It is very often that I will hear patients complain about having difficulty losing weight despite exercising and also trying to eat healthy. If it was only as easy and “calories or calories out”, everyone would be able to shed a few pounds if they just put their mind to it. However; there are many different reasons that can make it difficult including things like nutritional imbalances, chronic inflammation, metabolic challenges, leaky gut, changes in your microbiome, environmental toxins and genetics.
Things like your thyroid and your cortisol and common reasons that I have touched upon before but I am going touch about sex hormonal imbalances in this post.
Hormonal imbalances such as estrogen and testosterone can cause weight problems. With excessive estrogen, your cells that produce insulin can become resistant, resulting in your body’s inability to bring sugar into your liver and muscles. This resistance leads to higher levels of sugar in your bloodstream ultimately storing the glucose as fat.
Higher levels of estrogen are commonly due to diet intake of animal proteins, less fiber intake and our environment being ladled with toxins. A diet that is high in too much sugar, refind carbohydrates and alcohol can all spike estrogen.
Symptoms of higher estrogen in women include PMS, breast tenderness, fibroids and heavy periods.
This rise in estrogen can also affect the production of testosterone. Testosterone is important for muscle growth and metabolism and typically decrease with higher levels of estrogen.
It is not only women that can experience these hormonal switches but men as well!! Men can symptoms such as loss of body hair, a larger belly and breast development. Low testosterone can also cause men to lose muscle, gain fat leading to lower sex drive, fatigue, mental fogginess and bone loss.
How to address some of these imbalances? Here are a few things you can do to help balance this:
- Remove processed foods, refined carbohydrates and sugar from your diet. Also try to reduce alcohol intake.
- Increase your fiber – Ground flaxseeds can provide optimal fiber and lignans which can help balance hormones.
- Exercise – Exercises can help balance hormones, reducing estrogen and increasing testosterone which can help lose fat and build muscle
- Consider your environment – Toxins can be found in pesticides, herbicides, genetically modified foods and synthetic hormones found in meat. These toxins can behave like estrogen when absorbed in the body. The more you can purchase organic fruits and veggies and responsibly grown meat the better your body will be!! Also a great resource for chemicals in household products is www.ewg.org. I always consult this website to check out its safety rating.
