Curated's Approach to Finding Your Healthy Weight

Curated's Approach to Finding Your Healthy Weight

Emily Alexander, FNTP Emily Alexander, FNTP
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As Nutritional Therapy Practitioners (NTP), we focus on what impacts your health at the deepest level. Rather than focusing on symptom management, we use our nutritional expertise to understand the symptoms you're experiencing and develop a plan that utilizes a root cause approach to help you reach your goals, whatever those might be. For many people, finding a healthy weight is the main goal they identify when working with an NTP. Whether it’s to improve their self confidence, boost their energy, or just to simply feel good in their skin, it’s often the biggest motivator for making important lifestyle changes that improve overall health. 

 

So while we support any goal that helps people to improve their health, if you’ve come to Curated Wellness looking for weight loss you might be surprised that it’s not a specific focus of what we offer. Rather than recommending a restrictive and unsustainable diet, we instead focus on guiding you to make sustainable and balanced nutrition choices without restriction as a way to find your healthy weight range. And this is why:


The Healthy At Every Size Approach

At Curated, we take a Health At Every Size (HAES) approach with our clients. If you have never heard of HAES before, it is an alternative to the standard weight-centered approach to wellness that promotes the importance of following a balanced style of eating, participating in life-enhancing exercise, and respect for the natural diversity that exists within body shapes and sizes. Because we incorporate the HAES philosophy into all of the client work we do, we believe that there are much better ways to measure health than relying on body weight alone, which is why it is never our main focus. As nutrition professionals, we actively work to educate our clients on the importance and enjoyment of eating for well-being rather than for weight change.

 

The Bio-Individuality of Weight

 

There are many different factors that impact body weight, and they are truly different for each and every person that comes to work with us. At its core, body weight is a prime example of what bio-individuality really means.

 

Factors that impact body weight include:

  • Family history and genetics
  • Race and ethnicity
  • Biological sex
  • Age
  • Nutrition choices
  • Physical activity levels
  • Environmental toxins
  • Access (or lack of) to grocery stores that have fresh fruits and vegetables
  • Work environment
  • Lack of transportation
  • Medications
  • Medical conditions
  • Stress levels
  • Digestion and microbiome imbalances
  • Hydration status
  • Blood sugar regulation
  • Eating disorders and disordered eating
  • Family values


Your own weight not only depends on the food you choose to eat and the amount of physical activity you engage in, but also on the genetic, environmental, and social cocktail that you are currently experiencing. Let’s dive in a bit deeper.

 

Weight Fluctuations and The Foundations

The foundations of health, as we NTPs fondly refer to them, are the cornerstones of building a healthy you. When any one of them is out of balance the body sends signals through many different systems and symptoms that something is amiss—including how your body chooses how much body fat it needs to store.

      chard and salmon


A Whole Food, Nutrient-Dense Diet & Weight Loss

 

It’s no surprise to anyone that a whole, nutrient-dense diet is the foundation of health. This is the place to start when you are looking to make health changes, and finding your healthy weight range is no different. A nutrient-dense diet is one that provides a wide variety of macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals in the amounts needed for your individual body. Diets based in this philosophy include a balance of animal and plant-based proteins, fresh fruits and vegetables, properly prepared grains, non-toxic fats, plenty of pure water, nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes. Switching to a whole food diet does not mean following a restrictive elimination diet with no end in sight, and instead means finding the right balance of the types and amount of food for you. Once your body receives the nutrients it needs to thrive as its healthiest self, your weight will likely stabilize where it feels most comfortable for your body. This means it is possible that you will see weight loss, weight gain, or no change at all—and none of these are bad! As mentioned earlier, weight is only one metric of health and there are many non-scale ways to check in on our bodies. It's time to tune into the signals your body is sending you, and to listen!

 

If you’re ready to tackle this foundation, check out our Whole Foods Starter Kit. Our Whole Foods Starter Kit was designed with the health oriented person in mind, whether you are just starting out or a self-proclaimed foodie looking to restock your pantry, we’re confident this curation will get you moving in the right direction.

