91: Eight Root Causes of Unwanted Weight-gain

Have you ever wondered how integrative health could revolutionize your weight management and overall wellness? This episode uncovers the hidden consequences of weight gain, including chronic fatigue and severe health complications, while offering a comprehensive approach to tackle them. Learn how managing insulin and leptin resistance can significantly boost your vitality and mental clarity. We emphasize the power of a balanced diet rich in whole foods, healthy fats, fiber, and protein paired with consistent aerobic and strength training. Explore the benefits of functional lab testing and targeted supplements like chromium, magnesium, and berberine to elevate your insulin sensitivity and overall well-being.

In the latter part, we delve into the role of stress management and gut health in weight control. Discover how adaptogens and supplements can regulate cortisol levels effectively, with salivary cortisol testing providing precise insights. We highlight the impact of the gut microbiome on metabolism and the importance of combating chronic inflammation with an anti-inflammatory diet and supplements like omega-3s and curcumin. Learn about hormone balancing foods, regular exercise, and toxin removal strategies to manage estrogen dominance and other hormonal imbalances. Finally, we spotlight the personalized health consultations by Love Energy Wellness, guiding you toward a healthier, more successful future. Stay tuned as we explore i

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:58

Hello, wellness seekers and boundary breakers, Welcome to another episode of Breaking Boundaries for Entrepreneurs, the podcast where we explore integrative health strategies to help you achieve your peak performance and extraordinary success. I'm your host and personal integrative health practitioner, jeffrey Mort, and today we're diving into a crucial topic that can make or break your wellness journey managing weight through integrative health. Now, as entrepreneurs, we often prioritize our business over a personal well-being I myself am guilty of that sometimes and this can lead to unwanted weight gain and associated health issues, and we're going to dive deep into that today. Most people have been misled to believe diet and exercise are the only solution, but what if I told you that by addressing the root causes of weight gain, that you could enhance your vitality, sharpen your mental clarity and drive your business forward with unstoppable energy? Stay with me as we uncover how integrative health can be the unique solution that you need. Hello, I'm Jeffrey Mort. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you're busy taking care of business, yet who's taking care of you? If you're ready to take your energy and performance to the next level in your life and your business, then this podcast is for you, because today you're going to start breaking boundaries of your mind, body and business with integrative health, and when you do that, your possibilities are limitless. I'm grateful you're here. Bring it together on how to avoid failure and reach your next level of success with integrative health. And for all the show notes and links, visit JeffreyMortoncom and click on the podcast button.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Okay, so let's start by understanding the hidden consequences of weight gain. It's more than just a matter of appearance. It really is. Excess weight can lead to things like chronic fatigue, reduced cognitive function and decreased productivity all detrimental to an entrepreneur's performance and it can also contribute to severe health complications things like diabetes, things like cardiovascular diseases and metabolic syndromes. These conditions not only threaten your health, but also impose substantial financial burdens due to poor performance, medical expenses and lost work days. Now, I don't claim to provide any medical advice on this program. I don't claim to treat, diagnose or cure disease, but what I do is I help you get to the underlying root cause of the problem, and that's what we're going to do here today. I've seen this in my clinical practice. I've seen countless case studies in my education as an integrative health practitioner, as a high performance health coach and even as a clinical hypnotist. Hypnosis can be profound for results in weight loss as well, but today we're focusing on integrative health and primarily functional lab testing and targeted protocols.

