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Eating Less But Gaining Weight? Do These Successful Steps Instead.
How can it be possible to be eating less but gaining weight?
It seems counterintuitive, especially since most of us have been told for decades that weight loss is simply a game of calories– eat less than you burn, and you will lose weight. But it is indeed possible to be eating less but gaining weight.
Why? What if I told you that calorie restriction doesn’t get to the root cause, and it often even backfires? All too often prioritizing calorie restriction actually ends up leading to a slow metabolism, leading to major fatigue, cravings, thyroid issues, and making your body hold onto body fat. This is what so often causes weight loss resistance in women.
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Is PCOS an Autoimmune Disease?- A Functional Dietitian Talks
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Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, or PCOS, affects women at a rate of about 6-12% of women of reproductive age in the US, making it one of the most common causes of female struggles with fertility. PCOS is usually classified as an endocrine disorder. As research stands at this time, there is no exact proof that PCOS is an autoimmune disease. But it very well could be. Or at least the two are likely to coexist in women.
To understand what links PCOS has with autoimmunity, we first have to understand what’s going on in the body of a woman experiencing PCOS and autoimmune disease. We need to know what underlying dysfunctions are driving PCOS and autoimmune disease – and then understand why these two conditions may be linked. We’ll discuss all of this below.
What is an autoimmune disease?
According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, an autoimmune disease is a condition in which the body’s natural defense system (the immune system) can’t differentiate your own cells from foreign cells. There are different types of autoimmune conditions in which certain cells or tissues in the body may be involved. “Foreign cells” often refer to food particles that, because of improper immune responses relating to autoimmunity, the body sees as harmful and mobilizes an attack against them.
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Are Supplements Good For You?
How do I know if I need to supplement? And really, are supplements good for you anyway? I make sure that my clients know exactly why a supplement may or may not be helpful.
Reasons to Take Supplements
Nutrition supplements, when used safely and appropriately, can be an effective strategy to complement dietary and lifestyle changes. For my clients with PCOS or gut health conditions, I always make sure that we first focus on implementing the most supportive nutrition and lifestyle changes. However, changing behaviors can be difficult to do. So one reason to take supplements is to support progress in the early stages while my clients are still learning to form new habits.
Another reason to take supplements is that some conditions require more potent support than nutrition and lifestyle changes alone can provide. For example, women with intense period paid can experience significant relief with supplementation of good, high dose fish oil, but they might find it hard to get a high enough dose through diet alone.
Lastly, some medications can deplete essential nutrients. With medication use, nutritional supplementation can help replete insufficient levels of nutrients in the body. For example, common medications prescribed to women with PCOS may include hormonal birth control or Metformin, both of which can deplete nutrients and would be a reason to take supplements.
While there are many reasons to take nutritional supplements, choosing the right ones for your health needs is key.
How to Supplement Smartly
Three important criteria I use when choosing supplements for my clients include efficacy, quality and dose. Personalized care from a nutrition or health professional trained in safe and effective supplement use is essential.
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Essential First Step to Enable Weight Loss
Going Beyond Calories for Weight Loss
Have you ever tried restricting calories (i.e. eat less food) to try to lose weight? How did that go for you?Well, you may have heard that calories aren’t the only important part about nutrition for losing weight. You also know that some type of eating healthy food is probably important along with reducing calories to lose weight.
What I want to share with you today is the essential first step to take to enable weight loss. And it’s not just about less calories— it actually has very little to do with calories!
I’m talking about blood sugar balance.
Blood Sugar Balance for Weight Loss
What do you think of this idea that your weight loss efforts are hinging on blood sugar balance? You may think that it can’t be true, that it’s rather about willpower, or all just about dropping calories. Or you might even say, Victoria— my blood sugar is always normal when I see my doctor!
I want you to know that blood sugar balance really is critical. We can’t lose weight unless we start with supporting blood sugar balance. This is essential for EVERYONE, not just people who already have prediabetes or diabetes. Blood sugar balance is also the most fundamental need in treating PCOS, which is much more a metabolic type of syndrome at the root that has reproductive hormone side effects, rather than a reproductive hormone issue as a root cause.
