Today I want to talk about the reality of losing weight when suffering with fatigue.
Many of our wonderful patients come to us with both these issues – as well a pile of other niggly symptoms – and what they want most of all is the weight to shift.
When the body is fatigued, weight loss is much harder.
Why is this? Can we ‘trick’ the body to make it respond differently? What is STOPPING the weight loss?
Read on….
Persistent or chronic fatigue affects the metabolic system making it easy to gain weight and almost impossible to lose it.
Trying to maintain a healthy diet will seemingly working against you, and the weight will keep piling on. This uncomfortable weight gain adds to my many other symptoms such as;
- Aching muscles and joints
- Sleep apnea
- High blood pressure
- Cholesterol issues
- Brain fog
- Depression and low motivation
For many people making alterations to your diet is not enough to lose weight and keep it off. If this is happening to you, then you need to regain balance in your body before weight loss is achieved.
>>> Book a call now to discover how we can help you recover in the fastest time possible. CLICK HERE
5 Reasons You Can’t Lose Weight With Fatigue
1. Poor Sleep Quality
Many people struggling with energy and weight gain have sleep difficulties. They wake up several times during the night, or regularly have trouble getting to sleep at all. This sets in place a pattern of poor quality and inadequate sleep.
Correct sleep improves insulin sensitivity helping your cells respond to insulin and decreasing the tendency to store body fat. Deep restorative sleep also triggers growth hormone which helps burn fat and create muscle mass.
Lack of sleep reduces the hormone leptin which is the hormone responsible for suppressing your appetite. At the same time this is happening, another hormone, ghrelin responsible for triggering hunger, unfortunately increases.
It is important to get between 8 and 9 hours sleep every night. The importance of sound good quality sleep cannot be overstated.
2. Adrenal Health
Experiencing chronic stress leads to the adrenals overproducing cortisol. High levels of cortisol causes weight gain. In particular this type of weight gain shows up around your midsection as the body lays down fat around vital organs. This is why people get a fat belly, or ‘muffin tops’ on the hips.
When the adrenal gland function declines due to over stimulation from stress, this will result in hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) for most people. Symptoms of hypoglycemia can manifest as cravings for sugar as the body tries to raise your blood sugar level, and salt to try and build more cortisol.
Testing your adrenal function with a 3-point saliva cortisol test is the best way to assess function and start appropriate treatment to heal this vital aspect to your fatigue.
3. Thyroid Health
There is a largely underdiagnosed component to weight gain and fatigue syndrome which shows up as inadequate levels of thyroid hormone produced by the body. This can adversely affect weight control because the thyroid gland produces hormones that control the speed of your metabolism. Sub-optimal thyroid hormone levels will adversely affect your energy, weight, mood, hair, nails, and detoxification ability, and thorough screening is needed to discover if free T4 and free T3 are in optimal levels. Standard GP tests will only diagnose a diseased thyroid gland, but you still can have a suboptimal thyroid issue affecting your health.
4. Gut health and food intolerances
If you suffer with any digestion issues at all, these need to be resolved with treatment to lose weight – particularly belly fat.
Loose bowels, constipation, bloating, belly pain, reflux, sensitivity in the belly are all signs and symptoms that your digestion is not healthy. Having digestive issues is very draining of our energy and affects how well we can absorb nutrients from our food and supplements.
What this means
Our body systems influence each other. When one system gets out of sync it affects the others. This is why functional testing and treatment is the only way so many of our patients finally get results when nothing else has worked.
How to regain energy and lose weight
Carry out functional testing and get a plan to get your health back on track.
When you have a full initial appointment with us, your practitioner will review your health history and current symptoms, and recommend the testing that YOU need to get you well.
Don’t put up with these symptoms:
- Fatigue
- Weight gain
- Brain fog and forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating
- Losing yourself – putting yourself last
- Expending all your energy on work, and being left with nothing on your time off
There is a better tomorrow when you have the answers to your symptoms and expert health guidance. BOOK A CONSULT – CLICK HERE. We are a TeleHealth clinic and can work with you anywhere!