Why Am I Putting On Weight And Why Is It So Hard To Take It Off
If you are putting weight on easily and having a hard time taking it off, you should know that hormonal imbalances affect weight-loss and weight gain and could be part of the problem or maybe even the whole problem. In fact, some hormonal imbalances can make it down right impossible to lose weight!
Plenty of people attempt various diets and exercise programs with the intention of taking off any excess weight. Sometimes it can be frustrating when results are not forthcoming, which can end by giving up all together. What many people dont realize is that there can be many underlying health issues which impede weight loss attempts. Not only that, but these same issues can actually be the cause of the weight gain in the first place, in addition to poor diet and lack of exercise.
Hormone imbalances and other deficiencies can very likely be the reason. We frequently get phone calls from patients who are desperate for help because the pounds keep packing on no matter what they do. Unfortunately, many of them have sought help from their doctor, only to be told that they just need to eat less and exercise more, period. This not only leads to feelings of shame, but also helplessness and can be quite demoralizing.
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.
Other Natural Weight Loss Options
In addition to making diet and activity changes for those of us reaching this stage of life, there are other life changes we can implement to more efficiently burn fat and increase energy. These include:
- Taking proper vitamins and supplements to help the body metabolize and build muscle more efficiently
- Getting quality, restorative sleep to help naturally balance hormone levels
- Reducing stress levels taking up meditation or yoga to help naturally counteract the effects of stress
- Performing a medically-supervised detox using non-processed foods and water to help reset the bodys optimal function
While we have to be a bit more deliberate about our choices when it comes to health and weight loss, creating a state of optimal health in our forties and beyond is not only possible but incredibly exciting and rewarding as well. So cheers to losing weight after 40!
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Can Hormone Therapy Help You Lose Weight
When considering HRT and weight loss, you must consult a physician to determine what your unique hormonal imbalances may be. In doing so, your physician can then make recommendations that will work most efficiently to correct your hormone levels, restore metabolic function, and help you to lose weight.
Women in menopause may be ideal candidates for hormone replacement therapy, as declining levels of both progesterone and estrogen are responsible for slowing metabolic function and other systems throughout the body.
Men with hormonal imbalances can also benefit from hormone replacement therapy and the additional strength and energy that can result from restoring balance to the body once more.
Getting To Know Ghrelin
You can think of ghrelin as your hunger hormone. Like leptin, it communicates with the brain in this case, telling your brain to eat. Every time your stomach becomes empty, it naturally releases ghrelin into your bloodstream. Ghrelin levels are lowest just after youve finished a meal. Theyre at their highest when the stomach is empty and youre ready for your next meal. This scenario is normal when a person is healthy and maintaining optimal weight.
An overweight person, on the other hand, will find that like the other hormones weve explored ghrelin levels are typically out of whack. In healthy individuals, ghrelin levels decrease in a way that satiates them and signals their brains to stop eating. But in obese individuals, ghrelin levels dont decrease enough after eating, which fails to send the brain the signal it needs to stop eating and feel satisfied.
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Health & Wellnessits Hard To Lose Weight A Doctor Shares 6 Essential Tips To Make It Easier
“I was just feeling hope for the first time,” French said. “Some of my menopause symptoms were already fading. I wasn’t having the night sweats, I wasn’t having the hot flashes in the daytime. I was feeling clearer and I was definitely feeling more energetic.”
To determine if you have a hormone imbalance, ask your primary care provider about administering a simple blood test that can reveal that information.
Gottfried gave Shriver a list of foods that are good for maintaining those hormone levels during a visit to the supermarket. To balance insulin levels, the hormone that helps you regulate whether you store or burn fat, Gottfried recommends stocking up on dark, leafy greens, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, onions, and foods like avocados that are rich in healthy fats.
What You Need To Know About Leptin Resistance
When your body becomes resistant to leptin, leptin levels become too high. In fact, overweight individuals who get their leptin levels tested typically find their leptin levels to be as high as four times the normal level. Whats more, its really difficult to balance leptin levels once theyve become resistant.
With leptin resistance, communication between the brain and leptin is impaired, so that your brain doesnt understand that its full, and tells your body to keep eating. Its as if your brain thinks youre starving when in reality, youre just leptin resistant.
