Video of Kristy talking about 3 tests you need for Weight Loss
Common Questions about Weight Loss
Hi everyone. My name is Kristy Shaughnessy, and I am the clinical nutritionist at the Wellness Connection. And in this video talk today, I want to talk about a very popular health topic. Do you know what that topic might be? Weight loss or weight management in general. It is a booming conversation starter. If you want to start a conversation with someone just talk about weight loss. I’m sure you guys will talk for hours. It is such a popular conversation whether you’re talking just casually with your family and friends or just with your colleagues, but in today’s talk, I want to talk about specifically questions that I get most commonly here in the clinic.
Why isn’t my diet or exercise working?
“I’ve tried everything and nothing works. Why? I have tried Keto, I’ve done Paleo, I’ve done this, I’ve done that, and nothing has worked for me. What is going on?”
“I’m doing everything you tell me to do, and nothing’s working. I’ve just started losing weight in the beginning, and then I’ve just straight up plateaued my weight loss. I am following your dietary plans faithfully. I’m working out. What is going on with my body?”
Hormones Play a Part
I have some answers for you. So, one, there could be just a hormone imbalance going on, and especially, there could be estrogen dominance. If you are an estrogen dominant person, it’s going to be very difficult to lose weight. So, getting proper testing done for hormone testing is a great option.
Stool Analysis Might be the Key
Two, doing a stool analysis. I know talking about stool is probably not the most popular topic you talk about casually with your family and friends, but it is so important when it comes to health. Our gut is the center fold of our immune system. If we don’t have a very good gut, we don’t have a very good immune system. So, making sure that you don’t have any underlying bacterial or viral infections is very important, as some of these can turn into an autoimmune response in our bodies, which we don’t want. It’s going to tell us if you have leaky gut. If you have an allergy to wheat or you can’t digest food properly, that’s also important.
Do you have SIBO, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth? Those are all contributors to your overall gut health and whether you can lose weight or not. It can hinder you.
Autoimmune Testing can Help With Weight Loss
Third thing, do you have autoimmunity? Autoimmunity’s a booming thing. I mean, especially something we see here in our clinic, especially when we’re talking about the thyroid, and autoimmunity would be Hashimoto’s. What naturally can be done to help your autoimmunity so that you can lose weight? So, that’s another thing.
Food Sensitivities can hinder you
Fourth thing, food allergies, making sure the foods you are consuming you’re not allergic to, but I’m going to talk about that a little bit more in detail later on in the video.
Getting Proper Sleep is Important
The fifth thing, sleep. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep at nighttime. We are up all night on our phones, on our laptops, iPads, TVs, having all this light exposure is going to keep us up at night, and we’re not going to get very good, sound full sleep that our bodies need. So, having a good sleep hygiene pattern in place at night is a great way, not just for what your health goals are, but just for overall health in general.
Reduce Daily Stress
The sixth thing would be stress. Stress is a contributor to a lot of things when it comes to health. So, having healthy habits on a day to day basis, on how to distress, is so important. We are constantly on the go all the time. We never take time for ourselves, and that hinders us. And our health, currently, and down the road to even more things happening badly to our health.
Quick Tips to Reduce Your Stress
So, what are some ways to de-stress? Easy. Working out, reading a book. It could be simply as coloring. I know that sounds childish, but coloring is so much fun. I know when I am coloring with my niece, it is a lot of fun. So, they have adult coloring books out there. Painting is another great way of distress, prayer, meditation, yoga, those types of things are great for de-stressing. So, those are my top six things I would say to focus in on when you’re trying to lose weight.
Three Main Tests you Need
Now, I want to talk more in detail about the three main tests that I think everyone who wants to lose weight should be tested for.
Number one: Food Sensitivity Testing
Yes, food allergies. I am not talking about a food allergy where you go into an anaphylactic shock and you have to keep an EpiPen or you break out in hives. Having a food allergy can be something internally. Have you ever eaten a food and you felt constipated or bloating, or you felt brain fog after you’ve eaten that food? That’s a food allergy symptom. That is something that you get having a reaction to those certain foods. Perfect example for this is you could be eating healthy foods, talking lean meats, your fishes, your fruits, your vegetables.
Those are all healthy foods, right? But what if you have an allergy to those? So, we consume these healthy foods, and we have our cells. That food hits that cell, if you have an allergy, it’s going to get bigger, and when those cells get bigger, they cause this terrible reaction called inflammation. If you are inflamed, you are not going to lose weight. It’s a terrible thing. So, understanding what foods you’re allergic to is so important.
Example of Food Sensitivity
Another example, Keto. Booming dietary plan right now, very high in fats. You’re consuming more dairy, right? Those are your higher fat foods. What if you have a food allergy to dairy and you don’t know it? So, you’re consuming more inflammation, your body’s going to keep getting more and more inflamed, you’re not going to lose weight, and that’s going to hinder your weight loss progression. So, that is why I highly suggest getting a food allergy tests done.
Second thing: a full blood chemistry panel.
Now, the functional medicine blood panel’s a little bit different than a conventional approach. Our ranges are a little bit different than what the lab would tell us or anything like that. Things that we test for specifically that can be a contributor to your weight loss progression would be your full thyroid. So, this goes back to the autoimmunity of your thyroid. If you have thyroid antibodies, you’re more than likely going to have autoimmunity, so learning to control that is very important.
Blood Tests Can be Revealing
Knowing what your insulin and glucose levels are. If you’re insulin resistant, I hate to tell you, but you’re not going to be able to lose weight very easily. And this can be very, very challenging. So, understanding that’s very important. Do you have some type of infection? So, this goes back to your white blood cells and your red blood cells. Those are great contributors. Iron. If you’re iron deficient, you’re going to not only feel very tired all the time, and there’s other markers affecting that as well towards fatigue, but it can make it another challenge, as well.
And another thing that we test for is inflammatory markers, so these include our C reactive proteins, our homocysteine levels, that one in particular tests for your stroke risk, under seen. If you have that in your family’s health history, you may not even, but understanding if those inflammatory markers are high, you’re a very inflamed person. So, decreasing that inflammation, you get your weight loss, you get your health goals that you want to achieve. Because if we’re not healthy in the inside, it’s going to be really hard to be healthy on the outside. So, reaching your optimize health is the way to go if you want to achieve your health goals.
Thirdly: Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis or BIA.
I think that’s a lot simpler. I know in science we like to have these long words, so how can we simplify them as much as possible is the way to go. So, BIA, what is this test test for? It tests for many things, but specifically, what I look at is your fat versus your muscle percentage. Do you have more fat versus muscle? That’s a contributing factor. What’s your ratio between your intracellular weight, which is how much fluid you have inside your cells, versus your extracellular weight, which is how much water do you have outside of your cells? These are very much contributors to, are you retaining water?
Water Retention and Weight Loss
Basically, moral of the story. If you’re retaining water, that’s going to cause you to not see the scale go down very much, so that’s why I want to test people for those. Another thing it tests for is what we call the phase angle. So, how fast are your cells rejuvenating? How much energy do they have? If they don’t have as much, it may be aging you faster than what your age actually is. We don’t want that. We don’t want to age faster. We want to have a good quality and longevity and youthfulness of our life, so understanding that is very important.
Conclusion
So there is my explanations and reasons as to why you may not be losing weight and why you simply plateaued or why simply, in general, nothing has ever worked for you. So, get ahold of your practitioners, do your research on these different testing. And, again, I hope that this gave you some wonderful insight as to what to look for when you’re trying to achieve your health goals. Thank you for joining me today. And if you have any questions, please share them. Talk to you all soon.
Contact us at The Wellness Connection for more information!