If you watch a film taken of real people from the 1960’s, you’ll notice something different about them…

Hardly anyone is overweight.

If you watch a film taken of real people today, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll find people who are overweight. In fact, the obesity rate in the US has nearly tripled since the 1960’s.

In 2019, the United States was ranked 12th for one of the most obese countries in the world, with 36.2% of the population classified as obese and an average body mass index (BMI) of 28.8. For adults, an average BMI of 18.5-24.9 is considered normal, 25-29.9 is considered overweight, and 30+ is considered obese.

This means our average is at the top of the “overweight” range.

So what is it? What has changed so much since the 1960’s?

A LOT has changed about our food and lifestyle, and unfortunately it isn’t for the better.

Below are just a few reasons besides your portion size that are affecting your weight! This topic is so much bigger than what I can share in a single blog post.

If you are interested in learning more about weight loss and how I can help you can look and feel so much better, shoot me a message!

1. Convenience eating

Going out to eat, fast food, and meal delivery services are more common than staying home and cooking these days. This can be a problem for both your waistline and your wallet.

Restaurants typically use low quality ingredients that can make you gain weight and cause your body harm. Even a salad at some of these places can be incredibly high in calories and full of toxic oils, fillers, and sugars.

Cooking at home is always going to be one of my first recommendations to anyone trying to lose weight. However, it goes farther than that… Zapping a frozen dinner in the microwave is not the same thing as cooking real food. Ingredients matter.

2. Processed Foods

Processed foods are in almost everything! It’s very difficult to avoid.

What is considered a processed food? Basically any food that is changed from its whole, original form. This can include frozen, canned, dried, baked, pasteurized, and especially chemically altered foods.

There are different levels of processed food which range from pre-washed and chopped veggies to foods with added preservatives, sugars, and oils for longer shelf life or a more delicious flavor.

Not all processed foods are bad… I’m the first to admit I prefer buying my onions pre-chopped (I prefer not to cry over the cutting board!). But when food is processed to the point that it never goes bad and the ingredient list looks more like your high school chemistry book, it can definitely affect your health.

Some processed foods you should avoid are:

Soda and sugary juices
Low quality salad dressings, condiments, and sauces
Alternative butter like margarine
Low quality, man-made cooking oils
Junk snack foods like potato chips, microwavable popcorn, breakfast cereal, white flour bread or baked goods, etc.
Most packaged foods
Fried foods
Chemical sweeteners

The problem with these processed foods are the ingredients and what they do to your body. Unfortunately, these ingredients exist in everything… even showing up in healthier options.

These ingredients are terrible for weight management, your metabolism and hormones, your gut, and can even be a cause for chronic disease.

3. Ingredients to Watch Out For

It’s important to know what to look out for on your packaged food’s ingredient list. Does it look like it was made in a lab? Then it’s probably terrible for your health.

But food companies are sneaky and have found ways to market ingredients to make them seem less terrible than they are.

Here’s some examples of ingredients you want to avoid:

Artificial flavors and natural flavors– can include up to 100 proprietary ingredients (mostly chemicals) that they do not have to disclose on the package. They are made specifically to be delicious and addicting to consumers.
Artificial sweeteners, sugar substitutes, and corn syrup/high fructose corn syrup – aspartame, saccharine (Sweet’N Low), sucralose (Splenda), dextrose, and more– these have been known to be carcinogenic, they affect your blood sugar, and have been linked with dementia.
- Keep in mind that anything sweet, regardless of actual sugar content or calories, will trigger an insulin response, which can make you gain weight and lead to insulin regulation issues. It’s also incredibly addicting.
Artificial colors – Red no 40, Red no 3, Blue no 1, Yellow no 5, Yellow no 6, and caramel coloring– linked to hyperactivity and cancer.
Antibiotics and growth hormones in meats– major hormone disruptor.
Foods that have been sprayed with pesticides and herbicides– known to be carcinogenic and endocrine disruptors.
Canola oil, corn oil, partially hydrogenated oils, cottonseed oil, and soybean oil– chemically refined with toxic chemicals like hexane and bleach.
Preservatives, anti-caking agents, emulsifiers, and other ingredients with confusing chemical names – carrageenan, calcium peroxide, BHA and BHT, azodicarbonamide, citric acid, cellulose, maltodextrin, etc.– these are often toxic chemicals that have endocrine disrupting, cancer causing, gut destroying, carcinogenic effects on humans.

4. Sedentary Lifestyle

We have so many conveniences and many people do not have physically demanding work… we tend to have much more sedentary lifestyles today.

We’re a long way away from our hunter-gatherer roots. We do not have to fight so hard to survive and thrive today, but our bodies are built for a much higher level of activity than most of us get.

Even with an hour of scheduled exercise a day, most people spend the majority of their day sitting during their commute, at work or school, and in front of the tv.

There are easy ways to consciously add more movement into your day, like:

Cleaning
Take a walk
Dance in your house
Do some light exercises while watching tv
Get up and stretch first thing in the morning, at work, and before bed
Schedule yourself some time to move

5. Stress

Unfortunately, we also tend to have overpacked, overscheduled, demanding, and stressful lives. Cortisol is the stress hormone that gets released into your blood stream during stressful situations.

The evolutionary purpose was to help you survive in a life-threatening scenario. Your heart rate increases, blood pumps to your muscles, and your body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline while we go into a state of “fight or flight.”

If you are constantly under stress, however, this can have very harmful long-term effects on the body.

Many people are so used to being stressed out, they aren’t even conscious of it. This consistent release of cortisol can wear out your adrenals and hormone production, which can ultimately lead to adrenal fatigue… which can be permanent.

Stress inhibits weight loss and is a precursor for pretty much all chronic disease.

Taking measures to be aware of and cope with stress is hugely important to your health.

Take a moment to stop and take deep breaths throughout your day. Be conscious of releasing tension with breathing, exercise, yoga, meditation, or even seeking out someone to talk to. These coping mechanisms are a skill that need to be practiced.

If you are someone who is having trouble losing weight, it could be due to many different factors. I can help you figure out what will work best for YOU… without counting calories.

Click here to schedule a free session to learn how I can help you meet your health goals!

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