Adrenal Fatigue – A 21st century weight loss problem

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Hi everyone,

I hope your feeling on top form and not suffering from any of the problems below, but if you are these symptoms could point to a more sinister problem called adrenal fatigue, which could be scuppering your weight loss, motivation or even causing you depression.

Put a mental circle around any of the below that you are suffering from;

  • Difficulty getting up in the morning don’t really get going until 10am
  • Continuing fatigue that’s not relieved by sleep
  • Craving for salt or salty foods
  • Lethargy
  • Feeling that everyday tasks required an increasing amount of energy to complete
  • Decreased sex drive
  • Decreasing ability to handle stress
  • Increased time to recover from injury or illness
  • Light headed when standing up quickly
  • Mild depression
  • Decreased enjoyment or happiness with life
  • Increased PMS
  • Symptoms increase if meals are skipped or inadequate
  • Thoughts are more fuzzy and less focussed
  • Memory less accurate
  • Decreased intolerance
  • Afternoon low between 3 and 4pm
  • Feel great after your evening meal
  • Decreased productivity

If you have circled several there is a chance that you may have an adrenal problem getting in the way of your health, getting the most out of your life and your weight loss.

One more question;

Are you putting on weight round your middle giving you a spare tire or the, I swallowed a beach ball look?

Your adrenal glands produce hormones that enable you to handle the stresses of everyday life, from handling inflammation to keeping your blood sugar in check.

Adrenal fatigue often = Weight Gain

Adrenal glands produce cortisol in response to stress demands on the body. If the stress demands are too high for too long the adrenal glands can become fatigued. When they become fatigued you may start to suffer some of the above symptoms, many of them are due to low blood sugar, hypoglycaemia caused by low cortisol levels due to the fatigue. Low blood sugar in its self is a stressful situation for the body further draining your adrenals.

If you are in this situation you are probably reaching for high calorie foods and drinks to pick you up, coffee, cola, sugary foods. These foods all drive the adrenals leading to further exhaustion. These foods are also highly fattening leading to weight gain. To much cortisol can also lead to weight gain, when eating and drinking stimulants you give your adrenals a good kick causing the to produce to much cortisol for a short while, this leads to further fat stores around your middle!!!!

The road to recovery

Recovery is simple but not easy!

Step one is to seek dietary advice, NOT calorific intake advice! You need to be eating to your metabolic type or keeping a balance of fat protein and carbohydrates in every meal. This will be a good start in bringing your body back into balance.

Step 2 would be to get some coaching to make sure that you get balance into your life or to help you look at the causes of your stress, Emotional stress, Physical stress or Mental stress and find ways to reduce or cope in a healthy way with these stresses.

Small steps you can take right now

  1. Slowly reduce and eliminate stimulants from your diet
  2. Take out process and junk foods (bread and pasta ARE processed foods)
  3. Base your food decisions around meat and vegetables
  4. Eat little and often
  5. Eat Protein and EVERY meal
  6. Think about what’s stressing you. Once you have a list of your stressors start working on a plan to eliminate them or reduce the stress load.
Step 3 is to test your adrenal function through lab tests and then tweak your diet and maybe take some supplements to readdress balance and to give your glands the nutrients that then need to rebuild.
If you are suffering there is no need, we can help.

Committed to your success

Keith and the Team

Does One Size Fit All

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Below I’m going to discuss one size fits all approach to weigh loss and health. I have a basic strategy which will help you to discover what foods are helping you and which are hindering as well as 7 top tips for weight loss and health success…

Hey, I hope that you day is going awesome,

One of the questions I get asked and emailed time and time again is;

What should I have to eat?

Now I know that this sounds like a really easy question to answer and I’m going to give you some guidelines at the end but I need to explain that it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Did you know that the failure rate for diets is about 80%?

Yep it’s a big failure rate and means that you need to ask WHY this happens?

You may have noticed with your friends, family or colleagues that one diet that works really well for someone makes someone else feel awful and actually gain weight.

Have you also noticed that when people participate in one size fits all guidelines their ailments do not improve in fact, they often get worse!

What do I mean by ailments? Headaches, muscle aches, digestive issues such as reflux, bloating, cramping, pains and IBS.

Again the word WHY springs to mind… They are on a diet, surely that means they are getting healthier!

The problem is that many diets are not healthy…. I know what you’re thinking…… “Thanks Keith, that’s great. I have come to your blog and all you have told me is what I knew already!”

Yep I know, it obvious that just eating cabbage or just drinking milk/soup or doing shakes is not healthy or cutting your calories down to 1000 per day and yes that is commonsense, but let’s look at the problem in a little more detail.

Hippocrates was an early observer of the importance of food to your health he equated food to medicine. Some foods can be toxic to your body, slowly poisoning you even though you may not be aware this happening, we call this a chronic degenerative pathways and is the reason why ‘one man’s food can be another man’s poison’ or for us one persons diet can be another persons poison!

Steak for instance makes some people feel really good and others feel really tired. I, myself start the day with a piece of steak as it will but me in a great mood and make me feel full of energy for the day, but I can’t give this guideline to someone else as their body might not like it! They could go the opposite way, tired and grumpy…..

One needs to eat to ones type!

I am, what’s known as a parasympathetic fast oxidiser….. Mmmmm sound complicated right, but this just describes how my metabolism is functioning at the moment. In reality it means basing my diet around carbohydrates would be a very BAD idea and difficult for me to stick to. I used to be a carbohydrate monster being a Personal Trainer and a competing Sportsman, it’s what I was told I had to eat for energy. (How wrong could they have been!) I was grumpy and tired almost all the time and never felt properly well and energised and I was in my early 20’s!

Once I started eating to my METABOLIC TYPE (MBT) or eating genetically correct foods for me I felt awesome having increased, sustained energy, maintaining a lower body fat percentage and all the little aches and pains that I was suffering from in my gut cleared up.

Eating to your MBT is possibly the single most important thing you could do to gain and maintain a healthy weight and overcome health issues at the same time.

Click here to find out your metabolic type and how to implement it into your life

Here are 7 top tips to get you started in the right direction.

  1. Experiment with your food and listen to what your body is telling you about it. Have a day where you eat Carbs at each meal, a day where you eat lean protein at each meal and a day where you eat a high fat content at each meal. 2 hours after each meal ask yourself, how do I feel? Full/hungry, tired/energised, grumpy/happy etc. You’ll soon find out which foods make you feel the best and therefore what to eat at each meal to get the best results for you. This is far from your metabolic type but is a place to start before you come on the nutrition course with us.
  2. Base your diet around real whole foods. Meat, fish, vegetables, nuts and a small amount of fruit.
  3. Avoid processed foods, grains and COW’s dairy for at least 7 days. Add cows dairy back in on its own and see how you feel and then try adding in SMALL amounts of grain and see how you feel.
  4. Sip water throughout the day. Although this will not directly help you to lose weight it will help your detoxification systems which will help your weight loss. It has also been shown to reduce the symptoms of back pain, arthritic pain and digestive issues.
  5. Get some fresh air and sunshine everyday
  6. Exercise at least 3 x per week at a high intensity
  7. Come on the nutrition course and learn a little bit about how food works in the body so that you are in control of hunger, cravings and your weight loss rather than them being in control of you.

Committed to your success

Keith, Clare and the Team