Weight Optimization and Metabolism

Weight is not just a number.

Functional medicine investigates and supports both the physical and mental reasons behind your weight imbalances. At InHealthRVA, we help you identify the physical barriers and coach you to work on the mental-emotional issues either with us or a professional counselor so that you can find life-long weight balance.

On the physical side, FM understands that there are often very real physical imbalances that make it hard to lose weight, that disrupt our appetite and hunger signaling. Together, we work to identify what inflammation, hormonal, nutrient, stress and lifestyle imbalances could be contributing to unnecessary weight gain and dysregulating hunger and appetite cues.

On the mental and emotional side, food is so much more than fuel. Our relationship with food is often driven by our feelings, stress, socialization, pleasure, addiction and simply boredom. On top of that, our modern food market surrounds us with constant access to processed foods that prey on our natural drives for pleasure and reward.

For most of us, finding a health weight balance involves working on both our mental and emotional relationships with food and our body. And especially if you have dealt with weight issues for awhile, you’ll benefit from a long-term partnership as you learn, step-by-step, how to work with these variables and find your optimal weight balance.

Weight imbalances and healing from them is a very individual issue. No two people are alike and weight is often as much an emotional/psychological as it is a physical issue.

InHealthRVA treats the whole you through a personalized wellness journey. Through advanced labs and in-depth listening, we help you figure out what your root physical, mental and emotional causes of food and weight imbalances are and we also help you prioritize what to work, when and how.

For example, some people need to start by working on big-picture health metrics such as inflammation and blood sugar balance.

While others benefit from counting calories and macros.

And others need to prioritize working on their emotional/psychological relationships with food, stress and addiction in order to make progress doing the physical diet and lifestyle changes necessary.

Finally, at InHealthRVA, we know that weight is not the sole determinant of your health and certainly shouldn’t be the determinant of your self-worth or identity. We monitor lab data to help you make sure you are healthy and support you in having an active lifestyle and solid nutrition and we de-emphasize weight as the ultimate goal and emphasize lasting physical and mental wellness.

If you are looking for a quick fix and fast weight loss, we are not the right fit. There really isn’t a magic pill for weight loss!

If you are looking for life-long solutions and a partner in your optimal physical and mental well-being, we are a perfect fit!

Nutrition and lifestyle are the foundation of all health and weight goals. If you are looking for solutions to your weight issues, we can promise you that you’ll need to find life-long healthy solutions here.

In fact, we could bankrupt the 300 billion dollar (!) weight loss industry if someone could figure out how to get humans to eat a nutrient-dense, unprocessed diet, move more, sleep well and teach us to manage stress and practice mindfulness.

But if you’ve ever dieted, using calorie restriction and weird meal plans to get to a weight goal, you are probably one of the 95% of people who know that diets fail and the weight comes back. At InHealthRVA, there is no dieting. A focus on calorie restriction alone triggers all sorts of primordial physical and mental drives to restore weight. We support you in eating according to biology with a focus on nutrient dense whole foods and balancing appetite and healing food relationships.

Natural natural nutrition and an active lifestyle are the foundation of optimizing your health and weight, for some of us, there can be other issues on top of this that are in the way. InHealthRVA’s Functional medicine root-cause approach helps you figure out and address what those issues on top of your healthy nutrition and lifestyle practices.

Weight and body composition are an important overall health metric but it is wrong to consider it all on its own. Health can be found at a range of weights and body compositions and your current weight set-point will be strongly influenced by how much you have weighed before as well as your inheritance.

Instead, consider weight and body composition alongside other important metrics of health, including your diet and lifestyle, blood sugar balance, inflammation, hormones, toxin exposure and cellular health.

Inheritance and your weight throughout your life are important determinants of your current weight and just how much your weight impacts your health and there is a lot of variance amongst us. For some people, it is a big factor, others less so.

We all know that one person who seems to have avoided major health repercussions of a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle.

And there are also plenty of lean and active people who develop insulin resistance, heart disease, inflammation and fatigue.

Stop comparing yourself. Not to others, a younger you or a you in a different life. “Comparison is the thief of joy.” (Theodore Roosevelt).

Instead, get data. Get guidance. Get healthy. Let’s optimize your weight and health with what you’ve got!

Imbalanced weight can be due to a combination of physical and mental/emotional dysregulations.

Physical factors that can contribute to weight gain include hormonal irregularities, inflammation, digestive issues, insulin resistance, stress, insufficient sleep, inadequate physical activity, lack of access to whole foods, inherited traits and being overweight at a young age and/or significant weight gain in adulthood..

Mental-emotional factors that contribute to weight gain include having learned poor eating habits growing up (lack of information/ habits), stress or emotional eating, food addictions, eating disorders, body dysmorphia and unrealistic ideals about what a healthy weight is or what your body should look like.

The mental and physical factors that dysregulate our weight intertwine with each other and create and exacerbate each other.

For example, maybe your stomach is telling you it is off and doesn’t want anything. Your appetite is being controlled by pleasure, social pressures and maybe addiction. Whilst your hunger cues are imbalanced by your hormones, inflammation, stress, lack of sleep and blood sugar imbalances.

Meanwhile, your mind is having yet the same fight it always has, between the part of your brain saying “don’t eat that junk!” the other part saying “give me energy and pleasure!”

Trying to impose a fabricated diet plan on top of all these mixed signals is illogical and nearly impossible.

Instead, find appetite, energy and hunger cue freedom by understanding and addressing the root physical and mental causes of your weight imbalance.

Stop dieting. Human hunger and weight controls evolved when most of us were living with food scarcity and unstable social and economic conditions. Your body interprets significant/sustained calorie deficits as danger and will try to correct it. If not immediately, then sooner than later.

Instead: live like your ancestors.

Your ancestors didn’t have 24-7 access to processed foods. They ate what they could grow, kill or trade with their neighbor.

They moved. A lot.

Do what you can to break free from the modern day plague of sedentarism.

Get enough, quality sleep.

And work with a counselor, therapist, life or business coach to find healthier ways to manage or cope with stress, trauma and unhealthy food relationships and/or addictions.