Hormones play a crucial role in everything from mood to brain function, and now, many are learning they also play a role in weight loss.
For many years, much of the science around health performance and cutting-edge nutritional trends, such as intermittent fasting, was centered around male biology. But research is beginning to show that, due to hormones, what works for men may not work for women.
What Makes Weight Loss Different for Women?
As Stacy Sims, exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist, says: Women are not small men. Their inherent biological and chemical makeup insists that women adapt fitness and nutrition programs to meet their unique requirements at different phases of their lives.
“We know from research that women do better in a fed state [before exercise] regardless of age just because our morphology is different and our metabolism is different for exercise,” Ms. Sims said in a podcast with athlete Gabby Reece.
The Impact of Fad Diets and Weight-Loss Drugs
Women have been trying to crack the code to easy and permanent weight loss for decades, with varying degrees of success. Diet trends, including restricting calories, eating diets high or low in fat, and intermittent fasting, have all promised to be the key to weight loss for women.
Still, despite following all the latest protocols, many women, particularly those over 40, struggle with shedding extra pounds. In a last-ditch effort to drop them, some have resorted to pharmaceuticals such as Ozempic, a diabetes medication, and Wegovy, a drug used for chronic weight management and weight-related conditions. However, despite the efficacy of semaglutide, the active ingredient in these drugs, users often experience unpleasant side effects. In addition, many people discover that to sustain a lower weight, they must continue to take injections or else gain the weight back.
Both of these drugs help people lose weight because of a hormone known as GLP-1, which regulates insulin secretion to control blood sugar levels. It is also the hormone that signals to your brain that you are full, encouraging you to stop eating.
Filling the Gap in Female Health
Historically, conventional medicine was not set up to address the specific dietary and training needs of women and their hormonal fluctuations, both monthly and throughout their life span.
Dr. Sara Gottfried, a Harvard-trained researcher and author specializing in hormone balancing, recounted her experience with her general practitioner to podcast host Dhru Purohit. At the time, she lamented that she could not lose the baby weight after her second child. Her doctor told her to exercise more and eat less. He also suggested birth control pills and antidepressants. She was already running four miles a day, four times a week, a high-intensity cardio workout that has been shown to increase cortisol levels.
Increased cortisol levels are a response to increased stress, whether exercise-induced or otherwise. This is not necessarily bad, as it produces an adaptive growth response in the body. However, excess cortisol results in weight gain in an area where many women try to lose it: the belly.
Dr. Gottfried said cortisol, estrogen, and progesterone are key hormones to analyze when creating a weight-loss program.
Often, once women learn how to regulate their hormones through proper exercise, nutrition, and some supplementation, they also find that in addition to losing weight, their mood stabilizes, their energy increases, and they sleep better.
Accounting for Monthly Fluctuations
Each phase of the menstrual cycle, in which women’s hormones fluctuate, affects energy levels and metabolism differently.
During menstruation, estrogen and progesterone drop, which can lower energy levels.
In this phase, women have a metabolism more similar to men, and it is essential for women to ensure they eat before any activity, Ms. Sims said.
“It doesn’t have to be massive. Something to bring blood sugar up and signal to the brain that there is nutrition available to withstand the stress,” she added.
Low-intensity cardio exercise—such as walking, casually biking, or engaging in pilates and yoga—does not increase cortisol levels like high-intensity exercise, making it beneficial during this phase of a woman’s cycle.
Boosting Protein and Strengthening Muscles
Progesterone increases during the ovulation phase of the menstrual cycle, preparing a woman’s body for a potential pregnancy. Protein is especially important during this phase, according to Ms. Sims.
“Progesterone is catabolic,” Ms. Sims said. “It breaks down everything, so if we’re trying to build lean mass or recover from injury, we need to dose our protein.”
Ms. Sims suggests 30 grams of high-quality leucine-based protein for premenopausal women within 30 to 45 minutes after exercise. Leucine is a branched-chain amino acid that helps build and repair muscles and can be found in foods such as eggs, tuna, firm tofu, and pumpkin seeds.
As women move into perimenopause and postmenopause, they become more anabolic-resistant, meaning it takes more amino acids or protein to stimulate the same amount of muscle protein synthesis. Ms. Sims suggests closer to 40 grams of protein after exercise for women in this phase of life, with regular protein intake at each meal.
For many women, this may seem like more food than they are used to eating, particularly after having been told for years that eating less and exercising more is the key to losing weight. Getting over the mental block of increasing calories, as well as lifting heavier weights, can be a challenge. However, it is necessary if women want to not only stay lean but also healthy overall as they age.Maintaining healthy muscle mass is vital to weight loss, as is maintenance.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, a functional medicine practitioner specializing in nutrition and muscle health, insists that most people “are not over fat but under muscled.”
In her nutrition guide, she writes, “Muscle is the foundation of your metabolism, helping to regulate blood sugar and blood lipids … The stronger and healthier your muscles, the more carbohydrates and fat your body burns.”
To reflect this, doctors specializing in hormone balance often recommend consistent weight training for women.
Balancing Hormones Ahead of Menopause
Hormonal changes can happen incrementally over time, and even women in their mid-to-late 30s can begin to make lifestyle changes to manage these fluctuations.
This includes maintaining the proper balance between estrogen and progesterone throughout their life. “An excess of estrogen or estrogen dominance (an unbalanced ratio between estrogen and progesterone) has been shown to result in PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), weight gain, and even breast cancer,” Kitty Martone, holistic health practitioner and CEO of Ona’s Natural, a company that provides bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, told The Epoch Times.
Estrogen is mitogenic, meaning its action is growth. It needs a regulator, Ms. Martone said, to keep it from randomly proliferating. That regulator is progesterone.
Sufficient fiber intake is another way to ensure excess estrogen gets flushed through the body.
Dr. Gottfried wants women to consider their hormones way before the first signs of perimenopause and menopause and start preparing for it earlier than they do. “This is where lifestyle becomes so important,” she told Mr. Purohit. “The way you eat, move, think, your sense of purpose and meaning, your connections. All of those map to your experience of menopause.”
Jennifer Galardi spent decades as a health and wellness expert before receiving a masters in Public Policy from Pepperdine University. She writes about health, culture, and policy and her work can be seen in The New York Sun, The Blaze, and The American Spectator, along with countless health outlets.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/the-missing-link-to-womens-weight-loss-hormones-5575851
