Sudden weight gain is not only frustrating, it can affect your mental and physical health.  Figuring out how to stop – and then reverse it – is critical.  

What causes sudden weight gain?  There are a lot of theories but the one that makes the most scientific sense is chronic inflammation.  

We all deal with the symptoms of inflammation at one time or another.  It’s a natural immune response that happens when you get sick or injured.  A fever or a cut that becomes red and swollen are evidence that your immune system is kicking in and fighting to make you better.

While an injury to the outside of your body may be easily treated, what do you do when the inflammation is on the inside?

Modern medicine is finally beginning to come around to what many holistic healers have known for centuries.  Chronic inflammation can be the cause of a mind-numbing variety of ailments ranging from arthritis to depression to heart disease and even cancer.

Before you can treat inflammation, you must know the root cause.  For something that can cause and/or worsen a myriad of diseases, some seem confused about the source of this internal burning out of control.  

However, the cause is fairly simple to pin down: our modern lifestyle.

• • Poor eating habits
  • Lack of quality sleep
  • Sitting for long hours at an office job
  • Working the night shift
  • Exercising too little (or not at all)
  • Smoking tobacco
  • Consumption of too much alcohol

• And so on…

The result of these habits – particularly repeating them over decades – is severe damage to every cell in your body.  Chronic inflammation creates a cascade effect, leading to one condition or disease after another. Sudden weight gain is another little-known effect that can occur when unchecked inflammation reaches dangerous levels.  

Unfortunately, most people aren’t in a position to request fewer work hours or a standing desk.  Sleep is a commodity that proves hard to come by in our fast-paced daily lives filled with more tasks than time to complete them.  Food is chosen that is “easy” rather than “good” to get a quick meal between things to be done.

We’ve become a society of people who are always rushing, always “connected” to technology, steadily overscheduled, and severely lacking in time to rest and recover.  

How Inflammation Causes Sudden Weight Gain

Inflamed tissues swell and fill with fluid.  This is something that women must endure during their menstrual cycle.  It’s referred to as “water weight” and can alter how you look, how you feel, and how your clothes fit.  Extra water weight makes you feel bloated and sluggish.

If you suffer from chronic inflammation – this could be a problem you’re dealing with all the time.  Reducing inflammation can dramatically lessen this fluid buildup. You’ll end up with a far healthier and fitter you – feeling better both physically and mentally.

Let’s Talk About Food

When most people hear the word “diet,” there’s an automatic negative reaction that’s connected to deprivation.  That’s because “dieting” has become synonymous with eating less food.  

Unfortunately, this can lead to greater problems because the modern way of eating (often referred to as the Standard American Diet) already leaves us deficient in essential nutrition.  

Those eating portions that are too large are also eating the wrong foods in the first place.  If you replaced – not reduced – your food choices, you’d see results.  Even if you never dropped a single calorie from your eating plan.  

That’s because not all calories are the same.  

• 100 calories of spinach salad are utilized almost instantly by your body and put to work powering the various functions inside you.  
• 100 calories of snack cake offer nothing of nutritional value and your body can’t use it at all.  That means part of it is flushed from your body and the rest gets stored as fat.

You must pick your battles.  You can deal with sudden weight gain, high blood pressure, bad LDL and triglyceride numbers, blood sugar that’s out of whack, and a much higher risk of every disease currently known to modern medicine…or you can work to lower the inflammation in your body through your diet.

It’s easier than you think.

Worst Inflammatory Foods

• Refined carbs (white flour, white sugar, white rice)
• Fried foods, fast foods, “instant” foods
• Hydrogenated vegetable oils and margarine
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Sodas, excess alcohol, and energy drinks

Best Anti-Inflammatory Foods

• Fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines) and marine vegetation
• Tomatoes
• Olive and coconut oils
• Leafy green vegetables (spinach, kale, greens, broccoli)
• Seeds and nuts (walnuts, almonds, flax, and chia seeds)
• Berries (strawberries, blueberries, tart cherries)
• Citrus (lemons, limes, oranges)
• Green tea
• Grass-fed and organic animal products

Simply swapping out some of the worst offenders (like drinking fresh green tea in place of soda half the time) and skipping the “instant” meals that are a huge part of our fast-paced culture will help tremendously.  

In fact, you’ll start to see and feel the results within days (if not hours).  

Sudden weight gain is part of a much bigger problem: chronic inflammation.  By resolving the latter, you resolve the former. You also take many steps to a healthier, happier you overall.

Stay healthy my friends!