“I’ve hit a stubborn weight-loss plateau,” writes this week’s house call, “even though I seem to be doing everything right, like eating the right foods and exercising. How can I overcome that obstacle?”

I’ve discussed different reasons for weight-loss resistance in past blogs. Many obstacles have nothing to do with what you eat or how much you exercise. Instead, they involve things like nutritional imbalances, chronic inflammation, metabolic challenges, leaky gut, changes in your microbiome, environmental toxins and your genes.

One huge but often-overlooked reason for weight-loss resistance involves hormonal imbalances.

No contest: The monster hormone that causes weight gain, inflammation and chronic disease is excess insulin. Think of this hormone as your fat cell fertilizer! My new book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, discusses how to naturally regulate insulin so you can shift your body from fat storage mode to fat-burning mode.

At the same time, insulin isn’t the only player; other hormones also affect your weight and health. Three big disruptors are: thyroid, cortisol and sex hormones. I discuss these hormones in-depth in The Blood Sugar Solution, however, let’s briefly look at each of them here.