Transcribed using AI transcription; errors may occur. Contact Mikki for clarification

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Bye!

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team, Mikki here, you're listening to a mini Mikkipedia on a Monday. And this Monday I want to chat about something which I've been talking to people about in my mini course, Unlocking Fat Loss Success. And it was the premise of the first webinar that we went through, and talking about different avatars for fat loss. So you know what group that people might typically fall into, and then

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how stress impacts on their ability to lose body fat. And what I would say from the get-go is that you cannot ignore stress. And I know that so many people are either in denial about the amount of stress that they're under, or they don't want to address it, so they try to avoid it. And then they try to control the food aspect of it, and then continually fall down in that space.

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The thing is, just to remind you, as I'm sure that you know, is that the food is a symptom or an outcome of everything else that's going on around you. And unless you are able to manage that other stressors and other stuff, then it's really difficult for you to make lasting dietary change. You may be able to for a little while, but sooner or later, things can fall apart. So this was the premise, I guess, of

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that discussion and I just wanted to highlight a few aspects of what we discussed here today. Just because I think you're interested and anything that can help you shine a light on where your roadblocks are I think is really helpful. And the caveat to this is that we are of course all different and just because this is a regular pattern that I might see with my clients doesn't mean that you necessarily fall into this space as well.

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The other thing I'd say is that predominantly when we chat about this stuff, people often have a female avatar in their head because women and diet are almost synonymous. It happens with men also. Men fall into these similar categories and therefore the solutions aren't that different. It might look different, but the underlying solutions and strategies aren't that different.

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So, first and foremost, and we've chatted about mindset before, and anyone who follows me on social media knows that that's a topic that I'm super passionate about, because really, mindset is at the heart of your fat loss success. And when people come to fat loss, regardless of where they're at, they can fall into it. I'm thinking, let me actually back up and say, this would be for people who are potentially 35 and older, right?

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may fall into one of two categories. The first one is someone that I have termed the persistent pathfinder. This is someone who has tried everything, like literally everything. They have been on a diet for the last 20 or 30 years. They may have even started dieting when they were very young in their teenage years, like I did. My mother and I bonded over Rosemary Connolly's

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I would not recommend that mothers and daughters bond over dieting now. I have to say it was quite nice for me to be able to spend time with my mom like that. But there are a lot of women who are in my age bracket, 45 and older, who probably share a similar experience to me in that regard. However, for some women, it can feel like they gain weight, then they lose weight, then they gain it back, they lose weight, they gain and gain and gain again. And it's this constant battle

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that seems increasingly difficult to win. And despite their best efforts, the scales refuse to budge and the pants just keep getting tighter. Because of course, scalers are just one aspect, but how you look, how you feel, what your clothes fit like, these are much more tangible and objective measures of success. Not what you look like, I mean, that is, and how you feel, that's pretty subjective actually. But certainly what the,

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you're close fit is certainly more objective than that. Often with this avatar, there's just this hopelessness, right? Because they don't see any real return for their efforts, particularly when down the street, Sally's just lost 10 kilos doing keto and she didn't even really have 10 kilos to lose. It can feel pretty disheartening for some people. There is confusion because what worked in their 20s and 30s when you just don't eat for a week and suddenly

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five kilos have disappeared, never to return. It just doesn't work like that anymore. In part due to age, but in part due to stress, which is what I wanna chat in a bit more depth about. And then of course, there are the concerns of that long term implications of carrying excess body fat. And it is a real concern. And research shows that even though there are, there is a term metabolically healthy obese, what tends to be the case is that

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over time, as we age beyond our 40s into our 50s and 60s and beyond, we're no longer metabolically healthy. And that additional excess body fat that you carry through your 40s does place you at greater risk of cardiometabolic disease as you age. So let's be clear on that. And that certainly, I'm not saying that with any judgment. This is purely what we see in the medical literature.

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And also these people, they just want to find something that sort of enables them to break out of that cycle, but they're not even sure that it exists really. They sort of think it's their lot, almost always going into a plan, quote unquote, knowing that it's not going to serve them. So that's one sort of group of individuals that I see a large majority of people falling into. And it would be interesting to know whether you also recognize yourself in that. But then of course, there's this other group.

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and this is a group that I've termed the late life pivot pro. So these people have been relatively slim all of their lives. They never really had to consider diet or aggressive, excessive, hard, intensive exercise or even exercise per se. They've really just been able to maintain a lean physique, apparently, regardless of what they've eaten and how little they've exercised.

