Stop Feeling Guilty About Unwanted Weight Gain

---

Part 2 of a two part series on Hormonal Imbalance and Weight Loss

Stop feeling guilty about unwanted weight gain, many obstacles like hormone imbalances have nothing to do with what you eat or how much you exercise. Your body's hormone levels are regulated by feedback loops with other endocrine structures or by the biomolecule upon which they act. Your endocrine system helps control processes and systems like growth and development, metabolism, homeostasis, response to stress, and reproduction. Typically, increasing levels of hormones in the blood provides feedback to inhibit signals to the gland or organ producing the hormone.

Low levels of circulating thyroid hormones may be to blame

Regardless of the reason, if there are lower levels of circulating thyroid hormones, then your metabolic processes slow down tremendously resulting in weight gain. Weight gain, fatigue, brain fog and depression are common signs of low thyroid hormone production. Chronic stress, nutritional deficiencies and inflammation can cause thyroid hormone imbalances that leave you feeling fatigued, constipated or constantly cold. The glands in your body that regulate hormones play a large role in your metabolism. If you have changed your diet, managed your stress and your sleep is good, but you still cannot shed weight, thyroid hormone imbalance could be the culprit.

Target receptors can become numb to insulin hormone

Medical research has suggested that insulin hormone can make you fat and keep you fat. If your cellular receptors become numb, it almost does not matter how little you eat or how much you exercise, as the excess insulin will simply cause weight gain. Once your body finishes absorbing glucose and other nutrients from your bloodstream, it must turn to its fat stores for energy and your body enters its fat burning mode. High insulin levels result from eating too much of the wrong type of foods, particularly those high in carbohydrates and added sugars.

Ghrelin hormone triggers a positive energy balance

Hunger hormones play a major role in body weight maintenance. The same area of the brain that holds the receptors for leptin also holds the receptors for ghrelin/growth hormone. Once you are an adult, neither weight gain nor weight loss hinders your body's ability to maintain homeostasis. Any impairment of communication between your body and your hunger hormones results in hormonal imbalances that affect your eating behavior. Although ghrelin makes you hungry, it is not the enemy. It produces signals from stomach cells that encourage you to eat. Ghrelin is the only known circulating hormone that triggers a positive energy balance by stimulating food intake.