Why can't I lose weight?

Millenials have grown up in a fat shaming world. The message was clear, fat is not beautiful, fat is not ok, fat is gross, fat is lazy, fat is not worthy of respect.  It's really only been since the advent of social media and perhaps the popularity of the Kadashians that a larger bodies have been afforded a platform and the conversation around acceptable body size has transformed. Nowadays the messaging is different and it needs to be. Nearly all of us are 'fat', at least a little bit fat, . And we're all worthy of respect, love, cute outfits and a peaceful existence.

Our culture and diet, filled with ultra processed foods and glycemic load make it incredibly easy to store excess energy in our bodies to use later.

Back when we were foraging in the jungle,It was pretty hard work to get all the calories you needed for the day. And indeed, for most of the history of agricultural activity, communities were often dependent on single crops, such as wheat or potatoes, and a bad weather year, or a crop-killing fungus meant a lean pantry and starvation.

We're just biologically designed to cram calories when they're available. These days, for those of us lucky to be living in peaceful countries, Food is available all the time, in relatively cheap and easy to attain forms.

I'm sure our bodies will evolve to handle ultra processed foods better, though it may take a millenia or so. Maybe it will only take a couple of hundred years. One Russian experiment bred the aggression out of the silver fox in just 20 years. So about 15 generations to cute and cuddly pet foxes. Perhaps it will only take 15 generations of ultra processed food eating for us to become resilient to it.

In the meantime, we need to not be so hard on ourselves.

Your body creates a weight set point. Once you get up to certain weight, your body fights very hard using your hormone production and chemical messaging to keep you at that weight. If you lose some weight you're going to get hungry again. That's ok. It could take anywhere between 1 and 6 years for a weight set point to change. Pretty tough to maintain weight loss for 1 - 6 years when your body is battling you to eat more. It's a special kind of willpower that quietens down that nudge to eat, and is almost impossible to maintain for long.

Instead, let's focus on eating as naturally as possible (ie minimally processed), retrain ourselves to listen to our hunger cues, and rid ourselves of our sugar habits. Sugar addiction makes you feel hungry when you're not.

There's plenty of inspiration for connecting with your true hunger and transforming your relationship around food in my ebook Mindful + Nourished. Available here.