Tag Archives: diet change

Emotional Stress And Weight Gain Or Loss

Healthy Me, , , , ,

Weight loss is a tricky subject for most who have tried to yo-yo diet and follow starvation diets, with crazy workouts lasting hours on end.

Here are some things to think about when choosing a weight loss program that will benefit you holistically rather than just dropping the pounds. What caused the weight gain in the first place? What is the first factor that comes to mind – was it overeating? Was it a stressful event or turn of events that caused the weight gain, which also was compounded by other stress symptoms such as loss of sleep and fatigue? What was the stressor? Stressors could include anything that puts the body out of its normal state of being such as environment, diet change / modification, medications and emotional stress of varying degrees.

If in fact it was emotional stress related, here a few simple things that you can do that will significantly help improve your success at loosing the additional weight.

  1. Identify the emotional stress factor that caused this spiral with the weight and write it down.
  2. Rather than being stuck in past, come up with realistic strategies that are going to help motivate you to change your attitude towards certain things. Cognitive behavioral therapy would be great for this.
  3. Put your action plan to use. This might include a healthier diet change which will nourish your body with the nutrients that the body has a high demand for in times of stress. An exercise schedule might help, however, if there is a lack of motivation to start exercising because you have no energy, try to identify what you is causing the fatigue ( which could very well be hormone related if there was a prolonged period of stress), and talk to your Naturopathic Doctor about what tests need to be done to identify the root cause of the fatigue and weight gain.

Once this is established, and you start having more energy, you can get on an exercise plan, which will help with energy and stress management. Quite often however, its not so simple. The human mind is much more complex and we often need to change our mental behaviors in order to achieve some physical successes such as weight loss and break unhelpful and disruptive patterns that caused the problem in the first place and may cause a repetition in the future.

By: Sushma Shah, Naturopathic Doctor, at the Nature’s Intentions Naturopathic Clinic.

Treating Constipation Naturally

Healthy Me, , , , ,

People suffering from constipation often tend to do various cleanses and diets, which seem to find helpful for a few days or months and then their symptoms of gas, bloating and constipation recur. The thing that I have found to be most beneficial for my patients is determining what exactly is causing the constipation – usually we find the cause is the foods that they have been eating and not tolerating well or they have diets which is are high in carbohydrates such as breads and pastas, or they are not drinking enough water or they have too much stress in life, once all these issues are addressed- from determining what foods people are intolerant through specific blood tests and changing their diet and lifestyle and teaching them proper techniques for stress management, the issue of constipation is generally RESOLVED!

By: Sushma Shah, Naturopathic Doctor, at Nature’s Intentions Naturopathic Clinic.