To reverse leptin resistance or prevent it from happening to you in the first place, lets talk food, drink, and supplements. Everything in your body impacted by what you put into it, and leptins no different. Sugar, in particular, can cause leptin levels in your body to skyrocket, so youll want to eat less sugar. Other ways to prevent or reduce leptin resistance include:
- Committing to a regular exercise routine
- Getting truly restorative sleep on a regular basis
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Reset Your Hormones To Lose Stubborn Pounds
Why resetting your hormones will help you lose weight
Dieting, stress and anxiety are just a few of the contributing factors to hormones gone bad, but Dr. Sara Gottfried, a gynecologist and author of The Hormone Reset Diet, says you can reset your hormones to improve your overall health and lose stubborn pounds
Hormones can affect our mood, our weight and even our sex drive. But like most things in life its not always easy to keep them balanced. Dieting, stress and anxiety are just a few of the contributing factors to hormones gone bad, but Dr. Sara Gottfried, a gynecologist and author of The Hormone Reset Diet, says you can reset your hormones to improve your overall health and lose stubborn pounds.
The number one way you know is that youre gaining weight because 99 percent of weight gain is hormonal, and a lot of people dont connect the dots. They dont realize that their problems with energy, with feeling fatigued maybe even depressed or moody is related to their hormones, Gottfried told FoxNews.com.
Instead of turning to prescribed hormone replacement therapy, Gottfrieds 21-day reset diet claims to naturally correct your hormonal imbalances with the help of a fork.
I think its much better to do the foundational work to change the way you eat, move, think and supplement before you resort to prescription medication, she said.
In order to forgo sugar for 21 days, Gottfried also said to be aware of sneaky hidden sugars.
Hormone Diets Are All The Rage But Do They Actually Work
WHEN it comes to losing weight and getting healthy, there is never a shortage of diet and fitness crazes claiming to hold the secret to easy, sustainable weight loss. Some of the most recent popular diet crazes include the ketogenic diet , the carnivore diet , and intermittent fasting .
But another diet plan thats come into the spotlight recently is the hormone diet, which claims that the reason people struggle to lose weight is because their hormones arent working properly.
Many books have been written on this topic, with advocates of the hormone diet claiming people can quickly lose a significant amount of weight by using diet and exercise to manipulate or reset their hormones. There are a few variations of the diet, but the main idea with each is that the key to losing weight is by correcting perceived hormonal imbalances in the body.
Hormones play an important role in our bodys everyday processes, from digesting food to helping bones grow. Theyre transported around the body through the bloodstream and act as chemical messengers that instruct cells to perform specific jobs.
One popular book promoting the hormone diet uses a three-step programme that claims it will help people lose weight, gain strength and feel younger. Steps one and two of the diet focus on changing nutritional habits. Step three concentrates on exercise.
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How Does Estrogen Impact Weight Gain
Produced within the ovaries, estrogen is responsible for optimal functioning of all female reproductive organs. Estrogen promotes the storage of fat for healthy reproductive years. When estrogen is balanced, the right amount of fat helps carry out female reproductive functions. However, when theres too little or too much estrogen, weight gain often results.
Overweight women typically have high amounts of estrogen, as do women in the first half of pregnancy. Then theres perimenopause and menopause, which are characterized by a notable decrease in estrogen. Its during this time that some women opt for hormone replacement therapy to replace declining estrogen levels.
Hormones Matter: Doctor Shares Weight
A new strategy for weight loss doesn’t focus on working out more or limiting your portions: Instead, the method revolves around making sure you’re eating the right food for your hormones.
Special anchor Maria Shriver spoke to physician and author Dr. Sara Gottfried about the tactic, which she says works especially well for women who are trying to lose weight for good.
“Your food actually regulates your hormones,” Gottfried said. “So if you’re trying to reduce calories, as an example, to manage your weight, that is a course of failure. Calories matter, but hormones matter more.”
Gottfried said that instead of first thinking about hormones in their 50s and 60s, women should start thinking about them, especially in relation to their diet, at a much younger age. In her new book “Women, Food and Hormones,” Gottfried laid out a four-week plan that can help women achieve hormonal balance, based on her own experience trying to lose weight.
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Ghrelin: Aka The Craving Hormone
Ghrelin works in tandem with leptin. When your stomach is empty, it is ghrelin that is responsible for telling you that you are hungry and that you need to eat something. These days, something is broken in the ghrelin mechanism too, increasing your hunger with your rarely feeling satiated.
