To help us understand the predicament we’re in when it comes to weight loss in the modern world, let’s talk about our tribal cave sisters, Lucy and Martha.
Have you ever gone on a ‘diet’ and succeeded for a short time? You lose some weight and you start to feel really good about yourself. Then you seem to stop, and you reach a plateau. You try hard to get ‘off’ the plateau, but nothing shifts. Then you notice ever so slowly weight creep back on. You go back to your original weight.. or even heavier.
What makes all this even worse, is what happens next. Our judgemental mind kicks in and tells us we’ve failed, yet again. It will tell us things like we’re undisciplined, weak, we will compare ourselves to others who are ‘skinny’, we will wish we looked like them. We will feel angry with ourselves or depressed or hopeless. Everyone else seems to be able to do it, just not ‘me’.
I’ve been there many times, and so have most of my clients when they start working with me. So if this is resonating with you, keep reading. You are not alone, and you’re not any of those things your mind might be saying to you.
The thing is, we’re not built for weight loss (especially when we eat the modern diet that isn’t species appropriate!). And this is where Lucy and Martha come in to help you understand this.
Our bodies are designed to ‘store’ fat. For Martha and Lucy, food was scarce most of the time. If we didn’t become good at storing ‘energy’, we would have perished. Those who were the best at storing, were more likely to survive.
When there was plenty of food, Martha gained weight like a boss. But Lucy struggled. If Martha had a modern mind, she might like at her friend and be jealous if the fact she could eat anything and not gain weight! But of course during harsh winters or famines, it would not have been Lucy who would have survived.
As Martha and Lucy are our ancestors, we now carry their fat conserving genetic makeup. Those like Lucy, perished.
The reality of our modern world is that now ‘food’ and food like substances, are plentiful. There’s no famines in western countries, high energy food is everywhere, and we don’t have to hunt or gather. Our energy intake has risen rapidly (especially since the implementation of the anti human dietary guidelines) and our energy output dropped dramatically.
Yet our body hasn’t changed. We’re still genetically programmed to store fat. So if we go on a diet and start reducing intake, what does our body do? Starts conserving! It actively resists you taking off weight.
And this conserving can actually cause permanent changes in our metabolisms.
Plus if we lose weight the ‘traditional’ way of eating less and moving more, we will be starving and our appetites can be increased when we start eating again.
So in reality, our struggle to keep weight off really is natural. Fighting our biological systems is nigh impossible. It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s in our DNA. Can you also see the futility of balancing calories??? It’s like Sisyphus, who in Greek mythology was condemned to pushing a boulder up a hill, but never reaching the top before it crashed back down again. It’s a struggle, it’s exhausting, and it’s futile. It requires a Herculean effort with a very low chance of success.
Enter hope (and not the hope that ‘kills you’ if you’re a Ted Lasso fan like I am 😉)
And a chance to understand how to bio hack this system through our hormones! It’s not all lost, because when we can understand weight loss/gain from a hormonal perspective, we have a lot more insight in to how to bio hack our DNA.
Firstly we need to consider that the standard diet that is high in grains, sugars, processed foods and low in nutrient dense fats and proteins will always work against you. It does nothing to hack your hormones. It’s devoid of any real nutrition, and will keep you locked in this Herculean effort and horrible thoughts patterns that it’s all your fault.
So changing your food choices to be more aligned with a proper human diet of real food (meats, animal fats, some plant fats) and in season veggies (sorry, fruit except for a few berries are just sugar and little else) will help to hack your hormones. No packaged processed foods.
The hormone I am talking about here is the hormone insulin. This is the hormone that literally saved our species. Martha, who gained weight like a boss, would have been insulin resistant so that when food was plentiful, she stored fat. Insulin is our fat storage hormone! Lucy though, was more likely to be insulin sensitive which means she struggled to store energy. Ironically, in our modern world, this is the goal for us now, to be more insulin sensitive so that we don’t keep storing and instead use up our stored energy from our fat cells!
When we eat in a way that can hack our hormones, weight loss, health gain and a thriving mind and body is the result.
We can put our trust in our bodies to just do it’s thing, and we can get on with life. The thing with insulin is it is our king hormone. Once that’s balanced and working for us, the flow on affect in our bodies is enormous.
Can you see then, why you’re not a problem to be solved? This is actually the topic of my presentation in the upcoming Low Carb Lifestyle Long Weekend. A 3 day summit dedicated to women’s health to help you bio hack your hormones to get the health you absolutely deserve!
Isn’t it about time you started working with your body, not against it??? It took me till I was 40 to start to learn and understand this. Next year I will be 50, and I’ve never felt better or been leaner, and I haven’t had to worry about my weight for 5 years now.
Imagine the mind space you can clear in your head if you could see you could stop worrying about all that too… and spend a whole lot more time living and doing things that bring your heart joy???
Kind of appealing, yes????
And it’s not a fad or a diet or anything other than a chance to align a lot more with our ‘humanness’, stop dieting forever, get back you health and chuff off to live your life.
You can watch the entire summit for free. Honestly, this is a gift that I would have given anything to have had when I was 40, fat, pre diabetic and miserable thinking I was a failure!!!
https://thelowcarblifestylehub.vipmembervault.com/
The Health & Healing Coach
Founder of The Low Carb Lifestyle Hub.