5 Questions I Always Ask My Patients Who Want To Lose Weight

It’s easy to assume that your excess weight stems from poor lifestyle choices like too much junk food and a lack of physical activity, and that all you need to do is find the right diet and workout routine. But what happens when you've already tried all that without seeing any results? Often, the inability to lose weight is a symptom of a bigger underlying health problem or seemingly unrelated issue. Here are some key questions I always ask my patients who are struggling to lose weight:

I often see patients who struggle with fatigue, many of whom experience a second wind in the afternoon. It’s easy to brush this off and attribute it to a busy lifestyle, but I consider it a major red flag for adrenal fatigue. This hormonal imbalance happens when your stress hormone cortisol is high when it should be low, or low when it should be high, and makes losing weight nearly impossible.

What you eat can either feed your microbiome or destroy it. If you're eating a diet full of processed, inflammatory foods, you can be perpetuating chronic microbiome problems such as leaky-gut syndrome. This increased intestinal permeability can increase fat around your organs and contribute to metabolic syndrome. Not to mention that the chronic inflammation that goes along with leaky gut can also lead to hormone imbalance and leptin resistance. Studies1 have shown that people who typically eat a wider variety of fermented foods like sauerkraut and kefir generally have greater bacterial diversity, which has been correlated with lower weight.

Our culture tells us that weight has everything to do with diet and exercise, but your mental health plays a huge role in healthy weight management. Chronic stress has been implicated in health issues ranging from adrenal fatigue, autoimmune conditions, and digestive issues—all of which can impact your weight. Stress alone can actually slow down your metabolism and increase food cravings! Typically I start by helping patients adopt some mindfulness tools to jump-start the healing and weight-loss process.

We all come in contact with toxins on a daily basis. And over the years the amount of chemicals in our world has grown while our bodies and genes struggle to keep up. This leads to a slew of autoimmune, digestive, and hormonal problems that can contribute to weight-loss resistance. It’s important to note that certain people (hair stylists, for example) are constantly exposed to chemicals in their everyday lives. So it's important to evaluate the level of your daily exposure.

Looking at these labs will help determine your level of gut permeability:

Here are the five hormones controlling your weight and mood and 10 reasons you STILL can't lose weight.