Your hormones control your ability to burn fat. They can put you in fat storing mode or fat burning mode. But most people don’t know whether or not their hormones are balanced! It’s easier than you think! Our hormones are CONSTANTLY signaling us and letting us know when there is a problem, we just don’t know how to interpret the signals! In today’s episode we talk about how you can quickly identify if your hormones are balanced, which hormones are out of balance and we talk about specific steps to take to achieve balance where you need it most!
Common Obstacle: Generally speaking, we have no idea how to balance our hormones naturally. Heck, we don’t even know if our hormones are balanced to begin with or how we can find out. One of the facts I’m working hard to establish in this hormone mini series is that our hormones dictate whether we’re in fat burning mode or fat storing mode. This makes hormonal balance VERY important. Without it, we’re fighting an uphill battle to fat loss. People ask me all the time how they can figure out if their hormones are balanced and they assume it will take prescription drugs or expensive treatments to normalize their hormones. In most cases, that’s just not true. It’s far easier…
Solution: What is most exciting to me about hormonal signaling is that we have the ability to interpret what is happening inside our bodies! Our hormones SIGNAL US to tell us what’s going on! Most of us just don’t know what the signals are or what they mean. But, once you know that part of the equation, all you have to do is pay attention and you’ll have a REALLY strong indication of whether or not your hormones are balanced! Not only that, you’ll have all the information you need to make adjustments and get back in balance. You can have TREMENDOUS insight into your hormonal balance just by paying attention. The human body is FANTASTIC about communicating when things are right or not so right!
Your hormones are constantly signaling your body based on internal and external triggers. More often than not, we can feel and sense those signals. Shifts in your hormones will cause changes in your hunger, stress level, energy level and cravings. If we understand which hormone triggers which sensation and why, we can respond intelligently and encourage our hormones to work in our favor and not against us.
Practical Implementation:
Keep a food journal. Write down everything you & drink
Keep a regular tab on your mood, ability to focus, stress level, hunger, energy and cravings.
Pay attention to patterns – what foods satisfy your hunger? What foods never do? What foods trigger cravings? Do certain situations trigger cravings? What foods drain your energy? What foods sustain your energy? These patterns give you TREMENDOUS insight.
For specific links between sensations and hormones including how to adjust for excessive hunger, cravings or low energy, click here to listen to the full episode. We talk about what hormones trigger hunger and how to reduce it, what hormones trigger cravings and how to satisfy them, and particular hormonal imbalances that drain your energy and how to make different choices to boost your energy.
Resources: Episode 11 – Eating to Optimize Hormones for Fat Loss Pt 1 Episode 09 – Carbohydrate Spillover: Is the WAY You Eat Carbs Making You Fat Episode 07 – Carbs & Fat Loss
Hormones & Fat Loss ebook! 50 pages of diet & lifestyle strategies to help you naturally optimize your hormones and get into fat-burning mode!! Bulletproof coffee
How do you tame your sweet tooth? In this episode we’re talking about both long term and immediate strategies for taming your sweet tooth WITHOUT restriction & deprivation so you can reach your fat loss goals and enjoy your food along the way.
Question: “I have great intentions but sometimes my sweet tooth gets the best of me. How can I tame this crazy sweet tooth?!”
Answer: First & foremost you need to work to build up your pleasure associations with the attainment of your goals. I walk you through exactly how to do that in this episode.
You’ll also want to figure out what “clean cheats” you can build into your day so you can enjoy sweet treats and still reach your goals. These will be healthy alternatives such as:
A 1-ounce square of dark chocolate
Trail mix with dark chocolate (watch out for the dried fruit – its just a little sack of sugar)
Protein bars (see my recommendation below)
Protein pudding (you can make this with the protein powder listed below or buy Fit & Lean Protein Pudding)
Baked apple (just chop up an apple and toss with liquid stevia, cinnamon, vanilla extract and bake for 20 minutes)
Chocolate avocado mousse (puree 1/2 an avocado with 1 tsp vanilla, 2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder or raw cacao powder and top with some fresh raspberries)
For detailed information on carbohydrate strategies for fat loss including more on fruit, wheat, oats, gluten plus strategies for improving your carbohydrate tolerance, check out the comprehensive carbs & fat loss ecourse! Follow the link below and use the coupon code Primal10 to get lifetime access for only $69 (including troubleshooting help from me on demand!) https://www.udemy.com/carb-strategies/?couponCode=Primal10
Hormones have EVERYTHING to do with fat loss regardless of your age or gender! Most people seeking weight loss don’t know how or why to balance their hormones. In this episode we talk about how hormones and fat loss are linked, what you can do to balance your hormones through diet and exercise, and how your current eating habits might be causing hormonal chaos in your body.
