Category: Weight Loss Exercise

Weight Loss Challenges and Hormones: The Hidden Connection

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Post date March 15, 2016
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One of the most frustrating things you can probably experience is doing your best to lose weight, and not seeing the results that you want to see. This is not uncommon and a lot of people go through this infuriating episode in their lives on a regular basis. Why is it more difficult for some people to shed the pounds while others are just burning these off with the same amount of effort? Is something stopping you from succeeding in your goal to lose weight?

You might not be aware of this, but your weight loss efforts may be ineffective due to your hormones. Yes, an increase or decrease in the levels of certain hormones can hinder attempts to lose weight, and in order for you to succeed in attaining your fitness goals, you need to address these imbalances first. What hormonal imbalances may be reducing your weight loss chances? Here are some of them:

Hormones For Weight Loss

Leptin – this is a hormone that is released by body fat, and this tells your brain that you need to burn more calories and to eat less. There are times however when your body has too much fat that leptin is produced too much, which then results in what is called leptin resistance. This is when your brain becomes somewhat immune to the signals that come from such a hormone. You will need to remove the leptin resistance from your system before weight loss efforts can show any substantial results.

Cortisol – when you are stressed, cortisol is the hormone that is produced. This is what prepares you to either fight or flee. While this is all right in small doses, with how lives are being lived these days, people are constantly under a lot of stress, which means a body is bombarded by too much cortisol. This is not good. Too much of this hormone in your system makes you crave high-carb and high-sugar foods, which in turn results in a feeling of constant hunger, which then results in overeating. This also triggers the body to store more fat in your abdominal area, and this abdominal fat actually makes your body produce more cortisol when under stress.

Ghrelin – this is a hormone that tells your brain when you are hungry. When you try to reduce your caloric intake, there is an increase in this hormone and your body will feel that it is always hungry. It has been seen that even after you have returned to eating normally, your body will still feel hunger pangs from an elevated ghrelin level. The good news is you can counteract this increase in ghrelin with intense exercise. This is why dieting alone is not a good idea.

Adiponectin – this is a hormone that aids your body in losing more fat, and is produced by lean muscle. When you have very little lean muscle to begin with, and a lot of body fat, your body does not produce enough adiponectin. This is where problems may arise and why people lose hope when it comes to losing those love-handles. In order to make your weight loss efforts more effective, you need to create lean muscle and lose fat to increase your adiponectin levels, but since the lower levels of this hormone makes it difficult to do this, it feels like an impossible task.

In order for you to find out which hormones are wreaking havoc on your weight loss efforts, you need to visit your doctor. Tests can be done to find out what hormones are imbalanced, and what treatments need to be given to help you with these. Once you have your hormones on even keel, losing that excess weight won’t be the frustrating endeavor it used to be.

Sources:

http://www.shape.com/weight-loss/tips-plans/8-essential-fat-loss-hormones

http://www.saragottfriedmd.com/are-these-four-hormones-blocking-your-weight-loss-efforts/

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/hormone-diet

http://www.chatelaine.com/health/wellness/imbalances-halting-your-weight-loss/

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100 Mile Diet

I just ran into this for the first time this morning. The 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change is a diet that is more of an environmental movement.

The idea behind the 100 mile diet is this, you only eat food that was produced within 100 miles of your home.

This is a neat idea to think about and is probably very good for the environment as one of the real costs of food both at the supermarket and in our environment is transportation.

Each ingredient in our meals apparently travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to our plate. Although I know that it would be tough, especially depending on where you live this could be a great idea or kind of unworkable.

The people that started the 100 mile diet live in Vancouver, Vancouver is my hometown and is very close to farms, fishing and therefore most things that you would want to eat.

I now live in Calgary and here in Calgary we are 600 miles from an ocean although I can get rainbow trout from the local Bow River, there are farms very close and, of course, lots fo fresh water close by, but no fruit!

What happens though to someone in the middle of Los Angeles or in the middle of a desert, the problem for some people in these places is that there would be no quality food that is grown or produced as close.

In the end, I believe that the ideals behind the 100 mile diet are something that everyone should seriously look at.

Just because some produce from South America is cheaper than what is grown locally does not make it cheaper in the end, I talk about this on this blog very little but our environment is getting worse (I don’t really want to drag this into some pro or con environmental debate) and this seems to be one good first step to making things a bit better.

