7 Great Diet Tips for Hormonal Imbalance

What Are Hormones?

Your hormones can influence every aspect of your wellbeing, including your physical, mental, and emotional health. Hormones impact mood, weight, appetite, energy levels, and much, much more. 

There are many steps you can take to maintain a natural hormone balance, but one of the most important is to ensure you eat a diet that promotes regular hormone production.

So, what are hormones? Hormones are molecules usually described as chemical messengers or signal molecules. They are secreted from your endocrine glands into your bloodstream, where they are then carried to your organs and other parts of your body.

Healthy Hormones

In other words, hormones help organs and tissues in your body communicate, while influencing both physiological regulation, such as digestion and metabolism, and behavioural activities, such as mood, stress, and sleep.

Imbalanced hormones can affect you in a range of different ways. You might put on or lose weight, you might feel depressed or anxious, and you can feel fatigued. Low libido, irregular periods, digestive issues, and poor skin are other potential indicators of hormonal imbalance.

Diet for Hormonal Imbalance

Are you wondering how to balance your hormones, or do you want to know what you can do to fix hormonal imbalance? For many people, a key part of keeping hormones balanced is to eat a healthy diet. Here are seven tips to help you refine your diet in a way that promotes hormone balance.

How To Balance Hormones

Whether you want to be happy again, to have a higher libido, to feel less anxious, or for any other reason related to your hormones, the seven tips below will help you create recipes and a diet for hormone balance.

1. Eat enough protein every day – there are amino acids that your body needs, but it can't make on its own. It gets these amino acids from protein. Eating protein can also help control your appetite and increase your metabolism. So, protein should be a key part of your diet. Ideally, you should eat protein-rich foods with every meal.
2. Eat three meals a day and diet sensibly – skipping meals, drastically reducing calorie intake, and focusing heavily on counting calories are all things that can throw your hormones out of kilter. To stay healthy and to keep your hormones balanced, you should focus on cutting portion sizes rather than counting calories, and you need to eat three meals each day.
3. Carbohydrates are okay, but refined carbohydrates and sugar are not – sugar and refined carbohydrates impact your health in a range of different ways, including hormone balance. So, the diet you create for hormonal imbalance should drastically cut back or completely eliminate refined carbs and foods with added sugar.
4. Eat organic foods – pesticides can disrupt your hormones, so eating organic foods can help. It's also best if you eat organic meat, milk, cheese, etc, as they will be free from the growth hormones that are often given to farmed animals.
5. Eat healthy fats – instead of reducing all fats in your diet, make sure you are eating healthy fats. Examples include flax seeds, eggs, soybeans, walnuts, and fish. However, you should avoid partially hydrogenated fats and trans-fats.
6. Eat plenty of vegetables every day – most advice on how to balance hormones naturally includes eating plenty of vegetables. Broccoli, leafy greens, and root vegetables are particularly beneficial.
7. Eat fibre-rich foods daily - fibre is important to all healthy diets, but it plays a role in hormone balance too.

How to Balance Hormones to Lose Weight

Many people want to know how to balance hormones in order to lose weight. Many of the tips above will help, including reducing sugar, refined carbohydrates, and partially hydrogenated fats. Eating more fibre and vegetables can help too.

Other steps you can take to achieve hormonal balance with the specific goal of losing weight include:

• Drink green tea as it can reduce blood sugar levels.
• Get enough sleep each night to maintain leptin, a hormone that reduces your appetite by making you feel full.
• Meditate and do other things to manage stress levels as stress produces a hormone called cortisol, which can lead to overeating.
• Exercise regularly, particularly if you are a woman, as exercise can help to normalise estrogen levels. This is important as you can gain weight if your estrogen levels are too high or too low.

How to Balance Hormones for Overall Wellbeing

Sometimes the answer to the question of how to balance your hormones is to seek professional advice and guidance, particularly if you are suffering from a medical condition. A qualified and experienced professional will be able to determine the main causes of your hormonal imbalance by using a quiz and asking you questions.

You may also need hormone balance supplements like magnesium, aloe, glutamine, and curcumin. Vitamins A and D can also help to balance hormones.

When it comes to diet, though, there is nothing strange or radical about diets that promote hormonal balance. Essentially it involves eating a balanced diet that avoids refined carbohydrates, sugars, and trans-fats, replacing them with good carbohydrates, protein, healthy fats, and fibre-rich foods.

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