The Challenge: Most people seeking weight loss don’t know why or how to balance their hormones. They don’t understand the importance of hormones in the fat loss/weight loss game. Yet their symptoms point to massive hormonal imbalance. Seriously – do you have low energy? How about chronic stress? Are you hungry often? Do you struggle with cravings? How about irritability or mood swings? Trouble focusing? Weight gain or trouble losing weight? Trouble sleeping? Fatigue? Joint pain? What about depression and anxiety? Low sex drive? Infertility? Menstrual irregularities or hot flashes? Every single one of these is a symptom of hormonal imbalance and without hormonal balance you are fighting an uphill battle towards your weight loss goals.
The Solution: You can (and should!!!) balance your hormones with the foods you eat, the type of exercise you do and how much and how well you sleep. Seriously! A few simple tweaks can have a ripple effect that trigger weight loss, increased energy, improved mood, focus and much more! Once you get your hormones in balance it will feel like a whole new life! We have an amazing capacity to improve our hormonal balance through our diet and lifestyle.
Here’s the truth for you – Your hormones dictate your ability to lose fat. When you balance your hormones, everything else falls into place.
So what exactly are hormones? They’re chemical messengers in the body and they initiate communication within your body. Your hormones influence your thoughts, feelings, behavior, metabolism, libido, energy, immunity, inflammation, appetite – pretty much everything! These little signaling molecules tell your body how it needs to respond to what is happening both inside and outside the body. When our hormones are balanced we experience reduced inflammation, increased energy, decreased hunger and cravings, weight loss – especially that super stubborn belly fat – improved mood, better sleep and natural detoxification.
One common question people often ask when they start to understand the huge role of hormones on weight loss is, “so do calories really matter?” The answer is yes, calories do matter, but hormones matter just as much if not even a little bit more. Think about it for a second – have you ever cut calories and not lost weight? Or ate a ton of calories and not gained weight? Have you ever felt like you were doing everything right but not seeing results? Why? Hormones. In order to lose fat you need two things:
A caloric deficit – you need to consume fewer calories than what your body needs to operate – this is the only way your body will allow your stored fat to be broken down to burned for energy.
Hormonal balance – if you have a calorie deficit WITHOUT hormonal balance you’ll either burn MUSCLE instead of fat OR your body will fight any type of weight loss and respond by slowing your metabolism and you won’t lose any weight at all. Your hormones are what determine whether or not your body will burn fat, store fat, burn muscle or build muscle.
If we just focus on #1 – the calorie deficit crash dieting model – we create hormonal chaos. Our body responds by increasing hunger and cravings, slowing the metabolism, increasing the production of stress hormones, decreasing the production of thyroid and sex hormones – all this can result in depression, anxiety, and an impaired immune response. This approach is NOT sustainable and will not serve you in the long term!
We have to strive first towards hormonal balance. And here’s the great thing! When we balance our hormones, we naturally experience less hunger and fewer cravings so the caloric deficit we need happens naturally! You don’t even have to hardly focus on it!
The other awesome thing about our hormones is that they all impact each other – when we improve one, it has a ripple effect that helps bring the others in the line. On the flip side, when one is out of balance, it throws the others off kilter as well. It’s important to realize that there is a hierarchy here. There are some hormones that have a greater impact on weight loss and metabolism than others so if we focus first on nutritional strategies to improve the big dogs, we’ll have an exponential effect on improving the others with far less effort. It goes back to the 80/20 rule I love to talk about – just a mere 20% of our effortswill produce 80% of our results – we take advantage of this by focusing first on the most impactful hormones for fat loss. In this case, we’re talking about The big 3: insulin, cortisol and leptin. We’ll talk about some of the others – ghrelin, glucagon, thyroid and sex hormones in later episodes.
