Blue House Blog

{Trim Healthy Mama} Five Reasons You May Not be Losing Weight.

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I’ll be honest… I got frustrated with Trim Healthy Mama a few weeks ago, which is why I decided to sort of put it on the back burner.

It was frustrating to see so many of my friends melting away SO FAST and me, trying as hard as I could, and not seeing the scale budge one tiny bit. I mean, seriously… friends reporting 50 or 80 pounds losses, THATFAST, and I would literally go two solid weeks without one cheat, dutifully eating my wasa bread and healthy pancakes while my family ate cookies and cinnamon roll pancakes, and I could not budge ONE OUNCE. It was so unfair.

And after much research and the counsel of wise friends, I have come up with five reasons why it may not be working, and what to do about it. 

Starting with hormones… because sometimes, due to some hormonal imbalances you may have, your body just flat may not be able to do it in spite of your best efforts. The THM book touches on hormonal issues very little, pretty much just to say that “if you’re not losing you might need to get your hormones tested” but that advice kind of leaves you hanging. I’m not faulting Serene and Pearl at all; the book is long enough already without delving into every possible hormonal issue that might hinder your weight loss, know what I’m sayin’?

So where do you turn if you suspect hormonal issues?

And what if you can’t afford to have your hormones tested?

And what if your labs come back normal (as is the case a LOT) but deep down you KNOW something isn’t right with you… then what?

I hope I can help. 🙂 I have to tell you I’m no doctor, so please don’t misconstrue this post as any sort of medical advice; I just want to pass on what I know, what I’ve experienced personally, and what helped me.  

My #1 Reason Trim Healthy Mama Might Not Be Working: Adrenal Fatigue.


For those of you who have followed my blog for any length of time, you already know the massive amount of stress I’ve been under since 2006. I won’t rehash all the details, but in the past seven years there has been encephalitis, a brain tumor, a divorce, poverty, then working two jobs, and pretty much hanging onto a cliff by my fingernails while a certain person took great joy in periodically stomping on my fingers. Then there was a remarriage, a surprise pregnancy four weeks later (at age 39), three moves, a massive remodel, death in the family, and a wildly erratic financial roller coaster. 

I have had a fair amount of stress, is what I’m trying to say. Like, so much stress that the Holmes chart put me at high risk of serious illness. And while most of it was terrible stress, there has been GOOD stress too, REALLY great, blissfully happy stress, but even GOOD stress like a happy new marriage and a new baby is… STRESS. It still taxes your adrenal glands.

See, stress can be a good thing; God made stress to prompt your adrenal glands into fight or flight mode. But when you have SO much stress, for an extended period of time, it’s kind of like your adrenal glands get ‘locked’ into the TURBO position, and your body doesn’t know what to do and your adrenal glands get seriously fatigued, or can even completely fail.

And when that happens, even mild stress, like, say, having to pick up you friend’s kid from school, or running out of clean towels, can be TOO much to handle. Literally. If you have severe adrenal fatigue or failure, one tiny little inconvenience can make your body react like you’re a soldier in the trenches being fired upon by the enemy.

You break out into a sweat over EVERYTHING (literally). You breathe hard over EVERYTHING. You canNOT function. You CANNOT cope with ANYTHING, and WIG SMOOTH OUT even the SMALLEST of inconveniences. It paralyzes you. It ANGERS you; you might be CONSTANTLY, blood-boiling MAD, over virtually nothing. You either feel NUMB, or RAGE, with very little emotion in between. You stay in a state of chronic fatigue, and may even cry a lot over the dumbest of things, you can’t sleep, and your body causes you to crave sweets and carbs and chocolate and alcohol. Does this sound like you? These are all symptoms that I have had, or a couple of my very stressed out friends have experienced.


Adrenal fatigue, and adrenal exhaustion, is very real.

And I KNOW this, because I was there, ***and I fixed it,*** thanks to my wise friends who helped me.

It’s been a two-year-long period of trial and error.  

Two years, and I believe my adrenal glands are ALMOST back to normal. I feel like me again. I can cope with stress without curling up under the coffee table and sucking my thumb. I’m laughing a WHOLE lot more, like my old self, and haven’t cried in minutes, or at least since I opened my last Christmas gift (but those were good tears). I am SLEEPING at night. And if I can sleep, I CAN DO THIS. And I’m ready to start THM again 100%. 

HOW, YOU ASK?

I started with two books: The Diet Cure by Julia Ross, and The Mood Cure, also by Julia Ross. 

The Diet Cure talks about the damage that has been done to your body by stress, most specifically the stress of being on one diet after another for decades, like so many of us have. 

The Mood Cure talks about irrational moods that arise out of who-knows-where, and you can’t seem to shake. 

I combined info from both of them to figure out my own supplement schedule, and what would help my own set of issues. I will tell you all about which supplements Julia recommends, and what they’re for, in another post, but meanwhile, you can order her books here (which I HIGHLY recommend, because I cannot possibly sum up the entire book in a blog post). I faithfully tried the supplements recommended in these books, adding some, subtracting others. It worked well for about six months, and at that time the effectiveness began to diminish.

