Weight Loss & Hormonal Balance
If you want to improve your weight loss efforts, boosting your metabolism is essential. The best way to increase your metabolism is not through deprivation or a restrictive diet, but by eating the right foods that treat the root cause of your slow metabolism. The key to a healthy metabolism is balanced hormones! As well, understanding your ‘hormone body type’ can reveal the root cause of your weight gain and the hormone imbalances that are driving your weight gain.
Signs of Hormonal Weight Gain
Resistant weight
Gaining weight even when eating healthy and watching calories
Gaining weight only in hips, thighs, and bottom
Cannot lose weight even with exercise
Gaining weight in arms
Muffin top
Belly weight
You have a known hormonal imbalance
Stop Dieting, Balance Your Hormones
Eliminating healthy foods from your diet, especially healthy carbohydrates, and fats can hinder the production of hormones your body needs to keep your metabolism working effectively. Your body needs the right kinds of foods to fuel your metabolism. It's not helpful to deprive yourself with 'diets' or to over-exercise. Some of the trends for losing weight actually do more harm to your metabolism, than good! Improving your metabolism should be about helping your body to work smarter - not harder! This is done when you prioritize hormone balance by eating and living a life that supports optimal hormone health.
Your Hormone Body Type
Before you can figure out how to balance your hormones so you can lose weight, you need to know which hormones are an obstacle for you. Identifying your unique hormone body type is a way to do that! I like the four hormone body types, as explained by Alisa Vitti from Flo Living[1]. According to Alisa, there are four primary hormone body types: estrogen type, cortisol type, insulin type, and testosterone type.
Estrogen Body Type Struggles with weight around the hips, thighs and behind.
If you have extra weight in your hips, thighs, and butt, your body is producing too much estrogen. It means that your progesterone levels are also way lower than your estrogen.
On your period, you may experience irregular periods, heavy flow, and PMS symptoms.
Eat green leafy vegetables like kale, broccoli, cabbage, collards, cauliflower, spinach, and brussels sprouts to improve estrogen metabolism. You may also want to take Di-Indolyl-Methane (DIM) supplements, which help the body process excess estrogen.
Cortisol Body Type Struggles with belly fat.
Putting on the pounds in your gut tends to point to stress and the over production of the stress hormone cortisol.
On your period, this can make you anxious and can lead to insomnia and PMS. It also causes skipped periods.
Eat oranges and bell peppers for their Vitamin C, which is important for stress management. Ashwagandha is my go-to for nourishing adrenal health and regulating cortisol.
Insulin Body Type Struggles with a muffin top.
If you have love handles this indicates that you have poor insulin efficiency. When your blood sugar levels are unstable, your body stores more fat around your middle.
On your period, this can cause fatigue, PCOS, and can also lead to skipped periods.
Eat for blood sugar balance. Avoid skipping meals and eating junk foods. Limit your intake of sugary snacks and white bread, rice, and pasta. Instead, go for fat-burning carbs like brown rice, quinoa, sweet potatoes, and buck wheat, which also improve your insulin resistance.
Testosterone Body Type Gains weight in upper arms.
Storing fat in your upper arms/shoulder area suggests you have a sensitivity to testosterone or too low testosterone levels. You need testosterone to burn fat and build muscle mass.
On your period, testosterone imbalance can lead to PCOS, irregular cycles, hair thinning, irritability, low sex drive.
Eat healthy fats like avocados, which are also a great source of bioidentical testosterone. Maca root is an adrenal adaptogen that supports healthy testosterone balance.
Hormone Healthy Exercise Walking
Walking can boost moods and reduce stress. Walking lowers stress hormone levels in the body and releases feel-good endorphins too. Walking is an excellent form of exercise because it does not increase hunger, it burns calories and it does not increase the hormone cortisol! Get out for a walk 3-4 times per week, trying to achieve 10,000 steps per day.
Yoga
Yoga class will help with flexibility, and, of course, yoga lowers cortisol and the stress response. If you have a cortisol body type, yoga is perfect for you! I suggest yoga poses such as downward-facing dog, chair pose, and dragon pose, which are all resistance type poses to build strength. Ask me about Hormone Yoga for balancing hormones.
Resistance Training
A basic full-body workout 2-3 times per week is recommended by most experts. Light weights with squats and lunges for your lower body. Resistance training is the ideal exercise for hormone health because it does not increase cortisol and supports healthy testosterone balance.
Cardio
If you have hormonal weight gain, use caution with more than 20 min of cardio regularly (i.e., three times or more per week). Cardio increases the hormone cortisol, which can lead to hormone imbalance and create an estrogen loop. Small amounts of LIIT (Low Intensity Interval Training) cardio would be better. Cardio also increases appetite, which can be challenging when trying to lose weight.
Sources:[1] https://www.floliving.com/boost-your-metabolism/