Are You Overweight Because Of A Hormone Imbalance?
I have had clients at RC Fitness in Houston, TX, who put on weight easily and are overweight. They find it hard to take off those extra pounds. It’s not that they eat more than others. It’s that they have a hormone imbalance, which makes it harder. If you feel like you’re trying your hardest to shed those extra pounds, but your body is fighting harder to keep them, that may be the case. You can control many of the factors when you know what to do. Hormonal imbalances make it especially hard for women going through menopause, when hormone levels are regularly changing. There are ways to identify the problem and control it.
When hormone levels drop, each level diminishes different.
One sign of estrogen dominance is weight gain. You’d think that at menopause, with consistently lower levels of estrogen, you’d find it easier to lose weight. That doesn’t happen because at the same time, progesterone levels are also dropping and you need the fine balance of the two to maintain normal weight and burn calories. When progesterone levels drop faster than estrogen, it creates an estrogen dominance and weight gain.
Other hormones play a role in weight loss.
Besides estrogen and progesterone, you have a number of other hormones that determine your weight. Insulin ensures your body uses the energy properly. High levels lead to insulin resistance and weight gain on your belly. Too much cortisol, the hormone of stress, is burned off when you run or fight. You can burn them off by mimicking those actions with exercise. Hormones that control hunger levels, leptin and ghrelin, tell you when you’re full or hungry. Too much leptin, the satiety hormone, develops leptin resistance and your body doesn’t get that message of being full. Too much ghrelin keeps you hungry all the time.
You don’t have to take medication to level hormones
Adequate sleep can help you keep your ghrelin and leptin balanced. You can reduce the amount of cortisol and stress hormones by simply exercising regularly. It mimics fighting or running that they are meant to help you do. Exercise also helps you modify the imbalance of estrogen and progesterone. It helps lower insulin levels and prevents insulin resistance. Eating healthy is another way of helping your hormone levels stay in balance and keeping you in a normalized state.
- Walking is a great way to start if you are completely out of shape. As you get fitter, you’ll be able to workout harder and see even faster results.
- Sometimes, your body needs additional nutrition. When you don’t get adequate sun, you may have vitamin D shortage, particularly if you use sunblock. Magnesium and vitamin B are also important in maintain a good hormonal balance.
- Too much caffeine and red meat might be causing the problem you face with your weight. Don’t forget to include healthy fat in your diet and make sure you focus heavily on whole foods, like vegetables and fruit.
- Your gut health plays an important role in regulating your hormones. Probiotic food like yogurt, sauerkraut and kefir contain healthy bacteria that can help you lose weight. Food high in soluble fiber, such as asparagus, onions and bananas are food for that bacteria and called prebiotics.
For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness
If you want to flatten your stomach, you need to work several muscle groups. People normally think specifically about the abs when they think a flat stomach, but other core muscles are also important. Not only are strong core muscles important for a flat stomach, but also to improve your balance, prevent backache and help you achieve your fitness goals. However, no matter how strong your core muscles and abs are, if you have a layer of fat on your belly, nobody will see how flat they are. That makes a healthy diet and weight loss important.
Those sweet treats and delicacies may look fantastic and taste that way, too, but they could be killing you in the process. They’re loaded with sugar and too much sugar can be dangerous to your health. That doesn’t mean you have to give them up entirely. An occasional treat won’t create lasting harm for most healthy people. However, there are dire consequences for eating food heavily laden with sugar on a regular basis. To make matters worse, sugar is in just about everything you find on the grocery shelf. It may be called corn syrup, dextrose or high fructose corn syrup, but it doesn’t make it any better for your health.
I focus a lot on appearance at RC Fitness in Houston, Tx, but every workout and dietary recommendation is also designed to make you healthier. Many of the recommendations help regulate hormones and hormones affect your health, while also affecting your weight and metabolism. People often associate hormones with estrogen and testosterone, which are associated with sexuality. However, they’re more than that. They are chemical messengers that help the body to function at its best. They control everything from your mood to your body temperature and weight.
While there’s a generalization that processed foods are bad for you, it’s just that, a generalization. There are foods that are processed that not only could be in your menu, but should be. The definition of processing is food that is cooked, canned, frozen, milled or dehydrated. Processing does many things. It can lower the nutritional value of food. It can also be loaded with unhealthy additions, which include preservatives, sodium and added sugar. Those are the true culprits of processed food, so reading the label is imperative.
If you’re using my ap or working out with me in Houston, TX, you know I highly recommend a program of healthy eating. Weight loss and fitness starts in the kitchen, which is why I made it easy for you with the weekly menu and shopping list ap. I’ve had several people follow the plan and ask what the best day to meal prep is. That’s one thing that’s so great about the program. You get to choose. It should be a day when you can have time to stay home and don’t have to go to work.
You don’t have to live in Houston, TX, to realize there’s food with added sugar everywhere you look. If you want to quit sugar for good, it becomes pretty difficult. Not only is added sugar in the vast majority of food we eat, it’s also quite addictive. It stimulates the reward center of the brain, like an opioid, releasing dopamine that makes us feel good. While it’s not physically addictive like an opioid, it’s emotionally addictive because it makes you feel good. Think about the times you grabbed a sweet because you felt bad emotionally. That’s what is meant by emotionally addictive.
What is accountability? There are a lot of definitions, but they all boil down to someone holding you personally responsible for your actions. When you work with a personal trainer, he or she tracks your progress when you exercise and measures and records your success. The trainer knows your goals and what you should be achieving, so if you don’t meet them, either you didn’t follow the path or there needs to be changes in how you reach those goals. Someone who has to meet a trainer at a gym or report to a trainer is being held accountable for his or her actions.
If you’ve heard about the latest miracle diet called intermittent fasting, don’t just toss the idea away as another fad. There is some scientific proof that intermittent fasting may be good for your health and also some logic that says it might be a good way to shed those extra pounds. The studies were animal studies. For a long time, scientists have known that calorie restriction could make rats stay younger longer. However, more recently they found that there was more to the story.
One client in Houston, TX, asked me whether she needed a preworkout. When I said that it all depended on her situation, she looked puzzled. She thought a preworkout was a warm-up, which is important for every person that exercises. I reassured her that a preworkout was a drink or other type of supplement taking before starting a workout and that there were reasons to take them and also reasons they’re unnecessary.