by Barbara Wicks
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19 Jan, 2024
January is a month when many women make resolutions to be healthier and lose weight. And while those goals can propel us towards feeling better, they can also be counterproductive if coming from the place of guilt, shame or wanting to keep up with others, rather than our wish to experience the best of what life has to offer and while also knowing that we are already enough as we are right now. Let’s look at weight loss for example. It is customary for many women to sign up for gym membership or various slimming clubs such a Weight Watchers or Slimming World this time of the year and often go from not being very active at all, to doing several exercise sessions a week and restricting their calorific intake quite a lot in order to encourage faster weight loss. And while both of those actions can be very positive in principle if carried out correctly, when we go about them in a wrong way, they can cause us more harm than be of help long term. First of all, many of the slimming clubs rely quite heavily on ready-made meal replacements, which although calorie and macro nutrient balanced, are unlikely to have the same nutritional benefits that eating fresh meals or naturally derived superfoods would have. So it’s not uncommon for women who follow very restrictive and low calorie diets long term to develop nutritional deficiencies, which in turn can adversely affect their health in a number of ways. Secondly, some of the meal replacements contain ingredients which can be harmful to our health, such as artificial sweeteners, many of which are carcinogenic, or anti-nutrients such as soy – which can affect both thyroid health and fertility in a negative way if consumed in excess and in its un-fermented form. And thirdly, limiting our food intake drastically, while also increasing cardiovascular activity quite a lot at the same time, can lead to adrenal burnout. This is especially true for women who are already under a lot of daily stress in their lives, as the intensive exercise is likely to raise their cortisol levels, which are likely already elevated, even higher. At the same time, such drastic food restrictions can also cause the slowing down of metabolism, as the body gets tricked into believing it’s famine season, so starts preserving already scarce resources for the rainy day, by making you burn your food at a slower rate. Which is obviously completely counterproductive to the goal you are trying to achieve. And if you are very unlucky, it can also mess up your hormonal health and fertility, as a nature’s way of preventing pregnancy with what is perceived as not enough resources to maintain it long term. So now that you know why crash dieting and killing yourself on the treadmill is not really that good for you long term, what can you do to get closer to your weight loss goals? Some of the simple strategies that you can put in place straight away include but are not limited to: 1) Getting enough sleep, as deficiencies in sleep are linked to an elevated level of a hormone responsible for increased hunger called ghrelin 2) Tweaking the timing of your largest meal to fall around midday, when metabolism is at its strongest and we are also most active, therefore require more calories to operate in the most optimal way 3) Making sure that at least some of the exercise / body movement you engage in encourages relaxation of the nervous system in order to reduce your cortisol levels What gives me an authority to speak on such subjects, you might ask? As someone who used to be an emotional eater in my 20s and 30s and who also used various slimming supplements earlier on in life, I have experienced first hand what it is like to be out of control with my eating habits, even despite relatively good foundations in that area in my childhood. As I went through life and qualified as a nutritional therapist first in 2006, and then studied counselling, as well as psychology of eating in later years, I also realised that a lot of commonly given advice about weight loss is incorrect and can have many women locked in a perpetual cycle of yoyo dieting. Which is why anyone wanting to embark on a weight optimisation journey needs to start asking questions not just about what and how to do it, but also why certain things are or are not happening for them. And those things can include emotional factors as well, by the way. If you are tired of guesswork, or doing the things you were told to do and still not getting anywhere, why not give yourself a bit of a leg up and book a no obligation Zoom chat with me. In our 30 minutes together, I will ask you about your most burning health concern and explain how working with me might benefit you, should we be a good match. To book your free Zoom call, just follow the link to my online calendar below: https://lnkd.in/ekSxe_cY I am really looking forward to connecting with you and being of service.