Why Most Diet's Fail
In my last Facebook Live post, I began the first of a four-part series on: "Why Most Diets Fail." In this first series, I talk about the importance of knowing your food intolerances before you can begin a weight loss program. Inflammation is a key offender that prohibits you from achieving your weight loss goals, and you can’t heal inflammation if you don’t know the root cause. In this video post, I take you step-by-step on how to eliminate certain foods from your diet and then reintroduce them back one-by-one, to find those food culprits that may be prohibiting you from losing weight.
To take it a step further, I wanted to educate you on how inflammation triggers a host of other problems including our hormones to be thrown out of whack. Especially during menopausal years. When just one hormone is thrown out of balance, it can throw off your entire system.
Take cortisol, your body’s main stress hormone. When you experience stress, the adrenal glands pump out cortisol to help the body deal with a perceived life-threatening event. It doesn’t know whether it’s a lion chasing you or if you’re sitting in traffic and you’re running late. Cortisol’s primary duty is to protect you, but can backfire when it’s in a chronic state, which is most prevalent in our modern-day lifestyle.
Living with food allergies, food sensitivities or food intolerances, can cause high cortisol levels. The most common offenders are wheat and other gluten-containing products, dairy, corn, soy, sugar, artificial sugars, and processed foods. These are the foods that we tend to crave and overdo the most, and are most commonly causing us negative reactions. I understand it can be a total bummer to tell you that the cookies and milk you look forward to for dessert every night is making you sick. But, as I experienced in my own life, when I eliminated dairy, gluten, sugar and processed foods, my health and mood improved, I lost a substantial amount of weight (25lbs. total), and I had more energy than I did in my 20’s and 30’s. And this was achieved without dieting! The body can react with an immune or inflammatory response to just about any food, so the best way to assess what the body reacts to is with an elimination diet.
In addition, over-exercising, extreme dieting, and eating disorders also raise cortisol. So just like your nightly bowl of ice cream can impact your cortisol, on the flip side, starving the body of calories and nutrients can have detrimental effects on blood sugar balance that triggers cortisol release and taxes the adrenal glands. In addition, the body can interpret too much intense exercise as stress. This is because the body can’t tell the difference between running a marathon and running away from a pack of wolves.
What happens when we have chronic high levels of cortisol?
People who have chronic high cortisol output for so long, their adrenal glands lessen the production output of cortisol. The adrenal glands simply can’t keep up with the chronic levels of stress anymore. This is when you feel completely exhausted as soon as you wake from a night’s sleep, that lasts throughout the day. This is often referred to as living with “Chronic Fatigue or Adrenal Fatigue.”
The purpose of my sharing this information with you is to underline the importance of knowing your food intolerances, and be mindful of how much stress you are living with, to not only reduce inflammation and lose weight, but to keep your cortisol in check. In addition to stress reduction, it is important to be your own detective to uncover your food intolerances, to gain optimal health.
If you missed my Facebook post about food intolerances, you can listen to it here: http://bit.ly/2fca5f1
This week, Wednesday, September 21, 6:30 p.m. Eastern, I will be presenting part-two of this four-part series on Facebook live, about the importance of getting organized and planning to stay on track with healthy eating during the work week. I’ll be sharing tips, tools and shortcuts to keep you eating healthy throughout your day, even when you’re on the road. No excuses!
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I WOULD LOVE TO MEET YOU!!! SEE INFORMATION BELOW ON MY UPCOMING WORKSHOP:
Join me at The Revolution of Consciousness, Sunday, September 24, 2017, at the Reggie Lewis Center, 1350 Tremont Street, Roxbury Crossing, Massachusetts. I'll be doing a brief workshop on "Finding Health in a Modern World," at 10:30 a.m., as well as exhibiting. I hope to see you!
Finding My Way Notes of Inspiration, a compilation of quotes and notes of inspiration taken from my first memoir Finding My Way, Facing My Journey With Courage, is now available on Amazon! This new volume contains a series of quotations from my previous work and words of wisdom for a variety of circumstances. Each page offers advice covering a number of important topics, including keeping your body healthy, taking time to self-nurture, the importance of removing negative energies, and much more. This book encourages you to keep learning and growing. Every setback is just another opportunity in disguise! Take a moment out of your day, sit down, and engage with the advice presented in this book. These small lessons are the perfect encouragement to contemplate your own life and the changes you would like to make. This would make the perfect gift for the holidays!
Contact me for a free Discovery Session to explore how I can support you on your journey towards a healthy lifestyle, and how to become your own health advocate.
To your health and happiness,
Donna Markussen www.FindingYourHealth.com info@FindingYourHealth.com 781-354-4075