21 Reasons For Unexplained Weight Gain - Dr Ekberg

twenty-one reasons for unexplained weight gain so often people say that

well I didn't change anything why am i gaining weight today we're going to talk

about all the mechanisms and all the reasons behind these seemingly

unexplained weight gains coming right up

hey I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if

you'd like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't

miss anything now we'll be in real trouble if we are gaining some weight

and we buy in to the general consensus to the mainstream misconception that

it's all about calories they tell you that oh you're you're just gaining

weight because you're eating more and you're not exercising enough you're

gaining weight because there's more calories in than calories out you're not

burning enough calories and while there is some fundamental truth to that we'll

be in real trouble if we just look at that if we don't ask the question why

why might I be eating more why might my body slow down and burn less what is

changing and the answer is that we're gonna go over 21 different reasons here

but in the end they're all gonna be hormonal it's gonna depend on hormones

in one shape or form because hormones determine everything about your behavior

and everything about your physiologies behavior and I want to mention one thing

before we get into the numbers and the reasons it's what we think of as aging

that a lot of people blame things on aging Oh what I'm just getting older oh

this is just happening cuz I'm getting older my doctor said it's just because

I'm getting older and while aging is a mostly inevitable process most of what

we call aging is a function of dis use deficiency or toxicity dis use is

use it or lose it your body grows at a certain rate that has its pre-programmed

for growth as long as you're growing when you're a teenager but once you're

fully grown if you don't use it the body says it's going to look around and say

oh well this muscles not being used that muscles not being used I'm not gonna

maintain body parts that are not being used use-it-or-lose-it so most of muscle

loss due to aging is disuse deficiency means your body has to have something to

perform a function or to maintain tissues if it's not getting it its

deficient it can't maintain tissues it can't maintain function if you don't

provide it and we are highly deficient because of all the processed foods that

we are eating toxicity means that the body is trying to do something but

there's stuff in the way there's junk there's toxins there's debris the

signals and the metabolic pathways are interfered with because of toxicity so

keep those in mind and understand that health everything that we call function

is sort of like a battery that a fully charged battery at a hundred percent is

going to make that Energizer Bunny go but if the battery gradually drops over

time we're not going to notice that change right away it's not like the

Energizer Bunny slows down to 70% just because the battery's at 70% it just

means it has less reserves and that's how the body works as well that it has

less reserves to cope and adapt which means we may not get any symptoms until

we have a significant reduction in reserves a lot of symptoms a lot of

changes that we're going to talk about may not happen until your battery is

down to 50% and again some of that is inevitable more or less with aging but a

lot of it we can affect by exercise and proper nutrition and activation and

detox and just understanding these issues properly in the category of

sudden changes so now we're talking about something that's happening really

fast it's like really out of the blue it seems in a matter of weeks or a couple

of months there was a dramatic change and number one reason I would say is

steroids that if someone gets corticosteroids if they get oral

corticosteroids that is a version of cortisol and cortisol drives insulin

insulin resistance and weight gain so you could gain a dramatic amount of

weight in just a few weeks with with that number two obviously applying to

women only is pregnancy that might be something that if you don't really pay

attention or didn't expect it that could cause some quick weight gain and again

because in pregnancy there's some dramatic hormonal changes number three

if you start an exercise regimen that's not appropriate if you do what you think

is cardio or aerobics but it's actually in the intensity level of an aerobics

now you're forcing your body to make cortisol which is going to increase

hunger it's gonna drive insulin it's gonna drive the storage hormone insulin

and you could gain weight rather quickly even though you're burning calories and

it seems counterintuitive it seems like you would exercise and lose weight you

would compensate for it because you're shifting your metabolism you're becoming

more insulin resistant and that type of training could make you ravenously

hungry I had a lot of viewers confirm to me that that's exactly what happened to

them watch out for your exercise so that you do it correctly

number four is not really an unexplained reason but I just want to put it up

there because if you go on a cruise and you get the unlimited soda drink package

and the unlimited beer package and you take advantage of the 24-hour buffets

just because it's there yes you

gained probably 20 pounds in a week it's been done I've even gone on some cruises

