As soon as your reach your weight loss or body composition goals, do you take your foot off the gas and end up undoing the progress you’ve just made?
Some take extreme measures to lose weight only to burn out their metabolism, thyroid, adrenals, and hormones. At this point, you will start to notice all the weight coming back and then some! So how do you avoid the yo-yo dieting that so many suffer from?
The answer lies in the ongoing practice of lifestyle habits. Below are 5 reasons why people struggle to lose weight and keep it off for good.
1) Still Over Consuming Sugar
Sugar is everywhere and a lot of people don’t even realize how much sugar they are consuming. Sounds obvious, but it isn’t. You must become aware of where it is all coming from. Read labels! Every label! And yes, even the healthy stuff! If you go out to eat, most restaurants provide nutritional information you can find out on their websites. Count-up the amount of sugar in grams that you are consuming in a day. Your goal should be no more than 20g/day. If your sweet tooth leaves you wanting more, try healthy sugar alternatives such as stevia.
2) Not Drinking Enough Water
Up to 60% of the human body is water (and your brain is 75% water!) and so many people just don’t drink enough. Drinking water helps boost your metabolism, helps your body detoxify, and acts as an appetite suppressant. People often mistake thirst for hunger so next time you feel hungry, simply try drinking more water. Don’t get tricked into thinking that teas, coffee, sodas, or even juices are a substitute for drinking water, because it is not. Buy a 32oz glass bottle off Amazon and focus on drinking half of your body weight in ounces. This will provide your body the water it needs.
3) An Underlying Thyroid/Hormone Problem
Thyroid hormone helps set your metabolic rate. And if your body does not utilize thyroid hormone correctly, your metabolism will be directly affected. Thus slowing your metabolism causing you to gain wait, despite positive changes to diet and exercise. Even if your thyroid labs are normal, you can still have a subclinical thyroid dysregulation. In our office, we run full thyroid panels to address this problem.
4) A Toxic Digestive Tract
Depending on your height, you could have anywhere between 5 – 20 pounds of waste stored in your intestines. When 80% of your immune system resides in your digestive tract, what we eat could be sabotaging our health more than you think. The food we eat and the toxins we are exposed to on a daily basis promotes a problem known as leaky gut syndrome. This can exponentially promote systemic inflammation causing your cells to become inflamed and insulin resistant. When you can’t get energy (glucose) into the cell (insulin resistance), it gets store as excess fat. Excess fat releases inflammatory cytokines that perpetuates an inflammatory cycle. This causes an increase in more body fat.
5) Too Much Exercise
We all know we should be exercising. That is a no brainer. Move more! We were built to move around on this planet, not sit all day. If you don’t move much, you must move more. However, when losing weight, there is a fine line between adequate exercise and over-doing it. If you are already working out, whether that is weight lifting or even cardio, and you aren’t losing weight then you are consequently putting your body in a stress stating causing your adrenals to release cortisol. This promotes abdominal fat storage.
In out clinic, our weight loss programs do not become another step in a yo-yo dieting experiment. We address the reasons why you can’t lose weight and promote a lifestyle of keeping it off. With a little medical assistance, you would be surprised how fast you can start feeling great again.
Reach out! We are here to help! Call our office at 540-678-1212 to schedule your free consultation or go here => https://www.brainandbodyhealthcenter.com/request-an-appointment/