Shocking Reasons Behind Unexplained Weight Gain

 Website content extracted from: Shocking Reasons Behind Unexplained Weight Gain – Smarter Nutrition

For Years, Research Led Us to Believe Weight Gain Was All About Eating Too Many Calories; This Same Research Now Tells A Different Story

The numbers don’t lie. Most of the US is obese or overweight and we are seeing record numbers of diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and autoimmune disorders.  When seeking reasons to explain this epidemic, doctors have been all-too-quick to simply blame a poor diet, mainly eating too many calories, and not exercising, as the culprits. 

While those certainly are contributing factors to the current state of affairs, what if there was more to the obesity epidemic than just simply eating too many calories? 

Well, it’s beginning to look like that could be exactly the case for millions of Americans. New findings are demonstrating that unexplained weight gain is a much more complicated process than previously thought and may involves many factors and contributors never before considered. One such key factor in weight gain is a specific vitamin or mineral deficiencies, and are other less talked factors we need to know. 

Inflammation Caused by Healthy Foods

Believe it or not, eating healthy foods can lead to inflammation which can cause you to gain weight.  How can that be? To answer that question, you first have to understand how chronic inflammation in the body works.

Inflammation, when present in normal levels, is an essential part of your body’s immune response to foreign bodies, including bacteria, viruses, and allergens.  For many of us, and especially as an increasing amount of our diet comes from processed foods, GMOs, and fruits and vegetables treated with harmful pesticides and insecticides, the foods we eat contribute to extreme-inflammatory responses throughout our bodies.  Over time, regularly eating foods (even certain assumed “healthy foods”) that your body considers to be inflammatory causes chronic inflammation and can often result in seemingly unexplained weight gain.

That’s because your body considers certain compounds in specific foods as foreign bodies, this response triggers an inflammatory response that includes increasing your histamine and cortisol-levels.  

For many, this response is the start of a dangerous inflammatory process that is characterized by initially water-weight gain resulting from higher levels of histamines in your body and elevated cortisol levels (also known as the “stress hormone”) that contributes to increased levels of long-term stored fat.  As this cycle repeats again and again, it’s common to experience weight-gain, especially around the abdomen - which is often just the start of several long-term and chronic health issues. 

As cortisol levels continue to rise, they begin to impact the function of essential hormones in your body, including testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen.  Over time, the constant fluctuation of these hormones can contribute to significant thyroid issues that can lead to further weight gain, chronic inflammation and long-term health issues.

It’s hard to believe that natural foods can contribute to this health issues, but they can - and they do.  Researchers have discovered that an increasing amount of people are learning that they have inflammatory responses to all-types of foods, including a few that will surprise you like asparagus, black beans, peppers, eggplant, white potatoes, and even tomatoes.

Weight gain isn’t the only indication that certain foods are contributing to massive inflammation in your body. In addition to unexplained weight gain, other telltale symptoms of food-induced inflammation might include bloating after a meal, chronic muscle and joint pain soon after eating, unexplained anxiety and depression, and regular dip in mid-day energy.

Prescription Medication’s Unexpected Side-Effect

An estimated 15-20% of weight issues are thought to be a direct result of prescription medication.  Some prescription medications make you feel hungry or crave sugar or salt, others, including antidepressants, steroids, and hormone replacement therapy medications, can slow your metabolism and increase weight gain; however, like food allergies, prescription medication affects everyone differently. 

If you suspect your medication is causing you to experience unexplained weight gain, make sure you talk to your doctor. He or she should be able to prescribe a different medication or suggest natural alternatives to the medication.

Not Eating Enough Is Making You Fat

It might sound crazy, but not eatingenough food can result in unexplained weight gain.  Again, this theory flies in the face of conventional thought about weight gain, but study after study continues to demonstrate this to be true...and it all goes back to hunter-gatherer caveman days.

