So you've been super dedicated to your new healthy lifestyle. You've been following the
diet; you've been exercising on the regular. At first, the weight was falling off, no problem.
But now, it's not, you've been told that you hit a weight loss plateau. But is that even
a real thing?
Let's discuss. But before we get started, I'm Dr. Zyrowski, and I'm here to help you
transform your health naturally because true health only comes naturally.
I was recently working with a lady who had lost 25 pounds. Now, she was super proud of
this accomplishment as she should be. But in order to get to her goal weight, she wanted
to lose another 20 pounds. So figuring, following the same path that led her to the first 25
pound drop, she persisted forward, following a low carb diet in order to lose more weight.
But there was only one problem, nothing happened. So she sharpened up her diet a little bit,
but still nothing happened. Many would say that she hit a weight loss plateau where other
professionals would say, "That's not even a real thing."
Let's go ahead and take a look at a few scenarios to help you understand the physiological roadblocks
that are stopping you from losing those last few pounds.
Now, there's no doubt that you and I both live in a time of high stress in our society.
I mean, between paying the bills, and taking care of your family, and the uncertainty that
comes along with this whole COVID thing; I mean the stress never ends, it seems.
And every time you think you have it under control, life throws you another curveball.
Unfortunately, this is a bit problematic when it comes to weight loss. Our bodies are not
designed to endure chronic stress.
As a result of chronic stress, our bodies go, and release a hormone called cortisol.
This cortisol sets off a whole cascade of negative events in the body. Some of the impact
it has on the body are things like insulin resistance, carb cravings, inability to lose
weight, or even weight gain.
So when you try to lose weight with all this going on in the body, you find your efforts
blunted, so we always have to focus on reducing stress. We can do this by practicing good
sleep hygiene.
We can limit our caffeine intake. We can exercise in order to reduce stress. We can also do
things like meditation with deep breath exercises in order to kickstart weight loss again.
It's very common for me to have an individual start care; and one of the first things we
see in their health history is that they've been dealing with thyroid issues for years.
It's like 20 million people who suffer from some sort of thyroid disease with women being
eight times more likely to have a thyroid disease than men.
But specifically, hypothyroidism can blunt your ability to lose weight. This is because
when the thyroid is underperforming, it is going to have an impact on your metabolic
function because the thyroid is a large regulator of your overall metabolism.
No matter how much you sharpen up your diet, or how hard you exercise, you can still have
a huge struggle with trying to lose weight or breaking through a weight loss plateau.
So if you want to take control of your weight, break through that plateau, and also, just
improve your overall health, it's very good to find a holistic doctor that can help you
balance your thyroid naturally.
Recently, an individual started care who is dealing with a weight loss plateau. She was
intermittent fasting and cutting calories. Now, this individual also has some underlying
conditions, but she was solely focused on losing weight, not fixing her problems.
Now when I start caring with people, I do a very in depth history to figure out what's
going on with them. And one of the things I discovered with her, which was not helping
the situation at all, is that, while intermittent fasting, she was drinking coffee with sugar
the whole time.
Now her situation is not unique. If you want to lose weight, you have to focus on healing
the body. And if you fail to address the underlying conditions, at some point you're going to
hit a roadblock on the journey to weight loss.
Now, this particular individual, of course, was intermittent fasting, doing something
that should have driven her blood sugar down, and done a lot of really good, healthy things.
But instead, she was driving it up with that sugar-filled coffee, she was driving up her
blood sugar, driving up her insulin levels, and of course, at that point, blunting weight
loss.
And I tell the people I work with all the time, "Our goal here is not to lose weight."
It just so happens to be a really good side effect, though, of getting yourself healthy.
So this is a very critical mindset shift, but if you want to lose weight, and break
through weight loss plateaus, don't focus on losing weight alone. Focus on balancing
hormones, reducing your blood sugar fixing your metabolism; as a result, weight loss
will come, and you'll get a whole lot healthier for it.
And as always, I never like to leave you guys hanging, so I will put links in the description
below to further solutions on all of the problems we're discussing in this video.
Now, sometimes we attach ourselves to certain diets that would guarantee us weight loss.
Now imagine this, you start following the ketogenic diet, and when you follow it you
start losing a lot of weight.
But then you plateau, so then from there, what you do is you go, and start exercising,
and you start losing weight again, which is really good. But then, you plateau.
At this point, you're super frustrated and your brain is about to explode, trying to
figure out why this keeps happening when you're specifically following a diet that is designed
to help you just keep losing a ton of weight.
You see, I have something I call the weight loss priority principle. First, we have to
fix the diet, and then we have to fix the underlying health conditions, and then we
have to start exercising. And if still from there we're not losing weight, we have to
look at calorie intake.
Now, the old model of calories in versus calories out is flawed in so many ways, yet it still
holds some truth. Now, if you have everything that I just mentioned previously in working
order, but you're continuing to not lose weight, then there's a good chance that you're probably
just eating too much food.
Sure, a lot of good foods on a low carb diet is definitely a good thing, however, too much
of a good thing isn't always a good thing. If you're consuming more calories than you're
burning, then you're going to either gain weight, or you're gonna hit a weight loss
plateau, so you have to cut back on food intake.
Now, if you want to learn more on how to break through a weight loss plateau, check out this
amazing mini-series I put together on how to naturally lower your blood sugar right
here.
A lot of people go to the store and they just find, like, a random supplement, and they
just take it. And they go, "Well, the natural approach didn't work for me," and it's simply
because you didn't do it right.