Weight Loss Options
Losing weight is not easy. It is even harder to keep from regaining lost weight. Weight loss drugs are becoming increasingly popular, but many have harmful side effects. And even with these drugs, most people gain back weight when they stop taking them.
Hormone Blockers
Many of the new weight loss drugs block a hormone linked to weight gain. The hormone is called GLP-1. Blocking this hormone makes you feel full longer because it slows the emptying of your stomach. It also tells your brain you are full, so you have less hunger. The GLP-1 blockers also prevent the liver from adding sugar to the bloodstream.
Protect Against Loss
Our bodies are tuned to avoid weight loss. When we lose weight, our bodies work hard to regain it. In ancient times, when food was scarce, that worked well. In today’s world of high-calorie packaged food, keeping weight off is difficult.
Lasting Loss
For lasting weight loss, we have to make lasting changes. Limit high-calorie foods and food with refined carbs like bread, rice, and noodles. Shift toward fresh meat, vegetables, and fruit. Don’t make drastic changes to your diet, continually improve your diet over time. When you get one win under your belt, look for another slight improvement you can make.
Healthy Food Relationships
A big part of weight loss is having a healthier relationship with food. Eight major chemicals in our body drive weight gain. Every single one of them is activated by stress. When we feel stressed, these chemicals are activated, and we tend to gain weight.
Chemical Control
Some of these chemicals are responsible for our intense craving for carbs. When we feel stressed, our body wants sugar and carbs. In the prehistoric past, when people were under stress, they needed to find a lot of calories quickly to prevent starvation.
Food Jackpot
Foods high in refined carbs and sugar trigger intense reward circuits in the brain. It’s like a slot machine jackpot but with food. The more high-fat, high-carb food we eat, the more we want the food rush.
Emotional Eating
When stressed, we can easily fall into a pattern of emotional eating. Because eating makes us feel good, it works, at least in the short term, to relieve some of our frustrations.
Manage Stress
To manage our weight, we have to manage our emotions and feelings. We can do this in a few ways.
Shush Self-Talk
We can start by monitoring our self-talk. We need to switch off the negative nannies we sometimes have inside. Often, our self-talk is self-critical, and critical self-talk makes us critical of others. Instead, talk to yourself as if you were someone you really cared about. Have compassion for yourself so you can have compassion for others. If you hear negative self-talk, shush it.
Feel Feelings
We can’t avoid our feelings. We need to check in with our feelings. Don’t ignore or squash feelings. We need to feel them. When you feel sad, call it what it is: sadness. Be honest with yourself about how you feel. Don’t tell yourself you feel fine when you don’t. When you feel nervous, don’t pretend you don’t.
Emotional Signals
Feelings are a good speedometer but not a good steering wheel. Feelings can tell us things, but they shouldn’t control us. Feelings can fool us. Feel them but manage them. Try to identify what is triggering the feelings that make you crave food. This will help us become aware of feelings that can trigger overeating.
Don’t Judge Yourself
When we are in a stressed state, we need some comforting self-talk. In the middle of a stressful situation, don’t judge yourself. Extend yourself grace, but try to limit the damage. If you are well into a bowl of ice cream when you recognize you are stress-eating, pause. Walk away for a few minutes. A pause can help us reestablish control.
Gratitude
Practicing gratitude is one of the best ways to improve our emotional health. This moves the focus away from us and our problems onto the many things for which we can be thankful. Too much navel-gazing is bad for the back and bad for the soul. Look outward and upward.
Exercise
Exercise doesn’t only burn calories; it burns stress. Burning up some stress turns off some of the weight gain chemicals. It is difficult to lose weight only with exercise, but it is hard to lose weight without it.
Practice Chilling
Practice ways to relax. We all need to set aside time every week, every day, and sometimes every hour to relax. Whether that is a walk outside, a quiet time alone, or simply some relaxation breathing during a break at work.
Task Management
One way to reduce stress is to manage our expectations of how much we can do in a given time. Most of us tend to schedule too many things in too short of time. This makes us stressed as we rush from one thing to the next.
Sleep
Sleep is vital for managing stress and, therefore, our weight. When we sleep poorly, it affects our hormones and our hunger chemicals. When we are tired, it is more difficult to resist poor-quality food.
Stick With It
When we develop bad eating habits like cravings for poor-quality food, these brain patterns are hard to change. They won’t change overnight. Don’t be discouraged if you have some setbacks. It can take years to reset our thinking and behaviour patterns. Slow, consistent change will win out in the end. Don’t expect immediate results. Expect slow, steady progress toward your goal.