You see, back in the hunter-gather days of the caveman, the human body was built for survival.  That meant adapting to survive for days, and in some cases weeks, with very little food. The body did this by recognizing a decrease in the amount of calories consumed and then drastically slowing down metabolism to conserve energy and body fat in the hopes of increasing the chances of survival.

While our way of life has certainly changed from the Paleolithic area, our bodies - and specifically our metabolism – in many ways still functions under the hunter-gatherer guidelines. It’s still our body’s primitive natural instinct to survive; so when you do not eat enough calories, your body goes into “starvation mode”.   When this happens, your metabolism slows dramatically and your body begins storing more calories as body fat. As you can imagine, the result is that you don’t lose weight, and for many gain not just weight, but a higher percentage of “fat weight”.

To avoid gaining weight, especially when you are actually trying to lose weight, make sure to eat several small, nutrient dense meals throughout the day.  We’ve been trained to eat “three square meals a day”, but when eating for health, let conventional wisdom take a back seat to what research shows to be true:  keep your metabolism high by eating 4 to 5 nutrient-dense small meals of 300 - 500 calories each over the course of a day.

Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies: A Root Cause of Unexpected Weight Gain

Being deficient in vitamins, minerals, and/or an essential nutrient can wreak havoc on your body and cause a number of health issues, including muscle and joint pain, hormone disruption, chronic inflammation, and several metabolic disorders that can result in unexplained weight gain.

That’s right, common vitamin and mineral deficiencies can actually make you fat.

New research demonstrates that there’s a strong relationship between unexplained weight gain and a deficiency in specific vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A, B, E and D3, and essential daily minerals like magnesium and calcium. 

While over 90% of U.S. adults are deficient in at least 1 vitamin, it’s estimated that 25% of people who are considered obese are also deficient in Vitamin D3, magnesium, calcium, and zinc.

Doctors continue to look for a direct relationship between the link between weight gain and vitamin and mineral deficiencies, but it’s starting to look more and more like part of it may have to do with an increasingly strong correlation between these deficiencies and leaky gut syndrome, a condition that contributes to chronic inflammation and also prevents your body from efficiently absorbing vitamins and minerals.

Here's a few other examples how doctors believe being deficient in ceartin vitamins and minerals can contribute to unexplained weight gain. 

Vitamin D3: Not Just For Bone Health

By now, you know that vitamin D3 is essential for supporting the health of your bones; the more vitamin D3, the stronger your bones and the lower your D3 levels, the more likely you are to develop osteoporosis.

What you probably didn’t know is that a vitamin D3 deficiency has also been associated with unexpected weight gain. The research specifically found that women with a vitamin D deficiency to be especially susceptible to weight gain, especially when compared to women who are not vitamin D3 deficient. 

Nearly 45% of people in the U.S. are vitamin D deficient, and nearly 72% of the population is considered obese or overweight. More and more studies are showing a direct correlation between being overweight or obese and having a vitamin D3 deficiency.  

Other symptoms of a vitamin D3 deficiency can include low energy, fatigue, chronic inflammation, muscle and joint pain, and a weakened immune system.

Magnesium: The Unknown Blood Glucose Regulator

Like vitamin D, a low level of magnesium is linked to increased likelihood of being obese or overweight.  While medical science continues to look for the exact relationship between weight gain and low levels of magnesium, researchers are starting to see a correlation between the amount of magnesium in the body, blood glucose levels, and weight gain.

Specifically, low levels of magnesium have been directly linked to increased insulin resistance.  Being insulin resistant causes your body to produce more insulin, the hormone responsible for transporting glucose - or sugar - from your blood to the cells of your organs.  As this occurs, you tend to eat more food to compensate for the excess demand of glucose; this, in turn, results in consuming more calories, a decreased metabolism, and adding extra, unwanted body fat.

In addition to unwanted or unexplained weight gain, other signs of a magnesium deficiency include muscle cramping, muscle spasm, chronic fatigue, inflammation, increased blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat, and osteoporosis.

