Are you struggling to maintain your weight or looking to drop a few pounds? Have you considered or tried varying weight loss programs? Maybe you are considering pharmaceutical options such as Semaglutide?
Let’s discuss!
There are many different factors at play when it comes to weight loss…
- Diet
- Exercise
- Sleep
- Stress
- Inflammation
- Microbial balance
- Toxin overload
DIET
The old saying goes “Abs are made in the kitchen!” I do believe this to be true. No matter how much you exercise, if you are eating an inflammatory diet you are unlikely to reach your weight loss goals.
However, there is no “one size fits all” diet. For some of us fasting will be effective, for some of us low carb will be effective, but it truly is individualized as many other factors are playing a role. Food is medicine and can hurt or heal.
So let’s take a look at other factors….
EXERCISE
So, being a couch potato is definitely not going to help you reach your weight loss and fitness goals. We need to move our bodies EVERYDAY! What type of exercise is highly individualized. An exercise program that is fun and easily fits into your routine and your fitness level is key. It is important to take into account stress, fatigue, sleep quality, and heart rate variability when establishing an exercise program.
SLEEP
Yes sleep plays a HUGE role in our bodies ability to function. If we are not sleeping our cortisol levels increase along with inflammation and fat stores.
Changes in meal timing and sleep disorders both increase the risk of obesity by affecting the dietary content, in both energy and quality, and other lifestyle factors2.
Furthermore, decreases in sleep duration and quality increase the hunger hormone, grehlin, and decrease the satiaty hormone, leptin2. The alteration of these hormones leads to increased food intake and poor food choices.
In contrast, addressing sleep disorders and increasing quality and quantity of sleep balance hormones, reduces cortisol and enhances glucose tolerance2.
STRESS
Stress is actually a metabolic demanding state, so it can seem counterintuitive that stress may cause weight gain. The body’s response to acute stress is critical to survival. It is when the stress never stops that negative effects happen to the body.
Glucocorticoids, the element released by the adrenal glands in times of stress, increase the breakdown of fats to release fatty acids (lipolysis) and gluconeogenesis (the formation of glucose) and antagonize the anabolic actions of insulin by inhibiting both its release from pancreas, as well as its signaling abilities allowing glucose, fatty acids, and amino acids to be shunted to the tissues that need them most promoting redistribution of energy stores3.
Acute stress promotes mobilization of energy stores for use, chronic stress and glucocorticoid release has the opposite effect, promoting energy storage as fat, preferentially within the abdomen4.
Chronic stress desensitizes the body to the breakdown of fatty tissue and its use for energy and promotes insulin resistance.
INFLAMMATION
Chronic inflammation can come from diet, infections (viral, bacterial, parasitic), toxins (mold, glyphosate, heavy metals), gut dysfunction, injury etc. Chronic inflammation leads to chronic immune activation leading to chronic stress and glucocorticoid secretion in the body.
Finding the trigger to your inflammation, and there may be more than one, can help you to reach your health and fitness goals.
MICROBIAL BALANCE
The gut is essential to a healthy immune system. Immune activation is the cause for chronic inflammatory states. Immune activation is caused by a “trigger. “ Leaky gut is a HUGE contributor to immune system dysregulation and activation. An imbalance in microbes in the GI tract from bacterial overgrowth, pathogenic bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungus and toxins can lead to leaky gut.
A leaky gut allows pathogens and their toxins to escape from the GI tract activating our immune system constantly. Those same imbalances throw off the immune fighting ability we once had, decreasing the effectiveness of our immune systems and our cells.
GET YOUR GUT RIGHT!
TOXIN OVERLOAD
Simply put, toxins are obesogens. There are more obese individuals now than ever before. There has been an exponential use and production of synthetic chemicals used worldwide. These chemicals and hormones are being used in our foods, livestock, pharmaceuticals, and topical products.
Being that the levels of synthetic chemicals required to cause weight gain are relatively low and that they have been administered deliberately to livestock and patients to produce this effect, it may be that non-deliberate exposure to low levels of contaminants in food and the environment could have similar results3.
As toxin exposure increases so do the rates of chronic disease development. Take diabetes for example. In 2015, 23.4 million people had diagnosed diabetes, compared to only 1.6 million in 19585.
SO WHAT’S THE SOLUTION FOR LONG-LASTING WEIGHT LOSS??
At Wave on Wave Health, we work with our clients to find their triggers, and address imbalances, deficiencies and overloads to reduce inflammation so that the body can work as it should. We have curated a weight loss plan that promotes optimal cellular functioning without negative muscle wasting and nutrient-depleting effects other programs inadvertently cause1.
References:
Ida S, Kaneko R, Imataka K, Okubo K, Shirakura Y, Azuma K, Fujiwara R, Murata K. Effects of Antidiabetic Drugs on Muscle Mass in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Curr Diabetes Rev. 2021;17(3):293-303. doi: 10.2174/1573399816666200705210006. PMID: 32628589.
Papatriantafyllou E, Efthymiou D, Zoumbaneas E, Popescu CA, Vassilopoulou E. Sleep Deprivation: Effects on Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance. Nutrients. 2022 Apr 8;14(8):1549. doi: 10.3390/nu14081549. PMID: 35458110; PMCID: PMC9031614.
PAULAF.BAILLIE-HAMILTON. Chemical Toxins: A Hypothesis to Explain the Global Obesity Epidemic. THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE. Volume 8, Number 2, 2002, pp.185–192.
Scott KA, Melhorn SJ, Sakai RR. Effects of Chronic Social Stress on Obesity. Curr Obes Rep. 2012 Mar;1(1):16-25. doi: 10.1007/s13679-011-0006-3. PMID: 22943039; PMCID: PMC3428710.
