As for many people, your New Year’s resolution may include letting go of some extra pounds to improve your health and wellbeing. Or maybe you have tried before and are frustrated with weight not coming off despite best efforts. Or your excess weight returned promptly when you finally started eating normally again after weeks of deprivation. Stress may be preventing weight loss.

If you just can’t resist those cravings and are blaming yourself for lack of willpower, I have some good news for you: it may not be your fault!

Let me explain why: The old adage of calories in vs. calories out that stipulates you will lose weight as long as burn more than you take in is coming apart at the seams.

You have probably noticed that some people are overweight despite eating small meals and exercising, while some lucky ducks can eat whatever they want and don’t gain weight.

Your Weight and the Microbiome

100 trillion microbes that inhabit our intestinal tract, making up your microbiome. And it turns out that our gut microbiome affect our weight and metabolism much more than caloric intake.  Microbiome transfer studies have shown that when researchers inoculated sterile mice were with the gut microbiome of obese mice, they became obese too. On the other hand, when they were inoculated with gut bugs from lean mice, they stayed lean. And this on diets with identical calories! Research shows that your gut microbes determine how much energy you extract from your food.

So, what disturbs our microbiome? Many things it turns out, such as diet, toxins and drugs, but a major factor is psychological stress. We are still discovering the tight connection between the brain and the gut. The good gut bugs produce B vitamins to support good mood and healthy energy metabolism. They also produce precursors to brain neurotransmitters that make us feel good and sleep well. They are easily disturbed by stress, which then affects our metabolism, mood and sleep. Stress is also the number one cause of irritable bowel syndrome.

Effects of Stress

Stress inhibits activity of the vagus nerve resulting in lowered digestive and organ function. In addition, blood sugar levels rise, the immune system starts making inflammatory proteins, and the body holds onto fat. All of these responses served our ancestors well in dealing with stressors like saber tooth tigers or food shortages. In our modern world our sources of stress are very different, but the biological stress response remains the same. If you have chronic stress, your digestion is now constantly inhibited. Your microbiome shifts towards the “bad bugs” and yeasts like candida which cause sugar and starch cravings. Your blood sugar rises and you are always inflamed while your immune system is weakened.

The inflammation makes your blood stickier and your blood pressure rises. Your body will store more fats, especially around the belly, and won’t let you burn it. You can easily develop leaky gut and food sensitivities. Due to lowered immunity you may pick up some parasites who also contribute to carb cravings and weight gain, which is way more common than officially recognized. With long-term stress, your immune system can get overwhelmed and you may develop an auto-immune disease like arthritis, allergies or asthma, and eventually cancer.

What can you do about all of this?

While you cannot always eliminate stressors, reducing your body’s response to them is key. For acute and chronic stress use techniques like meditation or prayer, mindfulness, EFT tapping, the King Method and regular practice of yoga. In addition, childhood conflicts or trauma rooted in the subconscious may be impairing your digestion and organ function via the vagus nerve. Shamanic energy healing, autonomic response testing, biofeedback, EMDR and family constellation are all great tools for removing disease-causing negative thought patterns and limiting beliefs.

On the physiological level, I use the Functional Medicine 5R program to heal leaky gut: identify and remove inflammatory foods, remove any microbial overgrowth or parasites, heal the gut wall, support digestion, and reinoculate the gut with beneficial microbes. Constipation is common with stress and must be dealt with naturally or toxins are retained and the gut cannot heal.

Importance of Detoxing

During stress, detox pathways are inhibited. Toxins in turn also make the body hold on to fat. Once the gut wall has started to heal and inflammation has calmed down, gentle detoxing is necessary to keep candida and other opportunistic microbes from returning. Detoxing will only be successful if lymphatic drainage, bile flow, liver, kidneys, and circulation are functioning well. All of these should be checked and supported if necessary. Stress-induced nutrient deficiencies in magnesium, B vitamins, potassium, sulfur, anti-oxidants, to name a few, need to be corrected.

As you may have guessed, restoring the gut microbiome is not a one-size-fits all protocol. A good practitioner will thoroughly assess your individual needs and correct imbalances with personalized diet and supplement plans.

As Hippocrates famously said, “All Disease Begins in the Gut.” That’s also where healing should begin.

And a healthy microbiome is a prerequisite for reaching a healthy weight. While you may not be able to eliminate all stress, you can counteract its effects to help you reach your weight loss goal.