Insulin determines whether we’re in fat burning mode or fat storing mode. Carbohydrates control insulin and insulin controls fat loss. When we chronically consume carbs, we exhaust our short term storage and the excess is converted to and stored as body fat. Elevated insulin keeps us in fat storage mode, triggers cycles of hunger & cravings and reduces our sense of satiety. We can manage our insulin release by getting smart about our carb consumption.
Leptin is our satiety hormone. Its primary job is to regulate your appetite. Think about it as a fuel gauge for your body. It tells the body how much fat there is in reserve and what to do with it. Ideally, leptin should be the hormone that keeps you thin – as you put on a little more fat, your fat cells produce leptin and your body gets the message “ok, enough fuel in reserve, down regulate appetite, we’re good here.” When you have less fat in reserve, there is less leptin production and you don’t have that satiety trigger so you eat more, reserve more fat, and then produce more leptin to down regulate appetite.
Sounds perfect, so what the heck goes wrong? Our high carobhydate diet screws all this up! You see, our fat cells release leptin in response to high blood sugar and high insulin. So when we’re eating carbs at every meal and constantly elevating our blood sugar, our fat cells are constantly secreting leptin. What happens? Our body becomes immune (or insensitive) to the message. It’s like when you blast loud music for so long that it doesn’t seem loud anymore…you’re resistant. Our body becomes resistant to the message of leptin and we never feel satisfied. Our appetite is insatiable. So, we keep eating and eating and eating. We get sucked into a cycle that we can’t get out of. Eat carb rich meals. Secrete insulin and triggers fat storage. More fat, more leptin. More leptin, the less sensitive we are to its message, we don’t hear the satiety signals, our appetite is out of control, so we eat more! Ahh! What a nightmare!! But we can change all of this…
Ok, there is one more hormone I want to talk about today before we get into practical implementation. It is cortisol, one of our stress hormones. It is released in response to physical, emotional or mental stress. Here’s how it relates to our weight loss – elevated cortisol levels tell the body that there’s imminent danger – the body responds by PREVENTING fat burning – turning off all fat burning machinery – because it wants to reserve all fuel in case of an emergency. Your body is programmed to survive. If it perceives a threat(such as elevated cortisol), it will conserve all energy and stop non-esssential processes. This means holding on to stored body fat and not letting it be used for energy.
Practical Implementation: The strategies discussed in this episode include
Eating to balance blood sugar and manage insulin via
The right carbs
At the right time
In the right amounts
Paired with the right foods
Staying out of the carbohydrate cycle to manage both insulin and leptin
Specific diet and lifestyle techniques to manage our response to stress and control our body’s release of the stress hormone cortisol
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[ctt title=”Carbohydrates control insulin and insulin controls fat loss. Manage your carb consumption to burn stored fat.” tweet=”Carbohydrates control insulin and insulin controls fat loss. Manage your carb consumption to burn stored fat.” coverup=”9Rcce”]
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The thyroid hormones tend to get the most attention from the general public when it comes to weight loss. You hear people say all the time that they struggle with their weight because they have a “slow thyroid” or something to that effect. There is no doubt that the thyroid hormones play a major role in both weight loss and weight gain. They are significantly impacted by insulin, cortisol, leptin and the other metabolic hormones. Fortunately for most of us, there are ways to improve thyroid function naturally via the foods we eat and our lifestyle choices. Before we dive into what we can do, let’s establish a basic understanding of our thyroid hormones.
There are several thyroid hormones and they all function differently. They are produced and released based on signals the thyroid receives from the brain. Your thyroid is extremely sensitive to external inputs such as diet, environment, stress and toxins. Suboptimal diet and lifestyle choices can wreak havoc on your thyroid. If you take away one thing from this post, let it be that last sentence. Your diet and lifestyle have a MAJOR impact on your thyroid hormones. If you want optimal thyroid function, you need to eat and live accordingly!
Let’s talk about several thyroid hormones and how they are different from one another. First up is T3. T3 is the hormone we’re typically referring to when we think about metabolism. It is an active hormone that regulates your body’s fuel usage and temperature. T4 is the precursor to T3. In order to be impactful, T4 must first be successfully converted. Reverse T3 is a completely inactive thyroid hormone. All three of these hormones need to be successfully produced and they need to be produced in the proper ratios. If the overall amounts or the ratios or off, your thyroid function will be impaired.
