Gaining weight (or losing weight) unintentionally is a common response to chronic or acute stress.
In fact, a recent poll conducted by the American Psychological Association found that most of us have experienced a significant weight change in the past year, thanks to the overwhelm that the 2020 pandemic brought our way.
The poll revealed that 60% of Americans report undesired weight changes as a result of this year long pandemic. 42% of us gained a significant and unwanted amount of weight and almost 20% of us had an undesired and significant loss of weight.
But I’m here to help. You can definitely reset your body to it’s ideal, healthiest set point again, and it doesn’t have to take as long as you think. And it absolutely isn’t about dieting. No amount of dieting, monitoring your food, and bullying yourself into losing weight will reduce your stress and re-align you with health.
To have a true, sustainable, natural weight reset, here are three steps you can take to feel better and lose weight naturally. Without the diet. Read on:
1. Focus On Adrenal Repair, Not Weight Loss
Stress affects your body from head to toe, and can have a tremendous impact on your weight, as the poll above reflects. Studies show that sress can cause changes in eating patterns and they also suggest that cortisol reactivity is one of the reasons why.
So instead of monitoring your eating, maybe what we should be monitoring is your cortisol and stress levels. Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands and by supporting your adrenal health, you can normalize your cortisol levels. Stop the focus on weight and instead focus on reducing your body’s stress hormone output. In fact, releasing your weight struggle and embracing your adrenal repair instead may be the best way to stop unhealthy food consumption that is due to stress, which is what is triggering this change in the first place.
As I wrote about in this article here, feeling stress and shame over your weight is actually harmful… and unnecessary, when what we could be doing instead of stressing is nurturing. Nurturing your body, nurturing your adrenals, and relieving stress to naturally reset your eating patterns.
If you have been focusing on trying to control your food intake, maybe it’s time to stop beating yourself up over something that is being triggered by high levels of stress and high cortisol. I’d like to suggest that weight issues might be actually adrenal issues.
To help you figure out if some of your unwanted weight changes is actually due to adrenal fatigue, I wrote a free book that you can download and read. It has tons of fun things inside like a quiz to help you figure out if you are in adrenal fatigue (and what stage you are in) as well as powerful ways to help you fix it.
If you have been through any kind of stressful situation (like uh… hello, 2020!!!) or big life transition (even fun, positive ones like marriage, a new job, a new baby!) chances are your adrenals could use some TLC. If you start to take care of your adrenal rhythm now, in just a few short months from now you can be fully recovered from Adrenal Fatigue and feel better than you have felt in many many years!
Did you know that you can actually be in adrenal fatigue from birth? It’s true. But did you also know it’s fully reversible, no matter how long you’ve been living on fumes? That’s also true, and I will help you get there. Click the button below to order your free copy of my Adrenal Fatigue eBook… it will be instantly emailed directly to you, to keep forever, and please share it freely:
2. Ground Your Body To The Earth Every Day
When you get stressed out, all you have to do is walk out your front door, step out of your office, or stop driving and step out of your car, and reach for the earth. To reconnect with nature is to find an instant sense of spaciousness, a calm centered experience as you take a single deep breath.
Reconnecting with the wonder of being a human being standing on a rock that spirals through space and seeing the earth for the vast support network it is can’t help but lift your spirits for the better. The power of nature can hold even your worst of days and remain an immovable source of strength.
Don’t believe me?
The next time you are having a panic attack, or a pounding headache, or a knot of worry grow in your stomach, just go outside. Get out there. Don’t force anything, just go outside and let nature work its magic. If possible, touch the earth directly with your hands or feet and get grounded.
Getting grounded immediately boosts your vagal tone, gets you out of “fight or flight†and calms you. Reducing blood pressure, deepening breathing and oxygenation, decreasing cortisol output and more.
I’m very heart-warmed to see so many families where I live going on after dinner walks, riding their bikes, jogging in the early hours of the morning, shooting basketballs in driveway hoops, jump roping, etc… but go outside even if you don’t want to exercise. If you have limited mobility due to medical conditions or just want to relax when you are outside, still do it. Even taking a hot cup of tea outside at night and looking up at the stars and moon, when the rest of the world is shut up tight at bedtime, is wonderful for clearing the mind and grabbing a few minutes of beautiful fresh air with your dearest friend, the earth.
Grounding has a profound and direct impact on your digestion, boosting your vagal tone (which supports the function of your entire digestive tract, from your esophagus to your colon and everything in between!) directly impacts your ability to feel full and satiated, even enhancing absorption by decreasing inflammation, which also helps with recovery after a meal.
From every single angle, eating grounded helps: putting you more deeply in touch with your hunger and satiation, helping you digest and absorb your nutrients better, boosting your metabolism and keeping weight gain at bay, even decreasing discomfort after eating.
Because of the scientific evidence that grounding supports our digestion, I ran a study of my own patients because I wondered if, by boosting our digestion and metabolism through touching the earth, we would see a change in weight over time. So I personally enrolled a dozen overweight patients into an informal private study on grounding and weight loss. I followed them for 10 weeks, measuring weight, energy, mood, sleep, and pain, with weekly weigh-ins and assessments.
Their instructions were to touch the earth outside directly for 15 minutes a day, and that was it. I told them not to change their diet at all. I wanted them to eat everything they had eaten before in the same quantities and in the same fashion. I told them not to start new activities or to change their activity level at all. I wanted to see metabolic changes from short periods of daily grounding over time. Following those patients with weekly weigh-ins and weekly assessments was very, very interesting.
Most of the patients lost a clinically significant amount of weight — 60% of them losing between 4 and 15 pounds in the 10 week study period — doing nothing more then adding in daily grounding for just 15 minutes a day.
Hop over here to watch a video I created for you to explain why adding grounding to your daily routine is the quickest way to heal your digestion. At the end of this free article I wrote for you, I share tons of ideas on how to eat grounded outside — pick one each day and watch your weight self correct effortlessly.
3. Reach Out For More Support
If you want even more support to safely, easily, and effectively lose weight in a way that supports your innate health, I’ve got you. We can work together to directly support your weight loss goals in my upcoming online health class.
Join into my upcoming 5 Day Weight Release & Reset Online Class right here.
“I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Weight Reset emails and videos! I looked forward to each and every day. Your class gave me so much hope!†— C.C.
“This was AWESOME!! I loved all the information — the medical studies to back it up and the daily reminders. Plus — I love that you can do this at your own pace. Thank you!†— C.W.
“I got a lot out of the class. I was surprised at how many different things can affect your weight and when you talked about them in the class… it was like a bell went off. I would definitely recommend the class to others.†— S.G.
Together, we will go over the 5 pillars of sustainable, feel-good weight loss. One pillar a day for 5 days. Simple and sweet.
I’ve based this course directly off of the medical literature and my 20 years of experience helping to support my patients with their weight loss goals. You’d be surprised that your body naturally knows what weight is the perfect one for you, and it can sustain it at this perfect weight effortlessly once you naturally align your metabolism. I’ll show you how in a very non-threatening, supportive, uplifting way.
It’s not about being rigid or militant or hard on yourself, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. The harder you are on yourself, the harder it is to align with your healthiest version of you. It’s not even about your diet and exercise plan — there are actually several other things that are even more important than what you eat and how you move… and without knowing what those things are, you just can’t lose weight.
Understand the things that sabotage weight loss and the weight releases, naturally.
Class starts August 9th and this is the last time I am running this class in 2021. Hop over here to sign up and reserve your spot today:
To your resilient, natural health!
xoxox, Laura