Calcium: The Key to Strong Bones... and Weight Loss

Being deficient in calcium, especially when paired with a deficiency in vitamin D, has been linked to increased weight gain.  While this is true for nearly every subgroup, it’s especially with post-menopausal women that it shows up most. 

Recent findings indicate that not consuming enough calcium contributes to weight gain, but consumingenough calcium andnot being deficient in vitamin D contributes showed significantly less gain weight - especially as you get older.

In addition to unexpected weight gain, other low-calcium symptoms include decreased bone mass and increased chances of developing osteoporosis, confusion, memory loss, muscle cramps and spasms, and bouts of depression that increase in intensity.

2 Simple Steps to Prevent Weight Gain

While your doctor will most likely suggest a prescription medication to address your unexplained weight gain, it might be more advantageous for you to first make sure you’ve removed all sources of inflammation from your system; this includes processed foods, trans fats, excess sodium and sugar, gluten, soy, foods that are genetically modified, pesticides, insecticides, and chemicals found in common household cleaning products, deodorants, toothpastes, soaps and shampoos, and cosmetics.

It’s critical to remove potential specific vitamin or mineral deficiencies as a contributor to your weight gain, and inability to lose the weight. You can significantly decrease the likelihood of these deficiencies by taking a high-quality, naturally sourced multivitamin and mineral (multi). However, to be clear, it goes beyond just deficiency. You need just the right amount of each key vitamin and mineral to more effectively lose weight: not too little, and not too much.

Blueprint for the Perfect Weight-loss Multi 

A historic10-year study with over 100,000 participants provided the exact blueprint for that perfect multivitamin formula - while also revealing the hidden dangers of daily multivitamin tablets. 

For decades now the marketers of multi vitamin and mineral supplements (multi’s) have been pushing more is better, often promoting many nutrients in their formulas above the 100% RDA level, that’s the“recommended dietary allowance” set by the FDA.     

But is more healthier? 

Multiple studies have concluded that the answer is NO! Including conclusions reached by one of the largest and most comprehensive studies ever done on dietary supplements - an independent, multi-cultural study with over 100,000 participants, aptly named “The Multi Study”.

The Multi Study, funded by theUS Department of Agriculture, provided all theinformationyou need toknowabout multi’s.The purpose of the study was simple. Health officials wanted to know once and for all if the multi tablets, we’re really doing what they were supposed to do, provide the right amount of missing vitamins and minerals that we don’t get enough of from the food we eat called the “the nutrient shortfall amount”. The study determined 2 important things about how we get our vitamins and minerals.

	The Multi Study laid out exactly which vitamins and minerals our diets are deficient in, and which ones we are not.
	The Multi Study provided information on what’s called “the nutrient shortfall” of each vitamin and mineral that we don’t get enough of from food.

Shocking Discovery Revealed in The Multi Study

It was found that American multi-users were simultaneously getting too little of many important key nutrients, while at the same time getting too much, even dangerously high and toxic harmful levels, of other key nutrients from their multi tablet. 

The Multi Study Exposed Popular Multi Tablets Formulated All Wrong 

The health impacts of thisimproper nutrient dosing(the wrong amount of a vitamin or mineral), exposed in The Multi Study, can mean serious negative health consequences over time. For example, getting too much iron, which The Multi Study found to be common with conventional multi tablets, can cause your brain to malfunction and age much faster than normal. 

Conventional Multi Tablets Miss the Mark

The medical researchers’ dual findings from The Multi Study clearly showed that Americans were getting an overdose of certain nutrients, and an underdose of other nutrients, from their multi tablets. In general, the findings concluded that, when diet is factored in, Americans are getting too much of some vitamins and not enough ofother vitamins and minerals. These conclusions were presented to the National Institute of Health (NIH), and published in peer reviewed medical journal articles. 

A Smarter Way: Formulating the Perfect Multi 

Using the real nutrient shortfall Smarter Nutrition formulated 2019’s supplement of the year,Smarter Multi, with just the right amount of each nutrient for optimum health – not too little and not too much.  It’s truly the “first and only” perfect multivitamin and exactly what we need daily to help with our weight-loss goals. 