not with the soda package but I just ate like a madman and gained 12 14 pounds in

a week number five the holiday season again most people probably expect this

it's not so unexplained starting in November through December we're gonna

eat a lot more cookies and candy and treats as a culture so that could

certainly be a reason for some people it might be the first time they they could

get away with it on previous seasons but something else has changed and now that

holiday season just really kicks them over the edge

number 6 pathology we could have some sort of disease or tumor like we could

have a pituitary tumor or an adrenal tumor that is producing hormones at a

very very exaggerated and unbalanced level so again it's all about hormones

and if we have a tumor that produces cortisol that would create insulin

resistance and weight gain very very quickly that'd be sort of like taking

steroids number seven and this is going to sound strange to you coming from a

low carb keto channel but you could gain weight suddenly by starting keto and

this would be if you start it and don't understand what it is if you hear that

oh it's all about meat and bacon and high fat and you start eating those but

you don't reduce your carbohydrates enough so you're still insulin resistant

and you're not reducing insulin by reducing carbs enough and you're not

getting fat adapted now you're going to still have that exaggerated appetite

that sugar addiction now you're just adding fat to it and you could gain

weight very very quickly so remember you're not supposed to eat more fat and

maintain carbohydrates if you increase the fat you have to drop

carbohydrates dramatically to let that insulin drop and to become fat adapted

Kito's not going to work until that metabolic shift takes place so all of

these things are things that could happen pretty quickly the underlying

metabolic change could be very very quick in a matter of weeks and the

manifestation the weight gain could also happen very suddenly in a matter of

weeks maybe a couple of months now we're going to move on to some things that

happen a little bit slower that it probably won't happen in weeks if my it

probably is going to take a few to several months and the underlying

mechanism would also be happening over a period of several months this would be

something like a life change maybe you had to move somewhere maybe you had a

divorce maybe there was a death of the family maybe you got a new job so all of

these large dramatic life changes can start shifting hormones can start

changing the way the body works maybe that life change was because of

number nine you became more sedentary maybe your previous life situation

allowed you to move more maybe your job involve more movement and when you

stopped moving then you become more insulin resistant you use less energy

burn fewer calories but you don't change your eating habits that life change

could also be causing more stress obviously the examples I mentioned are

very very stressful and for some people if it's like severe grief that could

cause the opposite effect where you just stop eating and you lose

weight but for most people stress typically means that their body is going

to look for more fast fuel it's going to be looking for sugar especially if

you're not fat adapted and now as you have that stress you start eating more

you're making more cortisol from the stress and you're gaining weight

becoming more insulin resistant and the weight comes on number 11 you

could also gain weight from a lack of sleep if you don't sleep enough that's a

form of stress in itself you're wearing you're burning your candles at both ends

but there's also certain hormones that are secreted that are released as part

of your circadian rhythm as part of your sleep and wake cycle so if you don't

sleep enough you're probably not getting enough growth hormone and growth hormone

