HOW TOO MUCH EXERCISE CAN MAKE YOU FAT

"I don't understand why I can't lose weight when I eat like a bird and exercise like crazy!"

The reason why this happens is because the body is programmed to interpret eating less food and excessive exercise as stress, and this turns on 'famine programs'.

Never Underestimate the Impact of Stress!

Your Primal Animal Brain only knows two kinds of survival stress:

1. Acute Stress - the kind of stress that's happening right now and it's life or death eg: war or being chased by a tiger (in this case, you need to have less fat so you can fight or flight)

2. Chronic Stress - it's the kind of stress that is on-going and feels endless eg: famine and winter (in this case you need to have more fat to survive because your body is in freeze mode)

When your body is in 'fight, flight or freeze' mode, it's really difficult for your nervous system to relax enough to get into the state of 'rest and digest' that is needed for healing and releasing weight.

When you are chronically stressed, a certain hormone called cortisol becomes elevated. When cortisol is chronically elevated, it stimulates the fat storage hormone insulin. Elevated levels of insulin tell your body to store more energy as as fat.

That's why stress can make your body turn more of the food you eat into fat - even if you don't consume even one extra calorie!

Excess cortisol also breaks down your muscle tissue making your metabolism even slower - not to mention it shrinks your butt and thighs, while depositing most of the fat in your arms and belly. Not exactly a pretty picture in any sense of the word, especially since visceral abdominal fat is associated with many disease states that are far worse than "just being fat".

When you are in a state of chronic stress even "things" that are normally healthy, can backfire and start slowing down your metabolism.

eg: exercising & fasting

Under-eating and over-exercising only reinforces being overweight (more stress, deeper nutrient deficiencies and more imbalance).

This causes 'weight loss resistance' (again because your body thinks there's a famine out there).

As a result of depriving your body of nutrition and abusing it with punishing exercise, you not only slow down your metabolism, but you pile on the emotional weight of frustration & futility when yet again, calorie restriction and exercising 'like crazy' backfires!

Book a session here and let's explore another way.