Have you been trying to lose weight for some time now, but instead of weight loss, your counting calories has resulted in an increased body mass index and weight gain?
Are you at the point where your weight loss efforts are exhausting you?
You have been consuming fewer calories, exercising regularly, choosing healthy fats, cutting out fried foods and following a low-carb diet, and trying various slimming pills or supplements, but you can’t figure out why you can’t lose weight.
You are constantly gaining weight mainly due to poor blood sugar controlAMP.
This means the energy from the food you eat is not being metabolised.
Instead, it is stored as fat, leading to weight gain.
This is a symptom and a clue that you have poor metabolic health.AMP
In our busy lives, it can be straightforward to attribute steady weight gain to a host of common factors such as stress hormone cortisol, mental health, lifestyle habits, high calorie intake, physical inactivity and the everyday pressures of work or home life.
While it’s true that these things can influence how we feel within ourselves, constant weight gain may, in fact, be a clue or symptom of poor metabolic health.
In theory, the best way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories, choose healthy foods, and burn off any excess fat through a regular exercise routine.
But your food intake needs to be converted into energy, if this part of your metabolic pathway stops working as it should, the result is poor energy balance which leads to insulin resistance and body fat.
So, if you have been steadily gaining weight, this indicates an underlying imbalance as your metabolism slows due to an increase in calorie intake, lifestyle factors such as certain medications, and short sleep durationAMP resulting in a change in your metabolism.
It is important to understand that weight gain is not just about willpower but also about metabolic health and how our bodies process energy.
With that in mind, if you have been struggling with steady weight gain for over two or more years with over-the-counter medication or supplements, then your metabolic pathways are likely slow to utilise the energy absorb the nutrients from the food you eat and dispose of toxins properlyAMP.
Identifying your everyday symptoms as clues to various underlying systemic imbalances will help you to enhance your future metabolic health and prevent the risk of developing high blood pressure, metabolic syndrome, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, autoimmune diseases, inflammation and cardiovascular disease.
Learn more about the consequences of poor metabolic health…AMP
If you only treat these chronic diseases by counting calories alone for more than two years, without any nutritional lifestyle intervention, your metabolic pathways will begin to fail, and your symptoms may develop into a systemic imbalance in your metabolic health.
Your metabolic health is significant and fundamentally everyday symptoms, such as rapid weight gain, are related to an imbalance or malfunction relating to either one of in part all three functional metabolic pathways:
Delivery of energyAMP to your cells, detoxifying toxinsAMP and absorbing raw ingredientsAMP.
In short, one of the main causes is poor blood sugar control due to previous unhealthy eating habits, such as eating too many calories too often. A diet rich in highly processed foods creates insulin resistance.
When you consume processed foods, in particular in excess for a prolonged period, this will result in a spike in blood sugars, and it’s the hormone insulin’s job to regulate blood sugar levels.
Every time you eat or drink, your body will continue to produce insulin to take the glucose from the blood and deliver it into the cell for energy, and any excess will be stored as fat. As insulin is a fat-storing hormone
Unfortunately, when high blood sugar levels are sustained over a long period, the body will eventually become accustomed to this and you will become resistant to the production of insulin. Known as insulin resistance.
This is definitely not a good thing. If this happens to you, your body will crave more calories and sugar to maintain high blood sugar levels.
As insulin is unable to deliver energy to the cell, it stores the energy in your fat cells, which leaves your brain without energy.
This is how hunger and cravings kick in…
Glucose (also known as blood sugar or blood glucose) is converted into adipose fat tissue through a process known as lipogenesis, which means ‘creation of fat from non-fat sources’.
Think of insulin as a switch that can set your body to either fat-burning or glucose-burning mode.
When insulin is high, your body is in “glucose burning mode” and stores the glucose as fat. When insulin is low, your body is in “fat-burning mode” and uses the stored fat for energy.
The average person’s metabolism will work better when their insulin levels are kept low most of the time.
The long-term effect of steady adult weight gain and the underlying cause is insulin resistance, which is the precursor to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is characterized by high circulating insulin levels, which over time leads to beta-cell failure and a reduced ability to produce insulin.
This will result in raised blood sugar levels (glucose intolerance), which can lead to damage to the blood vessels and nerves, as well as an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
If you are insulin resistant, you are gaining weight, even though you are cutting calories and exercising, because when you reduce your calories, your body will start to break down muscle mass for energy, not the previously stored fat causing weight gain.
This is because when your current body weight can’t deliver the consumed glucose into your cells for energy, it will turn to glycogen (stored glucose in the liver) and then to protein (muscle) for energy.
So, when you’re eating fewer calories and trying to lose weight, but your cells need high insulin levels, your body will break down lean body mass or muscle mass for energy instead of stored fat.
This is why keeping your insulin levels low is important if you want to maintain a normal weight and improve your metabolic health.
If you have various concerns, you must discuss them with a medical professional to get the all-clear.
In summary, you constantly gain weight because of poor blood sugar control.
If you want to low body weight, you should focus on balancing blood sugars instead of calculating calories and jogging to burn them off.
By managing the release of your insulin, you can encourage your body to burn stored fat for energy instead of muscle. This is the key to sustainable weight loss and improved metabolic health.
The long term consequence of poor blood sugar control is diabetes, which can lead to damage to the blood vessels and nerves, as well as an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
You should focus on a simple healthy eating plan for every meal as this will ensure your body has the building blocks it needs to create the hormones required for healthy blood sugar control.
In conclusion, the best way to lose weight is to focus on balancing your blood sugars, cleansing your liver and improving your gut microbiome.
This will enable you to help regulate your insulin sensitivity and deliver energy to your cells, detoxify toxins that disrupt your metabolism and create beneficial bacteria to reduce inflammation, improving your overall metabolic health.
Your steady weight gain is related to what you ate yesterday, NOT today.
So, breaking the vicious cycle is easy: change lifestyle habits, change what you eat next, and reduce the number of insulin spikes each day.
In the next article, you will learn why you are always tired. Your blood sugar control also interferes with the body’s ability to deliver energy into your cells to create mitochondria.
This article is part of my WHY series, which aims to help you identify the symptoms of poor metabolic health. Do you often ask yourself any of these questions?
What’s next?
Knowing what you need to do gives you power, the power to make simple changes today to your food and lifestyle choices that can boost your motivation and willpower to achieve optimum wellness.
Learning how to change what you eat each day with a simple healthy eating plan is the secret to longevity in health.
The Metabolic Diet Plan isn’t just another fad. It’s a comprehensive online course designed for the health-conscious to learn how to reset metabolic pathways by balancing blood sugar to support liver function and optimize your gut health for health and longevity.
Take a look at yourself and regain control of your health and weight today.
Remember, it’s never too late to make a change for better future health.
For more information and support on improving your future health longevity, check out my YouTube channel, Health HUB.
On my channel, I will share HOW to free yourself from restrictive dieting and obsessing about weight and know what your body needs for health and longevity to slow down the effects of ageing—naturally!