“I’m doing everything right, but I’m not seeing results. What am I doing wrong?”
Even though my weight loss clients and most people in the Intermittent Fasting BETA program are experiencing awesome results, making deep connections, experiencing true food freedom and feeling better than ever; there are a few cases I come across where people either are not seeing the results they expect, not seeing the results that everyone else is getting and wondering what’s wrong with them – or they may even feel worse – and they don’t know why.
There are multiple factors that could be at play in these cases, but this email is going to deal with the biggest one I see (and have experienced personally). And that, my friends, is STRESS.
Yep. Keep reading because the ubiquitous state of stress negates all of our healthy efforts toward progress, especially when it comes to balancing hormones, fasting and using a keto or low carb approach to lose body fat and heal.
The stress response is our survival mechanism. It’s a key part of our physiology designed to help us deal with actual threats including dangerous physical attacks, disease, toxins or famine. We are intricately wired to perceive and overcome stressors.
In general, the brain (hypothalamus/pituitary) senses that danger is eminent and sends signals to the adrenal glands which secrete stress hormones – namely cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline.
Cortisol raises blood sugar (glucose) so that our muscles can take up the glucose (energy) to fight or flee the “perceived threat”. The rise in blood glucose sends signals to our pancreas to release insulin, a storage hormone. Insulin will first send glucose into the liver and muscles for use and short term storage. If the glucose isn’t used in physical exertion and the cells reach max storage capacity; the excess will be kept for safe keeping in fat cells – increasing both fat storage while also blocking fat oxidation (aka fat burning)…just in case survival is at stake and we need it for later.
Isn’t the body freaking amazing!?
The tricky part with these mechanisms is we rarely have actual physical threats in modern life and famine is pretty much impossible since we have 24:7 access to food (thank God!)…yet the stress response is alive and well in all of us. Yay, Survival!
And for some of us – myself included – this system is more sensitive and trigger happy than other people – which is one reason why some people rock keto or intermittent fasting (or XYZ healing protocol) and others don’t.
So for those of us who are trying to lose body fat – who want to get into ketosis periodically to experience all the metabolic, anti-inflammation and brain benefits, it can be really tough to get there if we’re one of those “stress types”. This cortisol response and the downstream effects will not make the process easy – and for some, it’s physiologically impossible until this stress pattern is shifted.
So, what to do?
Well, I’ll tell you what NOT to do first – and that would include NOT tightening up your macros, NOT restricting calories and NOT exercising more. NO NO NO…Can you see now how the body will perceive all of those efforts as stressors, particularly if done in excess or out of mental desperation?
Yep – these old approaches are counterproductive for most people. Especially for women in per-menopause/menopause – our stress tolerance can drop drastically with these hormonal shifts, so what may have worked in our 20s and 30s will not work now.
OK – Here’s what TO do:
First and most important – go inside yourself:
Breathe.
Deeply.
Even Deeper.
Shift your mindset.
Develop a prayer or mantra, like: “I am safe.” “All is well.” “I’m so happy and grateful for…” “Jesus, take the wheel.” 🙂
We need to teach ourselves new neural patterns, relax the nervous system and stop perceiving every bad photo, financial hit, symptom, news story, work event, email and honking horn as a threat. We need to stop stressing out about food, macros, ketones, what’s “wrong” with us, and hating our bodies. We need to go inside with self-reflection, deep gratitude and peaceful thoughts and then:
Go outside:
Literally…we need to move and play. We need to sleep and relax too. Take breaks – put the phone down. And focus on nourishing our bodies with real food and enjoying our people – and take some time away from numbing ourselves with refined carbohydrates, comfort foods, Social Media, TV and wine. < the last 3 are my challenges 🙂
From a Functional Medicine perspective, systemic stressors that are beyond our thoughts are real issues – I’m not discounting them – I work with them everyday and have had my own healing journey with many of them – things like food intolerances, mold toxicity, heavy metals, EMFs, gut imbalances, hormonal imbalances, nutrient deficiencies, etc… But even if you spend thousands of dollars and hours testing, removing and “fixing” all these things, if the inside is still wired for stress, you will likely struggle with a new exposure or condition if the foundation isn’t addressed. Stress effects the gut, the brain, detoxification, the immune system, skin and hormones which means that it’s often the root root cause of all the common functional conditions we encounter today.
Stress is THAT important when it comes to healing.
Make sense? Tell me your stress story. What can you start doing today that lowers your stress trigger? Reply to this post or on social media. I’d love to hear from you. <3
xo,
Ev
