Trying To Lose Weight? 4 factors that can block your progress!

Sabotage can happen in micro environments—right down to a cellular level. Make it easier to lose weight by understanding the factors of sabotage.

For many in America, the struggle of losing weight, especially fat weight, can be challenging. With so many factors involved in our health, fitness, and weight, it’s not as simple as calories in and calories out. There are several primary factors you might be unaware of that could seriously be sabotaging your health and fitness.

These environmental and nutritional factors are important to consider both for improved health & wellness and for better fitness and weight loss objectives.

Antibiotics in Food

In many conventional meats and other animal products such as cheese or other foods, you’re getting a synthetic chemical cocktail. These antibiotics have been shown to be strongly linked with overweight and obesity issues. Not all of the reasons are completely understood yet, but scientists do know these antibiotics negatively affect the gut microbiome, which affects your weight. Good bacteria, or probiotics, are essential not only to life and health, but also to your ability to lose weight. If these are wiped out from antibiotics, both your health and weight loss efforts will greatly struggle. In fact, these antibiotics are given to livestock in part to cause them to gain weight! Research indicates these hormones do the same things in humans, and those with the greatest intake of these antibiotics tend to have the worst health and tend to be more overweight or obese. Beyond weight gain, there are other serious health issues linked to the intake of these chemicals including reproductive issues, birth defects, cancer, disability, and even death. If you choose to consume animal products, get them from a clean, organic source free of these harmful antibiotics.

Endocrine Disruptors & Pesticides

Most conventional produce and animal products contain endocrine disruptors or pesticides. Outside of our foods, these chemicals are also found in many cleaning products and plastic containers. These chemicals are similar in structure to our natural sex hormones such as estrogen, and can interfere with natural functions. These endocrine disruptors not only increase your risk for problems such as infertility, low sperm count, early puberty, and diabetes, but they also strongly increase your chance for being overweight or obese. Research has indicated these chemicals actually help promote weight gain, even at low levels. Additionally, these chemicals also negatively affect the balance of the gut bacteria in the body. To help minimize or avoid these chemicals, be sure to opt for organic and natural foods and products as much as possible, and avoid plastic.

Artificial Sweeteners

While many of us have heard sugar is bad for us and can make us fat, using artificial sweeteners instead is not going to help boost health or aid weight loss efforts. Artificial sweeteners cause an increase in appetite, increase cravings for carbs and sugars, and can stimulate fat storage in the body. These fake sweeteners trick the body into thinking you ate sugar, and when that sugar isn’t actually there, your body sends a signal saying it needs more, which means cravings for carbs or sugars. These synthetic sweeteners also mess with our metabolism and therefore any weight loss efforts will be negatively affected. While it is important to decrease or eliminate processed, added sugars, don’t think you’re making a better choice by choosing synthetic, fake sweeteners. Instead opt for natural, whole sweeteners such as raw honey, dates, or coconut sugar.

Trusting Marketing

Unfortunately, in today’s modern world, it takes a bit of detective work to really know what we are putting into our bodies. Simply trusting a package label making declarations of “all natural” or “organic” or other marketing claims doesn’t inherently make that food healthy. The more processed the food, the likely it is to be that much less healthy for you, impacting your wellness and your fitness. There are so many various ingredients in our modern food supply that can be detrimental to our health and fitness goals. What this means is if you desire full, vibrant health and need or want to experience some weight loss, it’s going to be essential for you to learn to read the ingredient list and understand what each ingredient is, the processing the food went through, and the source and quality of the ingredients. The best choice is always going to be fresh, whole, real foods.

While health and weight loss can be challenging at times in our modern world, a simple way of improving both is to eat as fresh, whole, real, organic, and locally as possible. This helps ensure you’re getting a great deal of nutrition, without any of the toxic, synthetic ingredients! Rather than focusing on calories, focus instead on the quality of the food you’re eating, and watch your health improve and your extra weight fall off!

Start eating healthy with this sweet potato shepherd's pie!