it with strategies like deep breathing, exercise, yoga, meditation and walking. Read more about how to do that here.