When we think of weight loss, most of us think of the simple formula of eating less and exercising more. Essential Oils for weight loss can prepare your body and mind for losing weight. While this often works when we are younger, as we age other factors come into play that can undermine our metabolism and weight loss even as we eat less and less.

Can Essential Oils help you lose weight?  There is no simple answer as there are many factors that contribute to excess weight, including:

• Poor Sleep
• Stress
• Blood sugar dysregulation
• Impaired Detoxification
• Hormone Challenges

These issues can all make it challenging, if not impossible, to keep the weight off.  I have many friends and clients who were able to follow a very restrictive regime for a short period of time and drop some weight only to regain it once they returned to normal eating habits.  I do not believe this kind of yo yo dieting is healthy or sustainable and instead encourage clients to focus on the underlying challenges that can impede long term weight loss.

Essential Oils for Weight Loss

Poor Sleep

If you are not sleeping through the night, it can be almost impossible to lose weight. Here’s why:  your body and your brain need glucose (blood sugar) to function and if you are not well rested and fatigued, you will invariable crave sugar and carbohydrates for energy, thus undermining your attempts to diet.  Essential oil blends like Circadian Rhythm®and Sleep™ can help support challenges with falling asleep.  Essential oil blends like Liver™, Liver Support™, Pancreas™ and Hormone Balance™ can help you stay asleep.

Blood Sugar Imbalances

Our bodies and brain rely on glucose (blood sugar) to function.  Ideally, this blood sugar should stay in the optimal range.  If it gets too high (known as high blood sugar or hyper-glycemia) or too low (known as low blood sugar or hypo-glycemia).  Many of us toggle between both which forces the body to compensate in a way that makes it hard to lose weight.

You see, if blood sugar is too low, the adrenals release cortisol which then tells the liver to produce more glucose, bringing blood sugar levels back to normal.  It then falls upon the pancreas to secrete a hormone called insulin to help carry the glucose into the cells for the body to use as energy.

When this process falls out of balance, either from chronic low blood sugar or stress, the exaggerated insulin response can, over time, lead to insulin resistance, where the cells lose their ability to respond to insulin.  This makes it very difficult to lose weight as the cells are not getting fed, so they are constantly sending the signal that they are hungry while the glucose builds up outside of the cells.  The body’s solution is to slow the metabolism and store the excess glucose in our fat cells, often those around the abdomen.  See the dilemma?  The solution is to help unwind the problem by supporting the organs of blood sugar, including the Adrenal®, Pancreas™ and Liver™ – for optimal blood sugar balance.  Blood Sugar Balance blend also helps support sugar cravings.

High Stress

When we encounter any physical, physiological, environmental or emotional stressor, the adrenal glands release the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine to help the body fight and flee the stress response.   This high cortisol response triggers the same issues as blood sugar imbalances, often contributing to insulin resistance and weight gain.  To help unwind this situation, you can support the organs of stress, including the adrenal glands and the hypothalamus in the brain.  Stress can often result from unresolved emotions and trauma, so helping to clear the emotions can reduce stressors and their resulting stress responses.

Impaired Detoxification

Just like we remove the garbage from our homes on a regular basis, the body removes toxins and waste from its system, ideally on a daily basis.  Organs such as the liver, gallbladder, lymphatic system, large intestine and skin play a huge role in helping to eliminate toxins from our systems.  Unfortunately, if their function is impaired, toxins can get reabsorbed instead of eliminated.  The body stores these toxins in our fat cells.  Are you beginning to see the relationship here?  If the body stores toxins in fat cells, you often cannot get rid of fat cells until you get rid of toxins.  Supporting the organs of detoxification  like the Liver™, Gall Bladder™, Lymph™ and Large Intestine™ with essential oils along with a detoxifying diet can help support the body in it’s effort to detoxify.  Supporting detoxification and lymphatic flow can also help support weight loss efforts.

Hormone Challenges

Our hormones control our metabolism and with it the body’s ability to gain or lose weight.  When they get dysregulated, either from Thyroid challenges or pregnancy and menopause, it can make it challenging, if not impossible to drop pounds.  Oils that support the Liver™, Adrenals™, Gall Bladder™, Hypothalamus™, Thyroid™, Hormonal Balance™ and symptoms like PMS™ can help.  As we are all bio-individual, it is important that you get some bloodwork done and review it with a practitioner.  We have several  practitioners that we work with.  To find one in your area, click here.  To learn more about thyroid support with essential oils, click here.

Losing Weight with Essential Oils

Smelling Essential Oils Can Contribute to Satiety

In addition, there is some interesting research from the Smell & Taste Research and Treatment Foundation that smell can contribute to satiety and weight loss, resulting in a weight loss of as much as 3 pounds in 2 weeks.

The research was prompted by findings that when people lost their smell, they gained between 10 to 20 pounds. The researchers hypothesized that, if people gained weight when they lost the sense of smell, perhaps weight loss could be induced by using certain aromas. Science supports this hypothesis as the olfactory bulb connects with the hypothalamus, which is the satiety center of the brain.  Anecdotal evidence also supports that satiety relates to the amount smelled in the process of eating. Similarly, people who work in pizza parlors, or candy factories, aren’t the slightest bit interested in eating those foods, perhaps because they have smelled them all day long.

To test this theory, the Smell & Taste Research and Treatment Foundation gave students plastic tubes filled with a fragrance that they asked them to sniff, three times in each nostril, whenever they felt like eating. At the end of 2 weeks there was an average weight loss of 1.5 pounds. Those who liked the smell lost 3 pounds in 2 weeks.

Featured Oils:

Ready to get started? Click the links below to order today:

• Adrenals™ available here
• Circadian Rhythm® available here
• Gall Bladder™ available here
• Hormone Balance™ available here
• Hypothalamus™ available here
• Large Intestine™ available here
• Liver™ available here
• Liver Support™ available here
• Lymph™ available here
• Pancreas™ available here
• PMS™ available here
• Sleep™ available here
• Thyroid™ available here