Fat Loss Stall

Fat-Loss Stall and Stress Adaptations issues

Here are some reasons that are nor related to eating that might contribute to why you are experiencing a temporary stall of fat loss. Avoid Mobile Phones, TV screens and Tablets. I will explain why but firstly a little bit about hormones…

Melatonin is produced by the body and is designed to help induce a deep sleep.

It seems to be produced once nighttime approaches and the light outside diminishes.

One function of melatonin is to inhibit insulin production.

Insulin blocks fat burning. So far so good.

BUT...

Exposure to blue light before sleep

For example, a PC, phone, tablet etc that light, especially the blue light, is going to block melatonin. 

So we have lost the insulin inhibition and therefore fat burning is switched off. 

This also means we might have disturbed sleep.

(Late night snacking will also stop fat loss because you’ve just bumped up blood sugar but due to the darkness of nighttime melatonin is inhibiting insulin so your blood sugars are going to go up!)

Stress

You need to sleep to lose weight, so here is how stress might be affecting the fat loss progress.

Stress starts production of the stress hormones such as cortisol, which is a glucocorticoid. ‘GLUCO’ means glucose.

It’s a glucose hormone.

Cortisol inhibits insulin.

It raises blood sugar because of this.

You are making sugar from gluconeogenesis to prepare you for a fight or for a flight away from the stressor.