Food sensitivities and weight gain are highly searched topics and for good reason. Food sensitivities can wreak havoc on our bodies so it only makes sense that they would directly contribute to weight gain, right?
If you’ve been reading our blogs for a while now, you know that food affects more than just our waistlines. Especially when it comes to food sensitivities.
The symptoms can range from mild and annoying to debilitating and life-altering. The real question isn’t whether or not food sensitivities cause weight gain, it really should be:
Do food sensitivity symptoms contribute to weight gain?
What are common food sensitivity symptoms?
Let’s elaborate on this question for a moment. Food sensitivities don’t directly contribute to weight gain in the sense that a food sensitivity will make your body produce excess fat. Only the actual foods that you eat can do that.
Food sensitivities produce symptoms that directly contribute to it, though.
Food sensitivity symptoms vary quite a bit. For example, a lactose sensitivity could cause stomach pains, cramps, and a bad time in the bathroom for some people. For others, the sensitivity could manifest as acne, the worst highschool deja-vu.
Gluten sensitivities can cause some to bloat, while making others feel spikes in energy then serious crashes an hour or two later.
With most of these symptoms, like the bad stomach and energy spikes, you’re unlikely to want to lace up your running shoes and pound the pavement for a few miles.
Fatigue and depleted stores.
Think about this for a moment: food sensitivities make it difficult for your body to digest certain enzymes in food, or the entire food. When your body works this hard to break down an incompatible meal, you will undoubtedly feel fatigued and like you need a two hour nap.
This is the snowball effect. You have an unknown food sensitivity lurking undercover. You eat a big bowl of fettucini alfredo for lunch with a helping of garlic bread. You go back to work and feel okay for the first hour.
At three o’clock you text your friend who invited you to that spin class after work, “Hey Jason. I’m really really tired, too tired for spin. Think Annie might have gotten me sick. Can’t make it tonight.”
If you would have eaten the roast chicken and veggies that you originally packed, you would have been mounted on that bike at seven. Not curled up on your couch in a snuggie, watching Friends re-runs (Not that there’s anything wrong with binging a season or two of Friends every once in a while).
If you regularly visit the same pasta place, and always order sandwiches or pasta, then you’re not going to be able to maintain the same level of fitness that you had before the newfound pasta obsession, leading to eventual weight gain.
Inflammation looks like weight gain.
Chronic inflammation is one of the primary symptoms of a food sensitivity. If you have an undiagnosed food sensitivity to eggs but your breakfast choice everyday is scrambled eggs on toast, your immune system may be creating internal inflammation and you don’t even know it.
You might have visited the doctor for your achy joints, chronic acne, and migraines, but one symptom you haven’t thought to mention is the chronic bloating. You just assumed that your pants weren’t fitting right because you’ve been a little bit more heavy handed with the honey in your morning oatmeal and sugar in your morning coffee.
It’s likely that you visited your doctor about all of these things separately, never knowing that it was the one morning habit that was the actual source of all of those health concerns.
Get the answers you need.
There isn’t a magic pill or magic wand solution to make you lose weight. Only the right diet and exercise can do that.
A great first step on your wellness journey is to take a food sensitivity test and gain some visibility into some of the negative ways that food may be impacting your health.
Ready to say goodbye to chronic fatigue and inflammation once and for all? Ask your doctor about Immuno Labs’ Bloodprint Panel food sensitivity tests at your next visit.