Ghrelin is secreted primarily in the lining of the stomach. Your stomach makes ghrelin when its empty. Just like leptin, ghrelin goes into the blood, crosses the blood-brain barrier and ends up at your hypothalamus where it tells you youre hungry. Basically, ghrelin is high before you eat and low after you eat.
How to tame this craving hormone?
Water is an essential part of life and well, it can help you tame down this hunger hormone. Make sure you keep yourself well hydrated and next time you feel hungry, have a glass of water first and you may be surprised to find your hunger pains abating.
How To Balance These Hormones
- Avoid sugary and refined foods
- Cut back on alcohol
- Engage in regular exercise to stay healthy
- Eat more anti-inflammatory foods
- Include more healthy fats in your diet
- Reduce food portions and munch on healthy snacks when hungry
- Drink more green tea
- Eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids
- Get enough sleep
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The Hormone Reset Diet
The Harvard-educated physician and New York Times bestselling author of The Hormone Cure shows you how to grow new receptors for your seven metabolic hormones, making you lose weight and feel great fast!
When it comes to weight loss, most people don’t think about hormones. But when you develop resistance to your seven major metabolic hormones–cortisol, thyroid, testosterone, growth hormone, leptin, insulin, and estrogen–your body adjusts by increasingly raising your hormone levels and ultimately slowing down your metabolism. And a slower metabolism leads to weight gain and difficulty losing weight. The solution, Dr. Sara Gottfried contends, is to reset the efficiency of your hormones by repairing and growing new hormone receptors.
Based on leading scientific research, The Hormone Reset Diet is her proven weight loss and energy program to reverse hormone resistance in just three weeks. It will help you:
For the last twenty years, this Harvard-MIT educated physician has helped thousands of women address the root hormonal causes of what bothers them most: excess weight, lack of energy, aging, and illness. Going beyond her bestselling The Hormone Cure, this program is the next generation of her deep understanding of hormonal optimization for rapid weight loss.
Hormone Tips From Dr Sara
EXERCISE SMARTER
Some exercises, such as running and spinning, place so much stress on the body that cortisol shoots sky-high. My advice is to stop exercising so hard in an obsessive desire to burn calories, and start exercising smarter. Practise yoga, meditation or guided visualisation several times a week and add burst training, also known as interval training, to your routine.
Burst training involves short periods of high-intensity exercise with moderate-level exercise as recovery. It is incredibly efficient and comes without the cortisol-raising side effect of a long run. Not only that, but it is incredibly effective at raising growth hormone levels.
OPTIMISE YOUR SLEEP CYCLE
Humans are designed to rise with the sun and to sleep when it’s dark. Sure, there are morning people and night owls, but your hormones are released according to your sleep/wake cycle. Get your circadian rhythm in order, and your body will produce the hormones you need when you need them.
Try to wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day, and to expose yourself to sunlight. There’s no better way to tell your body it’s time to wake up. Go to sleep by 10pm as many nights as possible. The ratio of catabolism to anabolism shifts while you sleep, and the hours before midnight are especially auspicious. In other words, this is how you can avoid botox.
PRACTISE YOGA
BEAT MENOPAUSAL WEIGHT GAIN
BETTER BIRTH CONTROL
MACA ATTACK
BOOST MOOD
TEST YOUR CORTISOL
Expand
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How To Fix Your Hormones And Lose Weight
Ive hit a stubborn weight-loss plateau, writes this weeks house call, even though I seem to be doing everything right, like eating the right foods and exercising. How can I overcome that obstacle?
Ive 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 isnt 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, lets briefly look at each of them here.
Thyroid
Research shows hypothyroidism, or low-thyroid function, affects one in five women and one in ten men. Unfortunately, in over half of these cases, this condition isnt diagnosed.
A common cause of hypothyroidism is gluten intolerance.
Cortisol
Sex Hormone Imbalances
How Healthy Eating Can Help Keep Your Hormones In Balance
“You want to have 25 different types of vegetables per week,” Gottfried explained, adding that things like eggplant, squash, zucchini, and bell peppers are “good for your hormones because it helps with balancing insulin.”
Those vegetables are also packed with fiber, which Gottfried said can help you “with feeling like you’re full longer.”
Proteins like chicken, salmon, shrimp and scallops can help balance metabolic hormones, which are essential for losing weight.
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