Welcome to Blasphemous Nutrition! I am your host, Aimee, and I think laughter is the best medicine, especially when served with a side of guacamole.
There have been many times in my career where someone comes to me, assuring me that they are doing everything right and still not losing weight. These people are often dismissed by their personal trainers or doctors, who do not believe they are telling the truth. In the case of one client who showed her food log to her trainer, she was told that because she was not getting the same percentage of macros day in and day out, her body was confused and this is why she wasn’t losing weight! With all due respect, I think it was the trainer who was confused. This client was actually under-eating, but the trainer likely knew nothing more than the calories in calories out dogma he’d been taught and came up with some fancy-pants explanation that highlights his total ignorance of the human body.
If you are eating the healthy foods you have been told will lead to weight loss but not seeing the scale budge, here are some things to consider:
- Reassess: if you are not doing so already, track your food for a week and see if you are as on track as you believe you are. Are you chronically undereating? Getting too little protein? Overestimating how often you have ‘just a little’ treat?
- Food tracking is often a huge wake-up call. Note not just what you eat, but also what you drink and how often you decide not to eat something because it would need to be logged. This can reveal lots of ways we may unconsciously be sabotaging our efforts! Once we face the music of recording every bite, we can see that what we think we are doing and what we are actually doing may not be aligned.
- If you are chronically under-eating, your metabolism may have slowed down to adapt to the lack of energy given. If this is a chronic habit, slow, steady reintroduction of calories will be important to prevent weight regain. Focus on increasing your protein and vegetables first to make the most of teh nutrients and metabolic impact of these foods.
- Malnourishment: Several of the B vitamins, as well as iodine, zinc, vitamin D, magnesium, calcium, chromium, and selenium play important roles in maintaining a healthy metabolism. Many of these nutrients are consumed in insufficient amounts in the general population. Working with a nutritionist who is familiar with micronutrients, such as myself, can help you ensure you are getting what you need! We can utilize labs as well as comprehensive food logs to assess if you are getting enough nutrients, and if those nutrients are being absorbed.
- Be patient. Some people drop weight quickly. Others drop weight consistently, but slowly. Still others have to do the work for MONTHS without seeing results, then their body starts to come around and begin to lose weight. This may be because the body is working on rebalancing – particularly in issues of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, it often takes much longer than we expect for the body to relearn how to utilize fat for fuel. Adjust your expectations and remind yourself that any progress is still progress! If you still feel frustrated, ask yourself if you want that lost weight back. Chances are, no matter how little it is, you’d rather take this than nothing at all.Your mindset itself is very, very powerful. If you are stepping into this objective of losing weight with a pessimistic, negative attitude, you will find the process much harder and also put yourself in a tenuous position where you are easily derailed and give up. Independent of any other variable I will mention today, I have observed that those who fare the worst are more likely to have a rigid mindset, very limited thinking, and an overall pessimistic and punitive mindset. If you step into weight loss with a belief that you are at war and fighting your body, that it is your enemy that must be corralled and controlled, you are setting yourself up for a special kind of mental torture that is unnecessary and ultimately counter-productive. These individuals do better when they combine their weight loss efforts with cognitive behavioral therapy or another therapeutic modality that they are amenable to. I believe in these circumstances, aside from greater difficulty adhering to any kind of change, these folks also likely unintentionally inhibit their progress by generating a lot of internal stress that directly impacts weight loss.
- Check your lifestyle! Speaking of stress, stress is one of several common non-caloric inhibitors of weight loss. Poor sleep quality, chronic dehydration, and high amounts of chronic stress can hijack the results you are seeking even when your nutrition plan is totally on point.
- Lack of sleep is a stressor on the body, inhibiting cellular repair on all levels and leading to increased insulin resistance and glucose levels, higher cortisol levels, and lower sex hormones like testosterone and human growth hormone. Sleep deprivation also disrupts our hunger/satiety hormones, making it even harder to stave off hunger during the day!
- Water is needed for most if not all metabolic processes in the body. Chronic dehydration gums up the works a bit and can inhibit weight loss. While there is not rigorous research on this, associations of obesity and dehydration have been reported in both children and adults over 50, and excess weight itself likely increases hydration needs.
- Chronic emotional and/or physical stress causes multiple hormone disruptions which make losing weight much harder for many. Chronically elevated cortisol is strongly linked to increased insulin resistance and increased production of glucose by the liver, which is like a one-two sucker punch to the body. Disrupted thyroid and sex hormones can also make it harder to lose weight, and chronic stress is associated with reduced output of these hormones as well.
- Medical Conditions can make it harder to lose weight. Aside from insulin resistance, health challenges like PCOS, low testosterone, hypothyroidism, and the hormonal fluctuations of perimenopause can make weight loss less reliable than it used to be. Working with a health practitioner who understands these conditions can help you gain traction if you are struggling. Often times, weight loss will not come until these underlying issues are better managed or resolved.
- Medications themselves can also be classified as obesegenic, or promoting weight gain. Several commonly prescribed medications in such classes as anti-convulsants, antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, antihistamines, antipsychotics, beta blockers, hormonal contraception, and even some diabetes medications, such as insulin, can promote weight gain and make it harder to lose weight. Not all medications in these classes are obesogenic, but if you are taking a class of drug I have mentioned and struggling with weight, it is worth talking with your doctor to see if your medications are contributing to the problem and if a viable alternative is possible. A research study of over 600 veterans showed those taking at least one of these medications while participating in a supervised weight loss program were 37% less likely to have any meaningful progress during the 8 week course, with those who were taking 3 or more of these class of medications having the least success overall when compared to those in the program not taking any obesogenic medications.
So the big takeaways from today’s episode is that if you are not getting the results you are looking for, you first want to do as we were told to in school and go back and check your work! Make sure you are eating as you think you ought to be, as this is easy to overlook and a simple solution if it is the cause of your lackluster results. If the nutrition is adequate, dig deeper and assess your nutrient status, as malabsorption or malnourishment may inhibit your weight loss. Beyond what you are eating, it is important to look over your lifestyle and do what you can to reduce chronic stress, get good sleep, and stay well hydrated. These factors can support weight loss even if you need to stay on obesogenic medication or you have a chronic disease that impacts your ability to lose weight. Finally, be patient with the process! I know that by time you begin to address weight, you want it to be gone yesterday, but it is very much a process that rarely comes as quickly as we want it to.
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For those of you who have rated and reviewed Blasphemous Nutrition, THANK YOU SO MUCH! It makes such a difference and is one of the easiest ways you can let me know that this is worth the effort I put into each episode. I appreciate you so much! Until next week, my Blasphemous buddies, this is Aimee and I’m outta here.
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