Have you been trying to lose weight with little or no success? Do you feel like it takes extreme measures for your scale to budge? Are you successful with weight loss when you are trying but easily gain back the weight?
You may be experiencing weight loss resistance.
What is weight loss resistance?
Our clinical director, Dr. Sarah Wilson, ND, wrote her book ‘Finally Lose It’ after experiencing her own frustration weight loss. Having a passion for research, Dr. Sarah set her sights on figuring out why weight loss had always been near impossible for her and so many others. The results of her findings became the Finally Lose It system and the outline for our Advanced Women’s Health Weight Loss Program.
Weight Loss Resistance includes the following factors:
- Insulin resistance
- Gut hormone imbalances and bacterial imbalances
- Inflammation
- Female and male sex hormone imbalances
- Stress and burn out
- Poor sleep
- Circadian rhythm disturbances
- Poor thyroid function
When one or more of these factors are affecting you, you can be stuck in fat storage mode with a down regulated metabolism – double whammy. Our program helps you to assess your individual factors and overcome them!
The Advanced Women’s Health Weight Loss Program
At AWH we realize that you are unique and therefore you need a plan that is customized to your individual needs. We also realize that the advice to ‘just lose weight’ is far from helpful! Insulin resistance, inflammation and other imbalances can affect your ability to improve and therefore we assess and customize your nutrition and supplement plan to those factors in our three phase plan.
Phase 1 – Understand and Customize
Healthy bodies balance their weight naturally! We want this for you and therefore we place an emphasis on thoroughly investigating your health and what factors could be holding you back.
In the first appointment you can expect that your Naturopathic Doctor will take time to hear your unique symptoms. We will also help you to understand what is happening in your body so that you can understand what we will do to fix it.
At the end of this appointment you can expect to leave with:
- Basic diet and lifestyle recommendations
- Personalized herbal and nutrient recommendations
- Where appropriate, in house testing for your adrenal health, gut health, and/or bioelectrical impedance analysis
- Lab test recommendations may include insulin and glucose testing, digestive health tests, androgens, female sex hormones such as Estradiol and progesterone, a full thyroid assessment, inflammation investigations and liver and cholesterol testing. We use both functional tests and standard blood tests to come to understand your health better.
After we receive the results of your testing your ND will explain all of the findings. No blanket normal statements here, we want to ensure you understand what it all means. From that point we will customize a meal system and supplements to your specific needs.
Phase 2- Tweak and Monitor
Aren’t plateaus frustrating! When it comes to weight loss it is common for the body to adjust and plateau. This can be a sign of many things but most commonly we need to assess and treat the following:
- Thyroid hormone changes
- Poor detoxification
- Gut bacterial/ hormone issues
- Leptin changes
- Evolving insulin changes
- Inflammation
Some or all of these concerns may have been taken care of by this phase but any remaining issues are tackled head on!
Three months after embarking on your plan we will also be retesting insulin, inflammation markers and any other important tests. This allows us to make sure that you are improving as expected and making your way into Phase 3.
Phase 3- Flourish and Maintain
Achieved your goals? Amazing right! But it is so easy to get pulled back to old habits when you don’t have continued support. We all fall off and experience set backs so this phase helps to keep you on track, judgement free! For some this is a semi annual check up and for others a community kick start program. No matter what this looks like for you we are here 100% of the way!
