Ten surprising things that secretly make you fatter

Have you been trying to lose weight for some time but can’t do it in the long term? The reasons why you have a hard time losing weight may come from a corner where you may not expect them at all. Let me introduce you to ten of these.

1. Your partner, friends and girlfriends

Take a look around you at a party with family members, friends and girlfriends. What do you see? Do you generally see people with a normal build or are there quite a few people among them who are overweight? Man is a social animal; we will not survive on our own. We adapt to our environment. In that sense, obesity is contagious. Research shows that having friends who are overweight significantly increases the chance that you will become overweight yourself. In a thirty-year study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, it was found that over a period of time, the risk of obesity increased by as much as 57% when someone during that period had a boyfriend/girlfriend who was also very obese. became.

The good news, of course, is that being slim is also contagious. Of course, I am not saying that you should dump your overweight friends/girlfriends, but if you are aiming for a healthy weight, then it is good to be aware of this.

2. Your television

I am increasingly hearing women say they are addicted to Netflix series on television. I recently heard from someone that she had seen five episodes of The Mentalist in a row and suddenly realized it was 2:30 in the morning! Be aware that too little sleep can be a major cause of obesity. ‘Do you sleep slim’ is not an empty phrase. There are mountains of studies showing that people who sleep less than seven hours a night have a higher weight than people who allow themselves more sleep. If your body gets tired during the day from lack of sleep and craves extra energy, there is only one remedy: food! Preferably something that gives energy quickly, so sweets or fast carbohydrates: the fatteners. Do yourself and your weight a favor; how much fun Simon Baker in The Mentalist is:

3. Your light products

You want to lose weight. You have cleaned up your kitchen and removed pink cakes, soft drinks, fruit yoghurt and bitterballen. They have been replaced by dairy products with 0% fat, peanut butter diet, coke zero and healthy, slim, bars. Oops, this is a trap that many women fall into. The food industry has led us to believe that we become slimmer by using light products. That is not true. Fatty light products, such as peanut butter, get loads of sugars to make them taste good. Peanut butter light contains 450% more sugar than regular peanut butter! Sweet diet products, such as soft drinks, are given synthetic sweeteners to taste sweet. Synthetic sweeteners disrupt your metabolism. From a 14-year survey of 66,000 women, diet drinks have clearly been shown to make women sicker and fatter. Ignore diet products and get rid of your sugar cravings. That is the only way.

4. Your job and your colleagues

Your workplace can be a source of constant temptation that makes it difficult for you to lose weight. Pastries from colleagues, meetings including lunch with milk and sandwiches, team drinks with bitterballen, the licorice pot from a colleague next to you, edible gifts from a grateful customer or patient: how often a day should you say “no, thank you”? Additionally, if you don’t feel happy in your job, the need to treat yourself to something tasty can be great. The only way to resist these temptations is to feed yourself very well with healthy food that makes your body happy and not fat. Indeed, that takes preparation, but bring your own lunch and healthy treats to your workplace. Don’t get hungry there. Drink two large glasses of water if you are tempted.

5. Your long to-do list

Do you have an overflowing to-do list and are you sometimes walking around like a chicken because you don’t know where to start? Or is there something else that gives you a lot of stress ? I’ve written about it before, but stress can make you really fat . When you are under a lot of stress your body makes cortisol, a hormone that makes you hungry anyway. Cortisol is also known to act like sugars in your body; it mainly ensures fat storage around your waist. Something that women can suffer from a lot, especially when they are over 40. The only remedy is to slow down. Yes, you really can to lose weight if you allow yourself more rest. Exercise and sports can also be a great way to relax. Feel what you need and especially learn to delegate and say “no”. Really, the latter is just a matter of practice. Start today!

6. Your intolerances to certain foods

More and more people suffer from food allergies such as gluten or milk. This means that more and more people are walking around with unnoticed intolerances or sensitivity to certain foods. If you have been suffering from bloating, constipation, headaches, rheumatism or skin problems for years, you may no longer be making a link with your diet. Being overweight can be the result of food sensitivities. The moment you eat something that your body cannot tolerate, the hormone cortisol also rises, the hormone that makes you fat. Listen to your body and see complaints as signals that something is wrong. Complaints are not normal.

Delete all gluten for two weeks and feel good what it does to you. Then do the same with dairy and sugars. Many people are intolerant to sugars, dairy and gluten.

7. Your gut flora

Your intestinal flora consists of billions of bacteria that together weigh more than 2 kilos. There are good and bad bacteria, you need both, but the good bacteria must remain in the majority. If the bad bacteria become dominant or there is too little variety of different bacteria, it can become very difficult to lose weight. Many studies have been done with mice. Mice that received the intestinal flora from fat people gained weight without eating more, while mice that received the intestinal flora from thin people remained normal  (3). Your intestinal flora therefore influences your weight! Therefore, feed the bacteria that will keep you slim: eat a lot of vegetables and fruit for the fiber. Eat healthy fats and drink plenty of water. Don’t forget sweets, because fattening bacteria love sugars, so you feed them and get more of them. Of course you prefer not to have one!

8. Your medicines (also think of the pill)

Have you been taking medication for a certain chronic disease for years? Read the fine print of the package insert carefully. A large part of the medications has the side effect of making you fatter. Losing weight then becomes very difficult. Note: the contraceptive pill is also medicine and it is known that you can easily gain weight. As for the pill; use a different contraceptive and you could suddenly lose five kilos. As for those other medications, be aware that medications never target the cause of your disease but only treat symptoms. I am not saying that you should stop taking these drugs today, but I challenge you to look for the cause and tackle it by the head. Medicines never make you better, you can only do that yourself and you can do much more than you think! Read inspiring stories from other women here.

9. Your insulin resistance

If you have always used a lot of sweets, potatoes, bread with milk and a lot of products from the supermarket (80% of the products from the supermarket contain a lot of sugars), chances are that your cells have become deaf to the hormone insulin. By eating sweets, starches, grains, dairy or hidden sugars, your blood sugar rises. Insulin is the hormone that brings this sugar (glucose) in your blood to your cells: glucose is energy for your cells. If you often have a lot of glucose in your blood, your cells can become deaf to insulin. This means that the insulin continues to circulate in your blood and with insulin in your blood it is impossible to lose weight. So make sure your cells become sensitive to insulin again. Limit eating anything that makes your blood sugar rise and get moving. Exercise before breakfast in particular helps to combat insulin resistance and increase your metabolism. If you don’t have a dog, pretend and walk your imaginary dog ​​every morning and let him run at a brisk pace.

10. Your cosmetics, perfume and care products

I have also written a lot about this subject. If they are not 100% natural, many of these products are full of hormone-disrupting substances. Your body can handle a little, but if it gets too much, it may happen that your body can no longer dispose of them properly. The circulation of hormone-disrupting substances in your body is unhealthy, so your body will store them in the safest place it has your fat cells. Losing weight can then be very difficult and even dangerous because those hormone disruptors then get back into your blood. Help your body get rid of these substances in your body as much as possible. You do this by eating plenty of green vegetables, especially the cabbage varieties are very healthy. Broccoli sprouts are toppers, chlorella and spirulina too. Eat plenty of fiber; those are in vegetables, fruits, and legumes and limit alcohol because it is your liver that is responsible for the purification and elimination of toxins, including alcohol. So do not burden it unnecessarily.

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