This episode is all about estrogen. Estrogen dominance accelerates weight gain and makes weight loss an uphill battle. We unknowingly feed our estrogen dominance with our diet and lifestyle choices. In this episode we talk about how estrogen becomes a weight loss nightmare for both men and women and we establish concrete steps for reducing your overall estrogen levels, eliminating estrogen dominance, and improving your overall health and weight loss potential naturally.
When I weighed over 300 pounds my estrogen levels were nuts. I didn’t have a regular menstrual cycle for YEARS. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS. Doctors told me my fertility was basically a joke. I had more than 20 cysts in each ovary. I think it might have been more than 30. My elevated estrogen levels were making it incredibly hard to lose weight. But then I did my research. Like other hormones, estrogen levels can be VASTLY improved through diet and lifestyle. So I did that. I shocked my doctors. I now have ZERO cysts in either ovary. My menstrual cycles are like clockwork. It’s unreal. And THAT is why I get so fired up about this.
The Challenge: Estrogen is a serious problem for many overweight and obese people – men and women! While it is considered a female sex hormone, it influences many other areas of health including heart health, bone density, mood and body fat distribution. We’re talking about a LOT more than fertility when we talk about estrogen. Imbalances in estrogen can lead to obesity, reproductive cancers, heart disease, infertility, PCOS, endometriosis and more. Fortunately, like I said, there is much we can do to balance estrogen naturally. Much of it is within our control based on our diet and lifestyle choices.
Estrogen dominance is a vicious cycle for those looking to lose weight. Excess estrogen encourages fat storage and insulin resistance, leading to weight gain. The more weight you gain, the more estrogen you produce, the more fat you store. Proper estrogen balance is an absolutely critical component of sustainable fat loss for women (and often for men, too!)
While the ovaries are primarily responsible for producing and releasing estrogen, your fat cells also produce estrogen. The more body fat you have, the most estrogen you produce. This is why we tend to see a LOT of problems with estrogen balance in overweight people. The more weight they put on, the more estrogen they are pumping into their bodies – male or female!!
The Solution: In order to maintain balanced estrogen levels, you not only have to produce the right amounts of estrogen in the correct ratios, but you have to be able to metabolize and excrete it. Your liver is responsible for estrogen metabolism – breaking it down and excreting it from the body. If that process is broken or impaired, excess estrogen will build up in your system. So, what does this mean? Our liver health is a really important part of our hormone balance! Once again, the foods we eat have a major impact on our liver health.
Our estrogen levels are a function not only of the estrogen we produce in our bodies but by the estrogen we consume! We are constantly increasing our estrogen load through toxins, herbicides and pesticides. We can work to control our estrogen production by eating cruciferous vegetables (natural estrogen detoxifiers) and balancing our blood sugar (avoiding processed foods, wheat, and grains). We can avoid consuming toxins in many, many ways.
Practical Implementation:
Limit your consumption of estrogens by avoiding environmental estrogens.
Choose organic foods
Opt for hormone-free dairy/meat/proteins
Wear gloves when handling cleaning products
Get a water filter, especially for your shower! (Link below in resources section)
Do not eat or drink out of plastic containers. At a minimum, DO NOT HEAT food or drinks in plastic containers!
Eat more cruciferous veggies! They are natural estrogen detoxifiers! More on cruciferous veggies in resources below.
Avoid soy products
Limit stress! Excessive stress will instruct your body to use precious progesterone to produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. When we lower our progesterone levels that way, we can create estrogen dominance without directly impacting our estrogen levels.
Fruit is one of those “slippery slope” cases within the Primal way of eating. More than that, for weight loss in general there are tons of different opinions on fruit. I want to address both. I want to take a look at the Primal perspective on fruit but also the physiological perspective – how does fruit impact fat loss? Should you eat fruit for optimal results? Are there ways to enjoy fruit and fat loss at the same time?
In the Paleolithic Era, fruit was not available year round. Our ancestors certainly enjoyed fruit when it was in season but it wasn’t available year round. During the warmer seasons when fruit was available and other food was more abundant, they would eat more with the intention of storing fat for times when food wasn’t quite so available. Fruit (and the sugar within it, known as fructose) is uniquely qualified for this job of storing fat. Let’s look a little closer at fructose and why we need to be very careful about how and when we consume it.
