Having Trouble Losing Weight? Learn About Weight Loss Resistance.

Have you every tried to lose weight and you are doing all the right things and the scale isn’t budging?  Or you have lost weight but now you have plateaued and working out harder isn’t making a difference? I have just read and researched this weekend about something called Weight Loss Resistance and it was like the light bulb going off in my head.  I couldn’t wait to sit down and write about it.  I do enjoy writing but usually I can wait so excitement has gotten the best of me!

I have helped people lose weight for over 11 years now and while most are successful there are the stubborn few that despite eating well, exercising and supporting their body with the right nutrition through whole food supplements that don’t lose weight like expected.  I have seen it take time due to the adrenals being burnt out.  In these situations the first step is to rebuild the adrenals so the body can then drop the weight.  To learn more read The Truth About Weight Loss.

But in Weight Loss Resistance the body has this underlining inflammation that needs to be addressed for the body to let go of the fat.  You still have to watch what you eat and exercise too. But overcoming Weight Loss Resistance makes those changes work like they’re supposed to. And it makes them stick too.

Once you kill your own Weight Loss Resistance, you’ll never struggle to lose weight again. You’ll never feel like your own body is against you.

 

Scientists gathered together a group of 16,616 men and non-pregnant women. They set out to conduct the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. In this experiment they found that overweight people had more of a certain destructive protein in their blood than the thinner people.

This was true for both men and women. And it was true for both young and old too. If one of the subjects was overweight or obese, they tested for higher levels of this harmful protein called C-Reactive Protein, or CRP for short. Excess CRP in the blood indicates one thing: low level systemic inflammation which you will see later doesn’t let the body lose weight. Often CRP is found in people with diseases like gout, arthritis, and lupus. Since these are inflammatory diseases, you’d expect elevated CRP levels. But it was a shock to find the same kind of low-level chronic inflammation in people who had no other issues than some extra weight!

Having this low-level chronic inflammation creates stress on the blood-brain barrier.  The barrier is there to let good things from the blood go in and keep bad stuff out.  The blood pumping through your body right now has nutrients in it. It has oxygen in it. And often it has toxins and bad bacteria too. That’s why we have a blood-brain barrier and it works really well unless you’re overweight! This is because CRP breaks down the blood-brain barrier slightly. It eats tiny holes in the barrier, allowing some of the bad stuff in.  In other words, elevated CRP causes a toxic brain.

Now these are small holes. But they’re big enough to let toxic bacteria get in and damage the brain.  It’s not like brain damage that ruins your memory or harms your thinking ability. But overtime, it’s just as harmful. This bad bacteria that leaks into your brain inflames a gland in the brain called the hypothalamus.  The hypothalamus connects the brain with the hormones by sending out hormone signals that control a variety of metabolic functions like the energy output of your body and nutrient metabolism.  But when your hypothalamus is inflamed, it doesn’t work so well. When it misfires it doesn’t get the signals from the body about how much leptin the body has which is the cause of Weight Loss Resistance.  Leptin is inside every one of our fat cells. The more fat cells we have, the more leptin we have. As we gain weight, our fat cells get bigger. And the bigger our fat cells the more leptin we produce then too. 

Leptin is supposed to signal your brain to put the brakes on your food intake. It’s the hormone that’s supposed to drive us to maintain a healthy weight. Except, as you’ve just learned, when the hypothalamus is inflamed, this pathway malfunctions.  It doesn’t see all the leptin. So, it puts your body in ‘starvation mode.’ And it instructs you to eat more food so you can produce more leptin. This malfunction explains why many overweight people don’t have an ‘off switch’ when it comes to eating and overeating becomes a problem.  Your body is caught in starvation mode, even when you’re clearly not starving.  And no matter how hard you try, your hypothalamus will always be working against you … thinking you’re starving … instructing you to eat more.

So how do we get the CRP level down to heal the blood brain barrier?  We heal this by getting rid of the inflammation.  There are a lot of reasons for inflammation in the body.  It could be our diet.  The most inflammatory foods are white refined sugar, coffee, and alcohol.  It could be heavy metals or chemicals that our body is having trouble detoxing.  It could be immune stressors in the body that the immune system can’t handle like bad bacteria, old viruses, fungus, mold or parasites.  This is why we muscle test for these things in the office.  The whole point of health in the office is to detox the body and with the right nutrition the body can heal.  So besides getting checked for what toxins you have, what is the right nutrition? 

Curcumin (which is found in turmeric spice) has been proven over and over again in clinical studies spanning more than 50 years to be a powerful anti-inflammatory.  In fact, it is the strongest anti-inflammatory I know and it’s been shown to be more powerful than many harmful medications that we take every day. But that doesn’t mean you should be rushing out to the grocery store to buy turmeric. If you’re going to sprinkle turmeric on your food or drink golden milk it will help but if you are going to take a turmeric supplement, you have to make sure it contains curcumin. And it should contain at least 60% curcumin.

