Many people who struggle to lose weight may find that an imbalance in their hormones may be the cause.
While it has been documented that there are conditions where a hormonal imbalance may have a negative impact on the metabolism many physicians insist that such conditions only affect a small percentage of the obese population and that most overweight people simply eat too much and/or exercise too little.
However, when one investigates how hormones work and the effect that our food sources and environment have on them, hormones would appear to have a greater impact than has been commonly accepted.
Hormones are powerful chemical messengers that cause certain changes in the body, which can affect the way food is processed and stored as body fat. The balance of our hormones will change from day to day and even hour to hour and has a great impact on our mood, metabolism and energy levels.
Everything we do and everything we eat affects our hormones. For example, when males become less active there is often a gradual decline in the testosterone hormone within the blood. Since testosterone is a metabolism booster and helps maintain lower fat levels, a decline in this hormone may cause fat gain in males.
For women, their diet and stress levels may cause decreased levels of progesterone causing estrogen levels to dominate and making the body more likely to hold onto fat.
A healthy diet high in fiber, protein and healthy fat levels along with regular activity will keep hormone levels more regular and make losing weight and keeping it off more attainable. Because our food supplies have been tainted with excess estrogen, it is sometimes necessary to supplement the hormones.
According to Dr. John Lee, MD, around 50% of women over 30 are producing ZERO progesterone. This would explain why women are more likely than men to be severely overweight. In these cases it is necessary to supplement the body with a bio-identical progesterone cream (not the unnatural drug progestin which can make matters worse).
Basically our hormones can make a big difference to the outcome of our physical health and contribute to weight gain and difficulty losing weight. Instead of our hormones working against us we can make small changes that will help them work in our favor.
For our hormones to work for us, we need to give the body the foods and activity levels it needs, take steps to reduce stress and get enough sleep.
