You’re Consuming Too Much Sugar
I think of leptin as the hormone that says, “Darling, put down the fork.” Under normal circumstances, it’s released from your fat cells and travels in the blood to your brain, where it signals that you’re full. But leptin’s noble cause has been impeded by our consumption of a type of sugar called fructose, which is found in fruit and processed foods alike.
When you eat small amounts of fructose, you’re OK. But if you eat more than the recommended five daily servings of fruit plus processed foods with added sugaryour liver can’t deal with the fructose fast enough to use it as fuel. Instead, your body starts converting it into fats, sending them off into the bloodstream as triglycerides and depositing them in the liver and elsewhere in your belly.
As more fructose is converted to fat, your levels of leptin increase . And when you have too much of any hormone circulating in your system, your body becomes resistant to its message. With leptin, that means your brain starts to miss the signal that you’re full. You continue to eat, and you keep gaining weight.
If you eat more than the recommended five daily servings of fruit, plus processed foods with added sugar, your liver can’t deal with the fructose fast enough to use it as fuel.
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“When I was in my 40s, I went on a ketogenic diet with my husband,” Gottfried said. “He lost 20 pounds. I gained weight.”
Gottfried added that it also is important to have a method that is specifically targeted to women, instead of treating all genders the same when it comes to weight loss.
“There’s a bias when it comes to the research,” said Gottfried. “We’re completely different, we’re not just men with breasts. We’ve got completely different hormone levels, so we have to eat in a way that helps those hormones.”
52-year-old Anu French, a mother of two, said that during the pandemic she dealt with weight gain and the onset of menopause. She was diagnosed with prediabetes and high cholesterol, and she wanted to lose weight. French said that with Gottfried’s protocol, she lost 40 pounds in three months and maintained the weight loss for a year.
How To Balance Ghrelin Levels
If you have a sneaking suspicion your ghrelin levels are in need of some TLC, here are a couple of ways to balance them:
- Eat adequate amounts of protein. Protein helps you feel full and should be consumed with every meal. Studies show how eating protein promotes healthy ghrelin levels.
- Avoid sugar as much as possible. As you can see by now, consuming too much sugar disrupts hormonal balance, making weight loss seem an impossible feat. Be sure to read labels. If an item contains high-fructose corn syrup, dont buy it. A 2013 study published in Nutritional Diabetes shows how high-fructose corn syrup is one of the primary culprits of imbalance when it comes to hormones and weight gain.
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Can Bioidentical Hormones Help You Lose Weight
Many people would like to lose a little weight, or maybe they would like to lose a lot. According to The National Center for Health, 39.8% of Americans over the age of 20 were obese in 2015, and over 7% of them were severely obese. We start diets, workout plans, and New Years resolutions, but sometimes we feel the need to take more extreme measures to shed unwanted pounds. In this article youll find out all you need to know about bioidentical hormones and weight loss.
Combine that struggle with the weight that many women gain during menopause, and its no wonder that people are looking to other possibilities. While bioidentical hormone replacement therapy is not intended as a weight-loss procedure, it might be something worth looking into. It is important to always consult your doctor before making any decisions concerning your health and body.
Bioidentical hormones are hormones that are designed to be identical on a molecular level to the hormones produced within your body . The idea behind bioidentical hormones is that side effects will be lessened, and effectiveness will be increased by introducing hormones that are identical to what your body already produces.
What Are The Symptoms Of A Hormone Imbalance
A hormone imbalance can have a wide range of symptoms depending on which particular hormone or hormones are out of alignment. Almost anything could and be indications of a problem, from weight gain, depression, fatigue, or muscle aches, to frequent urination and increased sensitivity to cold or heat. Men and women can also experience more specific gender-specific symptoms related to an imbalance in their sex hormones.
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Balance My Hormones: A Potential Weight Loss Key
How do I balance my hormones to lose weight? At Pellecome, we believe one key to weight loss can be found in supplements that help your body find a natural balance to aid in breaking down fat, increasing metabolism, and preventing dietary obesity. For more information about the selection of supplements that can help you balance your hormones and improve your health, please contact Pellecome in Randolph, NJ today!
Hormonal Imbalances You Cant Control
Again, even if youre doing everything right and utilizing these tips to try to keep your hormones in balance, you may still require some help from your doctor.
Checking your hormone levels in order to find out which of these are higher or lower and which may require more balance can help. This way, you will know what is creating your weight gain or loss and how you can better manage the issue at home and with your doctors help.
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How To Balance Estrogen For Weight Loss:
To avoid estrogen dominance, you want to keep a fine balance between your progesterone and estrogen.
Integrative Medicine Doctor Sara Gottfried, M.D., recommends eating a pound of veggies per day, as she states the fiber will help remove any excess estrogen from the body.
