Chapter 14: Weight Loss

Surprising reasons why we gain weight.

Aging: When people pass 40 years of age, their metabolic level decreases naturally. If they still eat the same amount of food as they did when they were 18, weight gain happens�� dramatically. Once you accumulate too much fat, your metabolic level can drop even further because fat cells cannot burn as many calories.

Hormone changes: Menopausal women have sudden drops of estrogen (50%) and progesterone (80%), which sharply decrease their metabolism. The imbalance of their estrogen and progesterone sometimes makes them crave sweets. Even if a woman eats only one cookie a day, she is adding more than 100 calories to her normal diet because she will never feel full just by eating sweets. After the sweets, she will still need the same amount of a real meal to feel satiated.

Unhealthy diet: There is a lot of hidden sugar in processed foods and soda, which easily increases you daily caloric intake without you realizing it. You could run a marathon with all the extra calories you take in this way.

Medications: Estrogen blockers such as Tamoxifen can artificially lower your estrogen level but make you gain 30 lbs within a short period of time even if you watch your diet very carefully. This situation often happens to breast cancer patients. However, it is still important to eat healthily even when weight gain is unavoidable due to these medications because you will not have as many of the other side effects such as hot flushes, night sweats, or osteoporosis.

Hypothyroidism: If your thyroid is under-performing, you cannot produce enough heat to warm up your body or enough energy to do your daily work because your body stores the calories as fat rather than burns them to make you feel less tired and cold. An imbalanced immune system can cause your body to produce antibodies that attack your thyroid gland. A high sugar diet can also damage the thyroid by causing inflammation, which is why diabetes is always accompanied by a hypothyroid condition.

Medications that lower your metabolic level: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and sleeping pills can change your sleep pattern and increase your appetite because the more time you spend in deep sleep, the more your metabolism is lowered, so you gain weight gradually. When I travelled to Shanghai, I took a sleeping pill every day for 6 days and gained 5 pounds even though I walked everywhere and ate a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit and no junk food.

Alcohol: Alcohol can increase the estrogen level of men and woman and add on those empty extra calories. You may have noticed that alcoholics can have very thin arms and legs but enlarged bellies, breasts, and veins on the chest or other body areas.

Dehydration: Not drinking enough water can also slow down your metabolism. Please remember that every single metabolic reaction needs water as a catalyst.

Birth control: Birth control pills can cause an imbalance of estrogen and progesterone and fat accumulation in your thighs, hips and breasts. If you stop taking birth control pills, you may find that you can lose 10 lbs within a short period of time.

Acupuncture Infertility Group