Hormones And Your Weight
Hormones are chemical molecules that act as messengers, responsible for communicating between the different systems of the body. They are secreted into the bloodstream and transported towards the areas of the body where they perform their work.
Among the many functions of hormones are regulating physiological activities like digestion, metabolism, respiration, tissue function, sleep, stress, development, and reproduction. Hormones also impact your body weight and fat distribution.
A study published in the Journal of Women’s Health explains that women have a higher risk of obesity than men due to hormonal fluctuations throughout their lives. This hormone-weight link also affects men to a lesser degree. Fortunately, both women and men can minimize this risk with proper prevention and early intervention.
Many complain that when they lose weight, they tend to gain it all back quickly. Others observe that their weight creeps up as they age. Finally, some follow a perfect diet with a consistent exercise routine, but nothing seems to work.
These situations may be the direct result of hormonal imbalances. With age, both men and women undergo changes in their hormone levels. As long as they remain off-balance, weight loss may seem impossible. While women largely deal with progesterone and estrogen imbalances, men have testosterone to blame.
Factors That Influence Body Weight
Body weight depends on a variety of factors. Some people are naturally slim just because of a different body/mind type. Others struggle with obesity their entire lives. Besides your genetic makeup, these are the factors that influence your weight:
- Certain health conditions
For example, cinnamon, hot peppers, and protein-rich foods raise your core temperature and metabolism.
Physical activity, especially strength training, builds muscle and increases metabolic rate. Exercise also stimulates the release of certain hormones to help your body burn energy more
Where Do I Start
If you think hormones are sabotaging your weight loss, it may be worth getting a blood test , to check key biomarkers such as your thyroid and oestrogen levels.
Knowing whether you have an imbalance in hormones is a great starting point and depending on which hormones may be affected will depend on the best lifestyle changes to make. For example, if your cortisol levels are found high, then your first step may be to look at ways to de-stress.
Ultimately though, improving your diet, increasing your physical activity, and finding ways to manage your stress levels will have a positive impact on your health, body weight, and hormone production.
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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.
Best For A Probiotic Supplement: Align Probiotic Supplement 24/7 Digestive Support
- Advantage: suitable for vegetarians
- Disadvantage: each container only holds a 2-week supply
This supplement contains a probiotic strain of Bifidobacterium, a species of bacteria present in the gastrointestinal tract. Other ingredients include gellan gum, magnesium stearate, and sucrose.
The product is gluten- and soy-free and suitable for people following a vegetarian diet.
It also claims to reduce abdominal discomfort and bloating and support the digestive system. Abdominal pain and discomfort are people experience during and after menopause.
This product may be suitable for individuals who do not want to take a daily supplement.
Each container includes 14 capsules.
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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.
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.
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The Best Ways To Lose Weight Naturally During Menopause
Menopause weight gain is obvious when you turn 45, and you may feel it is hard for you to lose weight during this time. Since it happens naturally, the best way to lose weight during menopause is with natural remedies.
Making sure you exercise regularly, eat well, and focus on boosting your hormones can help make weight loss during menopause easier. Other natural remedies such as herbal teas can also help you naturally lose weight.
Check out some of our top tips for losing weight during menopause and how to keep the weight off in the long term.
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Can Hormone Replacement Therapy Help With Weight Loss
With the onset of menopause, many women experience unexpected weight gain. Theyve been healthy for years, but suddenly discover a little extra belly fat. Thats frustrating enough, but even worse is that the extra pounds wont go away. It seems like no matter how much they diet or exercise, the scale wont go back down. Weight gain after menopause is so upsetting because it feels outside your control like someone else has taken over.
That someone is your hormones. These mysterious chemicals have been helping your body stay healthy for years. But with the onset of menopause it seems like they go rogue.
Thats where many women turn to hormone replacement therapy. For decades this treatment has helped women balance their hormones and manage the symptoms of menopause. But can hormone replacement therapy help with weight loss?
In this post, well answer that question. Well define hormone replacement therapy and explain how it impacts your weight.
