Why Some People Stall
We’d like to think that our bodies work like cars—press the accelerator to go faster, tap the brakes to slow down. But our body’s metabolic switches don’t quite work that way: We may not gain or lose weight at the rate in which we expect to. When we have inflammation, our bodies are less efficient, meaning that we burn more calories—as a way to protect you, even as you gain weight. As we lose weight and decrease inflammation, our bodies go back to being efficient, and we may not burn calories at the proportional rate in which we gained them. So when we eat the right foods and more efficiently metabolize them, weight also may stall temporarily—meaning you still may be heavy, but might not have as many health risks associated with the weight.
While we’re all familiar with those overt, emergency intestinal crises, our intestinal emotions also influence us in ways we don’t normally associate with food. The reason we may feel groggy or have less energy than a drained nine-volt could be because our intestines are trying to tell us we’re choosing the wrong foods. If you pulled out the small intestines of your entire family and laid them on the back deck to compare them (latex gloves, please), you’d see that they all look alike; they’re the classic, wormy tubes that wind throughout your gut. In terms of basic physiology, we all have the same intestines, just as we all have the same basic brain structure. But just as all of our brains don’t function the same way even though we have the same parts, our intestines don’t function the same way either.