Producing these hormones in adequate amounts and proper ratios is not all that is required for your thyroid to function optimally. The hormones must be successfully released from the cell and they must successfully attach to the precise receptor on the cell it is targeting. All those factors must be in place or else you’ll impair thyroid function.
Remember that your body is designed for survival. When you drastically reduce your calorie intake, your thyroid function slows down, taking your metabolism with it. Why? Because your body senses that fuel intake is limited and it doesn’t want to allow you to burn off your stored energy in case you need it. When you slash your calorie intake, your thyroid hormone production is reduced and much of the thyroid hormone you will produce and release will be the inactive form. This is your body’s way of conserving energy in times of perceived threat.
Similarly, when your leptin levels are low or you are resistant to leptin (due to being overweight or obese or consuming a very high carbohydrate diet), your thyroid function will decrease. Again, your body is either not getting signaled, or cannot properly receive the signal, that there is adequate stored energy in your body so it opts to downshift your metabolism to keep you “safe”.
High levels of estrogen can also slow your overall thyroid function. The presence of excess estrogen increases certain proteins that bind to your thyroid hormones and render them inactive. The thyroid is producing the hormones you need but they aren’t able to do their job because their receptor has been taken.
Finally, cortisol impacts your thyroid function. This relationship is a little more complicated. You’ll remember that in small, intermittent doses, cortisol is a significant fat loss ally. In these small, intermittent doses, cortisol can make your thyroid more efficient. Unfotunately, as is more often the case, excess cortisol inhibits the conversion of T4 (your inactive thyroid hormone) to T3, the active form. Why would we have excess cortisol? Chronic stress. Let it goooooo.
As you can see, there is a lot that can go wrong and impair thyroid function, leading to a slower, less efficient metabolism and an impaired ability to burn fat. Fortunately, there is a lot we can do to support the thyroid through diet, lifestyle and exercise.
First of all, proper thyroid function relies on several key nutrients. Here’s the thing – these nutrients MUST be consumed daily because our bodies have no ability to store them. Which nutrients am I talking about? Specifically iodine, zinc and selenium. If you aren’t sure if you are getting enough of these, your best bet is to take a high quality multivitamin. Nutrition is critical for optimal thyroid function.
As has been the case with all the hormones we’ve talked about so far, one of the most impactful changes we can make to maintain metabolic hormone balance is to control our blood sugar. Avoid dramatic peaks and valleys. The most straightforward and effective way to do this is to cut out processed foods and limit wheat and grain products. In fact, avoiding them completely is the ideal. Start by cutting out processed foods and focusing on vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, nuts, seeds and some fruit. However, as you make this transition be sure you aren’t drastically cutting your calories. Remember that dropping your calories slows your thyroid function. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full.
Finally, lifting heavy weights and high intensity interval type training improves thyroid function by increasing the sensitivity of the cellular receptors to which your thyroid hormones need to attach to function.
I hope you’re beginning to see a trend as it relates to balancing and optimizing your metabolic hormones. They all work differently but they all impact each other. Not only that, they all benefit significantly from a healthy diet that minimizes the blood sugar spikes that result from processed foods, wheat and grain products.
If you want to know more about hormones and fat loss, check out my free podcast!
There’s also my new ebook! 50 pages of information and specific diet & lifestyle strategies to help you naturally balance your hormones and get into fat burning mode!
In our 3rd QA episode we’re answering a question from a reader who doesn’t like exercise or vegetables and needs to balance weight loss with her many other priorities including kids, husband & work. We talk about how to navigate weight loss when you don’t like vegetables or exercise and establish what matters MOST when it comes to getting results.
I asked everyone on my VIP email list to share with me how I can help them lose weight. I got a great response back from a woman who feels like she can’t relate to my approach primarily because:
1. She doesn’t like to exercise
2. She doesn’t like vegetables
3. She doesn’t eat/breathe fitness & nutrition.
In this episode I break down how you can reach your weight loss goals without being a veggie fan, without regular exercise and without centering your life around fitness & nutrition. I also talk about my current routine – how much time I spend in the kitchen & the gym, and the other obligations I have in my life versus what you all see on the blog/podcast/social media.
What are YOU struggling with? What is holding YOU back? How can I help you make this year THE YEAR that you achieve all your health goals? Leave a question in the comments or you can use the contact form on the homepage. Either way, let me knock down the barriers that are holding you back! Let’s do this!!!
