There is a lot of frustration out there with both men and women who exercise regularly and feel they are eating healthily and still can’t lose weight.    It has long been stated that if you expend more calories while exercising than the calories you are intaking through your diet you should naturally lose weight. Unfortunately we are now understanding that other factors come into play regarding fat and weight loss.  One major factor that tends to be overlooked is the effect that stress plays in impeding your bodies ability to burn fat. The adrenal glands are stress glands that sit on top of your kidneys and secrete hormones to help in adaptation to stressors that you encounter. Our ancestors didn’t experience the long amounts of stress that we are exposed to present day. One of the adrenals hormone called cortisol, is secreted in response to “fight or flight” situations which boded well for our ancestors to fight the wild animal they encountered or to flee from the enemy. Present day I find  most individuals and families rarely take time out and are on a round the clock schedule leading to cortisol regularly being secreted and flooding your blood stream which leads to an increase in glucose in the blood. When we see high glucose in the blood there is an increased need for the “storage ” hormone , insulin, to be secreted to store glucose in your cells for energy. As long as cortisol is secreted throughout your day then insulin is always trying to store glucose that is mobilized by cortisol secretion. If the body is always in storage mode with insulin, the body finds it very difficult to burn fat. We are now monitoring all our patients that are wanting to slim down, lose weight, or can’t seem to drop weight or fat for cortisol imbalances.