Although they may want to lose weight, many women find they suffer from weight loss resistance where despite healthy eating, exercise and dieting seems to make no real difference to maintaining their ideal weight. This is due to hormones and inflammation. Weight gain and particularly abdominal fat is a classic sign of oestrogen dominance coupled with insulin resistance and chronic inflammation.
Some individuals try to follow the standard advice of low calorie dieting and lots of exercise but they struggle to maintain their weight loss. This is a classic sign of weight loss resistance. Chronic inflammation is the culprit and it must be addressed or the individual will not only continue to be overweight but will absolutely build disease in their body.
As a clinician I have helped thousands of people lose tens of thousands of pounds over the last 5 years. I have worked with many individuals who had “tried everything” without success. I have found several very key factors that must be addressed or effective and sustainable weight loss will never be accomplished.
These are what you must do to achieve healthy and sustainable weight loss.
1 Get Rid of Inflammatory Foods:
The modern American diet is full of grains and sugars. Cereal for breakfast, sandwich for lunch and pasta or potatoes for dinner. These grains are highly inflammatory and cause insulin spikes and cell membrane damage. This leads to poor hormonal signaling and weight gain in many individuals.
Minimize the grains and incorporate healthy fats, anti-oxidants& trace minerals to de-inflame and improve fat burning mechanisms. Use the Motto: Eat Fat to Burn Fat!
Expert Analysis: A nutrient dense, high fat/low carb diet is extremely powerful anti-inflammatory tool. Load up on good fats like coconut, olive oil, avocados, nuts/seeds, cacao, organic eggs and grass-fed meats.
Vital Tips: Drink a protein shake for breakfast with frozen berries, coconut milk & coconut oil and healthy protein powder. Have a salad with avocado or nuts/seeds for lunch and have steamed veggies & grass-fed beef or free-range chicken for dinner.
2 Heal Your Gut and Soak up the Sun
Individuals with weight loss resistance are known to have dysbiosis or abnormal bacterial balance in their guts. This problematic microflora creates inflammatory changes in the body and leads to cellular inflammation and weight gain.
Expert Analysis: Optimal Vitamin D3 levels are also critical for coordinating immunity and reducing cellular inflammation. Low vitamin D3 levels are associated with cellular inflammation and weight loss resistance. Be sure to get 30 minutes of sun on 75% of your body or supplement with 10,000 IU of Vitamin D3 daily.
Vital Tips: Use fermented foods like sauerkraut, naturally pickled veggies, fermented whey beverages like SeuroViv, coconut kefir, Amasai – fermented raw milk from grass-fed cows, raw cheese from grass-fed cows, kombucha and apple cider vinegar.
3 Train Hard and Rest Well
High intensity fitness is extremely critical to boost human growth hormone and testosterone. Short time period, high intensity exercise incorporates full body movements such as squats, lunges, pull-ups, dips, push-ups, etc. These exercises done in sequence with very little rest periods between sets effectively exhaust the cardiovascular system as well as challenging all the major muscle fibres. This blasts fat burning, anti-aging hormones for the next 36 hours.
Expert Analysis: Be sure to get enough rest. Sleep 7-8 hours each night and try to get as much sleep before midnight as possible. The rest is extremely anti-inflammatory and it regulates gut health and hormonal health. Poor rest will create a physical stress on the body and cause more inflammation and poor healing. This will negatively affect weight loss and overall health.
Vital Tips: An ideal training schedule would have challenging workouts every 24-36 hours. The more inflamed the individual – the less exercise they should do. Try 3-4, 15 minute high-intensity workouts each week. The workouts should leave you hot, sweaty and out of breath. Then you rest and continue to move your body with low intensity movement such as walking to de-inflame the body and heal.
More information
All these factors can combine to really hold back a healthy weight loss and the role of progesterone as an anti-inflammatory is not well known, but can be helpful here. Another factor in insulin resistance can also be low thyroid so that is worth having checked too. One of progesterone’s key functions is to act as a diuretic, and that of oestrogen to deposit fat, so make sure you also have good hormone balance to stay healthy.
https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2012/11/01/menopause-rearranges-womens-fat/
https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2014/01/13/how-to-stop-that-bloated-feeling-naturally/
https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2014/01/27/the-dash-diet-is-no-1-for-weight-loss/
https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2013/03/22/5-secret-symptoms-of-a-thyroid-disorder/
https://www.bio-hormone-health.com/2010/03/15/what-is-oestrogen-dominance/