The Real Villain In Your Weight Loss Story

Today we are going to be talking about the The Real Villain In Your Weight Story.

Have you ever had that feeling that something was wrong with your body?

You knew something was off, something was different and you couldn’t figure out what was going on?

Like let’s say, suddenly, seemingly overnight, you’ve developed this pregnant lower belly look or maybe more of a muffin top?

Or, let’s say you’ve been exercising 3-5 days a week for 45 minutes each time and in the last 3 months you’ve lost like 2 lbs. You feel great, but you didn’t lose any weight after all that exercise.

Or let’s say, you gained around 20 lbs during COVID and then you signed up for another round of Weight Watchers but nothing happened this time.

Like nothing.

So then you tried Noom. And only lost like 3 lbs.

You just have this feeling like something isn’t right because you are putting in this effort to be healthy but not seeing any results.

Or maybe you’ve had your weight under control until you turned 50 and now it feels like you don’t even know your own body.

When you have this feeling of being out of control with your body and your weight and your health, it causes us a lot of anxiety.

We are anxious about our futures, when will the weight gain end? How do I stop this? Why isn’t anything working?

Is this just what I have to accept?

Right, these anxious thoughts that tumble around in our heads all day and cause us a lot of suffering.

And no, it’s not just something you have to accept. Not if you don’t want to.

Today I want to help ease some of these anxious thoughts about how your body may feel like it’s betraying you a bit.

We need to talk about the real villain in your weight story.

The real villain is not getting older.

The real villain is not pre-menopause or menopause.

The real villain is not estrogen.

The real villain is not your thyroid.

The real villain is something called Metabolic Damage.

As we take trips around the sun, our body accumulates damage. Like sun damage. Too much sun cause freckles and then eventually wrinkles.

Some of this damage is deeper than your skin and into your actual metabolism.

Your metabolism is the heart of how your body takes food and turns into energy so you can do everything from get out of bed in the morning to thinking at your desk, to walking with your husband after dinner.

So when you damage your metabolism, your whole body is affected.

To put it very succinctly: when you accumulate enough metabolic damage, your body is no longer able to burn body fat for energy between meals and while you sleep.

This is a big problem.

The reason metabolic damage is so bad is that it is blocking your ability to burn body fat for energy.

If you can’t burn body fat for energy, what happens to you, how do you feel?

- You accumulate more fat, which will start to accumulate in your midsection more than your hips or thighs.

- You have less and less energy. You start to depend more and more on caffeine, sugar, and wake up feeling like you’ve never slept. Everything starts to feel like a lot of effort and you just don’t have the energy, mentally or physically to deal with your life.

- You start to store body fat in places that shouldn’t have body fat, like your liver and your pancreas. So now you have chronic disease like diabetes, fatty liver, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and maybe even sleep apnea.

- You are hungry all the time! You crave sugar, carbs, salty or sweet, just give them to you now. You become dependent on sugar whether from candy or salty pretzels to keep you going, even mentally, you need these carbohydrates to help keep you from freaking out and becoming irritated and snappy. Especially around 4 and 5 pm.

- You feel trapped by your hunger and cravings. You feel destined to only gain weight. You feel powerless against food and more weight gain.

- You start to feel like something is deeply wrong and your body is betraying you.

And you’re right.

There is something deeply wrong.

You have metabolic damage that needs to be repaired so that you burn your excess body for energy and have the life and health that you want.

Let’s go a little deeper:

You have two major pieces to your metabolism.

1. Your metabolic machinery.

Metabolic damage can cause literally physical damage to your metabolic machinery. Your mitochondria, where any and all calories or fat is ever burned can be clogged, cracked, and inefficient, you could say.

Like an old truck that back fires at a traffic light or an old engine in a car that doesn’t run right.

2. Your Metabolic Hormones.

Your metabolic hormones, they are the puppeteers of your metabolism telling your body when to burn fat and when to store body fat.

Your metabolic hormones are stimulated or not stimulated by what and when you eat.

So metabolic damages looks like hormones that turn on too high for too long and little mitochondria that have trouble burning energy.

Metabolic damage is very real.

The villain in your weight story is not that you eat too much or don’t exercise enough.

It’s your metabolic damage.

When your metabolism is literally hanging on by a thread, no amount of Spin class, Body Pump, Orange Theory, Crossfit or walking the dogs is going to repair that.

That feeling that something deep is wrong is real. That feeling that something is wrong with your metabolism is also real.

If you are a woman over 40 with excess body weight to lose and are struggling to lose it, you are most likely dealing with metabolic damage that needs to be fixed first.

So just how did we damage it?

- we followed diet rules that told us to eat more whole grains
- we followed diet rules that told us to eat less fat
- we followed diet rules that told us to snack between meals
- we followed diet advice that told us to eat more seed oils and artificial sugars and sweeteners
- we followed diet advice to eat much less that what we really need and want
- some of us are on medications that damage our metabolisms
- some of us have been on past diets that have really damaged our metbaolisms
- some of us popped out of the womb destined for metabolic damage in our current food environment

But also know this: no one damages their metabolism on purpose.

No one.

But every woman has the chance to repair it and get her life back.

Every woman has the chance to repair her metabolism and regain the ability to burn fat for energy.

Every woman has the chance to eat real food and have a metabolism that can handle Christmas cookies, birthday cake and a margarita every once in a while.

Every woman has the chance to stop being anxious about food.

Every woman has the chance to defeat the villain.

That’s what we do in the Freese Method. I guide you through a 5-step food-based protocol that systematically repairs your metabolism to a place that you can continue to burn fat to get to your goal weight and then stay there.

The same eating principles not only repair, but protect your metabolism from more damage.

So it’s one eating plan for renewed health and sustained health.

Remember, you absolutely have what it takes to lose weight, you just need to fix your metabolism first!