Is your weight spiralling in the wrong direction? Do those surplus kilos, particularly the persistent fat around your belly, refuse to shift, whatever you try? Are you struggling with hunger pangs and cravings?
If you’re doing all the right things, yet your weight is still creeping upwards, we’re here to help by uncovering the reasons behind your weight gain.
Science has come a long way since the belief that excess weight was simply down to too many calories and not enough movement. While energy in and energy out do play a major role, the situation is far more complex. In fact, difficulty in losing weight can be driven by many different factors.
Sadly, obesity levels are at record highs in the UK and many other countries. Medicine can offer little beyond weight loss drugs, but these often come with side effects like gastro-intestinal issues. Weight loss drugs are designed to suppress hunger, with some working on blood sugar control. However, they don’t address or correct the reasons why these body systems have become out of balance.
Once you discover what’s driving your weight gain, this knowledge will empower you to take action. Let’s have a look at some potential factors now.
One major determinant of your energy expenditure is your thyroid gland. Its acts like a gas pedal in your body, revving up energy use. Your thyroid produces the hormone thyroxine. This dictates the speed your cells burn fuel to release energy. If your thyroid is running sluggishly, your metabolic rate will slow down, and you’ll tend to gain weight.
Many people are unaware they have thyroid issues since GP tests often don’t pick up subtle reductions in function. Furthermore, most regular tests don’t evaluate factors like poor utilisation of thyroid hormones or auto-immune damage to the thyroid gland. The latter is only detectable by measuring thyroid antibodies.
Meanwhile, your adrenal glands have a major role to play in weight regulation by controlling how well your body manages its blood glucose levels. Disrupted blood glucose levels are a major contributor to weight gain. This is because when blood glucose and insulin levels are high, it’s harder for your body to burn stored fat as fuel. Fluctuations in blood sugar cause sugar cravings, too.
Long-term stress can adversely affect adrenal function, play havoc with blood sugar levels and reduce your body’s sensitivity to insulin, over time leading to weight gain.
Chronic inflammation is extremely common, and one of its undesirable effects can be to cause stubborn weight gain. Inflammation that doesn’t turn off when it should disrupts insulin signalling and hormone balance, including affecting the hormones regulating appetite. Manny modern-day factors contribute towards chronic inflammation. These include a nutrient-depleted diet, environmental toxins, poor digestive health, stress, and too little sleep.
Your DNA can influence how you metabolise nutrients. Genes affect your sugar and fat metabolism, as well as appetite regulation, all crucial for weight control.
Knowing your genetic picture can help inform where certain nutrients or lifestyle strategies may be helpful to support specific metabolic processes. For example, over- or under- expression of genes known as FTO and LEPR are associated with increased appetite, reduced sensitivity to the satiety hormone leptin, and higher levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin.
Our new Weight Management Testing Package is a five-part raft of functional tests designed to uncover the real reasons behind your weight gain. The tests evaluate how the factors outlined above may be interacting, with consequences for your energy balance. Some people, on the other hand, choose the test package because they are experiencing symptoms like fatigue, poor exercise recovery, or are concerned about cardiovascular risk.
Firstly, saliva and blood samples will comprehensively assess how your adrenals and thyroid are functioning. These results will indicate whether hormone imbalances are contributing to weight gain. Second, a genetic test, using a simple cheek swab, will analyse how your genes may be interacting with your environment to influence your nutrient and fat metabolism, appetite, and inflammation.
Thirdly, a blood test will check the levels of your blood fats, including triglycerides as well as the different fractions of cholesterol, all relevant to cardiovascular health. Finally, a further blood sample will reveal how well your body is controlling glucose levels by measuring Hb1Ac. This is a form of haemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells carrying oxygen around your body. This substance reflects average blood glucose levels over the previous few months.
Your results will be comprehensive and actionable; however, we do offer a professional interpretation service for your results by one of our expert practitioners if you choose.
Start your sustainable weight loss journey today by ordering your Weight Management Testing Package, or for more information book a FREE 15-minute Discovery Call.
If you want support with weight loss, why not book a FREE Discovery Call to see how Functional Medicine can help?
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