 

Digestion & Weight Loss

 

Here at Curated we often reference the quote, “you’re not what you eat, but what you absorb,” as it highlights the importance of optimizing your digestion to truly optimize your health. Poor gut health has not only been linked to numerous health concerns including inflammation, heart disease, allergies, and autoimmune disorders, but an imbalanced gut makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to absorb the nutrients from the whole foods diet you may have switched to. 

 

In regards to weight loss, research has demonstrated a connection between decreased microbial diversity (the good guys in your gut) and increased body weight1, as well as an impaired ability to keep blood sugar levels stable, and increased overall inflammation. Blood sugar regulation and inflammation both play a significant role in maintaining a healthy weight, so by addressing the health of our digestive system we’re setting ourselves up for better health all around. This association demonstrates exactly how connected our digestive health is to all parts of our body and why it’s so important to take care of it.

 

There are many easy steps you can take with both dietary and lifestyle choices to restore balance to your microbiome, and support your body in finding its healthy weight. Frequently consuming fiber rich foods, probiotic rich foods, and soothing foods like bone broth and collagen are great ways to support rebalancing your microbiome. If you’re ready for supplementation, check out our Digestive Rescue and Repair Curation. Designed in-house by our own Nutritional Therapy Practitioners, this curation is equipped with synbiotics (a blend of prebiotics and probiotics), digestive enzymes, digestive bitters, l-glutamine, and aloe vera all of which work directly with your body to soothe and restore an inflamed digestive system, which in turn supports your body in settling into its preferred weight range.

 

finding your healthy weight woman sitting down with smoothie and hand weights

 

Stress, Energy, Mood & Weight Loss

 

Perhaps tied with digestion—supporting your stress levels, energy, and mood is foundational to supporting your body and potential weight loss efforts. Your body needs to feel “safe” (emotionally, metabolically, and physically) to make weight loss an acceptable outcome. Many clients are not at this stage yet, at least when we first meet with them. This foundational system controls your hormones (like cortisol), manages your stress response, and provides feedback to your brain on how to react to your environment around you—all things that impact your ability to lose and gain weight. Poor stress management and extreme blood sugar fluctuations make it difficult for your body to regulate hormones, and increases your risk for conditions like insulin resistance and chronic inflammation. Prioritizing things such as practicing stress management, making sure your snacks and meals have a healthy balance of all three macronutrients, and sleeping enough at night can help to support this system and support a healthy body weight.

 

In addition to those important lifestyle changes, it is also important to consider the nutrients that are depleted by chronic stress and how they impact potential blood sugar swings and weight loss efforts. Important nutrients that are negatively impacted by chronic stress include vitamin C (which is depleted by an overproduction of cortisol), magnesium, and the B vitamins2,3,4. In addition to addressing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, it is also important to provide your body with nutrients like protein, fiber, and omega-3 fatty acids which help to keep both satiety and blood sugar levels in check, we know how important those are! With this in mind, we created our own Stability Now curation to help you get off the daily energy roller coaster, reduce cravings, and support weight balance.

 

Inflammation & Weight Loss

Inflammation gets a bad rap, but it's really not all bad. It is the body’s normal response to injury or illness, and is the only way the body is able to protect itself from potentially harmful toxins and injury. The body is innately intelligent and creates a complex process that allows the body to seamlessly increase inflammation to address a concern and then send in anti-inflammatory nutrients to decrease inflammation and return to baseline. However, this system does not always function the way it was intended.

Today we are exposed to many inflammatory substances including processed foods, chemical ridden cleaning products and beauty products, cigarette smoke, poor quality water, and pollutants in the air. The effect of each inflammatory trigger becomes increasingly detrimental as we are constantly exposed to trigger…after trigger…after trigger. This compounding effect leads to chronic inflammation, causing the body to feel like it is constantly under attack. The body then proceeds to send out as many immune cells as possible to fight the “invaders,” which eventually begin to attack healthy body tissue.

