Inflammation: Do I Have It? How do I Heal It?

Yes, you have it (and it’s affecting everything).

Almost everyone has inflammation for one reason or another, and if you haven’t done anything yet to heal it, you can bet it’s there. Inflammation is caused over time from all sorts of things (like sugar, processed foods, unhealthy fats, stress) and even from doing things we once thought were healthy (like consuming whole grains like bread, pasta, cereal) or using vegetable oils (which, by the way, aren’t even made from vegetables!). The problem is that inflammation compounds overtime and accumulates in your body. 

Some clues that your body is battling inflammation are:

• Belly fat
• Cravings for sugar, carbs or sweets
• Pounds that won’t budge no matter how hard you try
• Diets and exercise plans that have “worked” in the past no longer work
• Low energy
• Trouble sleeping
• Joint aches and pains
• Digestive issues
• Skin issues
• Back pain
• Headaches
• Stress
• Allergies
• Food sensitivities

If any of these sound familiar, then inflammation is present in your body. This sneaky, underlying, chronic-type of inflammation (that you can’t see or feel!) is the #1 reason why EVERY SINGLE WOMAN I’ve worked with over the past 12 years has not been able to lose weight and keep it off (until working with me. 🙂 ).

Your body knows inflammation is bad, so it allocates all of its energy toward healing it. Until this chronic inflammation is taken care of, you won’t have much (if any) energy leftover for burning fat, or feeling vibrant, energetic or healthy. In fact, it’s practically impossible to lose weight while in this constant battle with the inflammation inside of you (and even if you were to lose a few pounds with strict dieting, you’ll surely end up gaining them back because you lost them without addressing the actual reason for the pounds hanging on in the first place!).

Getting rid of this Inflammation is a big deal, because chronic inflammation is the root cause of ALL of these issues. Furthermore, inflammation doesn’t just make your body incapable of losing weight. Science shows that inflammation is the root of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and joint diseases, allergies, Alzheimer’s, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and there’s even a link to cancer.

So, even though it definitely impacts your weight and the laundry list of pesky day-to-day problems, we need to take care of this debilitating chronic inflammation to help prevent disease, too.

Can I get testing to be sure I have inflammation?

While I’m sure you have it if you’ve never done any intense regimen to get rid of it, there are a couple of tests that can help determine the type and level of inflammation you may have. Before I tell you about these, I want to be clear that nearly everyone today is living in a state of chronic inflammation unless you’ve taken measures to do something about it. Most of us have eaten low-fat (even if we didn’t intend to), just based on what was available to us at the time. Intentionally or not, almost all of us have consumed processed foods, vegetable oils and trans fats more than our bodies would like. And sugar…even if you don’t battle sugar or carbohydrate cravings like me and many of the women I have helped, if you indulge, you have inflammation.

So, before you spend the time, money and effort to get these specialized tests ordered—if you are battling ANY of the items I mentioned in the above list of inflammation clues, if you’ve ever followed a low-fat diet or counted calories, or pushed yourself too hard in the gym, or suspect a food sensitivity or have an allergy, then I think it’s very safe to assume you’ve got inflammation that needs to heal in order for your health to improve and symptoms to go away, and testing isn’t really necessary.

There are two tests that can confirm you have inflammation:

1. C-Reactive Protein: CRP is a general blood marker of inflammation. It measures a protein that signals a response to inflammation. It doesn’t tell us the specific cause, but it does tell us that an inflammatory response exists. You want your CRP level well below 1 and preferably at 0, indicating that no inflammation is present. Note: Make sure you don’t have any acute inflammation going on (from a recent injury, sickness or even a stubbed toe) when you get this test done because CRP will be elevated in response to any inflammation, acute or chronic. I consider the CRP to be the “go-to” for testing inflammation, but there is a second option:
2. Fasting blood insulin: A high insulin level when fasting may indicate chronic inflammation in the body. Insulin will go up as a response to elevated blood glucose because insulin acts as a vehicle for removing glucose from your blood and into storage. When insulin is high, cortisol (your stress-hormone) is being released to inhibit insulin production. And stress is one of the many causes of inflammation.

These two markers can be helpful, but we certainly don’t consider them to be the be-all end-all. Make sure you consider the other clues that you may have chronic inflammation, and be sure you’ve worked through the 7 steps to healing inflammation from my free guide!

How can I get rid of the inflammation?

Now that we understand how to identify if you have inflammation, let’s talk about the healing process.

This is the most exciting part of it all! Until now, you didn’t know why your diets and workouts weren’t working. You probably even felt a little crazy, or like there was something wrong with YOU because no matter how hard you tried, nothing seemed to work. Good news: It’s not your fault! There’s nothing wrong with your body, and your system isn’t broken. This is the reason you’ve been struggling all this time.

How we address controlling the inflammation is through my proven 3-Part model:

1. 1. We need to halt the inflammatory triggers to prevent further inflammation from happening! We need to work through all of the various ways that inflammation is caused and put a stop to them so we aren’t adding more and more inflammation. (Read: more weight gain! More energy sucked away from your fat-burning processes! More cravings! More stress! More sleep issues! More frustration!) 
   2. We need to heal the inflammation that’s already there (and likely built up over years and years). This is a critical piece. Most women we work with have been working hard at building great HABITS (like eating well, exercising and maybe even working on getting their hormones in balance and thyroid under control), and you might also be working on #1 (HALT IT) by doing your best to avoid sugar, steering clear of artificial sweeteners, taking it easy on the alcohol, etc., and while all of these efforts earn you gold stars, here’s the kicker: If you’re not healing the existing inflammation, you’ll never be able to lose the weight (and keep it off!). The inflammation is your #1 culprit, which means you can do all of the diets and workouts in the world, but without addressing the root cause, you’ll keep feeling like a failure as you find yourself continually stuck in that painful cycle of dieting, and weight loss/gain without ever breaking free of the pattern.
   3. We need to build lifestyle HABITS around HALTING and HEALING so that this becomes second nature! When we live a lifestyle of keeping inflammatory triggers out, and partaking in daily healing measures for ridding any inflammation that does sneak it (none of us are perfect!), then THIS is where the magic happens. This is where you experience a life of freedom, where you feel empowered, confident, fit and toned—no longer bound to your weight struggle, and off the diet roller coaster, for GOOD!

Where do I start?

There are some simple steps you can take right now to start working through this 3-part approach to taking control of the inflammation so that you can start to lose weight (and keep it off!) and feel better than you have in years!

I’ve done a lot of research on this, and there’s a lot to learn. I put together a free guide to get you started with 7 simple steps so that you can finally be liberated from the endless dieting cycles and lose the weight once and for all! Click to download the free guide to learn the 7 simple ways to heal inflammation and melt away those unwanted pounds.

Last, but not least

Don’t forget to give yourself some grace! It can be frustrating to learn that your hard efforts in the past didn’t help and even backfired, and changing years of ingrained habits certainly doesn’t happen overnight! Just like inflammation develops slowly over years or even decades, the healing process will also take time.

Work through each step, and be patient as your body heals. Once your body begins healing, you’ll know! And you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel, and how many of your issues seem to melt away. Be patient, be diligent, and allow your body to do what it was meant to do, which is to use the healthy nutrients you consume to heal itself and function to its best ability! You’ve got this!

Go ahead and download the free guide I created to get you started. I’m going to walk you through the step-by-step process of getting rid of inflammation so that you can finally be liberated from the endless dieting cycles and lose the weight once and for all!

Click to download the free guide to learn the 7 simple ways to heal inflammation and melt away those unwanted pounds.