What Really Causes Weight Gain and Bloating?

As we move into autumn, September is a great time to press the “reset” button and think about how you’d like to feel and what you’d like to change.

After a busy summer that may have included some overindulging and left you feeling even more fatigued than normal, the kids are back to school (maybe for the first time at big or little school) and you have more time for yourself.

More time to finally address the root causes of why you’re so knackered all the time and why you can’t lose weight no matter what you do.

“Cath, why can’t I lose weight?!” is something I hear all the time from my clients. Even when they’re eating pretty well, exercising regularly and doing everything “right”, the weight refuses to budge. If anything, it just continues to pile on. You might assume that your busy summer is the reason for your fatigue and weight gain but there’s a lot more going on.

Your weight gain, bloating and fatigue can be much more than what you eat or how often you move your body.

This might surprise you but hormone imbalances are one of the main causes of weight gain in women.

When your body can’t move out of fat storage mode, it’s your hormones that are keeping you stuck there. There’s such a strong link between your hormones and weight gain after 40 (or sometimes earlier than this) and you need to address this to tackle weight gain. Until your hormones are back in balance, nothing will change!

What Does Hormonal Weight Gain Look Like?

If you can say yes to these statements, you’re likely struggling with hormonal weight gain:

• You don’t feel satisfied after eating, no matter how much you may have had

• Your weight gain is mostly on your stomach, hips and things

• You’re under a lot of emotional stress and/or are putting physical stress on your body through exercise, restrictive eating and poor sleep

How Can Hormonal Imbalance Cause Weight Gain?

A few hormones are heavily involved in hormonal weight gain so let’s talk about the main players:

Insulin - Insulin helps cells to absorb glucose from the blood but chronic stress can wreak havoc with your insulin. When the body enters a fight or flight situation, glucose levels rise and the pancreas releases more insulin in response. If you were facing genuine danger, you’d quickly burn off this spike but with modern life, our stressors rarely force us to run for our lives.

This is when the extra glucose can cause a lot of problems, especially if the cells in your body already have enough fuel and aren’t receptive to taking on any more -otherwise known as insulin resistance. In this scenario, the pancreas will continue to release more and more insulin to help sugar to get out of the blood and into cells. If the cells can’t accept the extra glucose, it converts into triglycerides and is stored as fat.

Balancing your blood sugar is absolutely crucial for managing insulin levels and removing insulin-related weight gain. We dedicate a whole module to blood sugar in The Burnout Fix because it’s so key!

Cortisol - Cortisol is another biggie when it comes to weight gain, especially when it’s elevated most or all of the time. High cortisol slows down metabolism and makes it harder for the body to convert thyroid hormones. Visceral fat is particularly sensitive to cortisol and there are a whopping four times more cortisol receptors here. It’s also the first place that excess fat is stored, which is why your hormonal weight gain is likely going on your stomach (and possibly other areas too).

Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands and tends to go haywire in response to chronic stress. Our adrenals find it hard to cope with busy modern life, especially when stress and poor sleep are the norm. The adrenals will always prioritise the fight or flight response over sex hormones. Thyroid hormones also suffer when the adrenals are stressed.

If your adrenals are struggling, chasing weight loss will put them under more pressure and weight loss is even less likely. Those intense cardio sessions you’re putting yourself through in a bid to lose weight are doing more harm than good.

Thyroid hormones - The thyroid gland works with the adrenals to regulate metabolism. Because cortisol can disrupt the thyroid gland, supporting the adrenals is just as important as supporting the thyroid.

Poor sleep - Lack of sleep sends your hunger hormones (leptin and ghrelin) out of whack and leads you to crave carbs and sugar. You don’t feel full, even though you’re overeating, which of course makes you more likely to gain weight.

Restrictive eating -Dieting also skews your hunger hormones. Leptin goes down while ghrelin goes up, leading to cravings.

The body sees a calorie deficit as a form of physical stress. And what happens when the body is stressed? It produces more cortisol!

How We Can Address Hormonal Weight Gain

Resolving hormonal imbalances is what we do in The Burnout Fix because it‘s at the heart of almost every symptom. Not just weight gain but also fatigue, anxiety, low mood, digestive problems, skin issues (and so much more!).

When we can fix the hormonal imbalances that are the root cause of your symptoms, you can fix the symptoms too. It won’t happen overnight but your hormones didn’t become imbalanced overnight either.

The key is to balance blood sugar, reduce inflammation, support the adrenal glands, prioritise sleep and relaxation and improve your gut microbiome. It sounds like a lot but small changes can really add up.

Balancing your hormones is the first step to finally saying goodbye to stubborn weight gain and getting your energy back