Speaker 1: 5:33

So how do we tackle this issue effectively? The answer lies, of course, as I just alluded to, in integrative health, which offers comprehensive and personalized approach to wellness. It's very bio-individualized, and you know I said in the intro about diet and exercise. Of course that plays a role in it, but, as you're going to discover in this episode, it takes a very personalized approach to wellness to overcome things, and that applies even to unwanted weight gain or uncontrollable weight gain or even uncontrollable weight loss. So, unlike conventional methods that focus on symptoms, integrative health addresses the root cause of weight gain and we're going to explore some key factors and natural solutions. That's right. I'm going to give you not not just a problem but the solutions as well that integrative health provides.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So first up you've probably heard of this before insulin resistance. When your cells don't respond effectively to insulin, it leads to elevated blood sugar levels and promotes fat storage. Now the insulin is like a key to the cell. That unlocks the opening so that the blood sugar can go in there. But when that, when the cell is resistant to the key to the insulin, it allows the blood sugar to stay elevated. It allows that glucose to stay in the uh in the blood and the glucose levels in the blood stay elevated. It allows that glucose to stay in the blood and the glucose levels in the blood stay elevated, which promotes fat storage.

Speaker 1: 7:08

So to combat this, you can incorporate things like a rich diet in whole foods, especially fiber. So many people miss that marker for the proper amount of fiber in their diet, and especially the healthy fats. So many people oh, I'm fat free, uh, you know, have to avoid fats. It's the healthy fats that we want to be able to balance the body with, as well as the fiber, as well as the protein, as well as and I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna say the c carbohydrates. So many people are afraid of carbohydrates and you know they think of carbohydrates. As you know, things like rice and pasta and starch and aerobic exercises are also crucial. So, yes, exercise plays a big role in it. Now, strength training, you know, maybe three days a week, every other day, those off days, maybe doing some steady state cardio. I'm not saying crush it with a 45 minute HIIT training or bootcamp or anything like that. Like that's too extreme and that could also cause damage. We'll talk a little bit more about that further in the episode.

Speaker 1: 8:27

So supplementation supplementation things like chromium and magnesium, and especially berberine, can improve insulin sensitivity. Now precision, at-home functional lab testing, like the stress mood metabolism test I'll link up some lab tests in today's episode for fasting insulin levels and hemoglobin A1c can provide insights into your insulin sensitivity. And what that does is it allows a practitioner like myself to be able to bio-individualize a wellness plan for you. So next up, we have something that's called leptin resistance. We talked a little bit about insulin resistance, leptin resistance. Leptin regulates appetite and energy expenditure, and resistance to this hormone can lead to increased food intake and decrease caloric expenditure. Now an anti-inflammatory diet. Adequate sleep that's a big one right there. Sleep is foundational for any wellness plan. So adequate sleep not just quantity but quality of sleep as well, as you hear me talk about so often and stress management techniques can help restore leptin sensitivity. Omega-3 fatty acids found in not just fish oil I don't want to generalize fish oil but in a high quality omega-3 supplement and natural foods like flax seed or chia seed, can also be particularly beneficial as well.

Speaker 1: 10:01

So next, thyroid Things like hypothyroidism can cause a slowdown in metabolism. That is like the governor of your metabolic function is your thyroid. So thyroid disorders can lead to weight gain and you know a lot of conventional practitioners will treat with thyroid medications and 90, I don't even want to give a percentage the majority of the time it's not a thyroid issue. It's an underlying root cause that the thyroid is responding to. But that's an episode for a different day. So nutritional support with things like iodine the thyroid needs iodine, the thyroid needs selenium, the thyroid needs zinc those are all essential for thyroid health. And then on top of that you can also apply adaptogenic herbs. These adaptogens, like ashwagandha and rhodiola, can also support thyroid function and they do that by calming the stress response in the body. So you know those adaptogenic herbs, they're not directly targeting the thyroid, they're targeting cortisol production which throws off the thyroid.

Speaker 1: 11:18

So comprehensive thyroid panels, including most practitioners, most primary care and medical doctors. Just look at TSH. That's thyroid stimulating hormone. It's not even a thyroid hormone, it comes from the pituitary gland. But the TSH it's important to know. But we also want to look at things like free T3 and free T4. Those are very important, as are thyroid antibodies, something that's called TPO. Antibodies can help to reveal thyroid imbalances and guide a personalized again bio-individualized wellness plan. Bio-individualized wellness plan that's all of those markers right there the free t3, the free t4, the tpo antibodies, the tsh those are all part of our lab that we use. That's called the stress mood metabolism lab. You can run this right at home with a, and then for the sex hormones and then for it's actually a blood spot test for the thyroid panel, for the TSH, free T3, free T4. And you know, conventional medicine also uses blood to look at TSH. But we're in functional medicine, we're looking at a different range.

