It has all to do with the thing us fitness geeks call hormones.
Whether it’s realising that you’re at that time of the month when you cry at adverts on the television or when you get a parking ticket, or the rollercoasters of puberty, pregnancy and menopause, 99.9 per cent of women have felt a slave to their hormones at some point in their lives.
Hormones are like a family, they function together and dysfunction together.
Families can bicker and argue round a dinner table or they can all bounce of energy and spread a good happy vibe. That’s exactly how your hormones work. If one relationship breaks, you can be sure that everything else will follow in it’s steps and fall like a domino.
Whether you burn fat or store it; has everything to do with the interactions of hormones.
For example…
Your Thyroid stabilises your metabolism and takes it’s cues from the hormones like leptin to maintain weight set point; It acts like a weight thermostat.
Many people with under active thyroid function are actually suffering from a deficit in Leptin signalling because their bodies are leptin resistant.
What is that you ask??
Let your brother from another mother Jango explain it.
Leptin resistance is similar to insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes in which the pancreas produces large amounts of insulin, but the body doesn’t respond to it properly. Your brain response to msg’s from your hormones.
Now image someone is lightly tapping you on the head with a hammer every second of every day. You’re going to get a banging headache and get extremely pissed off right? And if it carry’s on you’ll pass out and not wake up for a couple days. That’s exactly how your brain feels.
In Leptin resistance, your leptin is too high, which means you have too much body fat. And your brain can’t see it anymore. You’ve over worked it and it’s starved and because you’re brain cant see it, it can’t communicate with your thyroid to stimulate the release of its fat burning hormones. Which is bad news but not irreversible!
I’ll say this now, dieting does not work! Low carb diets are no good either, trust me. More on this next week.
***Your body is smart, and if it thinks a “diet” is coming, it immediately holds on to fat as much as it can.***
Cutting calories actually will lower your thyroid metabolism.
Another simple example;
Picture this.
There you are, in the African jungle. Strolling across the grass minding your own business eating some fresh grass to feed your insatiable appetite. When suddenly a lion comes charging towards you from the bushes!! I’d shit my pants.
Anyway, you the zebra, have to respond to the attack with your “fight-or-flight” survival mechanism.
If you made it, your stress response would run at full speed from start to finish. In a very short period of time, it would go like this.
Imagine me in a Zebra costume for a second.
A. See lion - Stress Occurs
B. O.M.G In Zebra tounge! Stress response begins in the brain with lots of chemistry
C. RUUUNNNNNN god damn it!!! Fight or Flight
D. Whew Praise the Lord - Stress response ends and stress hormones dissipate.
Now all is normal in life, now let’s eat some grass. Unfortunately us humans aren’t so lucky in the 21st century. We are not Zebra’s. Our problems aren’t lions. It’s a much more worrying problems like our jobs, our mortgages , credit cards, work deadlines, traffic jams, family commitments the list goes on.
Our stresses are difficult to fight off and not something we can run away from. They always come back to test us more. It’s a pain in the ass!!! And it leaves our stress hormones in a constant chronically high state. Yes you may say, bills, traffic, demands etc… are all things that cause us worry and stress, they aren’t exactly life threatening as a hungry lion chasing after you - or are they?
I mean when you obsess, ruminate, continually mull over the “what if’s” of stressful situations, you will put yourself in a condition with chronic stress. And that doesn’t benefit your health or your weight.
See, cortisol is a vital metabolic hormone. Without it, your body wont stand a chance with the stress of daily life. Stress makes a person fat primarily because of the excess production of the key hormones, cortisol and reduces the secretion of KEY anabolic hormones such as DHEA, testostorone and growth hormone.
(More on some of the ^^above^^ hormones next week)
So stress is anabolic which means building but too much is also HUGELY catabolic which means breaking down everything in your body. It eats away at your muscle. As you can imagine this sea-saw is WAY out of balance for a lot of people.
So overall stress makes you burn fewer calories. Why you ask?? Because the stress hormone cortisol DIRECTLY blocks your Thyroid from working as it inhibits your Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) and T3, the active thyroid hormone. This basically means stress turns off the thyroid!
And remember from reading about a minute ago?
Thyroid runs your metabolism, helps your mood and increases your energy levels. The relationship between your hormones must be at sync with one another. If one goes you can be sure the others will follow for sure.
So it’s a proven fact that if your hormones are not getting on with one another you can sure it will show on the outside. Some eye opening stuff don’t you think??
So where do you start and what should you eat? That’s a secret for my Elite coaching members.
What you need to understand is you are unique with your own hormonal make up. So just starting yet another diet without following a few key principles, will mean you’ll have a 99% chance of failure. You need a Jargon Free approach. Do something different for yourself and begin to understand how to manage stress by changing the way you eat, sleep, exercise and supplement your lifestyle.
It’s not about eating less and exercising more, it’s about the health of you entire body. You may have to start with one thing at a time but over a period of weeks and months, you absolutely must incorporate lifestyle habits that are conductive to overall wellbeing.
You can discover how to balance your hormones to drop stubborn body fat by booking on to one of our free coaching calls.
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