Are my hormones making me fat?
We can’t begin to tell you how many times women come into our office asking this exact question! While hormones can lead to weight gain and weight retention, hormones are downstream, which means that something else is likely causing the imbalance in your body that’s ultimately leading to hormone dysfunction. But let’s talk through this topic more to help you determine more of what’s going on in your body and if working with us to correct imbalances might be the next best step for you!
(Disclaimer: none of this information is intended to be medical advice; please consult your doctor for all medical advice and recommendations)
Let’s take a deeper dive into how women’s hormones affect overall health and why you might not be losing that stubborn body fat. Did you know? Women’s hormones are changing constantly throughout the month. They help regulate not only our cycle but also our mood, appetite, and sleep.
When hormones are balanced, the cells in the body can do their job and function properly. But what happens when we add toxic stress, high amounts of sugar, environmental toxins, and sedentary habits into the mix? These lifestyle choices are all a perfect storm for hormones to become imbalanced and cause the cells in our body to not function properly. Unfortunately, as many as 80% of women suffer from hormone imbalances, which means hormonal imbalance is a fairly common concern.
So, let’s take back our health by understanding our hormones and why they are causing weight gain.
To support healing in the whole person – the mind, body, and soul – we have to get to the root cause of the problem. The first thing to consider when addressing your hormones is the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol is the foundation for balanced hormones. The role of cortisol in the body is to regulate the metabolism of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats as well as control inflammation in the body. It is normal to have stress in your life, but if it is constant, ongoing stress, this can lead to high levels of cortisol in the body.
When we experience stress, our brain will send signals to the adrenal glands to produce fight-or-flight hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones are a survival mechanism that helps us react quickly to threatening situations. Adrenaline increases heart rate and blood pressure, while cortisol increases glucose in the bloodstream so it is readily available. Once that threatening situation is over, we should go back to more of a rest and digest state.
Cortisol and adrenaline hormone production decreases and your body can go back to its normal state. But if your body is exposed to constant stress, the flight or flight hormones are being stimulated. Having prolonged fight-or-flight hormones in the body will disrupt many functions in the body. For example, the immune system won’t function properly, and these hormones suppress the digestive system, reproductive system, and growth processes.
High levels of cortisol also have several negative effects:
- High levels of cortisol lead to elevated estrogen – We know that elevated estrogen levels send signals to the body to store fat. We have nerves that go from our brain to our fat cells that are in communication. If we are stressed, our fat cells know it. Instead of using fat as fuel, our brain thinks we need to start storing fat, but in reality, our nerves cannot tell the difference between work, stress, and getting chased by a tiger.
- High levels of cortisol lead to poor function of the digestive system- High levels of cortisol compromise digestion in the gut. When we are under stress, we decrease the flow of blood and oxygen to the stomach. We see irritation and inflammation throughout the digestive tract because it is not able to balance the good and bad bacteria.
- High levels of cortisol affect the immune system. For acute stress, cortisol is needed to reduce inflammation in the body. But with chronic stress, it becomes less effective in managing inflammation which leads to our immune system not functioning properly. That is why we can see people get sick right after a stressful event.
Cortisol is foundational to balancing other hormones like the hormones produced by the thyroid as well as sex hormones like estrogen, and progesterone. We call this the hormone hierarchy.
The hormone hierarchy consists of tiers that we have to work on before we move to the next one. Cortisol is the first tier that needs to be addressed before we can work on higher tiers like our thyroid and sex hormones.
Estrogen and progesterone are two hormones in women that can have an impact on weight gain. Estrogen is the sex hormone produced not only in the ovaries but in the adrenals and fat cells. Progesterone is the hormone that supports women’s menstrual cycles and helps at the beginning of pregnancy. We want to have a healthy ratio of estrogen and progesterone in our body. We are seeing more cases of estrogen-dominant women. Estrogen-dominance is as it sounds, someone who has a high estrogen to low progesterone ratio. Many factors can cause someone to be estrogen-dominant.
- Chronic stress
- Consuming a lot of sugar and starchy foods
- Environmental toxins (Xenoestrogens)
- Excessive alcohol consumption
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Unhealthy gut microbiome
- Increase in visceral (stomach) fat
Estrogen-dominance is imperative to understanding why your hormones are making you fat. The more estrogen we have, the more the body stores fat. The more fat we have stored, the more that fat can produce estrogen. It is a vicious cycle that needs to be broken. To break the cycle we need to live a healthy lifestyle, but it is a targeted approach aimed at rebalancing hormones.
At Mitchell Holistic Health, living a healthy lifestyle consists of working on the mind, body, and soul. We strive to heal the pain you may have been experiencing for far too long. One of the best things we can do for our clients is support them in rebuilding a custom lifestyle to reclaim their health.
If you are someone who has tried everything from exercising to different diet plans but you still aren’t losing the weight, hormones could be the culprit. Stop in to see one of our Functional Medicine Practitioners to learn if your hormones might be out of balance and need some extra support!