 

Inflammation not only increases your risk for insulin resistance and weight gain, but weight gain has also been associated with increases in C-Reactive Protein (an inflammatory marker) in the blood5. So one might infer that there is no causation, but that inflammation and weight gain each impact the other—no matter which came first. Regardless, addressing inflammation is important for supporting your body’s healthy weight and it is thankfully not difficult to do. Curated’s Inflammatory Response Curation was developed with managing chronic inflammation in mind. It’s equipped with turmeric, the amino acid glycine, a balance of the omega 3s, 6s, and 9s, and a blend of choline and inositol for inflammation reduction. 

 woman drinking water


Hydration & Weight Loss

Hydration is often an overlooked foundation of health which is extremely unfortunate as it is arguably the most important component. Dehydration is one of the largest deficiencies in the modern world and thankfully one of the easiest to fix. Consuming enough water throughout the day is important as water is involved in many bodily functions including flushing toxins and waste from the body, transporting nutrients, temperature regulation, lubricating joints, and protecting your organs, just to name a few. In regards to potential weight loss, water’s role in excreting toxins from the body is extremely important. When toxins are not flushed from the body it becomes overloaded and must find somewhere to store them as a way to protect the body systems and organs. As a solution, the body chooses body fat as the place to store unwanted toxins, often leading to weight gain, poor energy, and hormonal imbalances6. When clients start to drink enough water they often find that their digestion and bowel movements improve, inflammation decreases, and their weight stabilizes.

Finding your own healthy weight can feel confusing, defeating, and downright impossible! Thankfully, when you focus on optimizing your foundations of health you support your body in its own innate restorative processes. Working with a Curated Wellness practitioner is the first step in restoring your foundations and taking the guesswork out of the process. Though we don’t treat sickness or disease, our practitioners are trained to identify imbalances in health, and address them through targeted dietary, lifestyle, and supplement recommendations, which includes helping you to find your healthy weight.

If you’re ready to take back your health with a knowledgeable guide and accountability partner, our practitioners are ready for you. Click here to schedule a one-on-one!


Emily Alexander, M.Ed, FNTP
—Emily is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner with Curated Wellness. She is passionate about supporting others in their journey to improve their relationship with food and their body through gentle nutrition, and is a firm believer that understanding the bio-individual components of nutrition is one of the best ways to do so. Emily completed her Master’s of education in health education and promotion with a concentration in eating disorders, and draws from both her educational background and life experience to help her clients improve their energy, understand their bodies, boost their athletic potential, and break down diet myths one at a time. Read more about Emily.



The information presented on this website is intended for educational purposes only. Statements within this site have not been evaluated or approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This content is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any specific condition or disease, nor is it medical advice and should not be considered a substitute for professional medical expertise. Readers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health conditions or concerns. One should always consult a qualified medical professional before engaging in any dietary and/or lifestyle change or new health program. Curated Wellness does not take responsibility for any health consequences of any person or persons following the information in this educational content. 


References:

  1. Davis C. D. (2016). The Gut Microbiome and Its Role in Obesity. Nutrition today, 51(4), 167–174. https://doi.org/10.1097/NT.0000000000000167 
  2. Marik P. E. (2020). Vitamin C: an essential "stress hormone" during sepsis. Journal of thoracic disease, 12(Suppl 1), S84–S88. https://doi.org/10.21037/jtd.2019.12.64
  3. Jacka, F. N., Overland, S., Stewart, R., Tell, G. S., Bjelland, I., & Mykletun, A. (2009). Association between magnesium intake and depression and anxiety in community-dwelling adults: the Hordaland Health Study. The Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry, 43(1), 45–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048670802534408
  4. Young, L. M., Pipingas, A., White, D. J., Gauci, S., & Scholey, A. (2019). A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of B Vitamin Supplementation on Depressive Symptoms, Anxiety, and Stress: Effects on Healthy and 'At-Risk' Individuals. Nutrients, 11(9), 2232. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11092232 
  5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589936819300167 
  6. Jackson, E., Shoemaker, R., Larian, N., & Cassis, L. (2017). Adipose Tissue as a Site of Toxin Accumulation. Comprehensive Physiology, 7(4), 1085–1135. https://doi.org/10.1002/cphy.c160038 

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