again is a metabolic and it's a fat burning hormone so if your growth

hormone is dropping from a lack of sleep then that could be causing some weight

gain number 12 working the night shift maybe

you're working at different hours of the day so you have to sleep at different

hours of the day so even if you get enough hours even if you get your 8

hours that your body typically depends on you're gonna shift your hormones

you're going to disturb your hormones by sleeping during a different time of the

day you're supposed to sleep when it's dark and be up when it's light that's

what your brain has learned that's when your nervous system has learned in order

to secrete the right hormones so growth hormone for example works best if you

get a couple of hours of sleep before midnight number 13 maybe you just

started a low-fat diet and - a lot of people that sounds very strange if you

listen to the government guidelines they tell you to eat low-fat low-calorie and

you're thinking well you know fat has the most calories I eat less fat so I

should have less calories but what happens when people eat low fat is they

typically eat more carbs and when you eat more carbs you're going to be

stimulating insulin insulin is a fat storing hormone as you become more

insulin resistant your body lowers its metabolic rate and you get hungrier so

there's many different ways that you could go wrong with a low fat diet

sometimes people just start eating more junk food they think as long as it's

low-fat then I can eat the cookies and I can eat the ice cream and I can eat the

super sweetened yogurt because it's low-fat and in doing that maybe you're

eating fewer calories and just becoming more insulin resistant but it's also

possible that because you're getting super super hungry from all that sugar

stimulation that you end up eating more calories and more food in addition to

becoming insulin resistant number 14 maybe you decided to become a vegetarian

so before everyone yells at me I'm not in favor of being a vegetarian typically

but I'm not saying that you can't be healthy and maintain weight being a

vegetarian also the problem is that it takes some skill it takes some knowledge

to be a healthy vegetarian and what happens to a lot of people who just

don't want to eat meat because they feel sorry they have some spiritual reason

for it what happens then is when they don't learn enough about food now they

start depending on anything that is not an animal so they eat french fries and

they eat Doritos and they eat all kinds of other fast food bean burritos potato

chips candy cookies anything that is from a plant origin but they're eating

junk food ok so again you can't be a healthy vegetarian if you really really

know what you're doing at least most people can not everyone can but most

people can be a healthy vegetarian but the problem happens when you don't

understand health and you start eating junk you start eating any plant food

because you think it's just a better way to do and now let's talk about some of

the things that sort of creep up on us over the years and it might seem

unexplained but if we understand the underlying reasons and especially if we

start understanding how our reserves decline over time then these would make

a lot of sense so number 15 older is not a reason in itself but what

happens as we have disuse and deficiency and toxicity the metabolic rate slows

down the growth hormone slows down etc so one of the things that might be

happening is that insulin resistance is catching up with us what does that mean

well your blood sugar is regulated by insulin so when you eat something your

blood sugar Rises your insulin goes up to control blood sugar and all is well

but as we eat more sugar and we eat more carbs and we eat them more frequently it

