How Inflammation Impacts Weight Gain And Your Health

There are so many factors that can affect our ability to lose weight and keep it off, and a big one is chronic inflammation.

Inflammation touches nearly every aspect of overall wellness, including how hard it is to stay at a healthy weight. Food intolerances, stress, underlying health conditions, and microbiome imbalances are all triggers for inflammation and, as a result, issues with weight loss.

It’s complicated and challenging, but once you understand the connections between inflammation, weight, and health, you can find ways to overcome these challenges and achieve positive outcomes for you and your overall well-being.

Inflammation And Weight Gain

Inflammation and weight gain have a complex relationship. One can cause the other, resulting in a vicious cycle. Habits like overeating, for example, can trigger the immune system and cause the body to generate proinflammatory cytokines, but chronic inflammation can affect the inverse, too.

Chronic inflammation disrupts hormonal signals that regulate appetite and fat storage. It can lead to insulin resistance and leptin resistance. (1) Both impair your brain’s ability to recognize satiety and when the body has enough fat stored, it drives overeating.

Elevated cortisol levels, a stress hormone that rises with inflammation, promote the accumulation of belly fat. (2) If you’re constantly stressed, that only leads to more inflammation, creating a cycle of fat gain and extended inflammatory responses.

Chronic inflammation also affects mitochondrial function. (3) This can reduce energy production, slow your metabolism, and impact calorie-burning. If you’re tired all the time, inflammation could be at play.

Finally, both chronic and acute inflammation disrupt the gut microbiome, an essential community of bacteria involved in metabolism and appetite regulation. (4) Inflammatory diets high in processed foods alter your microbiome’s composition and mess with your body’s hunger signals.

Clearly, the calories in/calories out idea we were all taught as kids isn’t going to cut it anymore. Inflammation touches every aspect of wellness, including weight, and it’s important to do our best to reduce inflammation for effective weight loss and better health.

How Chronic Diseases Are Involved

Chronic diseases can make weight management and inflammation control even tougher. They’re not just triggers for inflammation, which you know now is linked to weight loss resistance. These health issues can affect appetite, fat storage, and insulin resistance.

It’s also important to note that both obesity and inflammation are risk factors for many conditions out there that, in turn, make it more challenging to lose weight. It’s a cycle that requires strict management to reduce the health risks and get you back on track for optimal health.

Diabetes

Diabetes and weight gain are closely linked through insulin resistance and chronic inflammation. (5) In Type 2 diabetes, your cells become resistant to insulin, causing the pancreas to produce more of it. High insulin levels promote fat storage, especially in the belly, leading to weight gain.

Chronic inflammation can worsen insulin resistance, leading to more weight gain, elevated blood sugar levels, and even more inflammation. As you gain weight, your metabolism is disrupted even further, worsening outcomes of metabolic disorders like diabetes.

Managing diabetes often involves reducing inflammation through diet, exercise, and medication as needed to improve insulin sensitivity.

Arthritis

Arthritis, particularly rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, causes inflammation in the joints and triggers systemic inflammation throughout the body. The pain and stiffness patients feel with this condition can make physical activity difficult, which can lead to weight gain.

Excess weight further strains the joints, (6) exacerbating arthritis symptoms and creating this feedback loop of pain and inflammation. Managing the condition often involves anti-inflammatory diets, gentle exercise, and therapies to return some mobility to the joints.

You can reverse autoimmune symptoms from conditions like arthritis and reduce inflammation naturally. Learn more in my course, Mastering Autoimmune Conditions & Inflammation With Functional Medicine.

Cardiovascular Disease

Heart disease often involves chronic inflammation, which can lead to more fat storage, especially around the belly. That excess fat, already a risk factor for heart disease alongside cholesterol and high blood pressure, increases inflammation and puts stress on the heart and blood vessels. (7)

As an added bonus, common medications like beta blockers that aim to improve heart health and lower your blood pressure may increase body weight due to their effects on your metabolism. (8)

Physical activity, so important for heart health, can be hard to maintain with heart conditions or excess weight, making it even more challenging to manage weight. Anti-inflammatory diets, gentle exercise, and stress management are essential for managing weight with a heart condition.

Gut-Based Conditions

Gut inflammation and weight gain disrupt the balance of bacteria in the microbiome. This can lead to gut permeability and trigger further inflammation. Excess body fat can also release inflammatory molecules that impair digestion, leading to bloating and discomfort.

In the short term, this can increase your risk of gut conditions like acid reflux, leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), and ulcerative colitis (UC). All of these conditions are worsened by both inflammation and obesity.

On the other hand, an unhealthy gut microbiome can drive weight gain by increasing inflammation, slowing your metabolism, and affecting hunger hormones. (9) This creates a cycle where poor gut health and weight gain reinforce each other.

