I recently started working with a new client who has been struggling, I mean really struggling to lose weight for many years. She has tried any and all methods out there: personal training, boot camps, chiropractic medicine, detox diets, even home workout programs like Insanity. All without the success she was seeking. Sure, these worked for a little while and she did see some results initially but then she plateaued and couldn’t break through it. After many repeated attempts to try the “next best thing”, instead of losing weight, she was just getting more and more frustrated.
Sound familiar? I’m sure it does, because so many of us go through this, myself included.
As I started talking to this client, it was becoming more and more clear to me that some of her underlying issues weren’t being addressed by the methods that she was trying. She was maintaining an eat less and exercise more mindset- something that most of us have come to believe is the only way to lose weight. And yes, this is a way that worked for many of us when we were in our twenties, but as we approach our forties and fifties, there are other things to consider. I’m specifically referring to hormones.
Hormones affect so much of our life and when it comes to weight loss, an imbalance of hormones can throw everything off. For my client, her underlying issues were all due to hormonal imbalanace: adrenal fatigue, metabolic damage, thyroid dysfunction and of course….menopause.
Yikes! That’s a lot of stuff going on. When you look at weight loss strictly from a weight loss perspective and you cut calories and increase the amount you exercise- you know, the typical diet- all that you are doing is worsening the hormonal imbalance. You end up creating more stress on the body and we all know what happens when our body is under constant stress.. sustained weight loss becomes almost impossible.
Our bodies are a unique complex of different systems that work seamlessly together. How do they do that? They communicate through different messengers…. aka: hormones.
In the case of my client, she was so conditioned to spending 6-7 days a week at the gym for 1-2 hours, then eating lots of protein….but only when she remembered to eat anything at all. Then she would only eat again when she remembered which was often 6-8 hours later because she would be so wrapped up in her job.
So how do we address these hormonal imbalances that are exacerbated by eating less and exercising more? Very simply: eat less and exercise less.
This is such a hard mindset shift. I know because I fought it for a long time. How can exercising less help with weight loss? Won’t I lose all the strength and cardio endurance I’ve gained?? The answer is yes, that will happen, but only in the short term until hormonal balance is restored.
So instead of telling my client to do more cardio (or more high intensity intervals that I normally recommend), I told her to cut her workouts in half and spend 30 minutes a day doing leisure walking. Not power walking, which is what most of us are conditioned to do when we walk for exercise. No, leisure walking… strolling along. This type of walking is not for exercise, it is for resetting our hormones, our metabolism and to lower our stress. Fight the urge to pump those arms and quicken your steps and enjoy your stroll and your surroundings. Focus on your breath and just relax.
Give this a try for a few weeks and let me know how it goes. 😉