Something You Should Know About Weightloss

Do you ever feel like striving for your goal weight, is like being on a hamster wheel with a never ending finish line?

Or perhaps you were able to lose the extra pounds, yet can’t seem to maintain the weight loss?

Or maybe you are suffering from imbalanced hormones like I was and it seems the more you try to lose weight, the more weight you gain?

Girls, you are not alone and let’s just dwell in this pity party for a brief moment because this is not a nice feeling.

When you are unhappy with your weight and it can cause all kinds of depressive and anxious emotions leaving us feeling totally self-conscious and depleted.

I want you to feel your absolute best without needing to count calories or slog away for hours at the gym.

I want you to know that this it is possible to get to your goal weight and to maintain it rather effortlessly… and it has nothing to do with the amount of calories you are consuming or the amount of calories you burn off on the cross-trainer.

That's right...

Counting calories is redundant.

Both if you are trying to gain weight or lose weight, calorie consumption is an outdated model and does not help us reach our ideal weight.

There is science behind why you cannot shed the extra weight and it all stems around your hormones! Here’s a brief run-down:

Your blood sugar is the first piece of the puzzle. If your blood sugar is imbalanced due to skipping meals or eating processed sugary foods, the pancreas will eventually exhaust and won’t produce the insulin you need to help turn all that sugar into energy.

This is something called insulin resistance.

When you become insulin resistant it means what you are eating can’t be turned into energy and instead is stored as fat in the body.

This is why the first step to weight loss is blood sugar balancing. 

Tip: substitute processed carbohydrates with whole grains, root vegetables and fruit. Eat high small quantities of quality fats and plant proteins. Incorporate cinnamon wherever you can as it makes your fat cells more responsive to insulin (meaning it helps to burn fat for fuel).

Another thing to look carefully at is whether you have adrenal fatigue (most hormonally imbalanced women have some level of adrenal fatigue). I will write another article covering this topic in more depth, although the key message is this… if you are showing symptoms of adrenal fatigue (hungover feeling in the morning, more night time energy than day time energy, poor sleep rhythm, depression, lack of enthusiasm for life, no sex drive), then you need to stop focusing on exercise and calorie counting immediately.

Healing your adrenals is far more important. You won’t heal your adrenals by ‘pushing through’ and dragging your sorry ass to the gym. 

Tip: support your adrenals with Gaia or Jarrow’s support supplement or eat adrenal nurturing foods like buckwheat, sea vegetables, dandelion greens or burdock root. More on this later.

The adrenals go hand in hand with what I like to call, the FAT hormone a.k.a. cortisol which is secreted from the adrenals. Typically, it’s known as the stress hormone, although it’s been scientifically proven that high levels of cortisol in the body will prevent you from losing weight and will add extra pounds; especially in the belly region which is the most dangerous area to gain weight.

When it comes to controlling your hunger to continuously eat and self-sabotage, these two hormones are KEY.

Ghrelin – A hormone produced in the stomach and pancreas which stimulates hunger so is therefore known as the “hunger hormone”. It increases just before a meal and decreases after you’ve eaten.

Leptin – A hormone that is made by your fat cells which decreases your appetite and causes a sense of satiety. Leptin increases after you’ve eaten and decreases before meals.

These two hormones get thrown out of whack when there has been any kind of blood sugar imbalance.

Have you ever been really hungry, to the point of feeling low energy and shaky and when you finally eat your meal doesn’t satisfy you or you have immediate sugar cravings?

This is because your leptin hormone has been thrown off. Low blood sugar will reduce the amount of leptin that is created, which leaves us feeling constantly unsatisfied and wanting to eat more.

So there you have it, extreme dieting and exercise will not control your weight. If it hasn’t been working for you, it’s time to try something different which means looking at your hormones.

I will say this – If a diet is difficult for you and you constantly have cravings, you aren’t giving your body what it needs and you are creating an imbalance somewhere which will lead to further symptoms down the road due to the deficiencies that are forming.

I want you to feel optimised to eat as MANY foods as humanly possible. You should not feel limited by your diet which leads you on a merry-go-round of self-sabotaging. We need to do this the right way so that it will be sustainable for the rest of your life. 

For 10 years I worked out 6-7 days a week whilst eating a low-carb diet. Yes, I was very slim although I had extreme cravings and would have a cheat day which consisted of binging all day long. My cravings were totally out of control and I'd always end up giving into them.  When I did, I felt as though I gained weight so much faster than my friends and I never understood why.

This has all stopped since stablising my hormones. At the moment, I only have a yoga membership and I am eating more carbs than usual as I feel my body needs it, and my weight is more stable than it’s ever been. If you had told me this was possible back in my days of carb-hating and excessive exercise, I would of never believed you.

Let’s get you off the hamster wheel and let’s do this properly. The proof isn’t in the pudding my dear... it’s time to bring your body back to balance.

With love,

xXx