Gottfried also recommends that women should aim for 35 to 45 gram of fiber intake per day, increasing their amount slowly so as not to cause stomach upset.
You can also naturally balance estrogen dominance by:
- Reducing your red meat intake
- Eliminating excess sugar or processed foods
- Exercising daily to promote detoxification
Do You Ever Find Yourself Saying This
- No matter how much I exercise or eat right, I cant lose this excess weight.
- As Ive been getting older, my metabolism has slowed and I keep gaining weight.
- Once I lose the weight, the fat comes right back to me.
If you can relate to the above, you may be suffering from a hormonal imbalance.
As a Nurse Practitioner, and a Doctor with experience in weight management and bioidentical hormone therapy, I can tell you firsthand that your weight affects your hormones and, on the flipside, your hormones affect your weight. So, which came first? The chicken or the egg? Its kind of hard to tell, but there are things you can do to help both at the same time and lead to a leaner body and put your hormones back into balance. Even if youre going through menopause, you can help relieve hot flashes, weight gain, and other symptoms of menopause by changing your diet.
First, its helpful to know what hormones are, what role they have in the body, and what the major players are.
So, what are hormones? And how to balance your hormones to lose weight? Hormones are chemical messengers that are made in the body and are responsible for almost every bodily function. We cant survive without them! Without hormones, we would never experience hunger and may possibly starve to death. Without hormones, we wouldnt be able to make babies and mankind would end. Crazy, isnt it?
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Fat Hormone Boosts Metabolism
In the study, published in the April issue of Nature Medicine, researchers injected adiponectin into normal laboratory mice. They found that the mice lost weight even though the hormone didn’t seem to alter appetite or cause changes in the amount of food the mice ate.
“The animal burns off more calories, so over time loses weight, which was very fascinating because we knew that leptin caused weight loss by suppressing appetite and increasing metabolic rate,” says researcher Rexford Ahima, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release. “Here we have another fat hormone that can cause weight loss but without affecting intake.”
Researchers say fat hormones, such as leptin and adiponectin, are of interest because they may aid in promoting long-term weight loss. Over time, weight loss becomes more difficult because the body compensates, in part, by lowering its metabolic rate — the rate at which it burns calories.
If drugs can be developed that capitalize on the metabolism-boosting properties of these fat hormones, they may be able to sustain weight loss efforts over a longer period of time without adverse health effects.
“Adiponectin or its targets in the brain and other organs could be harnessed to sustain weight loss by maintaining a high metabolic rate,” ways Ahima. “This is only a possibility. We’re not suggesting at this point that adiponectin will become a drug.”
Obesity And Sex Hormones
Body fat distribution plays an important role in the development of obesity-related conditions such as heart disease, stroke and some forms of arthritis. Fat around our abdomen is a higher risk factor for disease than fat stored on our bottom, hips and thighs. It seems that oestrogens and androgens help to decide body fat distribution. Oestrogens are sex hormones made by the ovaries in pre-menopausal women. They are responsible for prompting ovulation every menstrual cycle. Men and postmenopausal women do not produce much oestrogen in their testes or ovaries. Instead, most of their oestrogen is produced in their body fat, although at much lower amounts than what is produced in pre-menopausal ovaries. In younger men, androgens are produced at high levels in the testes. As a man gets older, these levels gradually decrease.The changes with age in the sex hormone levels of both men and women are associated with changes in body fat distribution. While women of childbearing age tend to store fat in their lower body , older men and postmenopausal women tend to increase storage of fat around their abdomen . Postmenopausal women who are taking oestrogen supplements dont accumulate fat around their abdomen. Animal studies have also shown that a lack of oestrogen leads to excessive weight gain.
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How Effective Is Hormone Replacement Therapy
Youve worked hard your whole life to care for your family. Now youve retired and your whole life has changed. Youre tired and irritable. You wake up at night drenched in sweat. Youre gaining weight around your lower abdomen and youre not interested in sex anymore. At the Guyer Institute of Molecular Medicine in Indianapolis, IN, we specialize in hormone replacement therapy to help our clients protect their emotional, physical and sexual health.
The Link Between Your Weight And Your Hormones
Weight gain isnt just an issue associated with the food you eat or how much you exercise. It can also be affected by your hormones and vice versa. If youve noticed that youre experiencing hormonal changes and/or weight fluctuations, it might help you to discuss these issues with your doctor.
Drs. Daniel McDonald and Marc Wilson, as well as the rest of our team at OB/GYN Specialists, want you to feel comfortable and confident in your body. One of the best ways to get there is to understand how your body works, especially how many of its functions, which may seem independent of one another, are actually linked.
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What Is Hormone Replacement Therapy
Hormone replacement therapy is a treatment plan used to regulate your bodys hormone levels.
