What are you Weighting for?

The other day I overheard a woman speaking to her friend, it was something most of you have surely heard many times in your life. “No matter what I do and how much exercise I get, I can’t lose weight.”

With millions of dollars spent on weight loss books, programs, diets, people will do seemingly anything to shed their unwanted pounds. There is certainly no lack of information. In fact, there’s too much out there leading to mass confusion, trends that don’t sustain weight loss, and an array of opinions leading us to question where to even begin. We continue to complicate the issue every single day.

It’s almost as if we’re on a constant search for the magic bullet. There is none.

Having a healthy body and a healthy mind is a full time job. We cannot expect a bottle of pills or a six week program to change our body for good. Yet we’re spending millions on exactly that. What’s not easy is changing your lifestyle to foster the habits needed to sustain weight loss and provide optimal health, and it is the lifestyle habits that are all too often ignored.

As a nutritionist, my job goes beyond just the scope of what we put into our mouths. I strive to teach people that they alone are in charge of their body and their life. We can’t let tools be in charge, we have to take responsibility and take action. Behavioural modifications, many which seem uncomfortable or daunting at first, are absolutely necessary if we want to change our bodies.

Once we’ve seen progress and experienced what it is like to feel vibrantly healthy, it becomes easy to continue making the right choices. I’m not saying we can’t treat ourselves or splurge every once in a while. But, once we know how good we can feel, we become more in touch with the signals from our body, and thus will continue to make the majority of positive choices. But if we never have those positive feelings, it can all seem like a fleeting dream.

Change is hard. Change brings fear to most of us. For many, becoming complacent with health and weight challenges is the easiest choice. As time goes on, many of us will go continue to push ourselves through a downward spiral, making the ultimate goal of optimal health seemingly more and more unattainable. And then our vitality is robbed. We can become harder on ourselves, more depressed, and even feel hopeless. We can put up imaginary walls and limits on ourselves which keep us down. Our social lives are often impacted and we see no reasonable way out.

Is there an easy solution? It’s in our hands to take action. Small changes are easier than drastic ones but can make all the difference. Most weight loss programs are either a 180 degree change from our current lifestyles or are only attacking one element, and that is part of the reason why they’re not sustainable.

You have a unique body chemistry. You have a specific metabolism. You have different energy requirements from your neighbour. You therefore require an action plan that is tailored to you and your lifestyle. Maybe you have had your gallbladder removed or have issues with your thyroid. We are all different and we all respond differently.

Thankfully, the essence of our body’s chemistry is universal. When we have elevated levels of C-Reactive Protein (CRP) we have a clear marker for inflammation in our bodies. High levels of inflammation can cause heart disease, blood lipid disorders, diabetes, high blood pressure and a resulting inability to lose weight. By analyzing your blood’s chemistry, we can create a personalised program to help you reduce inflammation, increase energy, and balance your hormones—specifically, insulin.

Insulin is a hormone that puts sugar into your cells. The so-called “Western Diet” consisting of highly refined carbohydrates (for example pasta, bagels, muffins) and sugars causes our insulin levels to be consistently elevated. When we have elevated insulin levels, three things happen. First, we enter a cycle of rising and crashing blood sugars, forcing us to crave more foods which will continue to damage our hormonal balance and making us constantly hungry. Secondly, our body will be much more prone to store the incoming energy as fat. Third, we actually block our ability to burn fat.

Consistently living with increased blood sugar concentrations can be extremely harmful as glucose molecules bind with proteins, ruining the protein molecules normal functions. We need those proteins to help us uptake insulin properly and to help prevent this cycle.

You can start changing your body’s chemistry today. For example, eating one apple a day lowers cholesterol and uric acid unlike no other fruit and can help lower insulin levels. Cinnamon has been shown to improve our body’s ability to uptake insulin. Foods that contain high levels of healthy fats don’t actually make us fat, in fact they do the opposite—they stabilize our blood sugar levels and prevent them from crashing down and keep our energy consistent. Starting each of our meals with two bites of protein causes our pancreas to produce the hormone glucagon, a hormone which blocks insulin production resulting in lower insulin levels which stimulates fat burning, blocks fat synthesis, and prevents the dreaded attacks of ravenous appetite.

If you know more details of your unique composition, you can begin bringing your body into a more ideal balance immediately. There is an approach which takes all of these factors into consideration, if you’d like to learn more, take a look at how Metabolic Balance is built around you and your lifestyle. Food isn’t everything though. It takes a tough mind of determination, action, and a revamp of your psyche to make change, but it is possible.