Whether this is your first time visiting Fit Healthy Moms or you’re a frequent reader (thank you, btw!), you know that we’re passionate about sharing the most effective and efficient fat loss and fitness techniques with you.
That said, today is a special day, because my colleague, Steve de la Torre, and I are going to reveal to you exactly why it is you feel unable to stick to your nutrition plan, unable to find motivation to workout and, ultimately, why you are struggling with hard to lose pounds.
In a single word, the culprit of your fat loss woes is: Hormones
More specifically, your hormones are out of sync, causing you to gain weight and store more fat than you want.
You’ve most likely heard of the equation, “calories in vs. calories out” (extra calories burned = weight loss and vice versa). All though, at the very base of your physiology, this is may be true, this simple equation will not help you lose fat. There are many more players involved in your body’s ability to lose and store fat.
“Consuming too many calories is not the main reason most people gain weight.”
That’s right, eating too many calories isn’t the main cause of you having too much bellyfat – it’s a hormonal issue!
So, the biggest reason women and more specifically, mothers, gain weight and have trouble losing it is your hormones are out of sync. You have several dozen hormones simultaneously circulating around your body telling your organs and other systems (namely, you Endocrine System) what to do. As you can imagine, it’s a very sensitive balance. And when one or more of your hormones becomes out of sync, dysfunction and disease can occur. There are a few health markers you should be aware of that point to a hormonal imbalance.
Hot flashes / Night sweats
Irritability
Trouble Sleeping
Crashing fatigue
Constant bloated feeling
Weight gain
Frequent infections
Fat stored in belly
Hypertension
Hair loss/thinning
These are some of the most common symptoms. If you experience one or more of these symptoms, you are not alone! Let’s explore the 3 main hormones that affect your weight and fitness, Insulin, Cortisol and Leptin.
Insulin
Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas and its main responsibility is regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. If insulin wasn’t present, your cells wouldn’t be able to absorb nutrients and energy from food.
Because insulin opens your cells receptors to absorb nutrients and store energy, when it’s present in the blood stream, fat loss is almost impossible. Hence, the more insulin released in your blood stream, the more fat you’re going to store.
You may have heard of insulin before in relation to Diabetes. When someone is born with Type 1 Diabetes, their body doesn’t produce insulin and therefore perfectly timed insulin shots are required prior to meals.
One of the biggest epidemics plaguing the Western world is Type 2 Diabetes, or Diabetes that you acquire. This disease also puts your Pancreas into shut-off mode and is generally caused by poor dietary and fitness habits. Here’s how it works:
Sally eats cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, pasta for dinner, cookies for dessert and soda all day. Because of her poor food choices, her body has to produce lots of insulin to handle the amount of carbohydrates she consumes. After a while, the body has to produce more and more insulin to handle the same carbohydrate load as before. This condition is known as insulin resistance. The additional stress on the Pancreas fatigues the organ and effectively kills its function. Sadly, now Sally has type 2 Diabetes.
Regulating insulin through smart food choices and exercise is one of the key components of the Hormone-Syncing Diet (part of the SuperMoms Fat Loss System)
Cortisol
Cortisol is produced by the Adrenal gland and is released in response to stress – as it’s main function. Cortisol has been a trendy word in the media, the last couple years and it’s surprising to me how many consumers don’t know what this hormone does.
For starters, know that Cortisol is your friend. When we experience stress in any form (environmental, emotional, physical, etc) your body kicks this hormone into high gear to combat that stress and help you survive.
Imagine this: In cave-woman days, you’re walking along a trail, peacefully collecting food and you come across a saber-toothed tiger. It’s flight or fight time. Your body responds by immediately releasing Cortisol into your blood stream, which tells your body to turn off any system that isn’t necessary to immediate survival (digestion, immunity, etc.). It releases stored energy into your blood stream and allocates all that energy to your brain and nervous system, making you hyper sensitive and jittery. You can now quickly process the threat and get away safely. This process of “zipping” your body up allows you to quickly escape harm and death.
Now in those days, once the threat was gone, your hormones and systems would return to normal function until the next time they were needed.
In the world we live in, we don’t have saber-toothed tigers to worry about… even worse, we have bosses, taxes, bills and responsibilities! And those stressors don’t go away. When your body has the Cortisol button turned on, constantly, to deal with the various stressors you encounter on a daily basis, it can cause some major disease and dysfunction. Some of the symptoms of Adrenal fatigue and too much Cortisol include: weight gain especially around your middle, poor immune system, low sex drive, low energy levels, and feeling overwhelmed (unable to handle stress).
So the constant stress you feel isn’t just making you fat, it’s actually making you sick!
But not to worry, the Hormone-Syncing Diet and SuperMom workout plan is designed to not only help your body reduce it’s internal stress but also to bring your Cortisol levels back to normal.
Leptin
Leptin is secreted by fat cells and its main function in the body is to play a significant role in regulating both hunger, food intake and energy expenditure. If Leptin is absent hunger and feeding is uncontrolled and relentless. As leptin levels fall, the greater your cravings become for all those wonderful foods that you used to eat when you weren’t “dieting”.
So if you are experiencing more intense cravings on a daily basis, this is actually your body responding to a physiological signal, not just your mind playing nasty games with you and making your life miserable.
Along with hunger pangs, leptin also signifies a slowing metabolism. Whenever you are on a hypo-calorie diet for an extended period of time, your body will begin to slow its metabolic functions in an effort to ‘make due’ with the amount of fuel that it is being given. Know what this means for you? Little or no fat loss. Not a good situation.
The 3 main ways to keep your Leptin levels where they’re supposed to be is:
1. Get adequate sleep – not getting enough rest actually suppresses Leptin and the following day you’ll not only be have a higher hunger drive, but you’ll also store more of those calories as fat.
2. Avoid Fructose – processes foods made with high fructose corn syrup will spike your insulin levels and also suppress Leptin levels. The best rule of thumb is to avoid as much packaged foods as possible.
3. Don’t Stress – Now telling a mom not to be stressed is like telling the sky not to be blue. When Cortisol levels are too high, this will also suppress Leptin, leaving you craving sweets and other junk food. The main take away here is to help your body cope with stress through good nutrition and exercise.
So now that we’ve reviewed the 3 main hormones that affect fat loss, you can start to see the interconnection between the 3 and how easy it is to fall into an uncontrollable cycle. The good thing is, the solution for each hormone, positively affects the others as well.
“And if you ever hope to get rid of your muffin top, achieve a flat stomach and thin waistline again, you’re going to have to re-train your hormones to curb your junk food cravings and to burn fat at all hours of the day instead of storing it.”
If you’ve had trouble losing weight or you feel like you gain weight easily, it’s most likely because of your hormones being out of sync.
In order to get healthier, feel better, lose weight and get your body lean again – getting your hormones in sync needs to be your top priority.
We call our newest program, SuperMoms Workouts: The Fastest Fat Loss for Moms, for a very important reason. It it the only program for moms, designed from the ground up, to specifically target your out-of-sync hormones. In fact, our nutrition component is appropriately called “The Hormone Syncing Diet” and it is guaranteed to do just that!
To get a sneak peak at the SuperMoms Fast Fat Loss System click here!
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