Speaker 1: 12:42

I'm not going to get into the numbers right now because I just go on and on here and I want to get to this very next topic which is very important, and that is cortisol dysregulation. So from chronic stress leads to elevated cortisol levels and this promotes abdominal fat accumulation. Did I say that? Or did I say abominable Abdominal fat accumulation? So this is a biological survival mechanism. So this is a biological survival mechanism. When the body is under stress, it goes into what's called fight or flight or survival mode and in order to survive, it's going to accumulate and store fat reserves and it's going to accumulate that typically around the midsection, around the belly. So it's that belly fat and it's the chronic stress or the cortisol dysregulation that's a biological mechanism for survival. So stress reduction techniques such as meditation and yoga and mindfulness can lower cortisol levels and actually reduce weight.

Speaker 1: 13:48

And also nutritional interventions can also include things like adaptogens some of the ones we spoke of earlier, but also holy basil, also known as Tulsi, and supplements like phosphatidylserine is a big one as well. So salivary cortisol testing throughout the day Now this is different than blood cortisol testing that's really not as accurate as the salivary cortisol testing that functional medicine uses and looking at that not just in the morning but throughout the day that can assess adrenal function and cortisol patterns. We're looking for patterns here in the cortisol. So upon waking, before lunch, before bed um, I'm sorry, before dinner and before bed those are the four times of the day that we look at cortisol and that informs us of the pattern, and then we can arrange a stress management strategy. That is crucial for wellness and getting that cortisol under control, especially that one before bed. That bedtime cortisol is the one that's going to dysregulate your sleep and just really not restore the body. A lot happens when we're sleeping and I'll do an episode. I've done episodes before on sleep. That would be what Exercise. Stress reduction that would be 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 20 I think episode 20 of the Breaking Boundaries podcast. You can check it up or I'll link it up in the show notes for you. But the cortisol we also look at that on our stress mood metabolism test.

Speaker 1: 15:24

So the balance of your gut microbiome is what we're going to talk about next, because it plays a significant role in your metabolism, in your energy regulation. Dysbiosis or imbalance in the gut microbiome, that can also lead to weight gain indirectly, because that causes a stressor when the microbiome, the gut microbiome, is dysregulated. That's going to elevate cortisol and the cortisol is what's going to cause that weight gain, as we alluded to earlier. So a diet rich in prebiotics and probiotics it's important and to support a healthy gut microbiome. But if there's dysbiosis, you don't want to be adding more people to the party, as I like to say more prebiotics and probiotics to the gut microbiome, because that can further disrupt things. You know, if there's an overgrowth of bacteria, probiotics are healthy bacteria.

Speaker 1: 16:21

We don't want to be adding more bacteria until we know exactly what's going on there, and this goes to for things like fermented foods and even fiber. You know I talked about fiber earlier and having too much fiber. Like some people say, oh, I can't eat beans, right. What's the old saying? Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot, right? So the funny little rhyme that we used to say as kids. Well, there's a reason that it creates the gas and that's because there's a dysbiosis in the gut and the body can't handle those fiber rich vegetables. So this is why people feel better on a low carb diet, because their body just can't handle those, those carbohydrates at a high level. So you know, if they dive right into a full-on salad with, or maybe a cold bean salad or something like that, they're gonna have some gas and bloating and disruption in the gut and that's a good indication that it's time to take action and do something about that.

