Why did I shift focus from weight loss to gut health?

Something that I get asked a lot is how and why my focus changed from primarily weight loss as a goal, to general health and wellbeing.

And it may sound like a taboo subject, but listen up, because there’s something very valuable in what I’m about to say.

Part of that change is also what led me to becoming a gut health practitioner and wellness coach when it comes to weight management.

So let’s first talk about a few realities of why diet culture is so toxic.

One of those realities is the constant yo-yo dieting between what I call social media influencer diets. There’s a lot of restriction, a lot of do and don’t lists, a lot of elimination of entire food groups.

And what many women don’t realize is that over time, these things can significantly wreck your health.

Yes, you can and do lose a lot of weight, but we know that people gain it back again. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be a multi-million-dollar industry.

Now the important part for me is that I didn’t make this change because I saw some massive gap in the market. Absolutely not.

I made this change because I personally needed to change the focus for myself.

There are many women out there that are very prone to metabolic dysfunction. It can be severe thyroid dysfunction that affects metabolism on a whole other level, endocrine disruption, sluggish liver detox pathways.

And someone like me got hit with a double whammy.

I have sluggish liver detox pathways, and I have a thyroid that cannot produce thyroid hormone on its own, so I do rely on synthetic hormones. I can gain weight twice as fast as the average person and take 10 times longer to lose it again. It's metabolic science.

There are two ways I can address this.

I can feel sorry for myself, or I can work with what I have.

And to many people it may seem confusing that I still carry an extra 10 to 15 kilograms of weight, but realistically, I would rather not wreck my health in the process.

Now when I had this realization, I was still 30 kilograms overweight, completely stuck and unable to move.

And when I say stuck, I also mean stuck in calorie counting, macro counting, and food group elimination.

That life is exhausting.

This is what people miss along the way.

Now my weight loss is very slow. If I lose a marginally a month or even if I stay stable, I’m happy. The difference is, my body is stabilizing, gradually. And my weight isn't climbing back up despite my now normal way of life. I'm healthy.

Now imagine if I was absolutely fixated on weight loss.

Because there were times that I was that focused on weight loss, that I was dropping here and there, but my blood tests showed that my body was crying for help. For the most part, the struggle was daily.

So yes, the scale was moving a bit, but on the inside, I was slowly wrecking things.

That realization for me was that something had to give. My predisposition to metabolic dysfunction had other plans for me.

And that’s when I decided to rather put the focus on my general health than weight loss.

So the question became:
What can I do to give my body the best possible opportunity to live well?

That meant my environment needed to support my health.

Less toxic social media.
Not watching murder mysteries at 11 o’clock at night.
Making sure my nervous system was more regulated so my body wasn’t constantly in fight or flight.
Understanding gut health and nutrition academically, not what was trending.

Spirituality.
Purpose.
Community.
Movement.

All of these things matter.

All of these things set you up physically and emotionally for better wellbeing.

And guess what happened?

I started losing weight.
My skin started glowing.
My face started bouncing back.
I started looking radiant from the inside out.

I was losing weight without the inflammation, without the dysbiosis, without the constant IBS symptoms.

I was losing weight because I was healthy.

Not losing weight despite my health.

That is the difference.

So if you are losing weight while wrecking your body in the process, who are you doing it for? Because you’re certainly not doing it for yourself.

These are some very hard truths to sit with.

Yet they are also the truths that set me free.