Muffin tops and love handles usually only mean one thing – excess body fat sitting around your mid-section. For many people, it doesn’t matter how little they eat or how much they exercise, they simply cannot lose weight or even worse, weight keeps creeping on.

Beware of Cortisol - the stress hormone

If this sounds familiar, you may have chronically elevated cortisol (your main stress hormone) levels, sabotaging your weight loss goals. Excess abdominal fat in particular, is an independent risk factor for a number of chronic health conditions.

Everyone needs some fat, just not a lot of fat

You need to have some fat in your body as it protects your internal organs from damage and keeps you insulated against the cold. Your fat soluble vitamins; A, D, E and K can only be dissolved in fat and stored in your fat cells for later use. Stored fat cells can then be metabolised, or broken down, and converted into energy for your body to use. Your body has unlimited capacity to store fat, so any excess body fat tends to accumulate, and if left unchecked, can lead to obesity.

Manage cortisol to lose weight

Chronic stress, whether it’s mental, physical or emotional, appears to be the new ‘norm’, now reaching epidemic proportions. Prolonged, elevated cortisol levels can increase abdominal fat deposits, appetite, sugar cravings and weight gain. If you have a muffin top or love handles and an issue losing weight no matter what you do, you could have elevated cortisol levels. Under these circumstances, you really need to address the stress in your life and manage your cortisol levels before you can successfully lose weight. Two herbs in particular can help with this:

• Rehmannia and Licorice are adaptogenic and adrenal tonic herbs. Adaptogen herbs help your body adapt to, and resist mental, physical and emotional stress while their adrenal tonic activity supports your adrenal glands helping to reduce cortisol production and regulate cortisol levels.

When you decide to lose weight, you want it gone! If you want to fast-track your weight loss, you can add other specific herbs to your weight loss plan, in conjunction with a healthy balanced diet and physical exercise:

• Svetol^® Green coffee is a clinically trialled proprietary extract that has been shown to assist weight and fat loss, help reduce body fat percentage and improve body composition by improving lean tissue to body fat ratio.

• Garcinia cambogia contains hydroxycitric acid (HCA) which can assist weight loss in two ways; by blocking new fat production and helping to reduce appetite. HCA stimulates the breakdown of fat cells, resulting in weight loss and a healthy lean body composition. HCA also increases serotonin (neurotransmitter) levels that help regulate eating behaviour and appetite control. 

• Raspberry ketones are naturally occurring compounds found in red Raspberry fruit which have fat burning properties. Raspberry ketones increase levels of adiponectin, a protein that helps to reduce the amount of glucose available to be stored as fat and helps to regulate fat metabolism.

If you’d like some professional advice on weight loss, in conjunction with healthy food and lifestyle choices, or which herbs or nutrients might be best for you, 'Ask a Naturopath' at Mr Vitamins today.

Mr Vitamins recommends

Herbs of Gold Stress Ease, Burn and Garcinia

Find out more about each of these Herbs of Gold supplements and shop on-line below

• Stress Ease Adrenal Support
• Burn with Svetol^®
• Garcinia + Raspberry Ketones