Smarter Multi: We Eat Plants… We Don’t Eat Dirt!

As with vitamins, getting a daily intake of essential minerals is extremely important for your health. That’s why nutritional experts encourage us to get our minerals from fresh greens, fruits, and vegetables along with a daily supplement. Since your body can’t manufacture minerals, unlike it can with many other nutrients, you cannot truly be healthy without a daily intake of the key essential minerals!

But here’s the problem. Most minerals in multi tablets are synthetic and inorganic, derived from crushing mineral-rich rocks. Now mankind only started taking multi mineral supplements about 60 years ago. But for hundreds of thousands of years humans derived their minerals from food, not rocks. This means they were from organic-food, not inorganic-dirt. So, it’s highly unlikely our genes have yet fully adapted to the “unnatural” inorganic form of minerals in everyday multi tablets.

Using Rocks Versus Fruits & Vegetables Just Isn’t Right

If inorganic “dirt-like” minerals in multi tablets are not natural to the body, then why do the supplement manufacturers still use them? It all comes down to money. It’s extremely cheap and easy just to pulverize rocks, extract the minerals, and press them into a hard tablet. But is this good for you? Here’s some examples of syntheticand inorganicsources of the 5 top minerals used by typical multi manufacturers

• Calcium. The typical type of calcium in traditional multi tablets is calcium carbonate. Chalk you find in a classroom is mostly calcium carbonate – but have you ever thought about eating it? Calcium carbonate is so very poorly absorbed in the body, to meet your daily requirement for calcium you’d have to take a handful of big, hard calcium carbonate tablets each day. One of the most commonly used sources of calcium carbonate for supplements is discarded oyster shells. This is not a food source! 
• Magnesium. Magnesium oxide is the most typical form found in popular multi’s, and its absorption rate is also dismal. It is derived from pulverizing limestone and periclase, a mineral found in marble. 
• Potassium. The most common form in multi’s is potassium chloride. It’s found in a rock called sylvite. 
• Zinc. The most common form found in multi tablets is zinc oxide, which is also used as a lip and face cream to prevent the skin from sunburn. Most zinc oxide is produced synthetically and inorganically in overseas factories.
• Boron. Although very few multis on the market contain it, though they should, the few that do most commonly use synthetic boric acid as their source. Boric Acid is used as an insecticide, flame retardant, cockroach killer, and as a precursor to many dangerous chemical compounds. Do you really want this in your daily multi?

A Smarter Way – Organic Food Derived Minerals the Body Craves

Now for the good news, with Smarter’s Multi you’re not stuck with inorganic minerals. You now have a great, natural alternative to poorly digested inorganic minerals found in multi tablets — organic minerals from REAL FOOD! 

“Going Organic” now also applies to your intake of daily essential minerals. Your body is much more receptive and responsive to organic minerals from food – real fruits and vegetables. Here are the natural and organic food sources of minerals found in the Smarter Multi. Now compare with the inorganic list above in typical multi tablets. Which would you rather have in your body?

Smarter Multis Natural & Organic Mineral Sources 

• Calcium from almonds, Amaranth grain and the superfood red-green algae.
• Magnesium from sesame and sunflower seeds, spearmint leaf, dill and okra.
• Potassium fromspinach and banana.
• Zinc from wheat germ, pumpkin seed, watermelon, banana and cocoa.
• Boron from prunes, broccoli, peach and pear.

Smarter Multi – Important Part of a Healthy Daily Routine

Smarter Multi ensures you get the exact right amount of each vitamin and mineral daily. Smarter Multi delivers all your daily essential nutrients in the most bioavailable form possible - not a rock-hard compressed tablet, but vitamins that come in a veggie softgel with a digestive-friendly ginger oil base, and minerals that come in an easy to digest and absorb fine, loose-pack powder.  

Whether managing your weight, getting in shape for the summer, or just for your overall health and wellness, Smarter Multi is an important part of a healthy daily routine.