So if you are having trouble losing weight at your next visit let’s test what toxins may be causing inflammation and then test curcumin and other natural anti-inflammatory supplements and reverse Weight Loss Resistance!

The Truth About Weight Loss

When people come to my office to lose weight I must first explain to them that I am not a ‘quick fix’ doctor and that my patients are in it not to just lose weight but to create a healthier body. True health is about lifestyle changes. While my weight loss patients make adjustments in their lifestyle to follow the guidance I give them they go through 3 phases. The first phase is the transition to restore the metabolism. Once that is established then the body can start losing weight (step 2) and then the final step is to maintain optimal health.
The transition is a journey of healing. You can only be in your transition if you are improving your nutrition and lifestyle habits.
During the transition one’s hormones will change in response to the nutrition and lifestyle changes that are being made and this allows the body to heal. However, balanced hormones will not happen immediately—there are sequential steps of healing that everyone must take.
When a patient starts their transition process by improving their habits, their body will begin to rebalance its hormones. Their body will also rebuild at the cellular level with nutrients that were not available during previous poor habits. The more damaged the current metabolism, the longer it will take for this process to be completed.
When one has healed their metabolism, they are primed to lose fat weight, if needed. Once they have lost all their excess fat, they are through steps 1 and 2.

The Three Transition Stages
For most people, the transition (step 1) to a healthy metabolism consists of three main stages. Here is what you may expect as you journey through your transition to health. You begin at your initial starting point and then enter 1) a healing phase. Then you enter a 2) fat burning phase, if you need to burn fat before you finally reach a 3) healed state. Depending on your current metabolism, your body may skip the healing and/or fat-burning phases.
Let's look at each stage in more detail:
Healing phase
Fat-burning phase
Healed state
The Initial Starting Point
The initial starting point is your current metabolism type and age when you start improving your habits and begin entering your transition. Listed to the right are the four metabolism types an individual can have.
Insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands
Insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands
Insulin-resistant with healthy adrenal glands
Insulin-resistant with burned-out adrenal glands



These metabolism types are not genetic but acquired. Everyone begins life insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands. It is only after years of poor nutrition and lifestyle habits that you may become insulin-resistant or have burned-out adrenal glands—or have both conditions.
Your age and how long you have had your current metabolism affect the duration of your transition. The older you are and the longer your metabolism has been damaged, the longer it will take for you to complete your transition.

Insulin-sensitive
It is normal to be insulin-sensitive. You are insulin-sensitive if your body responds to all the actions of insulin, including the ability to make and store fats.
The following is what happens when you eat carbohydrates if you are insulin sensitive:
Sugar is taken up by your liver.
Excess sugar in your liver is turned into triglycerides and cholesterol.
Triglycerides and cholesterol are taken up by various cells of your body.
Sugar is also taken up by your cells.
When all the sugar and fats are in your cells, blood-sugar levels start to drop and insulin levels go back down.
You eat again and the whole process starts all over
Insulin-resistant
Eventually, from sustained high levels of insulin, you become completely insulin-resistant. All your cells are completely overfilled with fats and sugar, and they barely respond to the action of insulin. At this point you usually have high triglyceride blood levels. (High triglyceride levels are not indicators of insulin resistance only. Smoking, stress, birth control pills and drinking alcohol can raise triglyceride levels in your bloodstream also, but that does not necessarily mean that you are insulin-resistant. Do not diagnose yourself as insulin-resistant from your triglyceride blood test alone.)
When you are insulin-resistant, you have high fasting insulin levels, you usually carry your excess fat weight around your midsection and you have one or more of the following symptoms or diseases.
Abnormal cholesterol profiles: High triglyceride levels with low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels and high apolipoprotein B levels.
Hypertension: Sustained high blood pressure.
Type II diabetes: Sustained high levels of sugar in the bloodstream.
Coronary atheroscelrosis: Plaques in the heart arteries which may cause a heart attack when they rupture.
Cerebral atheroscelrosis: Plaques in the brain which may cause a stroke when they rupture.
Cancers: Abnormal cell growth. Breast, prostate and colon cancers are the most common cancers associated with high insulin levels.
Stein Leventhal Syndrome (SLS): SLS is a female clinical condition of infertility (anovulatory menstrual cycles), acne and/or facial hair.
There are three paths that lead to insulin resistance:
Years of high insulin levels due to poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.
Years of high adrenaline and/or cortisol levels due to poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.
Years of high insulin, adrenaline and cortisol levels due to poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.
If you recognize that you are on any of these paths, now is the time to change your habits!

Your Goal
Your goal is to stay or become insulin-sensitive and to have healthy adrenal glands or to heal them. Therefore, the goal metabolism to have is insulin sensitive with healthy adrenal glands and then and only then will the weight loss start happening! Know that there is hope and weight loss just has to be approached holistically with the ultimate goal is changing how your body responds to insulin. This way you lose weight AND keep it off!