How to Lose Fat By Getting Your Hormones in Balance

When it comes to losing weight, you’d think that eating a healthy diet and exercising would have it covered, right? So why are those stubborn pounds still there, despite all your best efforts to eat well and stay fit? 

The truth is that while what you eat and how often you exercise are crucial, this is not the whole story. You also need to keep your hormone levels balanced. Obesity is primarily a hormonal problem, and hormones are alterable, unlike behavior. The only way to lose weight is to reverse the hormonal dysfunction.

In this blog post, we will explain how you can lose fat by keeping your hormones in balance.  

How Do Hormones Affect Weight?

Your hormones act as chemical messengers and are responsible for controlling the functions of the body. So, when hormone levels act up, it can have far-reaching effects on your well-being and weight. To discover what is going on with your hormones, you need to understand the complete picture. It is essential to carry out a complete hormone map of the body, using blood tests to determine whether there is an imbalance and which specific hormones are out of line.

So let’s look at all the essential hormones that can lead to obesity and increased fat mass.

 Insulin

The standard prescription for weight loss is ‘eat less, move more.’ However, virtually every person who has used this calorie reduction method for weight loss has failed. The common root cause of obesity and diabetes is insulin resistance.

Insulin is a key hormone responsible for controlling the regulation of blood sugar in the body. The trouble with today’s Western diet is that it is overloaded with sugar, grains, and plant oils. If you consume a western diet excessively, your cells will not respond well to insulin, i.e., unable to use glucose from the blood. As a result, the glucose level in the blood rises, and this condition is called insulin resistance.

The excess glucose gets stored as fat and causes other symptoms, including lethargy, difficulty concentrating, high blood pressure, and high insulin.

Restoring the Balance

The best way to treat insulin resistance is to maintain a high fat, moderate protein, and low carb (HFLC) diet. HFLC diet, together with intermittent fasting, will break the cycle of insulin resistance.

Cortisol

It’s no coincidence that you will find it hard to lose weight when you’re stressed out. Anxiety severely affects the level of cortisol hormone produced in a fight or flight situation. Cortisol releases extra energy to help you cope with the stressful state, and if this energy isn’t burnt through exercise, it can leave you hungry, causing overeating. If you are in a perpetual state of stress, the cortisol ‘switch’ stays on, thus contributing to your weight gain.

Restoring the balance

Work on the stress levels, and your body will thank you for it. It’s essential to make time for exercise and relaxation. Some of the most overweight clients have trouble sleeping, and lack of sleep not only increases both cortisol and insulin. We believe that sleep is probably more important than exercise.

Thyroid

When you’re struggling to lose weight, the first thing to get checked is your thyroid function. The thyroid produces two important hormones, thyroxine (T3) and triiodothyronine (T4), to regulate the metabolic process or the speed at which you burn food to make energy. If your thyroid is underactive (hypothyroidism), it will make your metabolism sluggish and cause weight gain.

Other symptoms to watch out for include dry and brittle hair, constipation, general fatigue, low energy, depression, and cold hands or feet. A thyroid diagnostic machine is used to find out if hypothyroidism is the cause of your weight gain.

Restoring the balance

One of the best ways to overcome an underactive thyroid is through healthy eating. You should cut out all sugars, carbs, and processed foods and instead stick to a diet full of natural foods, such as fresh meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and eggs. This ‘paleo’ diet gives the best combination of moderate carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to trigger an ideal hormonal response in your body. Also, you must restore both T3 and T4 to restore optimum thyroid function.

Testosterone

Testosterone controls the traits associated with masculinity and also influences your weight. As testosterone decreases, the body becomes less efficient in fat metabolism and stores excess energy as fat. Other symptoms of low testosterone levels include reduced muscle mass, poor memory, low libido, low energy, depression, erectile dysfunction, and infertility.

Restoring the balance

BHRT can help reverse this problem and redress the balance between testosterone and estrogen levels.

Oestrogen

Oestrogen (estrogen) is a woman’s best friend that helps with reproduction, memory, bone health, and more. Insulin is the principal regulator of fat metabolism, primarily through the lipoprotein lipase enzyme (LPL). This enzyme sticks out from the membranes of different cells and pulls fat out of the bloodstream into the cells. If LPL is on a muscle cell – the fat is pulled in to be used for fuel. But if LPL is on a fat cell, it makes a cell fatter.

Why do men and women fatten differently?

The difference is due to the distribution of the LPL enzyme and the role of sex hormones on LPL. In men, LPL activity is higher in the fat tissues above the waist; therefore, the potbelly (apple-shaped) is common in men. 

In women, LPL activity is higher below the waist, so women fatten around the hips and bottom (pear-shaped). After menopause, the LPL activity in women’s abdominal fat catches up to that of men, due to which they put on excess fat above the waist.

Restoring the balance

It is essential to balance the sex hormones, including estrogen, in menopause. By balancing the estrogen/progesterone levels, you can control the fat.

Leptin

Leptin is another hormone that can cause weight gain. It is produced by fat cells to signal your brain that you are full after a meal. Eating a diet high in processed fatty foods floods your body with leptin, which becomes resistant and stops sending those ‘fullness’ signals to the brain. Leptin resistance can be one of the culprits behind the constant need to eat experienced by many patients.

Restoring the balance

The good news is that you have the power to reverse the effects of too much insulin and leptin with a high-fat, low-carb (HFLC) diet. Cutting out sugar and processed food from your diet and avoiding grains and refined carbohydrates can help correct the problem.

What have we learned?

There’s no doubt that hormones play a vital role in all aspects of your well-being. The deficiency or excessiveness of any hormone can have a huge knock-on effect, especially when it comes to putting on weight and increasing fat mass.

Therefore, if you want to stay in good shape, you need to keep the hormones in harmony. For this reason, you need to maintain a healthy diet or opt for a carefully administered, natural hormone replacement regime.

Euromed Clinic Center offers a variety of fat loss programs that can help you lose weight. You simply need to consult with our doctors. For this purpose, you need to fill in the form below or call us, and our staff members will book your appointment.