Hormone Imbalances & Weight Loss

No matter what, if your HORMONES are out of whack, your body is going to store as much fat as possible. You could be logging everything you're eating and sticking to all your workouts, but your human biology will cause your body to fight back by storing more and burning less fat. Not only will this mess with your PHYSICAL progress, but because stress also triggers mood swings and irritability, a hormone imbalance can also lead to personal problems.

So, which hormones should we be most concerned about, and how can we make sure they aren't holding up back?

HORMONES TO WATCH

The most problematic hormones (when it comes to weight loss) include:

🔸 CORISTOL: Our stress hormone. When it's out of whack, you might experience food addiction, sugar cravings and even depression.

🔸 INSULIN: Our fat-storage hormone. Insulin resistance can lead to weight gain and sugar addiction.

🔸 LEPTIN: Our natural appetite-suppressing hormone. High leptin can lead to weight gain and excessive hunger.

🔸 ESTROGEN: One of the main female sex hormone. The other is progesterone. But when estrogen levels are too high compared to your progesterone levels, you might experience an array of symptoms including weight loss resistance.

🔸 THYROID: Our metabolism-managing hormone. It manages how fast or slow we burn calories. A slow thyroid can cause weight gain, fluid retention, and other issues.

HOW TO AVOID IMBALANCES

We keep our stress levels down looow.

If you have a good set of practices, you're going to be much better at managing stress and your perceptions.

🔹 Perceptions being habits, mindset, and brain health

🔹 Practices being routines and rituals (macro tracking, meditation, stress management, sleep, etc.)

This will give you a better chance at optimizing your physiology, & when you go to the gym or exercise at home, you'll expedite results because there's a greater synergy between the practices.

I'll give you an example with cortisol, which is released when you're stressin'. If you always treat meals as stressful events, accompanied with food anxiety and guilt, your body will go into fight-or-flight mode and release a ton of cortisol.

But if you practice thinking about your meals more neutrally, relaxing a bit, and looking at the bigger picture, your body won't act as if it needs to store EVERYTHING it can while it runs away from a predator.

Make sense?

MORAL OF THE STORY

If you're feeling stuck on the journey to reaching your nutrition or fitness goals...take a good hard look at how you perceive yourself and the world, and what your daily routine looks like. If both of these things aren't serving you, then there's the problem!

Start focusing on your overall HEALTH again, instead of how many calories you need to eat to fit into that outfit. The results will come naturally!