Photo Credit: Jonathan Borba
All of us tend to focus on losing weight to “get healthy.”
In my office, though, I never start by focusing on weight loss. We start focusing on overall health. Why? Because weight gain is simply a SYMPTOM of other underlying, chronic issues.
Friends, focusing primarily on weight loss will not make you healthier. Just like going on an extreme diet for your best friend’s wedding will not be sustainable. If you want to really address your weight, keep the weight off and get healthier, you have to dig a little deeper. You will not only look better, you will feel better too. And let’s be honest, I think that’s much more important!
Here are six areas I work with my patients on to get healthier and lose weight.
1. Gut health. If you’ve ever read any of my blogs, you’ll see a familiar pattern: I talk about gut health. In my other blogs I talk about how to naturally restore gut health, how gut health leads to autoimmune disease, how gut impacts various skin issues, how gut impacts our moods (anxiety/depression), and other commonly asked gut related questions. Gut health touches all aspects of our health. Did you know that your gut even has its own nervous system? It secretes hormones that we need for proper balance and regulation, fights off illness with its innate immune system, allows us to absorb all the nutrients that we need to rebuild ever single cell of our body and gets rid of toxins that we encounter every day in our environment. This is also related to weight loss in many ways. If you don’t address the gut and you’re constipated, you’ll be holding onto toxins for far too long (which will mess up your hormone balance). As a result, you can’t lose weight. If your gut is constantly fighting chronic underlying infections, then you’ll certainly not lose weight. If you keep irritating your gut with allergic chemicals, foods, etc. your weight will also suffer. On and on it goes. Bottom line: gut health is a cornerstone to ALL health. If you don’t take away anything else from this blog, I hope you take away this.
2. Regulating and treating emotions. More research studies continue to reveal how our emotions are impacting our body. When we’re under stress our immune system gets suppressed and our bellies ache (longterm stress can predispose us to IBS, colitis, enteritis etc.). We know that when we’ve not dealt with past trauma or painful experiences, these things can impact us as triggers down the road. Have you ever had something happen in childhood and as an adult it comes up in totally unexpected, reactionary ways? There is something there! We all have it. But how does it impact our weight? When our bodies are constantly under stress, even when we don’t “feel stressed,” our bodies hold onto any extra resources (weight) to keep you going. Our fat cells are an excellent resource of hormones. When we’re stressed, we tend to need more of those to keep us going. When a patient wants to lose weight, we always talk about stress reduction. Some tools we talk about are prayer/meditation, journaling, therapy, etc. Another excellent tool for stress relief, past trauma, dealing with anxiety/depression that I use in the office is a technique called Neuro Emotional Technique (NET). This technique helps to get to those hard to reach emotions that we can’t seem to shake and helps our bodies process them not only emotionally but physically. I find with my patients that there are always physical reactions in the body to an emotional response. If you want more information on Neuro-Emotional Technique and what it’s all about, read it here. If you’ve been on a long weight loss journey, it’s likely that there is an emotional component associated with what’s going on.
3. Diet. This one is obvious, right? You hear a lot of things about weight loss, but here is something important: it’s very difficult to lose weight and keep it off when you eat processed foods and “junk food.” You might be thin as a rail now, but you are likely not healthy if those foods make up a large part of your diet. This eventually catches up to you. No one gets a free lunch! Eating healthy does NOT mean starving yourself. It does NOT mean only eating salads and white meat chicken. You can eat a nutrient-rich, healthy diet and NOT feel deprived. This will look very differently for each individual person. For instance, some people do really well on 6 small meals a day, some do great on 2, some people tolerate a little dairy in their life and some can’t do any, some can do nightshades and other get arthritis from it, on and on this goes. There is no one thing that is a solution for everyone. What I would recommend is working with a healthcare doctor, preferably an Applied Kinesiology doctor, who you trust and who can muscle test individual foods for you to ensure that they help to strengthen and help your body THRIVE. But I will leave you with one bio hack: if it comes from a box or a can, don’t eat it. Start there and I bet you’ll notice a difference!
4. Movement. You don’t have to be a marathon runner or lift cars for a living to be fit, but you have to move. With patients in the office, we talk about gearing exercise to whatever is going on in your life. Some people can handle more anaerobic exercise (think sprinting, weight lifting, etc.) some need to slow it down and do more gentle aerobic exercise (think gentle walking, jogging, swimming). This has to be again, geared towards what’s going on in your life and can be determined with muscle testing. As a general rule, pick an activity that you like, that brings you joy. It can be Zumba, Pilates, running, etc. Heck, walking your dog three times a day counts. You don’t even have to join the gym. Outside air is pretty good too, but you have to do something.
5. Don’t rely on one “magic product” or solution. We’ve all heard inflated product claims like this before. “Just take this product. You don’t have to make any other changes to your life, you will just lose tons of weight and live your best life now.” These types of product pushes, which are becoming more common on social media, often highlight how much income the seller is making as an attempt to enlist more people to sell the product on behalf of the company. But as you can tell if you analyze the claims, these “magic” products don’t work. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. A better idea is to work with your healthcare provider on a multi-faceted, holistic solution to keeping you healthy.
6. Be consistent. You are what you do. Epigenetics, the study of how our behavior impacts our gene expression, demonstrates that about 80% or more of our gene expression (whether you get a disease or not) is determined by our lifestyle. 80%! That should both scare and bring you so much joy! If you can live in a way that allows you to not only feel better, but also to prevent disease, you should be empowered. Now go and do it!
If you are interested in further addressing this topic, please feel free to reach out and schedule an appointment. Dr. V is a Chiropractor and Functional Medicine Doctor in Elmhurst, Illinois who evaluates patients from the inside out, focusing on areas including hormone imbalance, digestive health, anxiety/depression, autoimmune disease, and many others.