If you’ve been trying hard to lose weight; via dieting, cutting carbs and sugar, exercising more and eating less, but still cannot seem to cut the fat, then you’re likely wondering why. Before you give up altogether, consider that like any persistent problem, there is something you probably still have not tried. It’s easy to think we’ve “done it all” when we put in so much effort into a few plans, but the fact is, if you’re not losing weight, there is a reason or reasons why.
Below I want to cover some of the more or less uncommon and overlooked reasons you’re struggling to achieve your ideal body weight.
4 SURPRISING REASON’S YOU CAN’T LOSE WEIGHT
- Your Not Eating Enough: Yes, you read that correctly, you might not be losing weight if you’re not eating enough. You see, our bodies need a certain amont of calories (energy) and glucose (energy) to carry out its functions and perform at its peak. If you’re chronically restricting calories and carbohydrates through dieting, it is easy to put your body in an energy deficit. In the most basic sense, without enough energy, your body cannot perform. Just think, how do you function when you haven’t eaten or slept enough? While will power is a great thing, forcing your body into accepting fewer calories than it’s comfortable with will eventually cause metabolic damage. When you diet, restrict food/calories and chronically cut carbs (ketosis), your body starts to think food and enerhy is scarce. While you think you’re doing a good thing by following your diet, your body perceives this scarcity as a stress. And in order to protect itself and survive the famine, it will down regulate the metabolism and hold onto fat as a way to perserve energy. This is a basic survival technique, just like if you were to lose your job, you would turn down the heat and minimize eletricity to save. When your body isn’t getting enough energy/calories, it saves its energy by downregulating the metabolism, slowing the production of digestive juices/enzymes (digestive requires A LOT of energy), reducing body temperature, and slowing thyroid function, all in order to make sure it survives on less food. The problem with this is now the body is fucntioning with less energy, which means it’s going to have a more difficult time “burning fat” because the liver will not have enough energy to properly eliminate fat from the body. Not to mention, with a sluggiest thyroid and digestive system, your body will have a harder time digesting, metabolizing and eliminting food, which can lead to further fat accumulation.
- Your Digestive System is Impaired: If you are either eating food that exceeds your body’s digestive abilities, or if your digestive system is weak from stress, calorie restriction, or some other factor, then you’re going to have a hard time losing weight. Digestion requires a lot of energy, and if you eat food that is too diffiuclt to breakdown, this creates a biological stress. As food is improperly digested, it ferments, leading to lactic acid production and the overgrowth of bacteria in the gut (SIBO). This not only leads to many digestive problems like bloating, chronic gas and cramping/pain, but also, the endotoxins and lactic acid produced by the bacteria lead to the increase of stress hormones and serotonin. Serotonin can reduce the production of energy by inhibiting mitochondrial respiratory enzymes and reducing of oxygen delivery to tissues (less energy). It also interferes with your body’s ability to use glucose, which means that sugar is going to be turned into fat and stored in the body. Additionally, intestinal irriation is a major factor of promoting excess cortisol, and as I discuss in my Healthy Weight Loss Course, cortisol and stress hormones directly lead to weight gain by inhibiting proper glucose metabolism. Be sure to check out my online course to learn about the more difficult to digest foods that lead promote intestinal irritation.
- You’re Too Low Carb & Sugar-Free: For a long time, I thought sugar was the devil, turns out a lot of the hype was just bad science. Once I started to really study biology, I learned sugar isn’t the problem, but the inability to metabolize and oxidize sugar it, which is usually the result of poor digestion, hypothyroid, liver impairment, PUFA, and other stress. While I still do not promote the consumption of junk foods, I still recommend strongly avoiding PUFA, most grains, and a lot of the foods that are commonly paired with sugar. However, I learned first handedly the dangers of a chronically low-carb and sugar-free diet. You see, while the cells can use fat for fuel (lipolysis & ketosis), it’s an inefficient and secondary source of energy. While the liver can produce its own glucose, it is usually not enough to perform at its peak. For example, hair follicies are a mini-organ that cannot “sub-in” fatty acids for energy, which is why it is common to lose hair when you go low carb, develop hypothyroid or diabetes (your body isn’t utilizing glucose properly). Also, when you’re not eating enough of the right carbohydrates, your metabolism and thyroid shut down. The liver needs glucose to stimulate metabolism and to convert inactive thyroid hormone (T4) to active thyroid hormone (T3). If the liver doesn’t have this energy, the thyroid downregulates by at least 60% (hypothyroid) and weight loss is not likely. If you’re chronically cutting carbs and sugar, and still having trouble losing weight, I highly suggest enrolling in my online course to learn an easy way to self-check your thyroid and for a complete list of the healthiest carbohydates and sugar sources.
- You Have Hypothyroid & Don’t Know It: Thyroid hormone is essential for normal metabolic function.If your thyroid is underactive, a lot of issues can occur. Not only will your body struggle to metabolize glucose leading to fat accumulation, but water/mineral balance is thrown off, leading to a “puffy” apperance from water rention. Thyroid hormone stimulates the liver to metabolize estrogen for elimination, so if the thyroid isn’t working right, estrogen dominance can occur, which creates a viscous circle, in which estrogen blocks thyroid secretion, causing the liver to accumulate more estrogen, further slowing total metabolic function. And estrogen can directly inhibit gluocse metabolism and increase the storage of fat cells. In my Healthy Weight Loss course, I talk more about the importance of thyroid health and how hypothyroid can be controlled with the use of supplements, diet and other practices.
WHAT TO DO?
If you didn’t notice, a lot of these causative factors are actually promoted in popular quick-fix weight loss strategies. I suspect that is why so many people end up “yo-yo dieting” and struggle to achieve their ideal body weight. The best solution is a more rational, slower paced weight loss program. In general, the quicker you lose weight, the more irrational approaches you’ll likely try and the problems you’ll run into in the end. But this is true for anything in life, the faster you try to do something, the faster it is to fall apart. However, if you take your time, and build a stable foundation for health, it will last. This is why I designed my Healthy Weight Loss Course, to help you get your body and metabolism into good shape so you can achieve your weight loss goals in a HEALTHY way, free of pain, struggle, restrictive dieting and future problems.
If you’re interested in the course, join the others who have pre-enrolled for a 50% discount!