Why Am I Gaining Weight With My New Weight Loss Programme?

Hey people, what's up and welcome to another live video. So tonight we have another Q&A and tonight's question is, my goal is weight loss but why am I gaining weight on my new program? So this is an awesome question and something that is actually more common than we think. So there is this phenomenon that can sometimes happen where you switch up your diet and you start your exercise training program, etc., and the goal is weight loss. So you pick a weight loss plan with allegedly a weight loss exercise program and you start engaging in the program. But then what happens is each time you start weighing in, you find that the scale seems to be creeping up and you're like, well, hold on a minute, I'm eating less calories and I'm now working out. How the fuck am I now gaining weight? Whereas before I was at least able to even maybe maintain my weight. What's, what's going on here? Now, in my experience, it tends to be one of two things, and they're both quite intimately related. And ultimately, it will come down to your body's ability to deal with stress. So everything that we sort of have going on in our lives, whether internal or external to us, is a form of stress. So another way to say is any change in our inner or outer environment is a form of stress. So with that in mind, we have to realize that what dictates our ability to stay healthy and manipulate our body in any way that we choose, as in weight loss or muscle gain and, uh, improved performance and so on, it will essentially come down to our ability to overcome or adapt to the stresses that we're exposing ourselves to. So 9 times out of 10, if you're already overweight, unhealthy, lethargic and got all these health issues going on that you want to resolve, that would suggest that the current stress load of your lifestyle is too much. It far exceeds your body's current ability to adapt and therefore keep you healthy and to keep you lean and performing well. So what's happening essentially is you're on this decline where your, your health is actually regressing due to the fact that your body cannot overcome the level of stress that's going on in your body. Now, it's important that we realize that any change in our inner or outer environment is stress. And it's not just things like, oh, my partner pissed me off, I had a bad day at work, or this dickhead on the road cut me up, da da da. Like, there are those types of stresses, of course, but it's everything. It could be too much food, it could be not enough food, it could be a hot day when you didn't drink enough water, it could be overhydrating, it could be overtraining, undertraining, not getting enough sleep. And so on. Like, there are lots of different things along with all the usual ones that we think of, like work deadlines, boss down your neck, partner nagging at you, and so on. So there's all those things, but everything is a potential stressor. Now, that doesn't make all those things bad. What determines whether they're good or bad, as I just mentioned, is our body's ability to adapt to them and essentially handle them. If our body has the adaptive capacity, we can actually stronger and thrive as a result of these stresses. But if we don't have the capacity, as I mentioned, we end up actually regressing in our health. So what happens when we come along and go, okay, well, actually, I'm now going to get onto a healthy regime and I'm going to reduce my calories and I'm going to start an exercise training program, is what we actually do is introduce another form of stress. So we've already got this load of stress that exceeds our body's ability or capacity to adapt to it. Now we go and add two more stresses. Now we can argue, well, a healthy diet, even if lowered in calories, is better than a junk food diet or a poor quality diet that was keeping us overweight. So how is that more of a stressor? And where the stressor actually gets involved for most of us is the emotional component. It's the fact we don't really want to switch up our diet. We don't want to get rid of all our favorite treats, sweets, snacks, and so on. But we've now kind of shoehorned this new diet into our lifestyle. And what we've done therefore is added to the stress. Then we've got the fact that many of us have now gone from an excessive calorie— sorry, an excess in calorie intake to now a deficit in calorie intake. Well, that change is another form of stress. So although you've only replaced one stress for another, it's now a new stress that your body has to adapt to. And short term, it's not so bad, but long term, the body doesn't like restricted calorie intake. Because the physiology assumes, oh, we're not getting enough calories in here, we're not getting enough energy in, therefore I think I might be starving, let me reduce metabolism and things like that. So short-term therapeutic, not such a big deal. You know, if we're doing fasts and things for one day here or there, not such a problem. But when we're doing it for extended periods, weeks, months and so on, it can potentially cause problems with metabolism again because it's another stressor. Then we've got the fact that we've added in exercise. So we've most likely gone from a relatively sedentary lifestyle to now an active one. And it may just be an exercise program that you're doing 2, 3, 5 times a week, who knows, depends what the program is that you're doing. You didn't actually give me any details on that, did you? No. So with the assumption that, well, now we've increased our physical activity, that is another form of stress. So essentially what we've done is increased our stress load and therefore reduced our body's capacity to adapt to the stress. We already had an inability and now we've just potentially made that worse. So sometimes we need to be less aggressive in our approach and in our, in our start with these things. We might only tweak a couple of things rather than overhaul all of our diet, overhaul our entire movement-based lifestyle and so on. But the other thing to consider is also, as well as this potential for stress, there is also a likelihood that for a long period of time you have been overfed but undernourished. So with that, essentially, yes, you're— you've got a calorie excess that's