Obesity and Weightloss
Why are you gaining weight?
If you started taking in more calories than usual or cut back on exercise, you wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers on the scales crept higher.
But what if you’re doing everything the same as you always do and your weight still goes up? It’s time to delve a little deeper into what else might be going on.
Lack of sleep
There are two issues at work with sleep and weight gain. The first is intuitive. If you’re up late, the odds are greater that you’ll eat some late night snacks that will increase your calorie intake.
The other reason involves what’s going on biochemically when you’re sleep deprived. Changes in hormone levels increase hunger and appetite and also make you feel less full after eating.
Stress
When life’s demands get too intense, our body goes into survival mode. Cortisol, the ‘stress hormone,’ is secreted, which causes an increase in appetite. We may also reach for high-calorie comfort foods in times of stress. This combination is a perfect breeding ground for weight gain.
Insulin resistance
The role of insulin is to allow cells of the body to take in glucose to be used as fuel or stored as body fat.
It also means that glucose is more likely to build up in the blood and this can lead to too high blood sugar levels.
When the body becomes resistant to insulin, it tries to cope by producing more insulin. People with insulin resistance are often producing too more insulin than healthy people.
Producing too much insulin is known as hyperinsulinemia.
Symptoms of insulin resistance
Initially, insulin resistance presents no symptoms. The symptoms only start to appear once it leads to secondary effects such as higher blood sugar levels. When this happens, the symptoms may include:
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- Lethargy (tiredness)
- Hunger
- Difficulty concentrating (brain fog)
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Other signs that often appear in people with insulin resistance include:
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- Weight gain around the middle (belly fat)
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol levels
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If insulin resistance develops into prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, the symptoms will include increased blood glucose levels and more of the classic symptoms of type 2 diabetes.
Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)
PCOS is a common hormonal problem in women of childbearing age. Most women with PCOS grow many small cysts on their ovaries. The condition leads to hormone imbalances that affect a woman’s menstrual cycle – and can lead to excess body hair growth and acne. Women with this condition are resistant to insulin, which may cause weight gain. The weight tends to gravitate to the abdomen, putting women at greater risk of heart disease.
Hypothyroidism
If your thyroid (the butterfly-shaped gland in the front of your neck) is not making enough thyroid hormone, you may well be feeling tired, weak, cold and gaining weight. Without enough thyroid hormone, metabolism slows, making weight gain more likely. Even a thyroid functioning at the lower end of the normal range might cause weight gain. Treating hypothyroidism with medication may reverse some of the weight gain. If you have any concerns, seek medical advice.
Menopause
Most women do gain some weight around the time of menopause, but hormones probably aren’t the only cause. Aging slows your metabolism, so you burn fewer calories. And changes in lifestyle (such as exercising less) play a role. But where you gain weight may be related to menopause, with fat accumulating around your waist more than your hips and thighs.
Tracking successful weight loss is sometimes trickier than you’d think. Focusing only on weight and stepping on the scale every day might be misleading, cause unnecessary anxiety and undermine your motivation for no good reason.
The scale is not necessarily your friend. You may want to lose fat – but the scale measures muscles, bone and internal organs as well. Gaining muscle is a good thing. Thus weight or BMI are imperfect ways to measure your progress. This is especially true if you’re just coming off a long period of semi-starvation (calorie counting), as your body may want to restore lost muscles etc. Starting weight training and gaining muscle can also hide your fat loss.
Losing fat and gaining muscles means great progress, but you may miss this if you only measure your weight. Thus it’s smart to also track the disappearance of your belly fat, by measuring your waist circumference.
The above factors are checked before Dr Naidoo helps you with weightloss and thereby uses natural Homeopathic medication to assist your body to return to its leaner, healthier state.
