Meet patient Jane. She’s battled the bulge since her teens, with little to no weight loss despite extreme diets and exercise. Most days she feels tired, puffy, with the femininity of a skeleton. Doctor after doctor tell her all is “normal,” apart from high blood pressure and obesity, and send her on her way without an answer.

Why is Jane weighed down with fat-loss resistance? How can all be “normal?” Will she ever stop feeling “off?” If you can relate to Jane, we’ve got some answers for you.

Maybe It’s Your Metabolism

If your weight-loss struggle has you feeling like you should star in an episode of “Mystery Diagnosis,” it might be time to look at your metabolism. Metabolic damage can present itself in strange and confusing ways, plaguing you with any of the following symptoms:

• Weight gain or stubborn weight loss
• Loss of muscle mass
• Gas
• Bloating
• Constipation and/or diarrhea
• Reflux or heart burn
• Low energy or fatigue
• Increased hunger and food cravings
• Reduced libido
• Oedema (fluid retention)
• Anxiety and depression
• Irregularity or cessation of periods in women
• Low immunity, recurring and/or prolonged colds and flu
• Sleep disturbances
• Changes in mood

These symptoms can be caused by any number of conditions, but without the proper testing, you’re going to end up like patient Jane – bloated and bewildered. Unfortunately, Jane’s conventional medical doctors only ran one thyroid test over the years. Had she visited a metabolism doctor from the start, she may have discovered sooner that she suffered from low T3 syndrome, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and intestinal yeast overgrowth – conditions which NINE thyroid tests later revealed.

You and Jane Are Not to Blame

Source: Jennifer Burk, via Unsplash

Conventional medical tests don’t look for the cause of common health problems. So, people like you and Jane are sent away to suffer. Without thorough metabolic testing, you’re doomed to pick the next diet and exercise program at random, hoping it works and realizing it doesn’t. The unfortunate truth is, if you have a metabolism problem, you won’t respond normally to traditional efforts. In fact:

• More exercise can overburden your adrenal glands and halt fat loss
• Eating less and/or cutting carbs can cause low thyroid function and halt fat loss
• Eating too little dietary fat can shut off sex hormone production and halt fat loss
• Eating common food allergens can create inflammation and immune responses decreasing entire body hormone communication and halt fat loss
• Too much high intensity interval training can create adrenal gland fatigue, stop muscle gains, and … you guessed it… halt fat loss.

Well-intentioned diet and exercise choices can be harmful and result in the very weight gain you’re trying to avoid.

How to Fix a Slow Metabolism

First things first. FREEZE! Before you start changing anything with your diet or exercise routine, you must identify which metabolic breakdowns are causing your problems. Then you can take next steps. Jane, for instance, relied on her metabolism doctor to start an elimination/rotation diet to identify food sensitivities, a carbohydrate-cycled diet to increase metabolism over time, and a supplement regimen that eliminated yeast overgrowth and assisted with normal hormonal health. The result? Her issues were corrected and 30 pounds were shed easily – after just 90 days – and the re-testing proved it.

Professionally guided programs not only increase your chances for success, they prevent you from trying fads that can cause more harm than good. So, if you suspect a problem with your metabolism, don’t stress, don’t guess, call Twin Cities Metabolism and get the tests.