Why Can't I Lose Weight?

Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my weekly house call, your chance to ask me your questions. And today we're talking about something that many of my readers go through, which is a weight loss plateau. That's when you try to lose weight, you lose a little and then it stops. So this is a tweet from Mada909. She says, I lost 30 pounds on the blood sugar solution and I'm doing eat fat get thin for another 30 days. No sugar, no carbs or starch, all veggies, protein, good fats, but much lower weight loss this time. What do I do? Well, that's a great question. And when I'm working with someone who's having trouble losing weight despite doing everything right, there are a few things that we look at. And today, I'm gonna cover the four most common reasons for experiencing a weight loss plateau. And they include, one, nutritional imbalances, two, your gut microbiome imbalances, three, inflammation and immune dysfunction, and four, environmental toxins. So first let's talk about nutritional imbalances. Our nutrient poor, calorie dense, high carb diet has led to many nutritional deficiencies such as omega-3 fat deficiency, magnesium, zinc, and vitamin D deficiency, which actually affect our metabolism. Often, nutrition-based treatment can help reset your metabolism. So you might want to consider nutritional deficiencies. you can actually get tested for these deficiencies with a functional medicine doctor. And the next thing you might want to consider is the gut microbiome imbalances. And this is a more challenging area, but we now know that the gut flora determines your weight in so many ways. We have over a thousand species of bugs in our gut. We have 10 times as many bacteria in us and on us as our own cells. We call this the microbiome, and that's the place where all these bacteria live and work within us to maintain a healthy gut. Now from both an animal and human model, we know that the gut bacteria can have profound effects on weight metabolism through multiple mechanisms. Taking the gut bacteria from a thin mouse and putting it into a fat mouse can cause the fat mouse to lose dramatic amounts of weight without changing its diet. Your gut flora can regulate your weight through all sorts of mechanisms. Some bacteria extract more energy from food leading to weight gain, while other bacteria will extract less energy from food leading to weight loss. Some bacteria trigger inflammation, leading to a leaky gut, while others are anti-inflammatory. Now, inflammation then triggers insulin resistance and diabetes, independent of your calorie intake. So just having a healthy gut flora is really critical. So it's important to make sure you heal your gut if it's damaged. And I typically recommend working with a functional medicine practitioner but there are some things you can do today to cultivate a healthy microbiome. First, eat whole unprocessed foods. This is getting redundant, but it's actually the cure for everything. Eating whole foods goes a long way to cutting the sugar and the refined carbs while increasing the food the bacteria needs for a healthy gut, which is fiber and all sorts of things you get from healthy plant foods. Next, focus on making veggies fill up 75% of your plate because plant-based foods Feed the good bugs. They're called prebiotics. Next thing you can do is eat good fats like omega-3 fats, monounsaturated fat like olive oil, and omit the inflammatory omega-6 vegetable oils. Next, add seeds and nuts and special fibers such as glucomannan, which is a special fiber, and other prebiotics that are good to food for the gut bugs. They actually eat that stuff and it makes healthy gut. Also, you can try to eat things like fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi. You can take probiotics, they reduce inflammation and they literally keep your gut healthy. Now there are a few other things you can do which I'll include in the blog post to keep your gut healthy, so I would encourage you to try those. The next thing you want to consider after nutritional imbalances in your gut is inflammation and how your immune function gets out of whack. Now science clearly identifies chronic disease and aging as a state of inflammation. That's not just allergies and asthma and arthritis or autoimmunity that are the problem. We now know that diabetes and obesity are inflammatory problems, as are heart disease and cancer. Even depression, autism and dementia are all inflammatory. Now your fat cells produce inflammatory molecules that perpetuate weight gain and disease. It's not just they're holding up your pants. That fat is hot and inflamed. But other factors also trigger inflammation that can lead to weight gain independent of calorie intake. Now there are many other triggers that promote weight gain that drive inflammation, including latent infections. We know viruses can cause weight gain. Mold toxins, environmental toxins, pesticides, chemicals, metals, all those can produce weight gain and inflammation. Food allergens like gluten and dairy and also our poor quality processed diet that's high in sugar and refined vegetables and low in fiber, all these triggers cause inflammation which then creates insulin resistance, prediabetes and weight gain. Now, Eat Fat, Get Thin and the 10-Day Detox Diet are both designed to be powerful anti-inflammatory programs. Learning to identify the various hidden sources of inflammation is often critical for those who are stuck in the vicious cycle of weight gain plateau. Functional medicine is the only way of thinking that addresses the root causes of all these problems and treats the whole system to quiet the flames, cool the inflammation, leading to weight loss and good health. And the last factor we're going to look at today that promotes weight gain independent of calories are environmental toxins. Many doctors look down on the whole idea of detox, but just ask them how bad things are going to get if your liver or kidney stops working or if you get constipated for a few weeks. That's a serious problem. Detoxification is a natural process that occurs all the time in the body. Unfortunately, in our modern world, we are exposed to a huge burden of toxins in our environment and our diet. These toxins, including plastics, pesticides, phthalate, bisphenol-A, flame retardants, mercury, lead, arsenic, I mean, there are so many. In fact, there's over 80,000 chemicals that were introduced into our world since the Industrial Revolution, and most of them have been not tested for safety. And many of them have been shown to interfere with metabolism and cause weight gain, even in the absence of extra calories. These environmental toxins are called obesogens. The average newborn has 287 chemicals in their umbilical cord blood before they even take their first breath. Animal studies found that toxic chemicals can cause weight gain independent of any change in caloric intake or exercise. Now, there are lots of mechanisms by which toxins promote weight gain. They affect your metabolism and slow it down. They affect your hormones and cause more weight gain. And they affect your brain function, affecting your appetite regulation. Cutting your exposure to environmental toxins is possible, and your body can eliminate these stored toxins naturally if you know what you're doing. There's a lot you can do to reduce your exposure to toxins and to help your body eliminate the ones you have. First, eat organic when you can. I would follow the Environmental Working Group's list of the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables and the Clean Fifteen fruits and vegetables for the help in identifying the most and the least contaminated fruits and veggies for your diet. Next, stop eating mercury. I would avoid big fish with lots of mercury, including tuna, swordfish, halibut, Chilean sea bass and lots more. Check out the NRDC guide to eating low mercury fish. Also, eat clean organic animal products by choosing grass-fed or pasture raised animals without hormones or antibiotics. These products cost more, but when you eat high quality food you often consume smaller amounts. Also, be sure to filter your water. Use a reverse osmosis or carbon filter to get rid of the hidden contaminants in our water. There are over 38 wastewater contaminants in the average tap water. It's terrible. You can also support your body's own detox system by drinking eight glasses of water a day, eating lots of fiber so you poop at least once a day or maybe twice, sweat a lot using saunas or exercise which helps excrete toxins, and I also recommend you increase foods that help your body detox. So eat one to two cups of cruciferous vegetables a day. That's like broccoli, kale, bok choy, because these help your body get rid of toxins. Also, eat lots of garlic, onions, and turmeric and ginger which also help your body detox. And finally, take supplements that support detoxification including selenium, zinc, vitamin C, and B complex vitamins, as well as special glutathione boosting compounds like N-Acetyl Cysteine, Lipoic Acid, and Milk Thistle. These all help your liver and your body get rid of junk. So when I work with patients who are experiencing a weight loss plateau, these are the first things I take into consideration. So next week I'm going to cover four more reasons for weight loss plateau, so stay tuned for that and if you like this video be sure to share it with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter and tweet me your questions using the hashtag HouseCallWithDrHyman and maybe next week I'll make a house call to you.