Your diet is only as effective as the rest of your lifestyle.
You could be the healthiest eater in the world, but if you’re burning the midnight oil, over or under exercising, and dealing with a ton of physical and emotional stress, your healthy eating efforts fall to the wayside.
The body is a complex network of systems that all work together. If you want your healthy eating habits to be effective for weight loss, increasing your energy or resolving other health issues, then you need all systems online and working right.
You have to learn to value sleep and stress reduction as much, if not more than, diet and exercise.
Focusing on diet alone may get you some results; maybe you’ll lose a few pounds, notice a small increase in your energy or some symptom relief but eventually progress comes to a halt unless your lifestyle also supports your healthy eating habits.
For example, one night of poor sleep or going to bed late can have significant impacts on your body’s ability to balance blood sugar and your hormones, both of which directly correlate with weight gain or weight loss resistance.
Over exercising or exercising too intensely when you’re body is already depleted and tired also directly impacts hormone balance, which will dictate your weight.
And then there’s emotional stress.
When you’re stressed, your stress hormone cortisol goes up and surges in cortisol have been linked to weight gain right around your midsection (the “spare tire” effect).
I was guilty of all of these things. I stayed up late, worked long days and constantly pushed my body beyond its limits when it came to exercise and my functional lab tests showed it!
My cortisol was barely getting out of the gate, my sex hormones were low, I had a congested liver and some pretty nasty bacteria growing in my gut.
It was no wonder why I felt fat, tired and had chronic acne even though I was eating healthy!
Ok, so here’s how I finally got my weight and skin under control, and my energy back once and for all…
I shifted my focus to be equal parts diet, rest, exercise and stress reduction by:
Paying more attention to what foods made my body feel good
Setting a goal to be asleep by 10pm at least 5 nights per week
Incorporating 1-2 days of restorative exercise such as beach walks (love my beach walks) and yoga
Creating a daily mindfulness practice using a variety of meditation and breath-work tools
And I also worked on restoring function to the different systems of my body using functional lab testing as my guide.
Now my healthy eating habits are as effective as they can be, and one or a few days off my normal eating routine doesn’t throw me completely off course–although for me I’ve chosen to remain gluten-free.
I’ve seen similar stories over and over again with the clients who have come through my health coaching practice.
They’ve tried various diets such as Paleo, Whole30 and Keto but get little to no results because it’s the only thing they’ve been focusing on, and their lifestyle wasn’t supporting the expected results of their eating habits.
But once we run the foundational functional lab tests to identify their healing opportunities and get them on a more personalized plan with a balanced focus, the weight starts falling off, their energy instantly goes up and any other health issues start to diminish or go away completely.
If you’re frustrated with the lack of results you’ve been seeing from your healthy eating habits, then let’s explore what’s holding you back.
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