At the same time, there are many people who eat healthy, unprocessed food and exercise but are still overweight. That is because there may be many other stressors and dysfunctions in the body, which need to be discovered and solved. And there may be also many surprising ways to jump start weight loss, which you haven't considered before.
The Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG)
HCG has been safely used to enhance and accelerate weight loss for over 60 years. HCG is a naturally occurring hormone produced in large quantities during the early stages of pregnancy. This hormone allows the body to mobilize fat and use it as energy for both mother and baby. For weight loss, research suggests a significantly less dose or injection (approximately 125 IU to 200 IU) results in a weight loss of a pound per day, and often more, when accompanied by a very low calorie diet of approximately 500 calories. In a famine state, the very low calorie intake is what activates the hCG hormones to seek those stubborn fat stores that you want to get rid of.
The amount of weight loss depends on many factors including how much excess weight you have and how much weight needs to be lost. On average, most patients will lose approximately 15-20 pounds in a 30-40 day cycle.
Over time people have questioned hCG's safety and whether the hCG diet does more harm than good. Watch as our health coach, Sherry Allen, addresses just that.
There may be other benefits of using this hormone like: reducing hunger feelings (while hCG is in your bloodstream), contributing to balancing of other hormones in the body, and keeping you from losing muscle while you diet.
Managing Your Set-point
The basic premise of the set-point theory is that the body has a built in weight regulating mechanism that will tend to keep your weight in a physiologically established comfortable range. Maybe you lost weight in the past, only to gain it back after a few months. Despite initial weight loss success, your body will tend to go back to your "normal" increased weight.
So what do you do when your set point is not where you want it? A new nutrition and exercise regimen for a sustained period of time will help change your set point. Don't do crash dieting or extreme exercise, since this can actually shift your set point in the wrong direction.
Certain medications like antidepressants, mood modulators, birth control pills, synthetic hormones, blood pressure medication and many more can also increase the body's weight set point and stimulate weight gain. There are, however, medications which have the opposite effect and lower the body's weight set. Thus, they can be used to aid in weight loss.
Decreasing Leptin Resistance
Leptin is an important hormone which stimulates metabolism, reduces appetite and signals the body to burn fat. A majority of overweight individuals with a difficulty of losing weight have varying degrees of leptin resistance. This results in a leptin deficiency in the hypothalamus and so multiple mechanisms are activated to increase fat stores, as the body perceives this as a state of starvation.
There are many factors that can negatively impact leptin levels including: fructose and simple carbs consumption, overeating, lack of sleep and high stress, high insulin levels, exercising too much or too little, or doing the wrong type of exercise, grain and lectin consumption.
Medications like Byetta and Symlin can contribute to a decrease in leptin resistance. These can have good results if given in conjunction with other metabolic treatments and following a healthy diet and lifestyle. In a randomized, double-blind placebo controlled, cross-over trial, it was found that short-term use (less than 4 months) of the leptin sensitizing medication, resulted in significant weight loss in 65% of individuals.
Solving Thyroid Dysfunctions
An imbalance of thyroid hormones, specifically hypothyroidism or thyroid hormone conversion disorders, can make it difficult or impossible to lose weight. To determine if you have thyroid issues, ask your doctor to test TSH, Free T4, Free T3, and reverse T3 (RT3). The right thyroid treatment begins with the right thyroid testing! Only by using an integrative approach will your doctor be able to correctly determine the state of your thyroid and prescribe the treatment that works best for you. Once you feel more stable in this regard, your body will have more necessary resources to fight overweight problems.
Ruling Out Hypothalamic Obesity Disorder
When the hypothalamus does not function properly it can affect your thyroid's ability to take up T4 and convert it to T3. In this situation, hypothalamic obesity disorder can develop. With this condition, your nervous system continues to react as if you are starving, and you continue to gain weight.
Even with severe caloric restriction and high exercise, if you have hypothalamic obesity disorder, your metabolism is so impaired that it focuses on storing calories, rather than burning them, causing continued weight gain. In hypothalamic obesity disorder, there can also be an overproduction of insulin, which can further contribute to obesity.
Make sure to discuss all the above-mentioned dysfunctions when assessing your health status so you can finally obtain the results you've been waiting for.