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Reduce Exposure To Exogenous Oestrogens
Hormonal imbalances may also be affected by our exposure to exogenous oestrogens. Exogenous oestrogens are an environmental source of oestrogen that mimics the oestrogen within the body and can cause imbalances.
Examples of exogenous oestrogens include:
- Female contraceptive pills
- Hormone replacement therapy
There has also been a rising concern surrounding day to day exposure from sources within food, plastics, and other household products.
To counteract and help balance exposure to exogenous oestrogens, there are some foods that can help balance the bodys oestrogen.
Foods to help balance oestrogen include :
My blog on should women be worried about exogenous oestrogens explains more about where they are found and how to avoid them.
You Can’t Stop Thinking About Food
Feeling hungry? Blame it on ghrelin, a hormone made in your stomach. Ghrelin’s job is to ensure that your body has a steady supply of energy on tap. It kicks in when you haven’t eaten for a while, sending hunger signals from your gut to your brain telling you to start thinking about your next meal. Trouble is, ghrelin doesn’t just rise when your belly is empty. It also spikes when you drop pounds, leading to a gnawing hunger that makes it nearly impossible to maintain your new weight.
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Can An Endocrinologist Help With Weight Loss
An endocrinologist can very often help you reverse weight gain that is associated with hormonal imbalances. Potentially useful interventions include lifestyle changes such as exercise, diet modification, or stress management, as well as treatments such as testosterone or thyroid hormone replacement. Medications may be able to help with weight gain-related symptoms such as increased appetite, or to moderate excessive hormone levels.
Stress Hormones And Weight Gain
Here is how stress can cause weight gain
When you are put in a stressful situation the body goes into something called fight or flight mode. Immediately, the body starts churning out hormones which act as little messengers to protect you. We call these stress hormones.
There is nothing wrong with stress hormones. In fact, stress hormones give us a boost of energy and endurance, and help us be more alert.
Unlike our ancestors who used these stress hormones to prevent from getting eaten alive by predators, our body reacts to stress we may feel about a tight deadline at the office or making it on time to an important appointment.
Cortisol, Adrenaline and Norepinephrine are three of our most common stress hormones. Stress hormones slow down our metabolism which in turn increases our ability to store fat.
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Hormone Assisted Medical Weight Loss Program
Studies confirm that HRT is effective in helping to reduce belly fat. However, if you desire long-lasting results, then it is recommended you also avoid self-defeating habits that contribute to weight fluctuations.
At SKINovative we believe in empowering our patients to make healthy lifestyle changes for long-term weight management.
Along with our state-of-the-art hormone replacement therapy we offer a comprehensive program to help you maintain your amazing weight loss results.
Our Hormone Assisted Weight Loss Program includes:
- Medical Testing
- Patient Guidebook
If youd like to know more about our medical weight loss solution, please dont to hesitate to call or drop by the office.
The best way to determine if hormone therapy is right for you to is to speak with a hormone specialist who will take you through the process step-by-step and answer any and all questions you may have.
How Do Hormones Affect Weight Loss
Hormones are chemical messengers that are essential because they control many vital processes in your body. Hormones control how hungry you feel, how your body breaks down food, your sleep and wake cycles, and energy levels. Hormones can therefore influence your ability to lose body fat, maintain muscle, handle stress, and experience hunger.
If you have a hormonal imbalance, either too little or too much of a specific hormone, it can affect your body weight. For instance, if you have a thyroid dysfunction called hypothyroidism, you have an under-active thyroid gland that produces an inadequate amount of the thyroid hormones. Having a reduced production of thyroid hormones is a common cause of weight gain.
Gut hormones also have an extensive role in weight loss or weight gain. An imbalance in intestinal hormones can affect how your body metabolizes food. Gut hormones control insulin secretion and are essential for blood glucose and body weight.
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What You Can Eat
Turner calls her food plan âGlyci-Med, since its a mix of foods low on the glycemic index and a traditional Mediterranean diet.