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Now, before I go on, I will just caveat that by saying this is by no means meaning that they are healthy, but if we're thinking about it from a fat loss perspective, they've just managed to stay lean, and then they're not. And it's almost like overnight or over a year or two years, they've gained weight and they can't shift it. And there's a shock and discomfort at that sudden weight gain. There's also a lack of experience of sort of knowing what works.

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like pulling levers in certain ways, that they just haven't had to think about it before and suddenly they have to think about it. And they also need a manageable and sustainable approach to weight loss. And they're unprepared. They don't have that same experience that the persistent pathfinder might have. And they do also have this desire to understand the underlying causes of weight gain at this stage of life. And this does often happen as a woman hits perimenopause.

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when we lose the insulin sensitivity of estrogen, we start gaining fat around the middle, our limbs become skinnier, so your legs and arms are still skinny, but you lose your butt, so you no longer have, it's no longer as round, but the weight appears to shift into the mid region or midsection. And even the scales, I mentioned that the scales might go up, might not go up a lot.

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even in some women, they don't really go up at all. Yet they've had a definitive shift in their physique. Whilst these individuals or this group might not have the stress from dieting, and that sort of, because dieting is of course a stress, they have other life stresses given just where they are in life. You know, you're a carer for your parents, you have a family, you have a household you have to run.

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you have a career and you might be at the pinnacle of your career. You have financial stressors, you have other relationships that you have to make time for in this ever increasing, busy lifestyle that you lead. There is certainly stress, but it might just not be that type of stress that relates to a continual chronic dieting situation.

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What I would say is that despite the fact that the stressors are different, the stress will impact physiology in the same way. And that's what I want to chat about today. As you know, stress is a perception, and it is our reality, but it is how we perceive what's going on around us. And everyone is different as to the level of stress that they can adapt and become more resilient to.

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and by no means am I meaning to diminish a person's experience of stress, but stress is a perception. And the thing is, is that most of us recognize when we are stressed, but we may not have those management, those management stress management techniques in place to be able to then respond accordingly. But not all of us know that when we are stressed, and this is certainly true. Like there are people that I speak to and they swear black and blue that they are not stressed.

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but you can see it in the way they hold their body. They're hypervigilant. The tone of their voice might go up an octave. Just the way that their body language just emanates this stressed scenario, even though they don't see it in themselves. And that is definitely something to be mindful of. And I also always say to people that, you know, it might not be a good idea to ask someone if they're stressed. It's probably more appropriate.

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ask their best friend or ask their spouse or partner or their parent or whoever, because you're probably going to get a truer reflection of the stress situation than if you were to just rely on the individual themselves. Anyway, but stress though, stress is essential to life. Cortisol, the stress hormone that is released in an acute stressful situation, governs hunger, cravings, digestion, blood pressure.

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sleep-wake cycle, our capacity to cope, and it is released to increase energy, focus, attention, to liberate glucose from our liver in order for that to be used for energy. This is all necessary, but it's not designed to be on every single day, several times a day, and we're not designed to be on high alert. Cortisol itself is actually an anti-inflammatory molecule, but

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because it is activated so often, it can actually be pro-inflammatory for that reason. And it isn't stress per se that's the issue, because without stress we'd be dead. But it is unmanaged stress, so not being able to cope. Unrecognized stress, as I talked about earlier, with someone not even in denial about their situation, but it also is an addiction to stress. And loads of people fall into this category.

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where we've thrived for years in a stressful scenario where we have juggled work, parenthood, relationships, not just juggled them, we've thrived and excelled in these areas. And for some people, it's like they almost can't get going and achieve anything unless there is this element of stress. It really stimulates us. The problem is, is that over time, in the years, we become less resilient.

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and we can no longer cope with the same amount of stress. We just find that our brain finds it hard to recognize. So because we are addicted to that feeling of completion and satisfaction, that a deadline can bring if you like. And just a word on sex differences in the hormones, because I don't think that men and women are that different in what I've just described. We often hear that women need to be really

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sort of protect themselves from cortisol and the spikes in cortisol that they experience across the day. And while I will say that, of course, women, it appears that we are more sensitive to a lack of food signaling. So we may experience more thyroid disruption, more hormonal disruption. If we go for long periods without food, whereas men, it might not be that, might not have that issue.

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There isn't any difference between men and women in their cortisol responses across the day. And if there is any difference, what the research has found is that men have a slightly higher cortisol response than women. However, regardless even of that, it's not clinically meaningful. So something can be statistically significant in a study, but it doesn't mean that it's clinically meaningful in real life.