At that time, out of a feeling of TOTAL desperation because I had tried EVERYTHING I knew to try, I caved in and called my Plexus friend. I know, I know… trust me, I know how you feel, because I was there. Total skeptic, totally turned off by the whole idea. But… DESPERATE, y’all. She sent me some Plexus, I tried it, and I was hooked. Turns out, blood sugar imbalances are a massive souce of stress on the body. Stress = adrenal fatigue. Plexus plus my Mood Cure supplements changed everything. For me, it’s the ultimate Adrenal Fatigue protocol. You can buy it here. 

Other good books? Nourishing Traditions (useful info on whole, traditional foods for healing adrenals, and SO much more).

And the Prescription for Nutritional Healing (also good info).

And ALL of these books are VALUABLE resources to help you on your Trim Healthy Mama journey. So let’s do this thing, ok?

My Trim Healthy Mama store  (with all my favorite THM products in one place)

My Mood/Diet Cure Store

My Book Store (LOTS of great books I love…)

For part two of my adrenal fatigue protocol click here!

*Some of the above links are affiliate links, FYI, Clicking them won’t cost you anything but does help to support this blog. 🙂 THANK YOU!

If you liked this post PLEASE share it with your friends! ~ Melissa Beene Taylor
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Comments

  4. I am very intrigued by this information. I am not sure if I have adrenal fatigue, but think I might. I would like to purchase the book The Diet Cure, but have one question about the supplements. Are these in pill or capsule form? Could you take as a liquid form? I have issues swallowing even the tiniest pill, and most likely would not be able to take supplements unless they could be liquid

  5. Can xantham gum be substituted for gluccomannan? If so, would it still be 6tsp? Thanks for the recipe!

  6. &quot;And because I&#39;m a geek whose love language is BOOKS …&quot;. OH.MY.WORD. You nailed me.<br /><br /><br />Actually you nailed me on much of the rest of this too. I&#39;d even put the books by Julia Ross on my Amazon Wish List about a week ago. Thanks for the confirmation that this is the road i need to head down. <br /><br /><br />And thanks for sharing!

  7. This is me! This is my problem and it is SO frustrating. However i am hopeful thanks to this blog. Thank you for sharing! But i dont think i can wait a whole week for the list of supplements. I will try to be patient. 🙂

  8. I&#39;ll let you know asap! 🙂 I just ran out of time to type so I had to cut the post short. Email me if you want to… melissabeenetaylor at gmail.com!

  9. I&#39;m not sure Jan… I&#39;ve only taken capsules. I know some of them are liquid but since I don&#39;t buy supplements in that form I haven&#39;t really paid attention! I&#39;ll try to notice next time I&#39;m at the HFS…

  11. I&quot;m gonna cut and paste my comment from above… I&#39;ll let you know asap! 🙂 I just ran out of time to type so I had to cut the post short. Email me if you want to… melissabeenetaylor at gmail.com!

  13. I&#39;ve been dealing with Adrenal Fatigue, and my naturopath proved MOST helpful. She was able to do blood, saliva, and urine tests to pin down EXACTLY what supplements MY body needed. Also, she recommended the book that was written about ME! Well, the author had no clue I existed, but it was like he had sat down and investigated my body&#39;s needs, finding out more than I knew about me, and

  14. Sounds exactly like what I&#39;m dealing with and my question would be can I do the vitamins while full time nursing a baby?

  15. I am emailing you too for mofe info. Thanks for taking the time to address this 🙂 ~Jenn

  16. I recently realized I too have adrenal fatigue or more likley, exhaustion. Will you be telling us about your supplement regimen and how you came to that conclusion? I&#39;m ordering 2 of your suggested books from my library, and the Mood Cure from Amazon. I can&#39;t wait to learn more! I NEED IT!

  18. I read this post on Monday after seeing it on pinterest, and immediately ordered the 2 Julia Ross books with 2 day shipping (I am so desperate to be better! Yes, I want to lose weight and THM (&amp; exercising) isn&#39;t really doing all that much, but more than that, I want to not feel &#39;off&#39;.) I started flipping through the diet book and felt frustrated – I&#39;m not addicted to carbs.

  20. At any time did you have bloodwork done? I believe I may suffer from this but have not read up on it. Would my Dr. be able to do any tyoe of bloodwork to test my adrenal function? Thanks so much for this timely post.

  23. So glad I found this post! I have diagnosed adrenal fatigue and the provider wants 100 dollars a month for supplements. I have requested both of those books from the library! Thank you!

  24. Don&#39;t know if anyone already commented, but I think it&#39;s misleading to say there&#39;s no bread. Sprouted wheat bread and sourdough bread (made with starter and no yeast) are on plan.

  25. Gah. No wonder I feel burnt out… Totalled my &quot;score&quot; on the Holmes and Rahe stress scale you linked to and got a 660…. (Anything over 300 is high risk for disease?) <br /><br />I need to check out the books you linked , and ASAP. <br /><br />Meanwhile, breath in, breath out…. Thanks for the great post! Looking forward to the other 5.

  30. You are right…. I know in my head I was thinking bread as in WHITE bread or Red Lobster Biscuits… sure didn&#39;t mean to mislead anyone! Thanks for the correction!

  33. Thank you! I&#39;ve been on the plan for just over 6 months now. I&#39;m happy to say that I&#39;ve lost weight and gained energy. Of course, I&#39;m still learning. Your post is very helpful. It was interesting to see you discussed supplements. Two before I found THM, when I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, I started making healthier choices… that included adding fish oil and Calm