But sometimes, when it comes to health and wellbeing, the outside can be a reflection of a few things not working so well on the inside. When it comes to weight loss or weight gain, far too often people think (and are sometimes told by other health professionals!) that it’s just a case of eating less/more and exercising more/less. While this can be partly true, our experience with hundreds of patients shows that actually, there is usually a lot more at play.
Your health and wellbeing
At Practical Naturopathy, we’re not so interested in your weight (i.e. the number on the scales) as we are your body composition.
This is the breakdown of what you’re actually made up of (bone, fat, muscle and fluid) and gives us a lot more clues on how we can support your body and overall health and wellbeing.
Underlying drivers that can make it hard to lose weight.
Fatigue can come in many forms and it’s important we differentiate which one is pulling the strings for you (Spoiler alert: it could also be all of them).
Nutrition
We can’t really talk about weight loss without talking about nutrition, but the difference in the way we approach nutrition and weight loss, is through a purely individualised approach. For every time we get asked ‘should I be following a keto diet?’, we are equally asked about going paleo, plant-based eating, eating low fat, intermittent fasting, the Mediterranean Diet and meal replacement options! But our answer in all of these instances is usually ‘it depends’.
Too often we see people who have tried everything and still can’t seem to shift the extra kilos. They have done all the diets and followed them to the letter, but still, nothing seems to budge. We believe the reason for this is simple: they aren’t eating the way their body’s need them to eat in order to be healthy. We have to remember that many weight loss programs are based on large groups of people and while the researchers in us understand this approach, at the end of the day, this large group of people is still not YOU. You are unique and we believe your nutrition should be too.
We believe that food is medicine and everyone’s medicine is different. Our naturopaths will work with you to identify a nutrition prescription to suit your needs as well as your lifestyle. There’s a reason why our clinic is called Practical Naturopathy. Even the best, well-intended prescription won’t make a skerrick of difference if they can’t be implemented. As trained health coaches, our naturopaths will not only work with you to come up with your nutritional plan, but also help you find a way to implement it into your daily life.
Hormonal imbalances (e.g. menopause)
Hormones can absolutely wreak havoc with your weight when they are out of balance, especially during transition periods like menopause. Many women become increasingly frustrated about not being able to shift the weight despite doing all the right things. In these instances, we need to zoom back out and look at what is out of balance in your body. Only then after rebalancing these issues will your body start to cooperate and you will notice healthy, sustained weight loss.
But hormones aren’t just the reproductive kind. Stress hormones, metabolic hormones and thyroid hormones can all play a role into why you might not be losing weight or finding it hard to lose weight. Our naturopaths may recommend additional testing to investigate what your hormones are doing so we can then develop a specific strategy to address what is going on.
Stress and adrenal insufficiency (adrenal fatigue)
One of the biggest hinderances to weight loss is chronic stress. When we go through periods of stress, our bodies can feel as if they are ‘under attack’. This can set off our internal panic alarm as our cells worry about getting adequate nourishment and trying to do all they can to ensure we have enough energy to ‘survive’. This can result in us ‘holding on’ to our fat stores so that we have a backup plan if we need it.
For those people in this category, it can often become increasingly annoying as they further reduce their kilojoules only to notice they still aren’t losing weight or more frustrating still, notice that they gain more weight! This is because when the body is already in this stressed state, not eating enough just reinforces the stressful environment and the cycle continues.
Our naturopaths will work with you to do two things at once: help you (and your body) feel less stress and lose weight at the same time. There are multiple strategies that we might use here, but as like all other approaches, this one will also be tailored to your individualised needs.
Toxicity
We have a saying in our clinic: give your body what it needs, and it will do what it’s supposed to do. At the most basic level, we need to be able to absorb nutrients and eliminate toxins, and being able to do this efficiently is key for our overall health and wellbeing. When it comes to weight loss, being able to detoxify and eliminate toxins is essential. If your body has a high toxin load that is not being cleared properly, this can affect your capacity to lose weight as cell signalling and metabolic processes slow down or even come to a standstill.
Some toxins, like heavy metals can be particularly bothersome making weight loss even more challenging than it needs to be. Heavy metals can stop the metabolic cogs from turning (a highly complex bodily process called methylation) leading to a backlog of hormones and chemicals that prevent the body from burning fat for fuel. If you have been trying everything to lose weight, but still not having any success, looking into your detoxification processes may be something your naturopath suggests. And just to be clear, we’re not talking about lemon-detoxes, water fasts or anything of that nature! A naturopathic detox program looks at ensuring your organs of detoxification (bowel, liver, kidneys and skin) are all working effectively, and if not, we give them a little TLC with nutrition, herbal medicine and nutrients.
