How Do Hormones Affect Weight Loss?

Personal/Fitness Training Blog

There is little doubt about it. Many of the hormones in your body are closely associated with its ability to store fat. This essentially makes it difficult for you to lose weight. Yet the relationship between the balance of your hormones and your weight loss ability, and maintain it, is far more intricate than simple fat-storage.

Each of the hormones in your body plays a crucial role in terms of your bodily functions. However, there are times in life when this balance might be upset. Through natural sources or through our diets and lifestyles, an imbalance in hormones can make it difficult to stay healthy, happy and enthusiastic.

If you have had no luck with weight loss in spite of exercising frequently, eating healthily and living well, then your problems might be the result of hormone imbalances. To give you a clearer picture of the interaction between weight loss and hormones, here is a little more about some of those bodily elments which are directly related to your ability to lose weight.

Oestrogen and Progesterone’s Role in Weight Loss

Although your oestrogen and progesterone levels will fluctuate throughout your life, oestrogen dominance is a common cause of difficulties with weight loss. Even if your oestrogen levels plummet after menopause, you can still be oestrogen dominant if this hormone is present in a higher ratio than progesterone in your body. When these two hormones are imbalanced, your body is more likely to store body fat, particularly around your mid-section.

Ensuring that your diet includes plenty of fibrous vegetables will help your body remove any excess oestrogen. Reducing your red meat, sugar and processed foods intake can go a long way towards helping level your hormones as well. Regular exercise promotes detoxification.

Cortisol

Cortisol helps your body deal with stress effectively. However, in the stressful environment of today’s world, most people tend to have excess cortisol in their bodies. This has been known to put you at risk of heart disease. It also leads to visceral fat being stored around internal organs, which often shows up as excessive belly fat.

Balancing cortisol can be done through diet and lifestyle. Plenty of meditation, stress management, exercise and supplements or foods that are high in B vitamins and magnesium will give you what you need to manage your cortisol levels and your stress.

Is Leptin Involved in Weight Loss?

Produced by your body’s fat cells, leptin is responsible for letting you know when you are full when you are eating. Modern diets which are rich in fructose often result in an excess of leptin (since fructose is stored as fat). This results in our bodies building a tolerance to the hormone, which means we become unable to feel satisfied after eating correctly, causing enduring hunger even after you have eaten.

Eating Omega 3-rich foods, taking supplements of the essential fatty acid and decreasing your fructose intake will help keep your leptin levels under control. Plenty of unbroken sleep also helps manage leptin levels. So, if you have been staying up too late, try making sleep a priority.

Call Trifocus Fitness Academy Today for More Information on Nutrition Courses

For more information on how your diet and lifestyle can completely transform the way you look and feel, contact a consultant from Trifocus Fitness Academy today to learn more about our Specialised Nutrition Course.