Hormones and Weight Loss: How Hormones Affect Your Weight and Health
HORMONES AND WEIGHT LOSS: HOW HORMONES AFFECT YOUR WEIGHT AND HEALTH
You're doing everything right.
You're eating healthy foods, exercising regularly, cutting back on sweets, and getting enough sleep at night.
Yet, for all of your efforts, you can't seem to get the scale to move in your favor.
Have you considered that there might be other factors at play?
Turns out, there's a significant connection between your hormones and weight loss, and if yours are out of sync, you might find it difficult to shed those extra pounds, despite all of your hard work.
Today, we're exploring this link in greater detail, so read on to discover a fresh perspective on this age-old concern.
What Leads to Weight-Loss Resistance?
It's easy to think it's all on you.
If you can't lose those nagging pounds, you must not be working out enough, or eating enough nutritious, slimming foods, right?
Actually, you could do all of those things with great fervor and still wind up far away from your goal weight.
What gives?
Your body's internal processes play a major role in how much weight you're able to shed. Some of the most prohibitive obstacles have nothing to do with what you eat or how often you hit the gym.
Keep in mind that weight-loss resistance is different from plateauing. Almost everyone will hit some sort of roadblock on their weight-loss journey that could result in a brief time of zero change. However, most people are able to overcome that obstacle and continue losing weight.
However, if you're staying on a strict protocol and weeks or months go by without any progress, that could be weight-loss resistance.
There are myriad culprits that could lead to weight-loss resistance, including:
Medications (pharmaceutical and over-the-counter)
Thyroid imbalances
Adrenal imbalances
Another reason why you might not see the results you crave? Hormonal imbalances. Let's take a look at one of the top issues that might be at play.
The Role of Insulin
In short, insulin acts as your fat-storage hormone.
Similar to the way you stockpile your savings account in the event of an emergency, insulin stores up fat. It's especially effective at storing fat from unhealthy sources right along your midsection.
Every time you eat, your insulin levels increase. When they do, they send a signal to your body that it should store a portion of the food energy as fat for later use.
When thousand-year famines wreaked the land, this trait was an essential survival skill. Now, however, food is widely available at any time we want it, and we're no longer bound by that early defense mechanism.
As a result, it's common to maintain excessively high insulin levels, which can lead to obesity.
Which Foods Raise Insulin Levels?
In all fairness, a majority of foods raise your insulin levels.
When you eat, insulin steps in to make the most of what you're consuming. It sends excess glucose from your bloodstream into your cells, where it can be used for energy. Or, it sends it to your muscles and liver, which store it as glycogen.
However, there are some foods that spike insulin levels more than others. These include refined carbohydrates and processed, sugary foods. When you consume too many of these items, it can trigger insulin resistance.
This means your muscles, liver and fat cells no longer respond to insulin's call and are unable to utilize blood sugar as they should.
When your fat cells become locked up like this, it can stall your weight loss or send it to a screeching halt. In addition, insulin resistance also puts you at a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes and prediabetes.
Other Hormones and Weight Loss Connections
While insulin is the key hormone linked to weight-loss resistance, it isn't the only one.
When it isn't functioning properly, it doesn't take long before other hormones follow suit. That's because they're all interconnected, not operating in a silo.
In fact, there are many other hormones responsible for keeping your insulin levels in check. Take glucagon, for example.
This hormone opens the storage units in your fat, liver and muscle cells as your body needs them. Together, insulin and glucagon help regulate your body's blood sugar levels, with insulin "saving" it and glucagon "spending" it.
That means high levels of glucagon and low levels of insulin can lead to weight loss, as your body expends more energy than it consumes. Yet, when your insulin levels spike out of control, glucagon is unable to regulate them on its own.
Other hormones responsible for regulating insulin and counterbalancing its effects include:
Adrenaline
Noradrenaline
Cortisol
Human growth hormone
As these hormones spin out of control in response to excessive insulin, it can play a major role in your ability to lose weight.
Stress and Inflammation
High levels of insulin not only cause the abovementioned hormones to become imbalanced. This spike also increases inflammation and oxidative stress, which can both hinder your weight-loss efforts.
Other factors that ramp up these two issues include environmental toxins, such as organic pollutants and heavy metals.
When your stress hormone cortisol increases, you'll be hard-pressed to lose weight. Heightened cortisol levels are linked to a variety of health issues, including:
Anxiety
Sleep disorders
Fertility issues
Hormonal imbalances
Weight gain
Help Your Hormones Work For You
The bottom line?
Your hormones and weight loss journey are interconnected in more ways than you might realize. When your insulin levels spike, it can throw all the scales off-kilter and make it nearly impossible to drop the pounds.
Do you believe you're suffering from a hormone-related deficiency? If so, we'd love to help.
We specialize in bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) designed to help individuals live healthier, happier and more rewarding lives.
Contact us today to learn more and let's connect.
