Weight Loss Troubleshooting

     You're exercising and you're eating right, and yet, you're not losing weight. Naturally, you eat less, and exercise more, but the number on the scale still won't budge. What's going on? After all, it seems that the calories that you're expending are greater than the calories you're consuming. Why won't you lose weight? There are many possible reasons for fat loss resistance. This article will briefly outline the different causes, and future articles will talk about each cause in more detail.

Hidden (and not-so-hidden) Stress

Stress can actually make you fat loss resistant. How? When you are under stress, you release a hormone called "cortisol." Cortisol raises blood sugar, which in turn raises insulin. Insulin is another hormone that does two things: it tells the body to stop breaking down fat, and it tells the body to open its cells up to whatever is in the bloodstream. The obvious source of stress is what most people think of: mental/emotional stress. But that's only one type of stress, and there are others. Those include too much exercise (especially long-duration cardio, like jogging, swimming, biking, etc.), eating foods that you're sensitive to (and sensitive doesn't necessarily mean "allergic"), electromagnetic stress, poor nutrition, infection, and a number of others. This is assessed through something called "salivary cortisol."

Thyroid Malfunction

The thyroid is the body's key hormone producer, creating hormones that are responsible for how fast your metabolism is going. If your thyroid is suppressed, you may have a difficult time (or impossible time) losing weight. If your doctor ran a thyroid panel test, chances are s/he didn't run all the necessary tests. Chances are they ran a TSH and T4 (and in rare cases, T3). But there are 9 different things that can go wrong with the thyroid, and yet your blood work only checked 2 or 3. If you feel sluggish, if your hands and feet are cold when most people aren't, if the outer third of your eyebrow is thinning, then you may have some problems with your thyroid.

Poor Insulin Sensitivity

As mentioned earlier, insulin is the hormone that tells your body to stop breaking down fat, and start taking in whatever is in the bloodstream (be it fat, sugar, amino acids, or something else). Even if you're eating a generally "healthy" diet, but a good number of your foods are starchy or high in carbohydrates (that would include cereals, even whole grain/whole wheat), you may have problems losing weight. If you have family or relatives that have diabetes or prediabetes, chances are that your insulin sensitivity isn't great either. Lucky for you that there's something that can be done about that, and it's quite simple (though not necessarily easy): eat a low carbohydrate diet.

Poor Digestion

Believe it or not, calories aren't everything. There are some vitamins and nutrients in food that help with the breakdown and metabolism of food. If your digestion is poor, you may not be absorbing those nutrients, so you have problems digesting that food. As a result, through a complex series of reactions, your body ends up absorbing more calories than it would otherwise.

These are some of the most common reasons for problems with fat loss if you're doing everything else right. There are of course other reasons, but they are a discussion for future articles. So what can you do about those 4 problems? Read the next article to find out.

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