Fructose is the type of sugar found in fruit. It is the sweetest of all naturally occurring carbohydrates – sweeter than glucose! Because of its intense sweetness, the food industry has adopted it as an additive to enhance sweetness “naturally” via the development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Now, fructose is hardly limited to fruit. Fructose (and HFCS) can be found in the majority of processed food products as a sweetener and to help extend shelf life.
Initially, fructose was hailed as a beneficial sweetener with positive health implications. This is totally untrue, but there’s a reason the food industry came to this conclusion. Whereas glucose can be used by any cell in the body for energy, fructose must be metabolized by the liver. When you eat foods containing glucose, they are broken down and the glucose goes to your blood stream, raising your blood sugar. Fructose skips that part. It doesn’t end up in the blood stream and so it doesn’t raise your blood sugar in the same way – it goes straight to the liver as the liver is the only place fructose can be metabolized. Sounds like a great thing – fructose won’t raise your blood sugar the way glucose does – but it’s not quite so simple.
Fructose is THE MOST lipogenic carbohydrate. In plain English: when compared to allllll other carbohydrates, fructose is the most easily and readily converted to fat. Bad news! With the fructose load in the Standard American Diet (coming mostly from processed foods) the liver gets easily overloaded and converts all that fructose very quickly and efficiently to fat.
It gets worse. Fructose encourages muscle and fat cells to become insulin resistant. Remember that insulin dictates fat storage/fat release. When your muscle and fat cells are insulin resistant, that accelerates fat storage and makes fat burning much more difficult.
Finally, fructose does not trigger satiety signals the way that other sweeteners do. This is why you can eat a pint of blueberries or an entire watermelon and never feel full. This is part of the reason that processed foods feel so addictive. It worked out really well for our Paleolithic ancestors – they could gorge on fruits and berries during the summer and store fat as energy for the winter. We, however, don’t experience periods of famine and fructose is abundant year round. The result: accelerated fat storage and slowed fat release.
The best thing you can do to prevent excess fat storage from fructose is to avoid processed foods. From there, however, be mindful of your fruit intake. For maximum fat loss, consider fruit a carbohydrate and enjoy it after a workout or with your evening meal.
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
We’ve talked a lot on the podcast about what NOT to have for breakfast when your goal is fat loss and hormone balance. By now, you know that to stay in fat burning mode and take advantage of the morning’s peak fat-burning potential, you’ll want to avoid carbohydrates in the morning. But people begin to panic when they consider what they shouldn’t be having for breakfast. They can’t imagine what options might still be available to them! You’ve got to listen to the full episode!
Question: I don’t have time to prepare a meal for breakfast every day. I’m busy, I have my hands full trying to get out the door and get to work. So what should I do for breakfast??
Answer: I’m all about preparing ahead of time. I recommend that my coaching clients set aside 30-60 minutes on the weekend to make 2 breakfast dishes that they can grab and go or heat & eat during the week. Then I recommend that they have 1-2 “oh crap” options – if they ran out of their premade option or they left the house without it or their dog at it all. And, of course, we talk about weekend strategies – things you can make on the days you have some more time to enjoy a delicious, fat loss friendly meal at home with your family or when you’re out for breakfast.
Make Ahead Grab & Go or Heat & Eat Options
Chia Pudding
1/4 cup chia seeds
1/2 cup brewed coffee (cooled)
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
1/4 tsp liquid stevia extract
1 tbsp almond butter
1 tsp cacao powder or unsweetened cocoa powder
Blend all ingredients in a blender or with an immersion blender. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours so the chia seeds soak up the moisture.
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The thyroid hormones tend to take a lot of the blame when it comes to an ability to burn fat or chronic low energy levels. The thyroid hormones are incredibly sensitive to our diet, lifestyle and environment and then can totally derail our fat loss efforts if they are out of balance. In today’s episode we talk about the factors required for optimal thyroid function and how we can implement specific nutritional, exercise and lifestyle strategies to optimize our thyroid function naturally!
Common Obstacle: The thyroid hormones tend to get a lot of the blame when people struggle to lose weight. 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 thyroid hormones play a major role in both weight loss and weight gain. What many people don’t realize is that you can naturally improve your thyroid function via the foods you eat and your lifestyle habits.
