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The ‘call to action’ of the most recent Catalyst program on the ABC compelled me to watch it. ‘Why eating less and exercising more is no longer enough’ – the answer to your question ‘why am I still fat?’.

As an exercise scientist, the body’s response to anything has always been of interest to me, and my health is a top priority.

Exercise Physiologists, amongst other things, are specialists at helping people lose weight when everything else has failed. This is because there are often complex, interacting factors in play that these clinicians must figure out, and then devise an individualised plan of action.

It is well-known to an Accredited EP that an unhealthy lifestyle and excessive weight over a long period disrupts the hormones, leading to metabolic syndrome.

I found the ‘Why am I still fat?’ episode to be the perfect explanation for the everyday person who is struggling to figure out the mystery of why they a) struggle to lose weight and b) when they do, they pile it back on.

The answer lies in the body’s famine response. We all have one, but if you hold on to excess weight for a long period of time, you muck-up your famine response.  What that means is, when you are trying to lose weight and keep it off, you need to basically never eat until you are ‘full’ and not always eat when you are hungry.  It may take years to overcome an overactive famine response.

A helpful tip also, was after vigorous exercise, such as High Intensity Interval Training (which is important to losing the weight and re-setting the body’s basal metabolic rate – the energy you burn at rest), a high protein meal is essential. It resupplies the body with essential nutrients, before your famine response takes over and causes you to eat too much, and too much of the wrong foods.

However, there may be something else at play that we can not entirely control.  The presence of Bisphenol A (BPA) in our lives may be also causing endocrine disruption (mucking  up our hormones).  It isn’t as simple as reducing or eliminating BPA from our lifestyle (found in tinned foods and plastics, for example), as BPA is in our water supply!!

I sincerely hope that if BPA is found by the SA Medical and Health Research Institute (SAHMRI) research to be involved, that it is at least eliminated from our water supply, as it surely is a human right to have control over what we put into our bodies?!

In the meantime, it looks like eating some purple foods may help! There is research under way to determine whether  a compound in purple foods (called anthocyanin) can counteract the weight-gain effects of eating junk food.

As long as we don’t eat them from tins off plastic plates, right?!

To learn more, check out the program for yourself: http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/catalyst/SC1402H013S00

It could change your life.

To obtain the services of an Accredited Exercise Physiologist, visit the ESSA website.

Not a sponsored post.