Why A Gym Membership & Willpower Isn’t Enough For Weight Loss – Integrative Medicine –

Arming yourself with a new gym membership and fresh resolutions may not be enough to achieve and maintain weight loss.

“Everyone’s been beaten over the head with nutrition and exercise fads,” says Dr. Ashwin Mehta, Medical Director of the Memorial Division of Integrative Medicine. “In Integrative Medicine, we focus on sleep and stress management to change metabolism.”

Sleep deprivation and most forms of stress can change the body’s metabolism. For the body, chronically elevated stress levels signal draught and famine. “This triggers the body to store calories because it thinks it’s going to have hard time finding food again, and it preferentially shunts calories toward fat tissue,” Dr. Mehta says. “Focusing on improving sleep and reducing stress addresses two big hurdles to reducing body fat.”