Hormones are your bodys chemical messengers. They are created by your endocrine glands and then travel through your bloodstream to your organs and tissues. In the process, they affect many biological functions. Small changes in hormone levels can have a massive impact on your bodys growth and development, metabolism, energy level, mood, body temperature, libido, cognitive function, and reproductive health.
While hormone levels do fluctuate with age, imbalances are most common in midlife especially with the onset of menopause in women. Thats why many people use hormone replacement therapy to offset the symptoms of menopause .
The Bottom Line: You Have To To Address Your Hormone Imbalances
Now you know the “whys” of your broken metabolism, these are reasons regular diets don’t address the root cause of your weight gain. Hormones dictate what your body does with food. Talk to a doctor about fixing your hormones, and your body will slim down without any extra effort from you.
From the book The Hormone Reset Diet: Balance Your Hormones and Lose Up to 15 Pounds in Just 3 Weeks!
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What Hormones Impact Weight Loss
Your thyroid hormone is the master of your metabolism. By looking at it, your body gauges how quickly it should break down food. This set point determines how long youll hold onto macronutrients. As you might guess, it is difficult to lose weight if your body is slow to break down food.
But thyroid hormones arent the only ones impacting weight loss. Testosterone is also important for energy, vitality, and metabolism. It increases your basal metabolic rate . This helps you build lean muscle mass and sets the stage for weight loss.
Meanwhile, estrogen can determine where your body holds fat. In menopause, fat often shifts from your gluteal femoral region to your abdomen. As abdominal weight increases, so does insulin, increasing weight gain and the chance of other problems. To avoid this vicious cycle, your estrogen levels cant be too low or too high.
Want To Learn More About Your Weight And Hormones
To make an appointment with Drs. McDonald or Wilson at OB/GYN Specialists, call 940-202-0566 today. You can also send us a message here on our website.
Our Denton, Texas, office is open Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5pm to offer our patients the chance to ask questions, get informed, and start living the lives they most desire.
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How To Balance Leptin For Weight Loss:
A huge component to balancing your leptin levels is getting enough sleep. When you dont get enough sleep, your leptin levels are lower and you dont feel as satisfied after you eat. Harvard studies show that sleep deprivation reduces leptin levels and actually increases your bodys desire for fatty or carbohydrate-rich foods.
If you suspect a leptin imbalance is to blame for your weight gain, make sleep a priority each and every nightwe should all be prioritizing sleep anyway for its myriad of health benefits. But if weight loss is the kick in the pants you need to start catching more zzzs, then let that be your motivation.
Other ways to balance your leptin levels include:
- Taking an Omega 3 supplement or eat more Omega 3 rich foods such as fatty fish, grass-fed meats, and chia seeds
- Exercising regularly
Hormone Balance For Weight Loss: Fact Or Fiction
Originally appeared in the spring 2019 issue of the American Fitness Magazine.
A quick online search for weight loss strategies reveals a plethora of hormone-balancing diets, supplements and medications. The premise behind these products is that hormonestiny chemical messengers that regulate physiological processesget out of balance, causing weight gain or foiling attempts to lose weight.
That seems like a reasonable claim, but is it true? What should you say when clients ask about hormones and weight management? In this article, well provide answers on the links between body weight and five of the most talked about hormone imbalances: those relating to insulin, cortisol, the thyroid hormones, testosterone and estrogen. Ill review the science and outline nutrition and exercise strategies to help your clients overcome weight loss plateaus and succeed at long-term weight loss.
The hormone issues discussed below often fade away with proper diet, exercise, sleep and stress management. Supplements and specialized diets typically address the symptoms of hormone imbalances, not the causes. Your clients may get better results if they understand the difference between the two.
Lets dive in!
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Things That Happen To Your Hormones When You’re Trying To Lose Weight According To A Dietitian
These under-the-radar chemical messengers can make or break your weight-loss efforts. Here’s how to make them work for you.
Our series, Hormones & Our Health: How What You Eat May Affect How They Work, explores the vast role hormones play in the body and the diet and lifestyle factors that help them function as they should.
Numbers don’t lie. Except when it comes to weight loss. For years, dietitians swore weight management boiled down to one simple equation: Eat less, lose more.
Sounds logical. But today, we know that dropping pounds isn’t just about mathematics. If it were, we wouldn’t still be searching for the latest weight-loss miracle . Why is weight loss such a challenge? One big reason is your hormones.
Our bodies are evolutionarily hard-wired to hang onto fat to protect against starvation and famine. So even though you might want to lose weight quickly, your body has other plans entirely. And it really doesn’t matter which diet you choose. Whether it’s keto, paleo, intermittent fasting or old-school calorie-cutting, rapid weight loss sets off alarm bells telling your body to restore the status quopronto. As soon as it gets the SOS, your body springs into action, releasing a flurry of hormones designed to put the pounds back on. Next thing you know, the weight you worked so hard to shed starts making a comeback.
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