Are Food Sensitivities Making You Fat?
Even though you are watching what you eat, counting calories, you can’t seem to lose weight. Or, every time you step on that scale, you gained another 5 pounds!
Common food sensitivities like gluten, corn, and dairy could be one of the causes of your inability to manage your weight. But what if it was a sensitivity to green peppers, avocadoes, or maybe lentils?
How Could Food Sensitivities be Making You Fat?
Becoming sensitive to certain foods doesn’t occur overnight and eventually leads to chronic inflammation. Whereas we need some inflammation for a natural healing response, it is chronic inflammation that ultimately affects our metabolic health.
Metabolic health is how our bodies metabolize and use the energy from the food that we eat. And, is highly dependent on nutrients, hormone balance, and our mitochondria (powerhouse of our cells) health.
One of the major causes of chronic inflammation is poor gut health or leaky gut. Leaky gut invariably leads to food sensitivities as the gut, and our immune system sees certain foods as the enemy. This response is very pro-inflammatory, leading to chronic inflammation.
What are Food Sensitivities? Anyway?
Food sensitivities are an immune response to the sugars in foods. Even animal products like meat, fish, and chicken contain some “sugar molecules.” With food sensitivities, our immune system reacts to them, leading to symptoms like skin rashes, diarrhea, and even constipation.
Unlike food allergies, your response to food sensitivities is dosage-dependent and can take up two days to react. Dosage-dependent means that it takes more than just a bite or two of the offending food to cause a reaction.
Food allergies, on the other hand, your response will be immediate and is not dosage-dependent. With food allergies, you are reacting to the protein molecule in the food. All foods contain some protein, and it is the allergy to that protein molecule that leads to an immediate response like swollen lips, rashes, and even anaphylactic shock.
Symptoms of Food Sensitivities
Most symptoms of food sensitivities involve pro-inflammatory conditions like headaches, joint pain, skin rashes, and heartburn. Your reaction to that green pepper or, say, avocado starts the natural immune response creating inflammation. This inflammatory response also begins to affect your metabolic health over time.
- Migraine, Headaches
- Unexplained Weight Gain or Inability to Lose Weight
- Skin Rashes, Eczema, Dermatitis
- Autoimmune Skin Flares
- Thyroid Autoimmune Disease
- GERD, Heartburn
- Joint Pain
- Asthma
- IBS – Diarrhea, Constipation
- Gas, Bloat
You have to address the sensitivities to reduce inflammation and begin healing your metabolism to lose weight.
How Do We Get Food Sensitivities?
Most food sensitivities are a result of what is called, “leaky gut”, which is also very pro-inflammatory. Leaky gut is where our gut becomes “leaky” resulting in our food not being properly digested. And, this causes an immune response which is very pro-inflammatory.
Leaky gut is most often caused by a diet that is high in fat, protein, and processed foods. Chronic stress, alcohol, medications, and imbalances in the gut microbiota (the good bacteria in the gut) can also contribute to leaky gut.
Once our gut is “leaky,” food, especially gluten, can leak out into the body, leading to an immune response. But you can heal the gut by eliminating the offending foods for 2-3 months. And, give your gut the nutritional support that it needs to heal.
Do Elimination Diets Work?
The first step to addressing food sensitivities is to start with an elimination diet that eliminates the most common food sensitivities. With most elimination diets, gluten, dairy, corn, soy, and eggs are eliminated for one month. Then foods are reintroduced to see how you react. This is a great first step but if you are still struggling with your weight after being on an elimination diet for 30 days, you may want to try my food sensitivity programs to help get those pounds off. I like to call my food sensitivity programs, the science based elimination diet.
What if You Still Can’t Lose Weight?
You could be sensitive to other foods like peaches, whey protein, broccoli, and maybe cauliflower. By testing your food sensitivities, you can stop the guessing game and finally get started losing weight.
Eliminating the foods that you have become sensitive to is an excellent first start to reducing chronic inflammation. But to heal your metabolism, you will have to heal the gut and balance your hormones.
With my food sensitivity program, you begin your healing journey with a program that works. You will not just be eliminating foods but start healing the gut with my comprehensive 3-month program.
Heal Leaky Gut – Lose the Pounds
The key to weight loss is to heal the gut, reduce inflammation, and repair the gut microbiota. Your gut bacteria play a significant role in your metabolism.
Gut bacteria imbalances can lead to increased calorie absorption from the foods that you eat. Yek!! That 100 calorie apple just went up to 150 calories!
Your microbiota also plays a crucial role in managing inflammation. This is one of the reasons why rebuilding the microbiota has become part of weight loss programs. In addition, your microbiota supplies critical nutrients for your metabolism and gut health, like vitamin B12, B6, Biotin, and vitamin B.
This is one of the reasons that testing for food sensitivities will not resolve why your metabolic health is compromised. And why you can’t lose weight.
Get Started Today – Heal the Gut, Lose the Pounds
Your Food Senstivity Program – LEAP, starts with a food sensitivities kit sent to you and comes with full instructions on how to get your blood drawn.
With my program, I use food sensitivities testing that tests 170 different foods and chemicals. Most food sensitivity testing does not test for chemicals like food preservatives, medications, and chemicals commonly found in foods like tyramine.
By testing for chemicals you can help to determine if you have food intolerance like glutamate or tyramine. Most food intolerances including histamine intolerance are extremely hard to test for but by testing for your reaction to specific chemicals, you can determine if you do indeed have a food intolerance like tyramine (which is extremely similar to histamine). Along with a food journal and my detective work, you can begin the process of finally overcoming your food sensitivities and intolerance. And begin your weight loss journey.
- A gut microbiota-targeted dietary intervention for amelioration of chronic inflammation underlying metabolic syndrome, Xiao, et al, Microbiology Ecology, 2013
- Inflammation as a Link between Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome, Emanuela, et al, Journal of Nutrition & Metabolism, 2012
- Nutritional Support for Insulin Resistance, Dan Lukaczer, Applied Nutritional Science Reports, 2001
Eileen Schutte, MS, CN, FMN – One of my biggest passions is to help clients overcome food intolerances like histamine intolerance and sensitivities so that they can enjoy food again. My other passion is nutrigenomics, speaking to your genes through nutrition with focus on digestive health, autoimmune conditions, and skin health. I hold a master's degree in functional nutrition from the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut graduating Summa Cum Laude. After completing my masters I went on to get my certification in Functional Medicine Nutrition, and am a Certified LEAP Therapist (food sensitivities program). In addition, I am pursuing advanced education in Nutrigenomics through the American College of Nutrition.
