Why is losing weight so hard?  The answer lies in the angry hormone triad.  The hormones leptin, insulin and cortisol dictate whether you lose or gain weight.  Get the angry hormone triad under control and you can lose weight.

Leptin is a hormone that’s designed to manage metabolism.  When leptin is functioning normal your metabolism roars on like a well tuned engine burning up the pizza you had last night.  In addition, it curves your appetite making you feel less hungry.  However, when leptin is out of balance your subconscious mind takes over because leptin takes over your brain.  Even though you are 50 lbs overweight leptin tells your brain you are hungry and need to eat.  At the same time your metabolism is grinding to a halt and stalling causing all that food your brain is telling you to eat to be stored as more fat.  This leads us to insulin.

Insulin is a master hormone and allows nutrients like sugar to enter and exit muscle and liver cells.  It does the same to fat cells.  If insulin levels are normal a person can store food in the form of glycogen and fat, but it can also allow you to release glycogen and fat from cells and burn it up as energy.  However, if insulin levels rise too much which is the case in many overweight people the body becomes wrecked with inflammation (which make you sick) and fat cells lose the ability to release fat.  When insulin levels are too high the body loses the ability to lose fat.

Cortisol is the last hormone in the angry hormone triad.  Cortisol is one bad mother.  This hormone stores unwanted fat at high rate’s, causes muscle to waste away, increases insulin and glucose levels, and slows metabolism.  Cortisol is controlled by a myriad of things.  Sleep, stress, exercise and food all play a role.  Allow this hormone to get angry and weight loss is a no go.

So how do you fix the angry hormone triad?  It’s easier than you think.  Number one is diet.  You must eliminate food that has no nutrients and is high in fructose.  You must add in nutrient dense food (vegetables, fruit, eggs and nuts), anti-inflammatory foods (broccoli, blue berries, and turmeric to name a few) and foods that restore normal gut flora (kim chi, sauerkraut, and greek yogurt).  (E-mail me and I will send you a free E-book loaded with this type of food).  Number two is exercise.  You must get fit.  Not walking fit but truly fit.  Increase muscle and strength with resistance training.  Keep exercise sessions short but intense.  Anaerobic exercise is essential to great health and weight loss.  Some think due to health and joint problems that there is no hope.  You’re wrong!  Everything can be modified as you strengthen the body and gain a level of fitness you once thought impossible.  Number three is sleep.  You must learn to improve the quality of your sleep.  Doing things like turning off most the lights two hours prior to bedtime and sleeping in complete darkness.  (Visit our Facebook page by searching Expect Results Fitness and look for the post 9 Things You Can Do To Get Better Sleep).  Number four is lowering stress.  Easier said than done, but you must determine the source of your stress and develop a plan that will allow you to eliminate it.  It may be developing a budget with Dave Ramsey or seeking parenting help from a counselor.  Stress must be made the servant not the master.

I would love to help you achieve your health and weight loss goals.  Contact me at 501-607-4974 and try Fitness Boot Camp for FREE!

Did you know that up to 70% of your immune system resides in your digestive tract?  In addition, an unhealthy digestive tract may play a role many of the chronic diseases Americans suffer from today.  An old Ayurvedic Proverb states, “When diet is wrong medicine is of no use, when diet is correct medicine is of no need.”  Truer words have never been written because what you eat determines the health of your digestive system and the health of your digestive tract plays a huge role on your total health.

The healthy gut is made up of trillions of bacteria called “flora” that assist in the digestive process among other things.  When you truly begin to study the digestive system and the impact it has on total health it can be a bit over whelming.  A healthy digestive tract protects the body from infection, regulates metabolism, and promotes immune health.  However, an unhealthy digestive system does just the opposite and is increasingly being linked to many of the chronic and autoimmune diseases plaguing America’s health.

The digestive system is designed to be a highly selective closed system.  This means the digestive tract contains and maintains sensors that should only allow useful nutrients to exit the intestinal walls and enter the blood stream.  However, research is telling us that certain foods and medicines increase the intestinal wall permeability allowing foreign matter to enter the blood stream and cause the immune system to act causing inflammation and potentially disease states.  This increased permeability is often referred to as “leaky gut syndrome.”

While the medical community does not fully understand the causes or cures for leaky gut syndrome, they do know that certain things have the potential to improve and cause dysfunction in the digestive tract.  The below information has the potential to improve your digestive tract and health.  In the case of medications mentioned we do not suggest you stop using the medication but do encourage you to do some research and have a conversation with your doctor about possible alternatives.

1. Eliminate or reduce refined and processed foods in your diet. Many of these foods contain chemicals that have the potential to damage the intestinal lining.
2. Eat fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir, kim chi, and yogurt or learn how to make your own fermented vegetables. Fermented foods increase the good bacteria in your gut and work exponentially better than probiotics.
3. However, if fermented food is not an option probiotics is the next best choice and will also increase good bacteria in the digestive tract increasing the health of the digestive system.
4. Eliminate or greatly reduce refined sugar in your diet. Sugar can cause an overgrowth in yeast which is linked to increased permeability in the intestinal lining.
5. Eat foods high in fermentable fiber like sweet potato, yams and yucca.
6. Eliminate or decrease gluten in your diet. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye and barley and is linked to causing damage to the lining of the intestines.
7. Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDS) have the potential to damage the lining of your intestines and cause leaky gut.
8. Increase the amount of Vitamin D in your diet by getting out in the sun or eating more eggs.
9. Increase the amount of zinc in your diet, eating pumpkin seed, dark chocolate, and ribs.
10. Decrease stress. Make a worry list and determine everything that’s causing stress in your life.  Take care of the things that can be solved easily and develop a plan for those things that will take time.
11. Antibiotics can kill off too many good bacteria causing a shift in the good/bad ratio causing dysfunction within the digestive tract. Fermented foods and/or probiotics are needed reverse damage done by antibiotics.

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