Speaker 1: 17:22

So things like targeted biofilm disruptors and targeted probiotic supplements now there's specific probiotics that can be beneficial to drive out that unwanted bacteria and these things can restore balance. So a candida metabolic and vitamins test that uses a urine sample it's also known known in the industry as an organic acids test. That's a comprehensive test that can really help to identify yeast and bacterial fungal overgrowth, all kinds of things from that test. And then we also have a comprehensive parasite and bacteria test, which is a stool analysis that can help to identify microbial imbalances and help us to be able to custom tailor a dietary and probiotic protocol that's actually going to do what it's supposed to do. There's so many candida diets out there that just don't work, and there's a reason for that. I can do an episode on that later on.

Speaker 1: 18:20

But moving into our next topic here for weight gain, right, underlying root causes of weight gain, that's beyond diet and exercise chronic low-grade inflammation. This is a driver of so many cardiovascular and metabolic processes that get disrupted when there's chronic low-grade inflammation, and this contributes to weight gain as well, as you might have guessed. So an anti-inflammatory diet rich in antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids to balance out those omega-6s, phytonutrients these can all reduce inflammation. Supplementation like curcumin, which is found in turmeric that's a potent anti-inflammatory agent. There's so many more than that. That's a potent anti-inflammatory agent. There's so many more than that, um, but again back to a high quality omega-3 supplement. Uh, I did an episode on the litmus test that my omega-3 supplements have to pass before I'll recommend them to a client. This can. Um, this can be super beneficial. So how do we know? How do we know if our omega-3s and omega-6s are balanced? Of course we test, and omega-3 testing can measure inflammation levels and monitor the effectiveness of your anti-inflammatory strategies.

Speaker 1: 19:37

So next, we only have a couple left here hormonal imbalances, things like estrogen, progesterone these can all affect metabolism and energy balance, leading to weight gain, especially that estrogen component. There's two ways to be estrogen dominant One if there's higher estrogen than the ideal range, and another one if estrogen is even in the ideal range or sometimes low. You can still be estrogen dominant. Yes, both men and women, or should say women and men, because most people associate estrogen and progesterone with women only, but they they are present in men at lower levels, and that estrogen dominance in reference to progesterone can affect metabolism and energy balance and that can lead to weight gain. So hormone balancing foods, regular exercise, toxin removal is a big one, because we want to detoxify any excess estrogen, want to remove that from the body, and stress reduction these are all key. So supplements like DIMM, which is diindolomethane, is DIMM, d-i-m, that can support estrogen metabolism, as well as other things like zinc and magnesium. Magnesium is just, it's an all-star, I would say, next to vitamin C, magnesium is, you know, in the second place on the podium for all-star supplements because it can support testosterone levels, it can support hormone levels, it can support estrogen production.

Speaker 1: 21:14

So hormone panels, including saliva, you know, blood for hormones if you go to your primary care physician, blood's just not that accurate, you know. I say it time and time again, it's better than nothing, but it's really inaccurate measurements of hormone levels. You want a saliva hormone test and that can guide targeted strategies and protocols. That we do, especially over at our private wellness practice love, energy, wellness. And of course, you know talked about all-star supplements like vitamin c and magnesium, our all-star lab. It's really that stress mood metabolism test, because you can look at hormone levels and imbalances with the stress metabolism test through a thyroid sample, really through a thyroid sample, through a saliva sample, really, really easy to do.

Speaker 1: 22:02

And then lastly, uh, today on our topics for underlying root causes of weight gain genetic factors. These can influence your metabolism, your fat storage and energy expenditure. Personalized nutrition, exercise plans based on genetic testing is one way to optimize your weight management strategies. There's something that's called neutrogenomics and then also fitness genomics. So basically, this is just nutrition and fitness based on your genetics, and it offers insights into how your genes affect your response to different diets and workouts. It's really that simple. But a workout that's too strenuous on the body is a stressor any workout's a stressor but if it's too much for the body, that's going to elevate cortisol levels and cause yeah unwanted weight gain from exercise, believe it or not. So you could be overdoing it with your HIIT training or your boot camps or your cardio workouts. Whatever the case may be, if you're not sure what you need, then perhaps some of these fitness genomic tests could be beneficial for you, and we offer this in our Optimize program, our high-performance health program.

