Taking Off The Brakes For Fat Loss Success Part 3: Is Cortisol Keeping You Fat?

Ok, we're now at the 3rd instalment of taking off the brakes that are holding you back from serious fatloss so today we're going to start addressing brakes that are rarely, if ever, addressed by most people who are looking to get into great shape... and stay that way.

I'm talking about the endocrine system that produces and controls the flow of those ever-important hormones throughout your body.

Hormones that tell your body when to slow down, when to speed up, when to burn sugar, when to burn fat and, important to you of course, when to STORE fat.

You see, contrary to what you've been told, weight gain (and fat gain in particular) is not a simple mathematic equation of calories in vs calories out.

It's not just about burning off more than you eat and you'll somehow get thin.

If that were the case then most of the people who've spent a lifetime struggling with their weight on low calorie, high protein, low fat diets would already be stick thin, toned, strong and vibrant but, as we already know, they're not.

Some of the people you know can seemingly eat as much of practically anything they want whilst others merely have to gaze at a cookie and put on a pound. The math just doesn't add up.

Calories alone can't and don't explain why so many people are struggling to lose their body fat and keep it off. But hormones do!

You see, whilst we call food by common names that describe what they are like 'apple' or 'chicken' or 'cake', those words mean nothing to the intricately complex system of the inner world of our metabolism. All it knows of are chemicals.

Get the right chemical balance in your body and everything runs perfectly. You absorb nutrients from your food, those nutrients go to where they're most needed and the rest are either stored or expelled but nothing goes to waste and nothing
causes you any problems in how you look, feel or perform in day to day life.

Get the balance wrong though, and everything changes.

Nutrients can't get to where they're most needed, biological stress goes up, hormones are released to cope with the stress and before you know it you're losing muscle, slowing your metabolism way down and piling on the pounds.

Sounds familiar, right?

I bet it does!

But it's not JUST through your nutrition that hormones come into play, they're also affected by your lifestyle, your sleep habits, your activity levels and how you cope with stress, meaning that if any these are out of whack then you'll have a greater chance of losing muscle and piling on pounds as a result.

This is serious stuff.

In fact, inability to create a positive hormone profile is one of the major brakes that are keeping people fat, unfit, depressed and in pain.

That being the case, let's investigate how we can release the brakes in this area and start speeding up our fat loss results before we even consider joining a gym or starting a dietary regime. Just a few tweaks toward positive hormone balance can have a major impact on fat loss without any other changes taking place and, once you add even a few diet changes and some exercise, can help you to achieve quite startling results.

Sound ok to you?

Let's start today with Cortisol.

Now, I'm not going to bore you with in-depth endocrinology here, I know you just want to know how this information will benefit you so I'll keep it simple.

Cortisol is, your body's primary stress hormone and is responsible for, among other things, the 'fight or flight' response that you've heard so much about.

It works this way; when a stressor affects you in day to day life, such as being cut up in traffic, arguing with a spouse, being under a tough deadline or being chased by a wild tiger, your adrenal glands on your kidneys secrete cortisol directly into the bloodstream where it causes us to release amino acids from our muscles, glucose from the liver and fatty acids from our fat cells into the bloodstream for use as 'emergency fuel' to help us fight or flee.

So far, so good, right?

Well, normally that would be fine. Especially if those stressors are few and far between but that's not the case for most of us. Most people live in a continual state of stress where cortisol is being released time and time and time again leading to permanently elevated cortisol both in the bloodstream AND in the cells themselves.

Trouble is, whilst short exposures of cortisol are useful and can be beneficial, longterm they're downright destructive leading to:

- Increased appetite and food cravings
- Decreases in lean muscle mass
- Increased Anxiety and Depression
- Decreased libido
- Increase of PMS symptoms
- Increase in menopausal side-effects
- INCREASE IN BODY FAT


And guess where cortisol-created body fat wants to live?

Right up there on the belly!

(In later articles I'll explain how each of the hormones creates its own 'fat dump' in a different location on the body)

This means that if you're carrying a excess fat in your abdominal region that's stubborn to shift, you're more than likely to have chronically elevated cortisol causing the problem. And again, it may not have anything to do with the total number of calories you're eating.

In fact, those people who have drastically cut calories from their diets may actually be at MORE risk of gaining abdominal fat as the body tends to treat either extreme or long-term calorie restriction as a stressor and secretes (you guessed it!) cortisol in order to deal with the stress.

Strange but true!

So it's pretty clear that we need to remove this hormonal brake if we're serious about shifting fat from our bellies and keeping it off. But how?

Well, there are numerous ways in which we can re-establish normal cortisol levels in the body and start burning fat but the best are simply 'natural cures' that can be applied almost immediately and with very little expense.

In fact, the first one is absolutely free!

It's called SLEEP.

That's right, sleep is one of the most important factors in cortisol control as a lack of both quality and quantity of sleep leads to elevated cortisol and a depression of other important metabolic hormones (that we'll talk about in a later article). Fail to get enough sleep and at the right time and you'll be doomed to struggling with your bodyfat forever. Conversely, make even a few moderate sleep habit changes over the next few days and you'll start to see the fat shift.

Because cortisol is related to sleep and wake cycles and is triggered by light, you should aim to spend the last few hours before bed in a dimmed or dark room and aim to be in bed by 10pm and sleeping by 10.30pm.

It sounds too early, I know. Especially with late night TV and those emails you have to do before bed but hey, your hormones don't know about TV and email, they know stress. You want to lose fat? Then get to bed! In fact, bright TV's and bright computer screens are the last thing you want just before you hit the hay. They keep your cortisol pumping through both the light they emit and the potential for stress they evoke (Ever read a bad news email just before bed and tried to sleep?)

Sleep is one of the most under-rated fat cures there are. Many of my own personal training clients here in London have 'spontaneously' dropped 7lbs or more in a single week just from getting to bed earlier. Apply a good sleep protocol for just 7 days and you'll have all the evidence you need to become a believer.

(Note: 8 hours from midnight to 8am is NOT the same as going to bed by 10. I'll explain more when in my in-depth sleep article)

You can also help reduce your cortisol through a simple supplement strategy that provides your body with the full spectrum of nutrients required to better tolerate stress.

These should include the vitamin B family, Calcium, High dose vitamin C and magnesium.

In addition I'd recommend taking a cortisol controlling supplement like Magnolia bark and Theanine which you can get from your local health food store and have been shown to be very effective at helping control cortisol release during stressful periods.

Nutritionally, eat plenty of apples and onions which are high in quercetin and can help with reducing intercellular cortisol and grapefruit which does the same through its active substance Naringenin.

Hopefully, it should be clear that the best way to cope with stress is to avoid it altogether or at least reduce it.

Try identifying high-stress situations in advance and working out coping strategies to deal with them as they arise. Add exercise (though minimise aerobic exercise which releases more cortisol) and relaxation techniques and eat a clean and healthy diet and your cortisol levels will soon come under control.

Once they do you'll see the fat disappear faster than easier and with far less effort than ever before.

Go ahead, release your cortisol brakes today!

Start by getting some good sleep for just 7 nights and see what happens.

Dax Moy
London's Leading Personal Trainer