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it doesn't make a measurable change or difference to our physiology. You'll probably recall me saying this, but I had a really great conversation with Dr. Carrie Jones, who was head of medical at Dutch.com, which is a dried urine test for comprehensive hormones. She reviewed thousands of urine samples, men and women, and found no difference in that causal response. It's just worth noting that, I think, because so often the questions I get is,

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women shouldn't do hard exercise, or is it true that women shouldn't do hard exercise because they can't handle the cortisol and things like that? In short, no, that's not true. Let's talk then briefly about the physiological effects of stress on body fat. And this is where I think it is really important to drill down what happens, just to illustrate why you just can't ignore it. So when we are stressed, when we have that high cortisol response,

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We go into that survival mode because of the impact of cortisol. Cortisol does increase and it changes energy allocation to one of preservation. What it does over time, it wants to hold on to all of your resources because it perceives a threat. When cortisol is high, our ability to burn fat is lower. This is in large part due to the changes in insulin that occurs as well.

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because when you increase cortisol, you increase blood glucose levels because cortisol liberates glucose from the liver. And then that change in blood glucose levels increases our insulin response and it raises our baseline insulin. In that scenario, we suppress fat oxidation and fat burning. We cannot burn fat. It also then increases our cravings and our appetite because of the higher blood sugar levels. Anything that

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impacts our blood sugar regulation changes our cravings because it can cause peaks and troughs. And when there's a trough in our blood sugar level, we get those cravings to bring our blood sugar back to within normal range. And this is something that cortisol does. It increases fat storage around our abdomen and that type of fat that it increases is more inflammatory. So that can change our metabolic health markers and increase vascular damage and increase inflammation.

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It also reduces our ability to build and maintain muscle mass because of that increase in inflammation. So we are much more likely to be catabolic. So if you're hard stressed out and then you're training every day and you're not doing anything to manage your stress, your body doesn't get a reprieve. So it's unable to recover and adapt and become resilient. It is just continuing that catabolic state. And then also cortisol can disrupt gut function, slow the rate of digestion.

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and the inflammation reduces our absorption of nutrients. So even if you're eating a sort of solid diet, you may not be able to get the benefits of it because we're unable to absorb those nutrients. And nutrients, micronutrients, are the message and signalers of all of our physiological pathways. That's what helps with energy metabolism, hormone production, neurotransmitter production, gut function, and all the rest of it. We don't digest those nutrients, these things don't help optimally.

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Then also, I think it's important to acknowledge thyroid a little bit separately. So, high stress or high cortisol contributes to symptoms of hypothyroidism, so slowing down of the thyroid function. That looks like fatigue, weight gain, cold intolerance, even in cases where standard thyroid function tests show normal results. And don't forget the standard tests are the TSH, the thyroid stimulating hormone, almost like a

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a first red flag, if that's out of whack, then your doctor is going to want to see T4 and T3, maybe. The thing is, is that it's largely acknowledged by the endocrine society that TSH is not a sensitive marker for thyroid function, and people really need to be monitoring as a minimum our T4 hormone as well, which is thyroxine. And our T4 hormone is what is considered inactive.

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and it needs to be converted to T3 in order for our metabolism to run smoothly. And cortisol plays into that relationship. So even in the absence of abnormal numbers, cortisol can be impacting negatively. High levels of cortisol can disrupt that hypo thyroid axis, and high cortisol can affect the conversion of that thyroid hormone T4 into T3.

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So it might look like you've got adequate levels of T4, but if you don't check T3, then you're not sure what is happening. And you can't measure reverse T3, which is what happens when T4 doesn't convert to T3, it instead converts to reverse T3. You can measure reverse T3 in a complete thyroid panel that you would order from NutraCert to New Zealand or Nutrapath in Australia, or any number of the functional medicine labs in North America and Europe.

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but it's not a common market and it would be a user pays scenario. And so reverse T3 is often higher when there is higher cortisol present because cortisol impacts on the conversion of that T4. And this isn't a good thing. What I would say though, is that we're sort of young in the research as to knowing, you know, how much of reverse T3 is a good thing or a bad thing. So can't really speak to that.

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What we do know is that if you have high levels of reverse T3 and normal levels of T4 and low T3, then something is amiss and it could be cortisol. Cortisol also can affect the sensitivity of the thyroid hormone receptors. We have got receptors in lots of our tissues and our organs and across our body.