Recognizing Inflammation

In addition to weight gain and weight loss resistance, inflammation can manifest in symptoms that affect all areas of your body. Signs that you’re dealing with inflammation can include:

• Moodiness
• Persistent fatigue
• Brain fog or difficulty concentrating
• Depression and/or anxiety
• Gut problems (e.g. bloating, constipation, gas, IBS flare-ups)
• Skin problems (e.g. acne, eczema, rashes)
• Frequent infections of illnesses
• Headaches
• Water retention
• Muscle aches and/or joint pain
• Blood sugar imbalances

For an in-depth overview of inflammation and tools to reduce inflammation in your body for better health, check out my book, The Inflammation Spectrum. 

How To Start Healing

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for lowering inflammation, but there are many natural tools that support healthy inflammation levels and reduce its impact on your weight. Let’s look at some of the best ways to reduce inflammation caused by weight gain.

Reassess Your Diet

There’s no one way to approach dietary changes when it comes to inflammation, but you can start by cutting inflammatory foods like sugar, dairy, and gluten-containing grains. From there, even foods that are generally considered healthy could contribute to low-grade inflammation.

I recommend doing an elimination diet, the gold standard for discovering which foods are irritants and aren’t working for you. By uncovering food intolerances and sensitivities, you’ll be well on your way to winning the battle against inflammation.

On the flip side, you should also incorporate anti-inflammatory foods into your diet. Here’s a short list:

• Leafy greens
• Avocados
• Ginger
• Turmeric
• Berries
• Nuts
• Olive oil
• Green tea
• Fatty fish*

*Fatty fish like herring and mackerel are a favorite among healthcare providers for a reason. They’re a good source of healthy fats and omega-3 fatty acids known to boost immune response and fight against high levels of inflammation.

LISTEN: Inflammation Insights, Skincare and Pantry Swaps, & Essential Health Tips for Parents | Maggie Berghoff

Proactively Work On Healing Your Gut

Our gut microbiome plays a huge role in weight management, and inflammation can create an additional obstacle to a balance of good vs. bad bacteria in your gut. (10) Imbalances in your microbiome influence your metabolism, appetite, and fat storage.

What you eat matters. Certain bacteria thrive on processed foods and sugars, creating a space more welcoming to inflammation and, as a result, gut dysregulation. A disrupted microbiome also reduces energy efficiency, meaning you’re burning fewer calories.

Healing the gut starts with diet. The anti-inflammatory foods I’ve already listed are a great start. Add probiotics found in foods like yogurt, kefir, or kimchi, or take supplements if you’re lacking.

Incorporate prebiotics found in whole grains, garlic, and leafy greens to feed beneficial gut bacteria. Eat fiber-rich foods to encourage bacterial diversity, which is linked to better weight regulation.

You should also listen to your body. The gut-brain connection is powerful, and barriers to that connection, like chronic stress, can affect the microbiome and undermine your weight loss efforts.

Get Adequate Sleep

Studies have found that getting adequate sleep each night is essential for healthy inflammation levels, especially in women. (11) Just one night of poor sleep can cause inflammation levels to increase, and quality sleep is just as important as the number of hours you sleep.

Work on cultivating a bedtime routine that works for you. That means no electronics before bed, weighted blankets, and/or stress relief tools like aromatherapy so that you can get at least 7 hours of uninterrupted shut-eye.

Try Detoxing

Everyone can benefit from a detox. We’re exposed to toxins on a daily basis that contribute to fatigue, gut issues, problems with our skin, and difficulties losing weight to reduce inflammation. It’s not enough to start every morning with a green smoothie, though.

You need to try to limit toxin exposure and support detoxification at the same time. That can look like switching out products around the house to non-toxic versions and introducing foods that support methylation pathways and liver function.

Antioxidant-rich leafy greens and vitamin B-rich superfoods like organ meats and other grass-fed lean proteins are a great start.

Exercise Consistently

Regular exercise isn’t just good for burning calories. It supports sustainable weight loss by boosting your metabolism, improving immune function, and balancing your hormones. Movement is good for your microbiome and strengthens your gut barrier, preventing leaky gut. (12)

Exercise also helps regulate insulin and blood glucose to prevent excess fat storage, reducing your risk of negative diabetes outcomes and chronic inflammation linked to obesity.

Take Care Of Your Mental Health

Your mental well-being directly impacts your physical health. Strengthening that mind-body connection can be a powerful tool in your efforts to lower inflammation and achieve a healthier weight.

High cortisol levels trigger inflammation and encourage fat storage. By alleviating chronic stress, you support balanced cortisol levels and other hormones that impact inflammation. Stress also disrupts appetite-regulating hormones, causing cravings that can lead to weight gain.

Lowering stress through techniques like mindfulness, exercise, or deep breathing helps to calm your mind, decrease cortisol, and reduce inflammation. Make it a daily routine.

If you need support, tap into your network of family and friends. Community is essential when it comes to stress management, especially if you’re dealing with long-term struggles with your weight.