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Why Take Multivitamins?

Vista Magazine is a great source for many alternative medicine info and I always pick up the latest magazine when I am near a health food store. I read through the latest copy and found a great article that talks about the importance of multivitamins.

As you know from some of my past posts I am a firm believer in multivitamins although I do not think that they are in any way a replacement for good healthy whole food.

Ensuring that your family’s nutritional needs are met can be a pot and pan-noisy event. Add to that the challenge of guiding your family through the piles of nutritional information available and you may feel overwhelmed.

Quiet the noise and feel sure that your family’s requirements are satisfied by discovering what there is to know about multivitamins.

We all know that multivitamins are a combination of nutrients (vitamins and minerals) that are essential for general health and well-being.

The body is a symphony of chemical reactions, each requiring particular nutrients to occur properly.

By ensuring that all of these nutrients are present, the body can function optimally, resulting in feelings of energy, vitality and health.

Are All Multivitamins The Same?

No. There are more than a dozen multivitamins sold in Canadian stores. Investigate the differences to decide which one is best for you.

There are two main groups: synthetic and whole food multivitamins. Synthetic multivitamins are formed by creating all of the essential vitamins and minerals in a laboratory and combining them into a capsule or tablet.

Whole food multivitamins also contain all of the essential vitamins and minerals, but because they are made from concentrates of whole fruits and vegetables, they also contain additional nutrients.

Many of these additional nutrients are necessary for the body to be able to absorb the essential vitamins and minerals.

For example, vitamin C is more efficiently absorbed in the presence of bioflavonoids, which are naturally present in oranges and other whole foods. By using whole fruit and vegetable concentrates, whole food multivitamins offer a more complete nutritional source, and are more bioavailable (better absorbed by the body).

Some multivitamins contain more than just vitamins and minerals. Today, multivitamins may contain green foods, mushrooms, essential fatty acids and amino acids.

All of these nutrients play a part in ensuring that the symphony of reactions in the body is functioning optimally.

Who Needs A Multivitamin?

Nutrients are essential to every reaction in our body. However, there are some age groups that have greater nutritional needs than others.

Multivitamin needs for Kids and teenagers
Growing bodies are working hard to create new cells while still maintaining energy and health in existing cells. As a result, they are in great need of essential vitamins and minerals.

Children, teenagers, athletes and pregnant women’s bodies face these growing nutritional challenges. A multivitamin can offer all of the vitamins and minerals needed to promote healthy growth.

Another area of the body that experiences rapid growth is the immune system. During the invasion of an infectious microbe, the ability of white blood cells to rapidly multiply is drastically affected by nutritional status.

Multivitamins have been shown to enhance many aspects of the immune response (Nutrition, Oct. 2001).

Multivitamin needs for Adults
Adults also need multivitamins. In your 20s, ensuring your diet contains lots of vitamins and minerals can correct any nutritional deficiencies you have developed in your teens and reduce your risk of developing long term deficiencies such as osteoporosis.

In your 30s, running after the kids and trying to manage a career can cause you to reach for convenience foods which lack essential nutrients. A multivitamin can help address the potential nutrient deficiencies. In your 40s, fine lines start to appear and a desire to focus on anti-aging emerges.

The antioxidant power available in a multivitamin can help prevent the aging damage caused by free radicals in the body.

In your 40s, fine lines start to appear and a desire to focus on anti-aging emerges. The antioxidant power available in a multivitamin can help prevent the aging damage caused by free radicals in the body.

Multivitamin needs for the elderly
As you age, the body’s ability to digest and absorb nutrients decreases. This can lead to nutritional deficiencies. The risk of malnutrition increases the risk of infection.

Studies have found that multivitamins can reduce the mean annual number of days spent with infection in the elderly (BMJ, July 2005). Daily multivitamin use in the elderly has been recommended by scientific reviews (Clin. Infect. Dis., Dec. 2001).

Now that you know who needs multivitamins I should tell you what I am taking daily and why.

I take a fairly good multivitamin (but not one of those expensive ones), a calcium for my teeth and bones (I don’t drink much milk), a B50 to supplement the B vitamins that are always short in a multivitamin, and an Omega 3-6-9 vitamin for the healthy fish oils.

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