There are so many reasons why controlling one's weight can be difficult.

It is no longer acceptable to hear "it's all in your head," "it's genetic," or "you eat too much, you don't make an effort."

Let's be clear:

• YES, there can be a psychological component to weight gain. Weight can act as a shield, protecting us from a world perceived as hostile. Overweight can result from humiliations experienced in childhood, or from sexual assault. But that's not all.

• YES, often, we eat too much. Too much sugar, too much of everything.

Is that a reason to blame only willpower on people who wish to lose weight? Look! one might say. So-and-so followed a drastic diet, starved themselves, and lost 20 kg! Why can't you do it?

So STOP! STOP the excessive guilt. There are so many reasons that push the weight regulation system to its limits. Yours are not the same as your neighbor's.

Forget diets !
The worst solution is diets. Yes, you heard me right. Diets starve the body. As a result, it loses weight. It has no choice— it needs to function and nourish your brain, muscles, and organs. So it starts to eat itself, literally. You lose fat, but just as much muscle and vital elements.

However, the consequences are brutal:

• Diets create deficiencies, most often in essential fatty acids because fats are eliminated. You lost weight, but your body craves nutrients. You’ll end up eating twice as much, and you risk long-term physiological disorders. Let's not even talk about deficiencies in iron and minerals.

• A low-calorie diet forces the body to reassess its needs. If, instead of 2000 kcal per day, you eat 1800 kcal, your body will adapt. Its basal metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy required to support vital functions, will lower. It's like a service working with a 30% budget cut. The body finds its balance by abandoning some tasks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t readjust after the diet. Result: as soon as you start eating normally again, you gain weight.

• A special mention for the Atkins/Dukan diets. There is no worse diet for the human body than these. Overloading it with protein damages the body in the long term. All these diets result in body acidification and an increased production of free radicals. Forget about them !

WARNING: I’m not discussing the benefits of fasting or the sugar-free therapeutic diets (ketogenic diet), which do have their place under specific conditions.

Resistance to weight loss
Here is a list of reasons why your weight can spiral:

• Your omega-3 status at birth.
  If you're the youngest of a large family, know that you naturally have a higher amount of fat cells than your older siblings. With each additional child, the deficiency grows. Since the omega-3 provided by your mother modulated the genes for adipocyte production, you were more generously endowed than others.

The result: you gain weight more easily. All you need to do is store, while others will have to create new fat cells, which will take them more time and energy.

Unfair? Yes, a bit. The positive point is that you will manage this small excess weight better than most. Even with extra pounds, you will be in better health.

• Heavy metals
  Heavy metals are toxic to the human body. Research has shown that many of us accumulate heavy metals from our environment. As most of them have an affinity for fat, the body stores them directly in fat cells to protect itself.

The problem: losing weight becomes difficult because our metabolism is intelligent. Imagine asking a country to release all its prisoners without providing a way to evacuate them. Your body is aware of the danger posed by heavy metals. If you don’t help it detoxify, it will prefer to keep them locked away in fat cells.

• The thyroid
  As I explained in the corresponding article, your thyroid is the conductor of the human body. If it weakens, the entire metabolism slows down, including the basal metabolic rate. Fatigue then adds to uncontrollable weight gain.

• The liver
  A tired liver no longer performs its functions properly. Yet the liver plays a fundamental role in regulating insulin and detoxifying the body. An excess of toxins, like heavy metals, causes the body to protect itself by producing more fat.

• Insulin resistance
  Sometimes, when nothing seems to be going right, your body enters a state of insulin resistance. This condition causes your organs to stop responding to the hormone that tells them to take sugar from the blood and use it in cells. Insulin also signals that blood sugar is too high and needs to be stored... as fat.

The primary consequence of insulin resistance is fatigue. Your cells don’t have enough sugar to function.

The second is that the body produces more and more insulin, hoping for a favorable response. This is insulin harassment.

The third is that insulin levels become too high. This leads the body to store more fat than necessary.

This insulin resistance is known as Type 2 diabetes, a non-insulin-dependent form of diabetes. Fortunately, insulin resistance can be treated.

• Metabolic acidosis
  An acid-base imbalance depletes potassium levels, a nutrient necessary for weight loss.

• Candidiasis
  The Candida infection triggers a cascade reaction. Its presence promotes intestinal permeability (see the next section). Moreover, candidiasis can lead to uncontrollable sugar cravings.

• Intestinal permeability
  Intestinal permeability has varying consequences depending on the individual. In terms of weight gain, it mainly affects thyroid function. Indeed, foreign peptides (fragments of proteins) that pass through the intestinal barrier promote autoimmune reactions that can lead to hypothyroidism.

If the thyroid is not attacked, the foreign peptides can block the receptors on the cells, creating hypothyroidism without disrupting thyroid hormone blood levels.

• Stress
  Stress plays a key role in weight gain because it stimulates cortisol secretion. This hormone tends to inhibit serotonin and raise blood sugar levels.

The insidious nature of stress is that it also causes magnesium loss, the very element that helps you resist… stress! So neurotransmitters struggle, we feel bad about ourselves, and eat sugar to compensate.

But that’s not all: if your serotonin levels are low, your mood is even lower. And, of course, your body craves sugar, more sugar!

So, what to do?
Above all, don’t feel guilty! Don’t like your body? It doesn’t like you back. So love it, pamper it. Your body is suffering. It needs care, not hatred.

If you eat reasonably and still don’t lose weight, it’s time to dig deeper into the issue. There’s no shame in being overweight. However, there are solutions adapted to every case.

The pleasure of taste, a very good indicator
Don’t go on a diet, it’s dangerous! Instead, eat a variety of local foods, and eat what you need. To determine what your body needs, here’s a little exercise in awareness:

You’re very hungry, you sit down with your meal of the day: steak, fries, salad. Yummy! You start the steak with appetite. First bite, delicious. Second, third, fourth... Suddenly, you notice the pleasure isn’t as strong as the first bite. Why? Your body is telling you: I’ve had enough.

This isn’t about satiety. You’re still hungry. But that piece of steak has almost no flavor. You dip it in pepper sauce. Nope, really, the flavor fireworks aren’t there anymore.

Usually, the taste pleasure decreases after 5-6 bites. Now, go for the fries !

And so on with the salad, then cheese if you feel like it, and finally dessert.

Do you feel like a pregnant woman with cravings? It’s true, pregnant women receive all these signals from their bodies, and they take them seriously because this need is urgent. Protecting the future generation is a survival instinct for the species. But you, don’t you deserve to be treated as well as baby? Your body is asking, it’s up to you to listen.

At the end of the week, if you vary your meals, your body will have received everything it needs. And if it asks for red meat two or three times a day, it may be time to address an iron absorption issue.

Fat is life ! 
Add fat to your life. Unsaturated fats, of course ! Duck fat and salad oils are the primary suppliers. Use rapeseed, flax, or walnut oil in your salads. They are tasty (mix them), and most importantly, they provide you with plenty of omega-3.

If despite these tips, your weight is still out of control, it’s time to make an appointment!