Could Hormone Imbalances Affect Your Weight?

Your hormones can play a huge role in helping or hindering your weight loss efforts. They can affect everything from your appetite to where you’re most likely to store fat. If certain hormones are out of whack, weight loss can be difficult.

We’re often led to believe that losing weight is solely about calories in versus calories out. That doesn’t always tell the full story with imbalanced hormones.

But here’s the good news: it’s easier than you might think to control these hormones and keep your weight in check. Here are some super important hormones that can affect your weight.

Stress Hormones and Cortisol

Stress hormone releases cortisol. Chronic stress exposes your body to high levels of cortisol for long periods and can affect the levels of other hormones in your body. Overeating and weight gain triggers high cortisol levels.

Often, you’ll be craving high carb and sugar-rich foods, especially if other hormones are also out of whack. Managing stress, getting regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy sleep pattern can help avoid super high cortisol levels.

Estrogen and Progesterone

Body fat, intense exercise, and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) can affect estrogen levels. If your estrogen levels are high, it can make it a whole heap harder to lose weight. It can sometimes be a factor in insulin resistance also. Low levels of estrogen can also affect weight, especially around menopause. Progesterone, another important hormone, can be depleted by stress, birth control pills, and menopause. This can trigger weight gain.

Ideally, you want to have a healthy ratio of estrogen and progesterone — if one is higher or lower than it should be, it can quickly affect the other. Estrogen dominance and low progesterone can have a whole heap of similar symptoms and it’s super common for them to go hand-in-hand. If your sex hormones are out of whack, you’ll probably also notice a ton of other unpleasant and debilitating health problems, including headaches, mood swings, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, and menstrual problems.

Insulin and Blood Sugar Spikes

Every time you eat or drink something that’s sugary or rich in carbs, your blood sugar spikes. This triggers insulin production. Refined carbs such as white pasta and white bread are super common culprits for blood sugar spikes. Swapping these for whole grains slows down the absorption into the bloodstream so your blood sugar is more likely to stay stable for longer, along with your body’s insulin response. According to studies, eating a lot of refined carbs and sugar in just the short term can pave the way for this. And as an added bonus, the extra fiber from non-refined carbs will keep you feeling fuller, and snacking is less of a problem. The end result? It’s easier to keep weight in check when your blood sugar and insulin levels aren’t erratic.

Leptin and Ghrelin

Balanced Leptin levels will give a sensation of fullness after meals. This is a good thing. There will less chance of overeating and excessive calorie intake. If you’re still feeling super hungry even after eating a big meal, leptin may be at least partly to blame. Exercising and dieting can help balance leptin levels.

For some people, if you’ve been eating a ton of unhealthy foods for years and are experiencing Leptin resistance you may need a bit more of this. According to studies, leptin resistance is more likely to occur if you’re overweight. Even if you have higher levels of leptin in your body, it doesn’t have a lot of impact. It’s thought this might be due to the inflammatory chemicals pumped out by fat cells, which impede the effects of leptin and encourage you to keep seeking out high-calorie foods.

Ghrelin is also a very important hormone for keeping appetite in check. Ghrelin stimulates appetite. Under normal circumstances, ghrelin levels fall after eating and rise again when you’re hungry. However it can quickly be tipped the wrong way when overweight is a concern. If you are not eating enough protein and going overboard on sugary foods and drinks, this can also affect ghrelin levels.

Adiponectin

Adiponectin, a hormone found in fat tissue can support weight loss. It’s super helpful for boosting metabolism. This hormone plays an important role in the regulation of glucose and lipid metabolism. Daily intake of fish or omega-3 increases adiponectin. Increasing this hormone is achieved by eating monounsaturated fats like avocados, nuts, olives and olive oil.

Thyroid Hormones and Metabolism

Your thyroid can play a key role in your metabolism. If you have a sluggish thyroid, it can be a super strong culprit for weight gain and fluid retention. It can also contribute to lots of other issues, including fatigue, dry skin, sensitivity to the cold and depression.

Blood tests can flag up thyroid imbalances so it’s super important to get this ruled out if you’re struggling to lose weight despite a healthy lifestyle.

Balancing Hormones and Tips

How do we balance our hormones? Let’s review some key tools that can help us focus on practical solutions to get our weight control back.

1. Eat enough protein with every meal. Studies show that protein helps control the “hunger hormone”. Experts recommend eating about 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal.
2. Performing strength training, aerobics, walking or other types of physical activity can help modify hormone levels in a way that reduces the risk of disease. Physical activity will helps to protect muscle mass during the aging process.
3. Avoiding high carbs and sugar. It is most beneficial to cut out the foods that are categorize as “white foods”. Foods to avoid would include white bread, white rice, white sugar, salt, white pasta. There are healthy food swaps for these. For example: swap out white bread for something like whole grain; for white sugar, eat fruits instead; pink Himalayan salt instead of the white salt; brown rice can be replaced for white rice; sweet potato instead of white potato.
4. Lower cortisol levels by engaging in stress-reducing techniques like meditation, yoga, massage and listening to relaxing music
5. Consume healthy fats which include MCTs (medium chain triglycerides). Coconut oil and olive oil are examples of healthy type of fats. Avoid trans fat such as vegetable shortening.
6. Try eating within your own personal calorie range as this can help you maintain hormonal balance and a healthy weight.
7. Try food coaching as this can be helpful. Especially if you are having difficulty in determining how to approach weight loss when all other strategies have failed. Contact me for a free 30 minute consultation to learn more.