takes more and more and more and more insulin over time and this could be

building up over 10 15 20 years and insulin is a fat storing hormone in

storing fat it in store it delivers sugar into the cell that gets converted

to fat so in that sense it's a fat storing hormone and because it's

tendency is to store things it means we have less access to the fuel once it's

stored it's sort of like your deep freezer that you put in the basement

you're not going to go there for a snack so you don't have quick access to that

food that's how severe insulin resistance works so as that insulin

resistance builds up over time you could get to a breaking point where you start

gaining weight you think you're eating that roughly the same thing but you

don't have access to the food you're storing more and more fat and you're

gaining weight number 17 your fat muscle ratio so maybe you're maintaining your

weight for 20 years but during that time you've done a bunch of yo-yo dieting

you've been mostly inactive you haven't used your body so the normal aging is

happening at a faster rate because of this use deficiency toxicity so your

muscle mass decreases and muscles are more active muscles is like the

machine fat tissue is the long-term storage so muscles are much more

metabolically active fat tissue isn't very active at all it's like we said the

deep freezer so over time the ratio can change you start with this much muscle

in this much fat and then over a 20-year period your muscle goes away your fat

increases but your weight stays the same so you think hey I'm doing the same I'm

doing good but then you get to a certain point a breaking point and now all of a

sudden the weight starts piling on because you've reached that threshold

number 18 growth hormone growth hormone declines with age that is inevitable but

we have a lot of influence over how quickly we can make a decline if we are

sedentary if we're toxic if we're deficient it's going to decline faster

we can have a decline at a quick rate or we can have a decline at a much slower

rate depending on our lifestyle but it is gonna go down and growth hormone is a

fat burning hormone growth hormone keeps up your basal metabolic rate it

increases the overall activity of the body so as it decreases then that can

also cause weight gain number 19 endocrine disrupters so this is part of

the toxicity bit that endocrine disrupters endocrine is your hormone

system and hormones like we said manages all about this the cortisol the insulin

the growth hormone and endocrine disrupters are toxins they're things

like plastics and foreign hormones and metals and chemicals and pesticides that

mimic the look they look almost like your own hormones so they fit into the

same receptors and when they fit they block the receptor and they can either

stimulate a function and exaggerate something the body is

or it can fit in and block it because the hormone can block something or

stimulate something so the endocrine disruptor can increase or decrease

something that the body normally does so the body has less ability less influence

to regulate these things all by itself number twenty inflammation so

inflammation is a natural part of healing but low-grade chronic

inflammation is not a good thing that's when inflammation has gone wrong that's

when there's stuff present on in the in the body

year after year that's creating a little bit of irritation so these are things

like toxins again they're things like foods that we don't break down

completely we don't may not have a full-blown allergy but we have an

intolerance to those foods we don't do well with them and the primary ones are

going to be processed dairy pasteurized milk and refined grains or grains in

general especially refined grains they create a low-grade inflammation in the

body and what that does is it changes the sensitivity of a lot of your

hormones your hypothalamus is an organ it sits right under the brain between

the brain and the brain stem and it's like a relay of all the traffic and it

senses your hunger and your thirst and your ph and temperature and all these

different things that cause you to eat more or eat less or want to do things

and if they change if the inflammation changes the sensitivity then you just

don't have the same function there anymore so the hypothalamus might lose

its ability to regulate leptin or gralen your hunger hormones your thyroid

hormones your metabolic hormones your your insulin it can affect the

resistance and the sensitivity of every one of those hormones and on that note a

very important thing to keep in mind is the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6

in your diet because they need to be about ideally about a one-to-one ratio

meaning we have equal amount of omega-3 to omega-6 in the diet somewhere up to

about four parts omega-6 to one part omega-3 is still okay it's still optimal

but the average person in Western society is more like a 20 part omega-6

to a one part omega-3 and what that does it promotes inflammation these

substances are precursors to things that control inflammation in the body so all

the things that raises omega-6 are in the sense pro-inflammatory when it gets

out of control and what are those things well they're primarily sugar grain and

seed oils seeds and nuts and that's why a small amount of a quality seed or nut

oil is not a problem but once we start eating large amounts of refined oils

especially then that creates huge problems and those are the only oil used

in commercial cooking so anytime you eat fast food anytime you eat out anytime

anything is fried you're getting all oh may go sixes and for most people they're

doing pretty well but you don't want to eat too many nuts because nuts and seeds

are high in omega 6's so even though they're healthy you can get it a little

bit out of control by eating too much nuts and number twenty one reason you

might be gaining weight is hypothyroid and this is a huge one I've done

separate videos on that to explain it but hypothyroid means that your thyroid

your metabolic regulator the thyroid is your thermostat and hypothyroid means

that it is slowing down it's like you're just not cranking out as much heat and

one thing that you can notice if your thyroid is slowing down is that you tend

to feel cold even in a normal temperature room where

other people are doing fine if you're just always a little chilly a little

cold to the core then chances are you have hypothyroid so if you've been

having some unexplained weight gain then start exploring these reasons because

it's critical that you start understanding every one of these

different nuances of metabolic function and changes in the body if you just go

chasing calories and you try to work out chances are it's gonna backfire a lot of

these things people do because they think they're gonna lose weight but

because they don't understand the underlying mechanism or how to do it

properly it ends up backfiring and it makes

things worse if you follow this channel for a while you know that we have videos

on most of these topics or that we've included these in other videos but if

there's one that you'd like more detail and more information please let me know

and we'll try to do one specifically for that if you enjoyed this video then I

bet you're gonna love this one thank you so much for watching and I'll

see you next time