Foods you can eat include lean protein vegetables and most fruit chia seeds, flaxseeds, and most nuts olive oil and some other unsaturated oils and fats, like canola oil and whole grains like buckwheat, brown rice, and quinoa.
On this plan, youll avoid or minimize caffeine, alcohol, fried foods, processed meat, peanuts, saturated fat, full-fat dairy, artificial sweeteners, and simple high-GI carbs like white bread.
Youll eat often every 3-4 hours making healthy food choices at least 80% of the time. But you do get one to two âcheat mealsâ a week.
Stunning Weight Loss Hormones To Balance
Weight Loss | Hormones | Insulin | Glucagon | Ghrelin | Leptin | CCK | GLP-1 | PYY | NPY | Cortisol | Estrogen | Testosterone | | FAQ | Studies
They regulate metabolism, appetite, and fat storage. Yet, hormones dont play a minor role in weight loss in todays conventional fitness industry.
Here you will learn in simple terms why hormones play the leading role in weight loss and how your lifestyle can help you regulate them naturally.
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What Steps Can I Take To Correct Hormonal Imbalance
Estrogen dominance can be safely and effectively treated with the use of bio-identical progesterone. Lab testing, preferably saliva testing, allows us to see the levels and balance of estrogen and progesterone in your body and develop a treatment plan to supplement the progesterone you have with enough to adequately balance out your estrogen. By simply replacing the missing progesterone in your body with bio-identical progesterone, you can get your hormones back into balance. The benefits of hormonal balance can include better sleep, improved moods, increased energy, better mental function, improved libido, and yes, even weight loss!
If you suspect you have a hormonal imbalance, you can Test Your Symptoms for Free. You can also request a Free Consultation and find out how we can help you get to living your best life possible!
Posted in: Bioidentical Hormone, Birth Control, Estrogen Dominance, Hormone Imbalance, Hypothyroidism, Weight Loss, Wellness, Women
Putting It All Together
Restful sleep has so many benefits on natural hormone production that perhaps it is our most important strategy to successful weight loss! During deep sleep we make more anabolic hormones and more leptin. Melatonin is part of the normal sleep cycle and is promoted by absolute darkness, quiet, and cooler temperatures.
Regular exercise is another way to increase anabolic hormone production and improve insulin and leptin sensitivity so that each works properly. A combination of aerobic and anaerobic is ideal. Peak intensity training, also called interval or burst training, to threshold will maximize growth hormone output.
Diet plays a major role in more than just the amount of calories consumed. The proper balance of proteins and carbohydrates is essential. The protein stimulates glucagon production and provides the amino acids necessary to make serotonin, dopamine and GABA. Protein is also necessary for good muscle development. Including anti-inflammatory fats is also important as fats do not stimulate insulin and help provide a long lasting energy source. Eliminating sugar and limiting high-glycemic foods and inflammatory fats will help. Avoid high-fructose energy drinks.
Our weight loss program addresses all these issues and many others. Simply telling patients to watch what you eat and exercise more is not good enough! Addressing hormone imbalances is a necessary part of successful weight loss.
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Small Changes But No Weight Loss
When adults with an HGH deficiency resulting from pituitary disease are given HGH replacement, it improves body composition — increasing bone mass and muscle mass and decreasing fat stores.
But it does not cause weight loss in the obese, says Nicholas Tritos, MD, who co-authored an analysis evaluating the effectiveness of HGH for weight loss in obese people.
“Our results showed small improvements in body composition, a small reduction in body fat and increase in muscle mass, but on balance, weight did not change,” he says. “More notable changes are seen when an individual is deficient in growth hormone from true pituitary disease.”
Another study found that HGH therapy was linked to a small decrease in fat and increase in lean mass, but no change in body weight. The researchers concluded that HGH is not an effective treatment in obese people, and said more studies were needed.
Further, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists has warned that the use of HGH for obese patients is not recommended.
Things That Happen To Your Hormones When You’re Trying To Lose Weight According To A Dietitian
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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