Speaker 1: 23:18

We offer biological age testing, genetic and epigenetic testing that can identify predispositions and help to tailor a very precise and effective wellness plan for you. So it's clear that there's more to unwanted weight gain than just eating less and exercising more, which is not a sustainable wellness plan. It really isn't. You can only eat so little and only exercise so much, and that is just not sustainable to keep that up. So by addressing these molecular imbalances through integrative health, anyone can transform their approach to weight management, overall wellness and especially longevity.

Speaker 1: 24:00

I talked about a sustainable plan. You want to be able to have a plan that's going to help you sustain a healthy life through your 70s, your 80s, 90s, beyond, even into you know well, into 100 years old. So precision at-home functional lab testing allows you to gain a comprehensive understanding of your unique health profile. This data-driven approach enables personalized interventions that can tackle the root causes of weight gain rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all solution. So I will link up the Big Five Lab Bundle that we offer over at our private wellness practice, love Energy Wellness. You can check that out in the show notes or on the podcast page.

Speaker 1: 24:44

And then, by optimizing your health with this lab data, you can avoid the pitfalls of chronic disease. That's right. You can avoid the pitfalls of chronic disease, you can enhance your cognitive function, you can maintain energy levels that are necessary for entrepreneurial success, and I know you're concerned about your health. So remember, a balanced, healthy body supports a sharp, focused mind, enabling you to lead your business with clarity and resilience. Now here's how you can apply this information to avoid failure and lead you to success.

Speaker 1: 25:18

Number one prioritize your health. Please, if you do one thing, prioritize your health. Make that commitment to understanding and addressing your unique health needs. It's not just about losing weight. It's about optimizing your overall well-being to perform at your best for years and years to come. Number two leverage these functional lab tests that I'm I'm giving you here. Use precision, at-home functional lab testing to identify the root causes of your weight issues, and it's this personalized data that is invaluable in crafting effective health strategies data that is invaluable in crafting effective health strategies.

Speaker 1: 25:57

Number three implement natural solutions. Incorporate natural solutions, such as a balanced diet, regular exercise, stress management techniques, targeted supplements. You know, basically it's the entire de-stress protocol that we learn over at the Integrative Health Practitioner Institute. That's diet, exercise, stress reduction, toxin removal, rest, emotional balance, science-backed supplementation and success mindset. It's these interventions that can correct imbalances and support sustainable weight management. You know, it's not a total lifestyle overhaul, it's just slight adjustments in each one of those eight points that can make a profound difference in your energy levels and your longevity.

Speaker 1: 26:37

And then, number four seek professional guidance. Don't do this journey alone. Consult with integrative health practitioners who can provide expert advice and personalized treatment plans, or I should say, wellness plans, for you. You know, if it's not me, you can go go to ihpcoach and you can find a wellness practitioner, a certified integrative health practitioner over there, either level one or level two, that can help you with creating your wellness plan, and I'd be happy to do that too.

Speaker 1: 27:06

So, to get started, I'm offering complimentary health consultations over at love energy wellness. You can check us out, love energy wellnesscom and uh, we're experts over there and we're dedicated to helping you achieve optimal health through personalized natural solutions, and you can discover how addressing these root causes of weight gain can lead to a healthier, more successful you. So invest in your health today, pave the way for the thriving, prosperous tomorrow, and visit us over at Love Energy Wellness for your completely free complimentary consultation for health or hypnosis, whichever you prefer. I appreciate you joining me on this episode of Breaking Boundaries for Entrepreneurs, and remember your health is your greatest asset. So until next time, stay healthy, stay focused and keep breaking boundaries. Bye-bye.