Carrying excess weight would rarely be regarded as a blessing in disguise. It’s seen as a burden, a source of stress and discomfort.
While those reactions are understandable, over the many years of talking to clients, it can also be seen in another light.
Most people think illness develops after being overweight but it’s the other way around. Sickness comes first and excess weight comes second. Weight is commonly one of many symptoms of metabolic dysfunction.
Our metabolism becomes sick or functions poorly, then we become insulin resistant and then we gain weight.
40 per cent of people who are at a healthy weight still have metabolic syndrome without knowing it, until they develop other symptoms, such a fatty liver, high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol levels.
This explains the way we do things at AstonRX. Everyone is focused on weight but health is a much broader, more involved, picture.
Sure, you can lose significant weight in 28 days on the program, but we take a whole lot of other factors into consideration. There’s gut health, circadian rhythms, liver function and muscle development.
All those factors may not be recognised until weight starts to pile on and then people start to look at their health more carefully. It’s the sign they’ve been needing to change their lifestyle.
The problem is, we can all see the excess weight. It’s an obvious indication that something is going awry. We can’t see our liver, or our arteries or heart. Even muscle wastage can be hard to detect because it tends to happen over time. We can’t see insulin resistance either or liver fat. Some of these issues are insidiously happening without us knowing.
The only way we recognise metabolic illness is through blood tests and measuring the waist circumference.
Once we start correcting the insulin levels on our program, they restore quite quickly. Clients are often surprised by this but it’s a matter of working with the body’s natural processes – eating at certain times, sleeping well, cutting out processed food in favour of protein, healthy fats and vegetables.
So, being overweight is your greatest opportunity. I often say that I’m grateful I was overweight in my late teens because it changed my life for the better. When I wanted to do something about my weight, I began my path towards health, and I’ve never looked back. It was my wake-up call and health has always been my driver. Not weight.
