1. Hormonal Imbalance
Hormones are like little messengers that control and communicate with everything in the body. As women, we have constantly fluctuating hormones - from week to week everything is changing.
Hormonal imbalance is the #1 reason you are not losing weight. In women, if even one hormone is off it affects the entire system, creating a hormonal nightmare in your body.
Let me give you an example - When cortisol (stress) is elevated this is going to increase inflammation throughout your body
>> this increases blood sugar
>> which increases another hormone called insulin
… and with chronically elevated insulin this is going to
>> Cause a shift in hormones ...increases testosterone (another hormone) making fat loss very difficult. In men, high testosterone is amazing for fat loss. In women, it makes fat loss impossible.
>>It also alters leptin - the hormone that tells us when we are full. We then end up with leptin resistance. This means the body does not sense the signal and we don't know when we are full and should stop eating.
>> It screws up our ability to detoxify and clear substance from our body...this means they remain in our body longer than they are supposed to and cause damage. Estrogen gets metabolized and cleared from the body by the liver and if we have problems with detox then estrogen re-circulates leading to irritability, breast tenderness, mood swings, painful periods.
>> Lastly, it Spikes inflammation throughout your body which further raises cortisol...which increases blood sugar = spiking insulin = causing a vicious cycle.
In Macpherson Method, we optimize and balance the hormones to help lose weight, increase energy, balance mood and regulate cycles.
2. Metabolic switch
Metabolic function is how good your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. If you have a great metabolism you are efficiently burning the calories you bring in
...but if your metabolism isn't working very well you start storing calories as fat instead of using them for energy.
You also end up tired, constipated or bloated and your brain feels like it has a huge fog around it.
For a lot of the women I have worked with - they have gone through what I call the "metabolic switch". Meaning, what they have done in the past to lose weight stops working and now nothing works despite "trying it all"
This often happens from
- Stress
- trauma (childbirth included)
- Adulting (responsibility and worries)
- Medications
- Undereating
- Overexercising
Our goal is to restore and boost your metabolic function so you are efficiently burning calories
3. Stress inflammation
Now inflammation can be good and bad. When you get an injury inflammation is how we heal. We need it to kill the bad stuff. For example - bug comes in, the immune system senses it and kills the bug with inflammation. However low-grade chronic inflammation - meaning your body is constantly attacking things - is how we end up gaining weight.
This low-grade chronic inflammation spikes histamine which pulls water into your cells making you feel swollen and puffy. It also affects your hormones by stimulating the ovaries to make too much testosterone (terrible for women and weight-loss), impairs the ability to receive leptin signal to suppress appetite and spikes cortisol - all contributing to weight gain.
Inflammation puts your body into a fight/flight mode (spiking cortisol and storing fat)
We will be releasing the inflammation in your body - triggering the response that you are safe and it's okay to let go of the extra weight.
