It can be quite baffling when you cannot put your finger on the steady increase in numbers on the weighing scale and the rapid and sudden weight gain can be disappointing when you are doing everything correctly – from sticking to a healthy diet to exercising almost on a daily basis. Of course, there’s something just not right internally if you are doing everything just as before and still the weight goes up. It’s not all about food and dieting that causes weight gain, sometimes certain hidden factors play an important role in pushing the weight upward. In this post, we list down 12 Things in Life that Cause Abnormal and Sudden Weight Gain.
1. Sluggish Metabolism: When you strictly restrict calories, depriving the body of necessary calories to run its day-to-day functions smoothly, the body will switch to a fat-storage mode, and when you eat the next time around, it will save a majority of those calories as fat for future use rather than using it all up. Follow a healthy dieting process such as on Rati Beauty to lose weight the healthy way without depriving the body of essential nutrition.
2. Stress and Anxiety: Do you know that continuously being in a stressful state can trigger a mammoth appetite and push you to emotional eating. Stress and anxiety leads to release of cortisol (stress hormone), which can in turn increase the process of gluconeogenesis, where blood glucose is made from breaking down body’s muscles, and this blood glucose causes increase in abdominal fat. Easier said than done, if you want to lose weight – you need to find ways to lower stress and anxiety.
3. Being Less Active For a Majority of the Day: Just 30 minutes of exercise in the morning and 23-1/2 hours of inactivity through the day will not help in losing weight, in fact, it might lead to weight gain. If you are wondering why you are gaining weight despite exercising, you need to move around more.
4. Sleep Deprivation: Studies have established that fat cells need to rest and get enough sleep to function properly and metabolism which torchers calories, would dip down without enough sleep. Apart from diet and exercise, what would help with weight loss is a good 7 hours of sleep.
5. Water Retention: Water retention is accumulation of additional fluid in the circulatory system or within the body tissues. This fluid buildup can make you feel bloated and swelled up, both in feel and appearance. Water retention can prevent you from fitting into your favorite pair of jeans. Water retention most commonly shows up on the feet and legs, but it can occur in the hands, arms, abdominal cavity and around the lungs. Excessive salt and dehydration can lead to water retention, cut down on salt and increase water intake to see the weight drop.
6. Certain Medications can Affect Weight Gain: Some medications like steroids, anti-depressants, etc., can not only increase appetite, they can also cause water retention.
7. PCOD and Hypothyroidism: Hormonal changes caused by hypothyroidism and polycystic ovarian disease can lead to significant weight gain, especially around the belly area. It is advisable to consult a doctor to rule out these disorders.
8. Are you Sitting All Day Long: It’s essential to be active through the day, especially when you are working from home, spending hours together sitting in a single position. An enzyme called lipoprotein lipase which is responsible for burning fat in the blood, stalls its “fat-burning activity” when you do not move for a few hours and spend most of your day at the desk at home. Stand up, move around, and reactivate the fat-burning enzyme, also boost up sluggish metabolism.
9. Yo-yo Dieting: Have you been yo-yo dieting too often? Yo-yo dieting can cause fluctuation of hormones including that of insulin, estrogen, ghrelin, leptin, etc. This kind of weight cycling can trigger insulin resistance as well and lead to faster weight gain.
10. Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies: Certain kind of diets can cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies because they advocate cutting out major food groups and severely restricting calories. Unknown to many, vitamins and minerals are essential for the functioning of fat-burning enzymes and hormones, and any deficiency of these nutrients would lead to weight gain. In fact, calcium, magnesium, healthy fats all are needed for fat-burning activity to happen in your body.
11. Too Much Workout: When you put the body through too much stress by exercising relentlessly for long hours, the muscles develop microscopic tears and swell up, retaining water, which would add up to the numbers on the scale. And that’s why it’s important to workout for 5 days and allow the body to recover for two days. If you have been working out for all 7 days of the week and still seeing increase in weight, you need to slow down and give your body a break.
12. High Sodium Diet: As we have mentioned earlier, high sodium can lead to water retention. Also, a high-salt diet leads to increase in abdominal fat. Do not completely cut out salt because it is extremely essential to maintain the electrolyte balance in the body, just limit the salt intake.
How to Stop Yo Yo Dieting and Keep the Weight Off Forever
10 Weight Loss Attitudes you Must Change to See Positive Results
How To Stay Motivated During Weight Loss Process
14 Real Reasons Why you are Exercising and Still Not Losing Weight