Because this is so important, I made the YouTube video about weight loss above to literally draw this out for you (whiteboard time!) so that you can see how blood sugar balance and weight management are tightly connected. And not only weight, but also cravings, energy levels, and mood.
Your Step by Step Plan
- Start here: watch the video above to understand why blood sugar balance should be your first priority in your journey to lose weight.
- Download my FREE step-by-step guide to the Protein + Fat + Fiber Method. This is the essential first step to enable weight loss. This method is the first step in my process I’ve developed called— a sustainable framework to unlock weight loss & get your energy back.
FREE GUIDE download: Protein + Fat + Fiber Method.
Join my metabolic health & weight loss program, The 4 Method, that gets to the heart of the blood sugar / insulin / weight connection!
The 4 Method Program is an online, live group program and community for people who want to lose weight by a better method. The 4 Method helps people overcome weight loss resistance & heal a tired metabolism through a sustainable approach that offers structure, consistency, and a clear framework to achieve progress daily so you can finally start to take back your control over this process of blood sugar balance & weight management.
Additional Resources:
Check out my recipes balanced by the Protein + Fat + Fiber Method.
Learn more here about why I am so dang passionate about root causes solutions to health issues.
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How I Built a Faith-Inspired Nutrition Business
“I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
~John 10:10
Where I am now is a complete work of the Holy Spirit. I am an entrepreneurial dietitian pairing my message of “faith-inspired wellness” with functional nutrition to help women optimize their health and fertility. But there is no way that I could have stepped into such a call if not for God’s initiation and my receptivity.
I have come to understand that God wants to enliven every part of our lives and radically guide us at every turn. Our role is to be receptive and persevere in prayer to daily recommit ourselves to his way. There were three pivotal seasons of my life where God enriched my journey and led me to my faith-inspired business.
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Is a Leaky Gut Causing my symptoms?
Leaky gut may be causing your digestive issues among other health issues.
If you’ve read any headlines or social media posts about health & wellness in the past few years, you’ve probably come across the hot topic of gut health. And rightly so.
The health of one’s gut, or digestive system, and more specifically the stomach and small and large intestines, is of utmost importance to the health of the entire body. It’s the epicenter of food transformation. Food comes in through the mouth (where part of digestion actually takes place with chewing & action of the saliva) and then gets chemically broken down to eventually be absorbed into the “inside” of the body in the bloodstream, where the nutrients are delivered to all parts of the body.
And get this- the gut is really one large canal that starts in the mouth and esophagus and can technically be considered “outside” of the body. That’s because things that come in through the mouth do not go directly into the bloodstream, which is considered “inside”. Pretty interesting to think about it that way. What is the need for this preliminary period of food breakdown while remaining sort of “outside” the body?
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Can Diet Cure My…?
Can diet cure my…
…diabetes?
…high cholesterol?
…PCOS?
…arthritis?
I hear family, friends, & clients all the time say things like this:
Diabetes is just genetic. Everyone in my family has it, so it’s just inevitable.
OR…
I have high cholesterol but it’s ok, I’m on medication.
Is it possible that diet can cure these issues?
And by “diet”, I mean simply changing what we eat.
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What is “Real Food”?
Just ground beef, veggies, olive oil & spices! You’ll see the phrase “real food” a lot around here. So let me explain what I mean by that.
It sounds funny, right? Would I really eat anything other than food that is real? Most people would promptly answer a resounding “no!”.
Is an apple real, naturally occurring as a food? Yes! 🙂 How about eggs? Yeah, those too. Is my collagen powder real? It doesn’t look like something straight out of the ground or from the farm. But yes, collagen is a real food and a pretty cool one too. Collagen extraction requires beneficial processing that helps turn big protein into little collagen peptides in powder form. What about my protein bar? Hmm…maybe.
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Welcome to Wonderfully Made Nutrition!
Hello! I am so excited to FINALLY move forward & take the plunge into my nutrition counseling & helping people heal with real food. I have so many things I desire to share: my innovative & nourishing recipes, the truth + debunk the many myths regarding food, my personal health journey & nutrition expertise, and healing with food for healthy body & soul.
A little more about me…
