How to return to a healthy weight without eating less

Our ancestors weren’t weighing themselves every day or even remotely interested in how much they weighed for that matter. A healthy weight was for the most part the norm. Their diet consisted of whole foods, their lifestyle required consistent movement and their environment was free from hormone disruptors.

Fast forward to today and people are obsessed with their weight and body fat percentage, this isn’t to say taking care of yourself is a bad thing, of course it isn’t but when weight becomes an obsession and getting the numbers down is the only goal, people often turn to drastic measures that impact their health in a negative way. 

However, there is a different approach you can take, one of supporting your body rather than tormenting it, so how exactly do you return to a healthy weight without taking drastic measures? Read on to find out.

Why weight gain happens

Firstly it is important to understand why weight gain happens in the first place. Our bodies are a marvellous piece of creation, they can adapt to immense changes in our environment. This adaptation will lead to weight gain under certain conditions, for example, when we are highly stressed this impacts how the body stores and burns fat.

An environment that causes the body to enter fight or flight state can cause either weight gain or weight loss, but in both cases the health of the body is sacrificed. When we look at the modern world and the prevalence of ultra processed foods, seed oils, technology, the ease of staying sedentary and the stress most are consistently under, it is no wonder the body reacts in a way in which it needs to protect itself.

Contrary to popular belief weight gain isn’t about eating too much but eating too much of the foods that aren’t conducive to good health. If you throw a load of wet wood onto a fire it will cease to burn and just end up a pile of half burnt wood, comparatively if you throw very dry wood onto a fire it will burn ever hotter and grow larger. The same goes for your body.

There has never been so much abundance of food but unfortunately most of it isn’t what our bodies are asking for. It is devoid of nutrients, contains ingredients that actively harm us and the worst part is, it leaves us craving more food.

Support vs drastic measures 

Ask nearly anyone how to lose weight and the answer is to eat less, sometimes a far deal less. However, forcing a body to lose weight that isn’t healthy to begin with is a recipe for failure and further health implications.

We see drastic measures such as Ozempic and other GLP-1’s growing in popularity, promising the shortcut to weight loss while disguising the hidden dangers, of which can be incredibly harmful. Issues such as sudden blindness, stomach paralysis and even cancer have been growing conditions linked back to GLP-1 usage. 

Our bodies know what to do, we just need to give it the nourishment and environment it needs to thrive. Most who experience rapid weight gain or uncontrollable weight gain aren’t those who are living like our ancestors would have done. This isn’t about appearing healthy by dropping weight drastically, it’s about seeking better health and supporting the bodies return to a healthy weight. 

Drastic measures are not just seen in peoples approach to eating but also in their approach to movement. Many jump to running long distances, tormenting their body through intense workouts without rest. Returning to a healthy weight is about removing stress not adding more, movement needs to happen, yes, but in away that supports the body instead of torturing it.

Protective vs abundance 

Most people are living in a state of protection, their bodies hold onto weight as a safety measure. They’ve stopped eating before in hope of losing weight but now the body is slow to give up its precious fat stores. Their nutrient intake is so low that hormones such as T3 are down regulated and depending on whether they are male or female, testosterone and progesterone are similarly lowered as the body struggles to maintain optimum levels.

Often when people are recovering from ill health they will gain weight, this entirely normal and part of the bodies healing process. It shows that when we start to nourish ourselves again our bodies recover, the weight gain is part of the healing and often with enough time the body returns to state of equilibrium.

Our ancestors ate organs, got plenty of time in nature and had to move or they wouldn’t eat or stay warm. These three facts are vastly different to what you’d see from a modern day human being. Nutrient lacking, indoors all day and food delivered to their door after a day of sitting down. 

Signalling abundance to your body is about getting out of that protective state. You restore the nutrients, the carbohydrates, the time in nature and the movement your body was created for.

Hormone health 

Our hormones decide more about our weight than most people realise. If our thyroid is healthy, our sex hormones strong, then staying at a healthy weight as well as having evenly distributed fat is easy. Now this isn’t a case for jumping on exogenous hormones but instead paying attention to how your food and lifestyle impacts your hormones. Stress as we’ve already covered needs to minimised. Cholesterol which was heavily demonised is the building block of all hormones and needs to be consumed and endocrine disruptors need to be avoided to help our hormones thrive again.

Hormone health is all about giving our bodies what they need and removing what is dragging it down. The food we eat is a huge part of the puzzle and we can improve our hormone health immensely by just eating more of what our ancestors ate. Foods such as organs, vegetables, fruit, raw dairy, eggs all contain the vital components our hormones need to operate at optimal levels.

Supporting our thyroid health with enough carbohydrates, B vitamins (from food), magnesium as well as removing ultra processed foods such as seed oils that slow it down, can make a huge difference to how our body manages its weight. After all thyroid health is the key driver of a fast metabolism.

Summary 

It is easy to get carried away with every new weight loss fad, but trends can often come with great risks to our health that affect us for life. The way to manage your weight isn’t to treat your body like a machine, where putting x in equals getting y out. No, instead it is about supporting your body and living more aligned with nature. Returning to a way of eating and living which was once normal.