Having battled with my own weight over the years I know how hard it is to get that weight off, and keep it off. In this blog I want to talk about why I struggled back then, and what I learned since then!
In 2019 I thought I’d figured it out, I lost 72 lbs (5 stone) and felt great for it. Life did its thing though and it all went back on, and more. Last year I tried again, I’m 81 lbs down again, and this time I know a few things I didn’t know before! Like why exercise and food are only two elements of successful weight loss.
Calories in vs calories out is a big part of it. But, the best meal plan in the world means nothing if the brain is struggling with excess stress and anxiety. You’ll just end up working your ass off and getting nowhere, things might even get worse.
Make the drama stop!
Getting our mindset right goes deeper than daily affirmations and determination.
All the daily stresses we encounter; paying the mortgage, rallying the kids, traffic jams, and deadlines at work can trigger a fight or fight response which never goes away. Those are the tangible ones. Don’t even start me on all our imaged stresses, which wouldn’t you know it, can trigger the exact same stress response. Thinking about all the things that might, or might not happen, is equally as triggering, and highly damaging.
Learn more about the power of imagination in my blog: Is Your Imagination Trying to Kill You
Our stress response system was only ever meant to handle short term drama; the threat shows up – stress (fight or flight mode) helps us run and fight better – the threat is gone – stress get’s cancelled – we go back to relaxing and fix the damage – phew!
Except…
The stress responses won’t go away until the stressors do. Modern threats like recurring thoughts, worry, mortgages, kids, debt, and all that life stuff, will never stop.
Your body still thinks it lives in a cave!
Our brains still think we live in caves, they don’t know it’s 2025! As far as our stress system is concerned, we must just be fighting an endless supply of bears all day long. Back in those caveman days, the bear showed up, stress happened, then when the drama was over, the stress hormones go away and be replaced by a different set of hormones designed to induce rest and repair systems. These new hormones would trigger digestion (to replenish used energy), rest (to repair any damage done) and reproduction (well, you know!)
The problem is that there will always be a work deadline, or kids to organise, or traffic jams, or queues in Tesco. The “bears” never go away, so the stress response never ends. We know that fighting and flighting takes energy, so those stress hormones make us crave fast food, especially sugar. How else will we continue to fight those, seemingly, never ending bears?
When you think about it; trying to lose weight, when there is a constant stream of bears to fight, is a bit daft! So your body turns that process off too, and instead tries to keep hold of all it’s resources for as long as possible. So, not only are you craving fast release energy, your body is doing all it can to sabotage your efforts to lose the weight it has already stored.
Caveman-you prefers to be overweight
Here’s the thing, losing weight is, in itself, a stressor in your life. “Caveman-you” stands a much better chance of survival when you are carrying extra weight, in fact the more you have the better you’ll handle periods of starvation. After all, who knows when the next meal might come along. Or, what you might need to do to catch it, or defend it from the other cavemen?
So when you start losing weight, your body panics, and you guessed it – triggers the stress hormone. So, caveman-you is doing everything it can to keep the weight on (just in case). Meanwhile, 2025-you is trying desperately to lose it. The more you try, the more your body panics, and you end up putting on more weight than ever – as I did.
You’re not off the hook, ever heard of set point?
If you do manage to achieve the improbable and get some weight off, you might think you’ve won, you’re finished. I wish. Actually, your body is just waiting for the right time to get that weight back on again.
Your “set point” is the weight your body wants to be. So even when you lose all that weight, as I did, you’re not off the hook yet. It’ll only need you to take your eye off the ball for a moment, and your body will do it’s thing and start piling it all back on again.
To lose weight, you need to do the calories-in vs calories-out thing. But to make it actually work, you also need to convince your body that there is not a never ending queue of angry bears at your front door for you to fight off! You need to convince your body to not only let the weight come off, but that it doesn’t need actually it.
Let your body rest and the weight will fix itself
When you approach weight loss from this angle, things change. When you work on managing your stress levels; when you work on getting your body into rest and recuperate mode; when you convince your body there are no more angry bears in the queue, your set point will start to change.
Your body will start to work with you, you’ll stop thinking about food constantly, you’ll stop craving sugary energy hits, you’ll want to move more. And as a result, all your efforts will finally start to pay off, and your weight will finally start to come down, and stay down.
It’s like magic, except it’s actually real and you can do it!!
Book recommendation…
If you are interested in learning more about how stress affects our weight and health I highly recommend you check out: The Cortisol Connection by Shawn Talbott