made you gain weight, but in terms of your actual tissues that record— that make you function, your organs, your musculoskeletal system, etc., all of the vital tissues that you, that you hold in the body those are actually malnourished and maybe not of the quality or integrity that they could or should have been because of this poor diet that you were on prior. So now you come along and introduce healthy food, and the body kind of goes, fuck me, it's about time, like, this is exactly what I've been needing. So what often happens for a period of up to, say, around 8 weeks for some people, is the body will go into a healing and a repair phase. So what happens is the body actually starts to build lean mass and build higher quality tissues. It starts to rebuild anything that's made of, of poor integrity and, and that lacks, um, integrity and so on. Anything that was a potential threat to the system, the body goes and takes this time to rebuild. And as it's rebuilding, it's possible that we can gain some weight. Part of that is the lean mass, but it's also because where you're in this deficit prior to starting this new diet, your body is in what we call a fight or flight response or a sympathetic state. So the autonomic nervous system, which is the one that, that basically dictates how your body functions involuntarily. So all of your organ function, your breath, your blinking, eyes dilating and so on, the one that controls our hormonal responses and so on, that part of the nervous system has, has been active for an extended period of time. You're in a stressed state. Now, when we're in a stressed state, the body preferentially burns sugar, not fat. So what we often need with this healing and repair phase that the body goes into is over time that shift begins to take place where we move from that sympathetic state or that fight or flight state and we move into what we call a parasympathetic state, which is actually repair and regeneration. So it's the opposite side of the autonomic nervous system. So as we shift into that and the body starts to rebuild and repair, yes, we can gain some weight. But then what tends to happen over time, as I say, potentially up to 8 weeks for some people, what will then happen is the body can then begin to preferentially burn sugar because it's no longer in a fight or flight response where the preferential energy source is blood glucose and so on. So instead, it can now begin to prioritize the burning of fat because now the body isn't so stressed, it's not stuck in that fight or flight response. So now the actual fat burning that you were looking for can begin to take place. So essentially what's happening is quite often we have to heal ourselves before we can reveal ourselves. So it doesn't mean, oh my God, stop the plan, this just clearly isn't working. What it means is stick with it, give it enough time, because what's likely happening in the background, particularly if you've been unhealthy for a while or overweight for an extended period, Sometimes the body needs to heal enough first before it can give up the resources and allow you to actually start burning fat. Because one of the other things that we have to realize as well, often when we're eating a poor diet and so on, we don't prioritize things like hydration and so on. And the burning of fat can only take place in the presence of oxygen. Well, many of us have poor breathing and we're very poorly hydrated, which means the availability of oxygen within the system to burn off fat is also very limited. So as we move into this new lifestyle where we're now getting better foods and we're now training better and so on, and therefore breathing differently and often bringing in more oxygen and so on, and hopefully hydrating yourself with high-quality water, what can then happen on top of this shift from one side of the nervous system to the other is you're providing the oxygen that's needed for your body to now burn the fat. So, that's a long way of me saying basically, don't give up on your plan. It's probably absolutely fine and working as it should. It's just your physiology, your body needs to catch up with what it is you're trying to do because it's probably been an extended period of time where you've been maybe neglecting your health and your diet and your exercise and so on. So, I would give it at least 6 weeks, maybe even 8 weeks. Most people, it doesn't take that long, if I'm honest. Normally within 3 to 4 weeks, you will see the turn. But of course, we are all uniquely individual biochemically and physiologically, so therefore it could take longer. So as I say, sometimes up to 8 weeks. If you get to that point of 8 weeks and it still seems to be going in the other direction, you might want to reach out to a coach, myself or somebody else, to get some more specific information regarding you, your lifestyle, what's going on. It's like, you know, I've been doing this for 8 weeks now, something's not going on, and then that professional can hopefully take enough details based on your current lifestyle and your medical history and so on and determine, oh, well, it's because of this thing, let's switch this up and do this, this, and this, um, or at least point you in the direction of somebody that would be able to help you. So for anyone else that's struggling with that and feeling like I've been doing this thing and for some reason I've stagnated, or I just can't seem to get off the mark, I'm doing all the right things but not actually getting results, perhaps it's just the case of your body being too stressed at this present moment and now you've just added in new stresses, which just means the body cannot adapt to what you're trying to do, even though it's technically a good thing. Maybe those stresses that you're exposing the body to need to be reduced. And if not that, maybe it's just a case of your body is going through a healing and a repair phase now that you've introduced higher quality nutrition and you just need to, excuse me, you just need to give it time to fully adapt and to fully go through that process before the fat burning will begin. So any questions on this, people? As I always say, drop them in the comments below. And if not, I look forward to seeing you all in my next video. Take it easy, people.