What To Do Right Now

It won’t be long before you know what’s going on in your body that’s causing your cravings, your urge to overeat or reach for junk foods. Make a change, however small, then build on it. The perfect time to start is never going to magically appear. To make lasting changes, you have to work with where you are now, to take that first step. First, discover what imbalances in your body are blocking your weight loss. You will know why your body is hanging onto excess weight and which internal systems have to come into balance to resolve this struggle. Food is meant to nourish you. It is meant to be enjoyed too. And you will feel so much better as you reclaim your vitality! A scale of 1 to 7 was applied to the answers, and the students rated themselves on the same questions at the end of the course. With this scale, we calculated these percentages. Is it affecting your weight? By the end of Part 1, you will know which biochemical imbalances fuel your cravings or your desire to overeat. And which imbalances are making you store more fat, especially perhaps around your belly.

Back In Business

This mini course takes you on a deep dive into each imbalance. Don’t worry if you have a lot of different imbalances in your body. Sometimes when one system becomes out of balance, it can affect other systems. Part 2 will help you bring your whole body into balance. This may be because your blood sugar levels have dropped. No wonder, it’s a struggle and you end up eating! Or perhaps, no matter what you do, you just can’t shift the weight, particularly around your belly. These hormones are released when your blood sugar is not in balance. Mandy is a successful businesswoman. As a project manager, she’s brilliant at making sure that everything happens according to plan and that her projects come in on time. But when I first saw her, by the time she got home she was worn out and just wanted to collapse on the sofa. She’d also been steadily gaining weight, particularly around her belly. If she didn’t have them on her, then she couldn’t eat them! However, the plan backfired.

Here, There And Everywhere

As she ruefully said, she just ended up going to the vending machine for a chocolate bar. It’s not like I should even be hungry, she added. I have breakfast on the train on the way to work, so it’s only been a few hours since I ate. When I delved a little deeper, I found her typical breakfast was a large coffee and a croissant. Unfortunately, this breakfast was causing her blood sugar levels to soar, then crash. This was the point at which she felt she needed the biscuits. In a desperate bid to bring her blood sugar levels back up again, her body was making her crave sugar. If your body is making you crave something sweet to bring itself back into balance, these cravings are hard to resist. Because of the way she ate, Mandy was on a cycle of blood sugar highs and lows throughout the day. This cycle was depleting her energy and making it hard to cut back on the sugary foods. Your blood contains glucose, a type of sugar. To stay healthy, you need this sugar to stay within narrow limits.

One Day Like This

Your body works very hard to stop your blood sugar from going too high or dropping too low. When your blood sugar rises, you release insulin, which moves this sugar into your cells. By contrast, when your blood sugar drops, you release glucagon to move sugar from your cells into your blood. This moving of sugar in and out of your blood enables your body to keep your blood sugar levels within the correct limits. Now, imagine this cycle and the predicament your body is in. The higher your blood sugar, the more insulin it needs to release. Insulin is often described as the ‘fat storage’ hormone. When your insulin levels are high, this signals to your body to store fat. If you constantly have high insulin levels, you are likely to gain weight. It also becomes harder to lose weight. Insulin is not a bad guy. But like everything in our body, it needs to be in balance. When your blood sugar drops too low, one of the ways in which your body gets it back within the correct limits quickly is to make you crave carbohydrates, particularly refined carbs, such as sugar, white bread and white flour. This is why you may find yourself wanting biscuits, cake, chips or pasta. These foods release their sugars quickly, causing your blood sugar levels to rise rapidly. Caffeine can also push your blood sugar up, so you might find you crave a coffee. It is easy to overeat and make poor food choices when your blood sugar drops too low. Your body is desperately trying to bring your blood sugar levels back into balance. It is not designed to handle the ready availability of sugar and refined carbs. It is not just food cravings that can be a problem when your blood sugar drops too low. To get your blood sugar levels up, your body releases stress hormones. It releases the same stress hormones in both instances. The stress hormone cortisol increases your appetite and causes you to store fat around your belly. Your blood sugar will fluctuate up and down, but ideally should stay within limits. How you get into a cycle of your blood sugar rising too high and dropping too low The more refined carbs you eat, the higher your blood sugar will rise. Your body then releases even more insulin, which can make your blood sugar drop too low. And, as we looked at above, this can trigger you to reach for yet more sugary and refined carbs. If another stressful situation occurs, your liver can quickly convert the fat back to energy. What food did you reach for?