Weight Gain, Cortisol, & Your Thyroid

Weight Gain, Cortisol, & Your Thyroid

For far too long, weight gain has been blamed on one thing and one thing only: Calorie intake. What if I told you that that was a total misconception?

Wouldn’t it be great news to learn that there was something else that is driving the storage of extra pounds? Wait, where are you going? It’s true! If you needed someone to say it, allow me: weight gain is not due to a failure on your part.

“But my friend eats fill in the blank, and she’s thin!”

I know what you’re thinking: You have that one friend who eats like she’s going to the chair, but she never seems to gain an ounce. As much we love that friend, and also kinda sorta want to pull her hair, we have to get comfortable with the fact that her hormones and metabolic rates may be responding differently than ours.

You can’t compare how your diet is working to how that friend responds to food. The bottom line is you may need to make some changes and tweaks to your food intake if you find yourself carrying some extra pounds. Besides eating a nutrient-dense diet of meats, vegetables, fruit, seeds, nuts, and eggs, let’s take a brief look at some of the other factors that may sabotaging your efforts.

Insulin

When it comes to all the fun things that swim around in our blood stream, it is hormones that are responsible for weight maintenance. One well-known offender is excess insulin.

Insulin is a fat-storage hormone. If you have too much insulin bathing your innards, then you are officially in fat-storage mode. It does not matter if you take your calorie intake down to 1000 per day (Sidebar: please don’t do that!). Insulin does not care about how much you eat. When you eat carbohydrates, you will require insulin to turn them into energy. When you require insulin, you trigger fat storage.  To get your metabolism firing on all cylinders, you need to make the changes to your diet that will reduce the amount of insulin needed for digestion.

If you are strictly reducing your calorie intake and not seeing that translate into shedding pounds, our friend (er, nemesis?) insulin may be responsible for some serious sabotage. If most of those calories come from carbohydrates, even something you are told is a healthy option such as oatmeal, you will need insulin to digest it. That means fat storage.

This can lead to a serious condition known as insulin resistance. If you are insulin resistant, that means that regardless of the level of insulin present in the blood, your cells lose their ability to respond to it. That poor little pancreas will do its best to crank out more insulin to get that glucose into cells. As your insides continue to be bathed in insulin, your body will keep getting that message to store fat. A Paleo diet rich in foods such as high-quality meat, pastured eggs, grass-fed dairy (if tolerated), and organic above-ground plants & vegetables require very little insulin to digest, and that makes them an excellent choice for those who are trying to shed unwanted pounds.

Cortisol

Insulin is not the only enemy here. Cortisol, the notorious stress hormone, is also a hormone that triggers fat storage. Unlike insulin, the body does not release cortisol in response to the intake of carbohydrates. Chronic stress is the bad guy when it comes to cortisol and its ability to cause weight gain.

Why on earth, then, do we have this weirdo hormone that makes us hang on to extra weight? Turns out cortisol has the best of intentions. It is responsible for our primal fight-or-flight instinct. Released by our adrenal glands, it activates a series of processes in our body that strengthen our bodily functions in order to fend for ourselves in stressful situations.

Cortisol readies the body by slowing down digestion while speeding up your heart rate. It’s trying to help you function better while improving sensory and motor skills. This fight-or-flight mechanism is simply trying to help us to cope with stressors in our daily lives.

When you have too much of this fat-storing stress hormone floating through your veins, that’s when things get messy. Long periods of unchecked stress lead to high levels of cortisol continuously circulating in your bloodstream. When this happens, you are fat storing instead of fat burning. It is even responsible for high blood pressure and muscle loss.

If you don’t do something to improve those pesky stressors, you are officially fighting a losing battle when trying to get to a healthy weight. Have you ever met someone who took up yoga and easily shed a few unwanted pounds? Did you wonder how something as low impact and relaxing as yoga could make that happen? The answer is stress management. Relaxation techniques, yoga, and meditation really do aid in weight loss, and it is thanks to their role in managing cortisol levels.

Thyroid

We’ve all been there. You are doing everything right. You have cut out the grains and sweets and are getting regular exercise. But as usual, the scale doesn’t move. What gives?

It could be a malfunctioning thyroid. The thyroid gland secretes the hormones thyroxine and triiodothyronine which are responsible for many vital processes in the body. Hypothyroidism is a condition where the thyroid is cranking out lower-than-normal levels of thyroid hormones. These low levels of vital hormones mean a slower metabolism.

This can be both a contributor to weight gain and a reason that the weight is not coming off. About one in five women suffer from hypothyroidism, and about half of those cases go undiagnosed. Hypothyroidism can even be triggered by gluten intolerance. When that happens, the result is the thyroid-targeting autoimmune disease known as Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.

Adrenal stress (see the cortisol section above) will also have a direct adverse effect on thyroid function. In order for the thyroid hormones to do their job, it is necessary for the thyroid receptors in the body’s cells to be activated. Otherwise, there will be no absorption of thyroid hormones no matter how much that mighty thyroid is trying to crank out.

Thyroid Hormones, Cortisol, Insulin, and Your Health

Thyroid hormones are released by, obvi, the thyroid. Insulin is secreted by the pancreas. So where does cortisol come from? Cortisol is released by the adrenal glands upon signals from the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA).

For most people, it is not uncommon to experience long periods of prolonged stress while also indulging in junk food. Even for those who avoid sweets and fried treats, you may be sabotaged by high-carb foods disguised as healthy such as whole wheat and brown rice.

If that sounds familiar PLUS your thyroid is sputtering out, then there is your recipe for disturbed sleep cycles, fat storage, high blood pressure, depression, chronic fatigue, and insulin resistance. I’m tired just typing that!

How is cortisol related to thyroid health?

If your thyroid is already not producing enough hormones to keep your metabolism in check, high levels of cortisol are going to be doing their part to exacerbate this and slow down your thyroid even more. Saboteur!

Cortisol will lower thyroid hormones by decreasing TSH, the hormone responsible for triggering thyroid hormone production. It even has the nerve to inhibit the conversion of the thyroid’s most prevalent hormone, thyroxine (T4), into the absorbable, bioactive thyroid hormone triiodothyronine (T3) which speeds up your metabolic rate.

Cortisol may even indirectly affect thyroid health by influencing blood sugar. Those out-of-whack levels of cortisol can lead to hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, or even both

The Good News

• Starvation is not the answer. Stop starving yourself and do it yesterday. The number of calories you take in is not as important as the quality of the calories you take in.
  
  
• Avoid foods that will require an insulin response and any that may do their worst when it comes to your thyroid. That means cut out sugars and grains.
  
  
• Fill up instead with the high-quality meats, organic vegetables, and pastured eggs that are included on a Paleo diet.
  
  
• Make sure you are appropriately managing your stress levels to keep the cortisol in check and talk to a practitioner about your thyroid health.
  
  
• Get those hormones functioning properly, and the weight loss will follow.