Healthy weight balancing is not as simple as most people who promote diets and exercise portray it. It requires a balance of physical activity and a healthy daily diet. Both of these should focus on the patient’s unique metabolism. A patient’s metabolism is intricate chemistry involving multiple factors. Each of these factors is unique to them. This balance of factors helps them achieve a healthy weight. This is why they benefit greatly from integrative medicine.
Weight Loss Integrative Treatment
Unlike functional medicine which focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of the issue, integrative medicine is holistic. It looks at the weight loss or weight gain problem as being a result of combined factors. It looks at the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and community or environmental factors.
The integrative approach looks into all the factors that are unique to a patient’s metabolic makeup. It looks at stress levels, the quality of sleep they get every night, and their exercise history. In addition, it considers their diet, intake of alcohol, caffeine, processed foods, drugs, and pharmaceuticals. Afterward, they have a complete blood panel workup. This will examine their hormone levels.
Here are some ways patients can incorporate integrative medicine into their weight loss or weight gain regime.
Nutrition Counseling For Weight Loss
Obesity can cause depression and suffering. It increases the risk of diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. It also threatens the immune system making it easier to suffer from infectious diseases.
Nutrition counseling is the first line of managing excess weight. It is an integrative medicine therapy. This therapy allows patients to walk with a board-certified health coach. The coach helps them in their weight management journey. Health coaches use their vast knowledge in different disciplines to help their patients.
What it involves
The counseling comes after the patient has gone through an evaluation. The health coach comes up with a comprehensive picture of their body and lifestyle. He discusses and interprets it with them. They then come up with a set of needs and goals that they need to achieve. They discuss several ways to meet these goals and agree on future steps. Finally, they fix the frequency of monitoring.
This helps patients to understand the impact of nutrition on their overall health. It provides practical measures for losing weight and helps them set achievable goals. It also emphasizes the need for behavioral change to achieve the set goals.
Expected Results
With collaborative input from their health coaches and nurses, patients achieve healthy weight loss, faster and more easily.
Dietary Adjustment And Exercise For Healthy Weight
A patient’s weight may not change for several months. This means that the number of calories they are consuming is equal to the number of calories that their body is burning. If they are looking into weight loss, they must consider changing their diet and physical activity.
What it involves
Counting calories is helpful in the beginning but, it is not a necessity. With time, drop this habit and instead of counting calories, choose food that is high in fiber. This will help to feel satisfied faster with fewer calories.
Eliminate sugar and reshape foods on the plate. This means two-thirds of the plate is whole foods, vegetables, salads, grains, and fruits. The other third should have lean meats and poultry. Once in a while, use measuring cups and a food scale to make sure that portions are under control. Also, keep a food journal to avoid eating when bored.
When it comes to exercise, schedule it as the first thing in the morning. Engage in high-intensity interval training so that the muscles get a better workout. When in plateau mode, instead of reducing food, increase the intensity of workouts. This will help to increase the number of calories burned and get a healthy balance.
Expected results
A healthy dose of regular exercise and a healthy diet will boost metabolism in two ways. First, exercise will help build muscle. The more muscle, the more calories needed. These calories are simply to maintain basal metabolism, blood circulation, and other processes. So, as one is resting, they shed pounds.
Secondly, it helps to burn calories when in motion. Stronger muscles burn more calories when in motion. This means there’s a need to eat more on workout days and less on rest days. The number of calories needed changes from day to day depending on one’s level of activity. The body needs fuel for basic functions to achieve daily activities.
Nutritional Supplements
When the change in diet and increasing the intensity of exercise do not work, check for metabolic syndrome. This condition affects gastrointestinal health and adrenal function. It causes adrenal fatigue resulting in hormonal imbalance.
Hormonal imbalance causes cortisol to increase. Cortisol controls insulin, which is a fat-storage hormone. When there is too much cortisol in the body, it results in insulin resistance. The body does not absorb glucose, and the liver turns the glucose into fat. This results in fatty liver disease.
Other hormones affected are leptin, which is nature’s hunger suppressant. Obesity causes the body to keep producing leptin. This gives one an appetite to keep eating food in an addictive pattern. Another hormone is estrogen, which resists weight loss when it is too much. The last hormone is the thyroid hormone which affects the burning of calories in the body.
What it involves
Food should always be the first place to turn to help replace the nutrients that are missing. If this does not work, try nutritional supplements. Nutritional supplements include a cortisol manager, this will help in getting better sleep. Sleep helps with relaxation and lowers cortisol levels.
Take supplements that help to reset insulin and support weight loss. An example is Berberine. Which when mixed with milk thistle resets insulin and boosts metabolism. Supplements that also encourage the reset of estrogen and thyroid hormones, also do the same.
Results Expected
Nutritional supplements will reset hormones and boost metabolism. This encourages weight loss and makes it easier to manage weight.
Lose Weight By Eliminating Environmental Toxins
The body fights external and internal attacks to prevent disease. Once it realizes that one of these contaminants has access to it, several systems kick in. Among them are the liver and kidney. The body redirects the toxins to these areas for breakdown and elimination. If the toxins are too many, they overwhelm the system. They are then sent for storage in the fat cells until the body can deal with them.
In recent times, there is a problem of an increase in environmental toxins. As their levels climb, they overwhelm the body more. Exposure to these toxins results in weight gain. Trying to lose weight, burns fat, releasing the toxins. They cause hormonal imbalance resulting in plateauing.
This means one needs to clean their body of toxins. This is not just before the weight management journey, but also during. Environmental toxins can also cause serious diseases.
What it involves
This involves taking out the trash and cleaning the body with the four Ps. They are pee, poop, perspire and practice pranayama. They will effectively help to flush toxins that overwhelm the kidney and liver.
Expected Results
Peeing is about taking lots of water. This will help the kidneys to flush out waste and toxins. Pooping is about a good diet full of fiber to help encourage gut health. It cleans out the colon by making the stool weightier and easy to expel. The water also helps to ensure the stool does not stick to the walls of the colon.
Perspiration will help to eliminate toxins through sweat. Exercise that allows the body to sweat for around 20 minutes takes care of this. In addition to exercise, use a sauna or steam bath. Sauna therapy also improves blood circulation, balances blood sugar, and improves detoxification.
In Sanskrit, pranayama is the word for “breath”. Breathing deeply and fully is a practice that will help oxygenate the body, brain, and spirit. Practice pranayama for five minutes every day. It will transform health and well-being.
Losing Weight By Promoting Gut Health
The promotion of gut health is by the gut microbiome. This consists of bacteria, fungi, and other microfungi that live in the digestive tract.
What it involves
The microbiome modulates metabolism, promotes the functioning of the immune system and mental health. They also regulate appetite, glucose metabolism, and fat storage. Changes in their composition can cause obesity and diabetes. Food sensitivities affect the gut microbiome, causing inflammation. Inflammation then prevents nutrient absorption into the body.
To heal the gut, cut out foods that irritate the digestive system. Also, cut out processed foods. These have hidden sugars that cause inflammation of the gut. Stay hydrated, take probiotics, and food that is high in fiber.
Expected Results
It will restore balance to the gut and the microbiome will improve. This will cause metabolism and immune functions to return to normal.