Facts: Your thyroid is a gland that secretes hormones. You can think of your thyroid as your body’s metabolic thermostat. The hormones secreted by your thyroid influence the function of pretty much every cell in your body. When your thyroid is functioning optimally you feel energetic, vibrant and optimistic. Weight management is easier. When it’s not functioning optimally you might feel tired, depressed, sluggish and foggy while experiencing weight gain, bloating and trouble regulating your body temperature.
You don’t have just one thyroid hormone. There are actually 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. Fueling your body properly will help your thyroid do its job. It can increase your energy and your ability to lose weight. NOT fueling your body well impairs your thyroid function.
An overview of thyroid hormones:
T3 is your active thyroid hormone. It regulates your body’s fuel usage and temperature
T4 is a precurser to T3. T4 is active and doesn’t play an active role until it is successfully converted to T3
Reverse T3 is also inactive. In times of stress, injury, illness or caloric restriction, your body slows your metabolism to conserve energy by producing more reverse T3.
Remember that your body is designed for survival. I say that all the the time because I think its so important. We have to look at all our diet and lifestyle choices based on the messages they send to our body’s survival instincts. When you drastically reduce your calorie intake, your thyroid function slows down. 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.
Practical Implementation:
Do not crash diet. Do not drastically cut calories. This triggers your body to go into survival mode and produce more of your inactive thyroid hormones.
Avoid thyroid disrupters like bisphenol-A (found in plastics), red dye #3 (found in processed foods) and dioxin (found in non organic produce and meat)
Fuel your body with quality nutrition and be sure to meet your daily requirements for zinc, selenium and iodine.
Eat to balance your blood sugar by limiting processed foods and junk carbohydrates
Lift heavy weights and engage in high intensity interval training to increase the sensitivity of your thyroid hormone cell receptors
Resources: Episode 11 – Eating to Optimize Hormones for Fat Loss Pt 1 Episode 12 – Eating to Optimize Hormones for Fat Loss Pt 2
Hormones & Fat Loss ebook! 50 pages of diet & lifestyle strategies to help you naturally optimize your hormones and get into fat-burning mode!!
There’s a lot of talk these days about bulletproof coffee. I’m one of the people doing a lot of that talking! I’m a huge fan of bulletproof coffee and over the past several months it has been a major staple in my diet. Yup, bulletproof coffee is my breakfast just about every morning. Now, there is absolutely nothing magical about bulletproof coffee. I drink it because it increases my energy, curbs my hunger and keeps me satisfied for hours. Most importantly, I drink it because I LIKE it. I like the way it tastes. I like how simple and easy it is. I like that I don’t have to prep food or clean up. It works for me. But it’s not magic. So today we’re talking about WHAT it is and why I drink it. To hear more about what I eat for fat loss and why, make sure you’re on the free VIP e-newsletter list!
Question: What is bulletproof coffee & why do you drink it?
Answer: Bulletproof coffee is high quality, low toxin coffee blended with grass fed butter and coconut oil or MCT oil.
Sometimes I get fancy and add cocoa powder and raw egg yolk!!
Why does low toxin coffee matter?
Traditional coffee can be packed with toxins from the mold that grows on the coffee beans. Analysis of standard beans shows that more than 90% may have mold growth.
What’s with the butter and what does grass fed mean?
Butter is packed with vitamins and antioxidants. Butyrate, one of the ingredients in butter, has powerful cellular-protective effects, especially on cells within breast tissue. You want your butter to come from grass fed cows (I use Kerrygold unsalted butter) and not from conventionally fed cows. Conventional butter will be high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids because those cows are fed grains. Grass fed butter is naturally high in anti-inflammatory omega 3s and free from the pro-inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids.
What’s MCT oil & why is it included?
MCT refers to medium chain triglycerides, a type of fat found in coconut oil. The fat in coconut oil is about 60% MCTs and coconut oil can be found in traditional grocery stores. MCT oil is pure MCTs but isn’t available in most grocery stores. I buy mine online . It is a great source of energy that is burned for IMMEDIATE fuel and is highly unlikely to ever be stored as fat due to the unique chain length of the fatty acids.
