Ways to fix 10 fatloss blocks….

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 8-18-2016

A few posts back we covered the basics of fat loss.

Yesterday, I got an email saying that to lose fat you keep off, lose all your excess fat, and lose fat if something blocks your fat loss, there are 6 common causes that you may need to check and fix.

Then I found 4 more in a Reader’s Digest that I thought worth including.

So this post has those and some ways to fix them.

6 Weird Reasons You Can’t Lose Weight  in a Sharecare email yesterday, 8-17 had these:

1.  Prescription medications

2.  Certain medical conditions

3.  Menopause effects

4.  Your friends

5.  Stress

6.  Bad habits

And the Reader’s Digest article added these 4 I think worth listing of their 8 they listed.

7.  You eat when you’re distracted

8.  You dine out for every meal

9.   You rely on dieting alone

10. You starve yourself.

1.  Prescription medications

Many drugs prevent fat loss or even cause fat gain!

Many of them are, from what we’ve read, undesirable or ineffective drugs.  And other ways to make the condition better not only don’t block fat loss, they are more effective solutions.

In other cases, there are other drugs that do that job as well but don’t block fat loss that your doctor or pharmacist can help you find.

Here’s a quote from the Sharecare article:

“ “About 60% of my [obese patients] are on antidepressants,” says Dr. Brown, “and that’s one of the most common [medications] that leads to weight gain.” Some allergy medications and beta-blockers for cardiac issues can also interfere with weight loss.

It’s important to remember that you should never abruptly stop taking something you’ve been prescribed. Instead, speak with your doctor about your prescriptions and the possible side effects. He or she can usually offer alternatives that won’t work against your weight loss.”

The antidepressants currently in use increase serotonin in the blood where it causes problems while vitamin D3 if you take 5,000 iu a day or more.  So D3 does help some people and the antidepressants currently in use tend not to.  So the alternative methods in the book by Stephen Ilardi such as D3 and exercise and sleep improvement and social engagement do help. So this solution is to stop the antidepressants.  But they are addictive and can be quite challenging to stop taking.  But by doing so and using the other methods that do help, it is possible to stop antidepressants from blocking fat loss.

Beta blockers and statins can often prevent the exercises that help prevent heart disease and turn off depression and help with fat loss from making you fit and delivering those benefits!

Statins even often cause muscle damage and type 2 diabetes.  Fortunately, many other things DO cut heart attack risk AND the death rate from heart disease quite a bit more effectively than statins.

Mercifully, the foods and drinks that CAUSE you to become fat also are heart attack starters! So totally stopping them all makes fat loss MUCH easier.  And, doing so reduces heart disease more than taking statin drugs.

Not only that, the most effective known way to cut heart disease risk and the death rate from heart disease is to eat 6 or more servings a day – or even approach that many – of organic vegetables other than potatoes.  And that too helps fat loss.  Many people who successfully start doing this lose 25 pounds of fat with no effort to eat less!

In addition, as I’ve found by doing it myself and have posted on, many supplements from DHA to deodorized garlic improve your heart health blood indicators as much or more as statin drugs.

Beta blockers are less harmful but do prevent exercise from being effective.  And like antidepressants, they are addictive and challenging to stop taking.  So they too tend to block fat loss.

This solution is harder but doable.  Things like yoga and tai chi and even other martial arts training often block overactive stress reactions better than beta blockers.

So does improving your social support network and becoming better at solving the problems that stress you.

And, there are other effective drugs to minimize high blood pressure to replace that effect of beta blockers.

Some antihistamine allergy relief medicines are anticholinergic drugs which have recently been found to also sharply increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

So it’s important to find a way NOT to take those and take other drugs or use other methods instead.

Replacing them is harder but there are 3 ways that can help:  Getting the desensitizing allergy shots works; for some milder allergies 500 mg a day of quercetin works without side effects; and better dust cleaning and air filters can also help.  (I once had some allergic asthma due to pollens in our local air.  While I was waiting in the ER for treatment, the super filtered air in the hospital from their excellent air filtration system cut my asthma in half.)

And for some things a knowledgable doctor or pharmacist can help.  For example, some birth control pills cause weight gain and block fat loss.  But some don’t!  So taking the ones that don’t instead can help.

2.  Certain medical conditions

Here’s a quote from the article:

“Some medical conditions can also cause you to hold on to or gain weight, despite your best efforts.

For example, a sluggish thyroid can slow your metabolism. [Treatment by a doctor who knows how to test for low level low thyroid and how to treat it can reverse this.  And ingesting absolutely no MSG not only directly helps with fat loss, it removes a common cause for low thyroid!]

Polycystic ovarian syndrome interferes with insulin levels in a way that can make it hard to lose weight. Cushing’s syndrome ups your body’s production of cortisol, causing weight gain around the midsection.

Insulin resistance affects your body’s ability to use insulin properly, increasing glucose levels and making you more susceptible to weight gain.

If you think a medical condition could be to blame for your weight woes, schedule an appointment with your doctor for an evaluation.”

And bring this list to have him or her check first!

Insulin resistance and too high blood sugar result from ingesting the foods and drinks that fatten you.  So totally stopping doing so can eliminate the need to take insulin or other drugs to do it for you.

Similarly, the same exercises, higher intensity, short duration cardio with rests; and effective strength training tend to reverse insulin resistance AND they also help with ensuring good health and help you lose fat too!

And, if you have done those and stopped any statins and still have some high blood sugar, the drug Metformin not only works, it HELPS cause fat loss.

If you can manage to use those methods instead of using insulin, it can make a huge difference in your ability to lose fat!  (Note that taking the methyl B12 lozenges helps avoid the one bad side effect of Metformin of reducing B12 levels.)

3.  Menopause

Here’s the quote from the article:

“The same changes responsible for symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings could be to blame for lackluster weight loss.

“Hormonal fluctuations do contribute to weight gain,” says Brown. “There’s no doubt about it.”

Studies have shown that changes in hormone levels cause the body to store more fat cells in the abdomen, leading to unwanted belly fat. Metabolism also slows during menopause, causing some women to gain around 10 pounds on average.”

In the early stages of menopause when this happens, recent research shows a woman’s heart health risk goes way up.

So by getting a low dose bioidentical estrogen patch AND following an inflammation preventing fat loss diet can do the triple of reducing this heart risk, helping the woman have less harsh symptoms, AND preventing this fat gain.

(See the book Anticancer for details; and eat a high vegetable, no grain version of the Mediterranean diet. 

Foods like avocados, raw tree nuts, for those not allergic, and extra virgin olive oil have been found to be satisfying and heart protective and NOT support the inflammation that grain oils like corn and soy an canola do.

Similarly eating wild caught fish and sustainable seafood lowers inflammation and has heart protective effects.

Eating these foods you can eat well and be less fat AND have less inflammation and heart disease too!)

4.  Your friends

“It’s great if you have supportive friends that motivate you in your weight loss goals. But if you have the kind that would prefer you join them for a beer after work rather than hit the gym, they could be derailing your plans, says Brown.

Researchers from Harvard found that if a friend becomes obese, than your chance of becoming obese goes up by 57% (if it’s a close friend, your risk increases 171%!) Why? Researchers seem to think it has to do with social norms – being overweight is more acceptable if your friends are overweight.

To stay on track, surround yourself with people who encourage healthy habits. “

Two ways to do this are to:

Challenge yourself to become like those who teach exercise and healthful eating and fatloss who are NO  longer fat and to read their work and watch their videos.

Another way to do this is to socialize with fatter friends on Facebook instead of going out to eat with them!

Just ran out of time today.  So the remaining 6 topics will be in future posts.