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hormone. So it can impact in that way. And then it can also impact on the transport of that thyroid hormone within the body too. So there is a range of different ways in which stress or cortisol impacts on thyroid. And then finally, of course, stress impacts on our physiology or our metabolism or body fat by changing our behavior and the behavioral

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on body fat are probably much more recognizable than some of the things that I've just talked about. When we are stressed, it changes our food choice, in part because of the fluctuation in blood sugar that I've just described, but also because sometimes our brain just goes into default and we just head for whatever is convenient and option because we feel a lot more time poor. It also can impact our decision making because of course the fluctuating blood sugar impacts

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concentrate, to make decisions in our energy levels. And so we cannot really trust ourselves when we've got high levels of stress and we're much more reactive rather than proactive. Can it also change our exercise habits in part because it's driven by fatigue because of potentially lack of sleep that occurs when we're stressed because we can't sleep the same way it impacts on our melatonin production.

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and our serotonin production, which are both important for sleep. And then we're just too tired to exercise in the morning. And so we press the snooze multiple times. It can also impact on the amount of time we perceive we have to exercise because we're not feeling that productive. So we just have to spend more time working, even if it isn't productive work. And also it changes, like we have coping mechanisms for stress that might not be ideal. And food and alcohol are two of the biggest obvious ones.

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We use food and alcohol to soothe and unwind, and it's not doing our body fat levels any favor. So that is how stress impact negatively on our body fat levels, and why it shouldn't be something that you ignore in lieu of just getting a diet plan or just getting an exercise plan, because your body doesn't work like that. And as much as it's uncomfortable to think about...

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what is causing you stress and then to deal with it. If you've got a body fat goal, even just a health goal, because this isn't just body fat, all of these pathways I'm talking about relate to your cardio metabolic health as well, and your brain health. If you're not prepared to deal with your stress, then you're not going to make lasting changes really. So this is why stress is so important. And this is why I wanted to talk about it. Because I've had clients even as recent as last week, chat to me about the idea that

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They might be stressed, but what supplements can I take?" Recognizing or acknowledging that they weren't going to deal with the stress. And the reality is, is that you cannot out supplement a stressful situation, particularly one of chronic stress. It will put a bandaid on it, but it won't be a very good one and it won't last very long. So that is why I think that that needs to be addressed. And everything that I've talked about will result in changes to your metabolism.

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because it's all related to your metabolism. Thyroids related to metabolism, obviously blood sugar regulation is related to metabolism, and of course body fat storage. So if your metabolism is under too much stress, then that is going to have implications for your ability to cope and to deal with it. We need our metabolism to be adaptive and responsive to the stressors, whereas chronic stress tends to erode it.

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down and it means that we can't adapt and become more resilient actually. Of course too little stress is not a good thing either because too little stress means that it doesn't adapt, it's not that responsive and it can't be resilient. So it's a little bit like what Dr Jade Teter talks about the Goldilocks effect. You want not too little and not too much. You want it to be just right. So that is stress and body fat and

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Hopefully you got a little bit of insight into how I think about it. And it's just so important because in order for you to have success with your body fat goals, you need to deal with stress. That is just a non-negotiable. And of course can be done much more easily when you're on a plan that helps stabilize blood sugar that you do see some results with and you're motivated to do it. And sometimes even just following a plan can help you approve to yourself that you're, you know, that...

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all is not lost, that you actually haven't tried everything and that there are things that work. These can go hand in hand if you like. Of course, through Mondays Matter, registrations are open now, by the way, right through to the end of the week for our Shreduary edition. But in Mondays Matter, we discuss stress and the importance of mindset, and we encourage journaling. We have conversations like this on the Facebook page. Basically, we help people

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implement an eating approach that helps deal with their stress while they're also helping themselves with their stress. So it is a holistic approach. That's us for Mini Mikkipeda. As I said, Mondays Matter, it's open from now through to Friday. It's an eight week plan that is focused on protein-sparing modified fast, which is a type of fasting where you still get to eat. I know. And then outside of that, you just have awesome meals, a ton of variety, an amazing supportive

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and you've got the support of me, and you've got the support of our strength and conditioning coach, Darren, that can help guide you through the diet and the exercise plan. So you certainly are not left to your own devices. It is super effective. Thousands of people have done it now, and I'm just so excited to bring it back in 2024, kicking us off with Shreduary. So if it's the right fit for you, or if you wanna know if it's the right fit, DM me. You can catch me over on threads, Twitter,

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and Instagram @mikkiwilliden over on Facebook @mikkiwillidennutrion to my website mikkiwilliden.com, send me an inquiry. Sign up to Monday's Matter as well. Alright team, you have the best week. See you later.