A Functional Wellness Approach to Weight Loss
Are you looking for a long term solution to reach your desired happy weight? Have you tried multiple times to lose weight that just won’t go away? If so, I want this year to be different for you! It’s time for you to take back your health, and if that includes weight loss, I want to help you reach that goal! It starts with trying a functional approach.
To help you do that, I’m going to guide you through my approach to weight loss, which includes finding the perfect diet for you (it’s different for everyone), overcoming underlying causes of weight gain, and fine tuning your diet for your unique needs. Let’s get started!
FINDING THE PERFECT DIET FOR YOU
My first recommendation for anyone struggling to lose weight is to remove inflammatory foods like gluten, dairy and processed sugary foods. This helps reduce toxins and inflammation. If you’re eating a diet full of processed junk food (yes even junk food labeled, “healthy’, “gluten-free’, “low-calorie”, or “low-fat”!), or foods you have a sensitivity to, you’re continuously damaging your gut, disrupting your hormones, and stressing your immune system, all of which can cause you to gain weight.
Your body was designed to eat and digest real food – meats, vegetables, nuts and fruits – not packaged foods, even those labeled gluten-free. When you feed your body processed foods that are calorie dense, nutrient poor, and full of toxic chemicals, it doesn’t function properly. Your systems go haywire, the pounds start piling on, you tire easily, and it can become difficult to concentrate. Sound familiar?
The good news is, simply switching to a diet of whole, clean foods that your body can actually digest can reverse all of these symptoms and kickstart your weight loss. In fact, for many people completing my guided Wellness Programs, the pounds simply fall away as they cut out the junk and remove inflammatory foods such as gluten, dairy & sugar.
If you’d like to take elimination to the next level I’m happy to offer a free copy of my ‘7 Day Gut Health Protocol’. Just shoot me an email to [email protected] and say I’d like a free copy of your ‘7 Day Gut Health Protocol’. I’ll also include a video I made for extra support.
Then, after your body has had a break from the constant inflammation, and has begun digesting foods the way it was designed to, you can add foods back in one at a time, to figure out which which ones you do well with (and can continue eating), and which ones you have a sensitivity to. Unlike short-term, cookie cutter weight loss diets, this process will help you discover the perfect life-long diet for your unique needs.
HOW TO BEAT UNDERLYING CAUSES OF STUBBORN WEIGHT
For a lot of people, switching to a clean, anti-inflammatory diet is helpful, but isn’t quite enough to get them all the way to their weight loss goal. If you’re in this camp, it’s very likely that there are underlying health issues sabotaging your weight loss. Let’s take a look at what underlying health issues might be, and how you can overcome them.
Under active thyroid– This is one of the most common issues in regards to weight loss resistance. Many times it goes unnoticed due to the minimal ‘standard blood work’ that most insurances cover. Often times diving deeper with functional testing can produce a clearer picture as to where the imbalance is happening.
Chronic stress– Like I tell everyone, “stress doesn’t stop until we’re 6 feet under.” We all have it, but how we deal and cope with it is what matters. If we let things pile up and continue to build up inside this can wreak havoc on our health and our stress hormones like cortisol and DHEA. Functional testing can evaluate the relationship of cortisol to DHEA and how that may be contributing to your weight loss resistance.
Other hormonal imbalances– Sometimes it’s important to look at other hormones like Estrogen. When estrogen is too high or in excess, it is nearly impossible to lose weight. Balancing your hormones is a crucial step in feeling well and achieving a healthy weight.
Toxic Overload– Too much of anything is not good. To much, caffeine can wear out the adrenal glands. To much processed food loaded with chemical is difficult to digest, with little nutrient value and it stresses the liver. Gluten, dairy and fried foods are also difficult for most people to digest and therefore should be avoided for at least a month to help your body, gut and liver detoxify. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
Gut issues– ‘intestinal permeability’ aka ‘leaky gut’ happens when there is a breakdown in the intestinal barrier due to to many toxic and inflammatory foods. Many Functional Practitioners believe this is why we are seeing such a dramatic increase in autoimmune diseases in the last 5-10 years. Avoiding inflammatory trigger foods is a necessary first step to improve leaky gut issues. Probiotics may be beneficial to help balance the gut microbiome.
If you’d like to learn more about your state of health, please check out our free wellness evaluation. We offer in person, phone as well as webcam consults to people across the globe.