Metabolic Vitality VS Stress Induced Weight Loss

A common theme when I talk to women is: I managed to maintain my weight most of my life or I've always carried extra, but I could always bring it down, cut out a bit more, and then I would have it under control.  But, by the time they're talking to me, they're at a place where they don't seem to be able to do that anymore. Saying: I can cut more, it doesn't have the same impact.

 

Cutting things out...seems to be the mantra of what constitutes a diet now, cutting carbs, cutting calories, cutting protein or fats...seems like almost everywhere one looks, there are theory-based diets looking to cut a major dietary force out of our diet.

 

What most people don't realize is, cutting things out of the Diet in an extreme way creates a sense of urgency and stress in our system and system stress equates to STRESS HORMONES.

 

Sometimes our body will happily lose weight under the influence of stress hormones because transiently, that's what they do...after all, that's how phentermine works.

 

If we create enough stress in the system, we can force our body to do what it in actuality didn’t have a real capacity to do.

 

When we cut carbs for example into extremely small amounts, our body enters a slower, less efficient energetic state. Exclusively burning fats for fuel produces 30 percent less energy in the body, than burning glucose or fructose for fuel.

 

But, that lower energy state can work for a while... I had a client once who lost 50 pounds during her divorce, she temporarily looked better than she had in ages. Then, as the enduring stress response persisted, the weight began to come back and she found then, nothing would move it.

 

That was stress. Stress can be a potent weight loss mediator, when we go on extreme diets, we invoke stress, the biological adaptation to that is to lower energetic expenditure at the cell level as a means of survival. This lets us adapt to less and less efficiency while continuing to move about, work, and even exercise. However, once we exit an adaptive stage of stress and descend into exhaustion, the low energy state begins to have bigger and bigger consequences.

 

Persistent stress literally shuts down the conversion of T4 to T3, the active form of thyroid hormone.  It also disrupts blood glucose at the cell level, which is why so many find themselves less and less tolerant of carbohydrates, it also lowers liver glycogen stores, alters brain-body connections, increases cell age, increases free radicals and dramatically lowers immunity.

 

Problem is, we LIKE the effect of stress, it makes us feel alive, it feels familiar, it is in essence our drug of choice. Therefore, many people seek it out...which is why extreme diets have such allure. Cutting carbs to very low levels initiates a huge cortisol response, along with that comes adrenaline and even spikes of estrogen. The same can be said about extreme low calorie and other majorly restrictive patterns, including lots of sustained cardio and High-Intensity Workouts.

 

Thing is, stress is also the single predictor of long term illness, aging, and every scary age-related condition (think cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, stroke, Parkinson's, MS and autoimmune anything).

 

Although a whole lot less flashy and requiring actual time to heal, crafting sustainable cell energy, while repairing hormonal signaling and decreasing inflammation while detoxing both physical toxins and emotional ones too is the ONLY path to sustainable health AND metabolic strength and then weight loss.

 

You do not get that through extreme diets. You are not going to get that by cutting the calories more. You're not going to get that by pounding your body into submission, because all of those things are the antithesis of vitality. Those paths evoke one common belief, which is my body is fu#$ed up, it doesn't know how to do things, and damn it, I'm going to make it do what I want.

 

Now it is up to you. If you want to live by “my body is fu#$ed up” then great, have at it,  I can tell you we won't align because I don't believe in that philosophy and I will never invoke it with my clients.

 

If you want, my body is Divine and it's high time that I lived as that Divine goddess that I really am on all levels of my being then, yes, let's talk.

 

Blessings!

Dr. Julie