Top 6 Hormone Imbalances that Cause Fatigue & Weight Gain
When most people think of weight gain, they naturally lean towards believing it’s a food or exercise issue.
While both of these definitely play key roles in our overall health and vitality, they’re not the complete the answer.
If we peel back the onion and go a bit deeper, our hormones and the level in which they’re balanced inside of our unique bodies, is a major underlying factor to our energy and overall body composition.
There’s also the genetics that one inherits from their parents, the physical environment in which they live, as well as the overall quality of the foods in which they eat; all of these are important factors that put together the pieces of our truly most prized possession, that being ourselves.
It took many many past years of yoyo battles with my own weight for me to finally awaken to this new paradigm. I had tried a multitude of different diets (including keto, vegan, vegetarian, raw foods, and paleo), and a ton of physical exercises (including HIIT, heavy weight lifting, running two marathons, calisthenics, basketball, and yoga), only to realize none of them were the complete answer.
Underneath all this experimenting was the 100-pound elephant in the room; my hormones and how were they responding to the nutrition and exercise plans I was doing at the current time.
Sometimes our bodies are in a position where they can handle intense exercise, while at others it craves more gentler forms of physical activity.
The same goes for food.
Sometimes our bodies may require animal foods to thrive, while at other points a lighter or more plant based nutritional plan (notice I didn’t say diet) is what we need.
The word diet in itself can elicit a range of emotions from many different people. It can cause inner resistance, fear, or frustration to build.
I know because I’ve been there.
“What’s your diet?”
“Have you tried the (insert one of the 2 million diets)diet, it’s the best!?”
“I can’t eat that, I’m on a diet.”
If I were granted two wishes in the whole wide world, they’d be to remove these two words:
Can’t
Diet
Ok maybe I’m over exaggerating just a tad bit on them really being my top two, but I think you get my drift.
Let’s replace the word “can’t” with “choose” and “diet” with“nutritional plan.”
Ahhhhh, I just took a nice long sigh.
All right let’s get back to the original premise of this article, which is to highlight the top six hormonal imbalances that cause weight gain and decreased energy 😄
1. Testosterone
We’re all familiar with testosterone and what it is equated to.
Big strong muscles, a lower body fat percentage, and a deeper voice with men (or impressive facial beard game).
In men it is the primary sex hormone.
It’s at its peak around the ages of 18 or 19 years old, then begins to subsequently decline each year after that.
Once we hit the early to mid 30s, how we’ve nourished ourselves and managed stress, plays a significant role in the range of our levels.
Some natural testosterone enhancers are:
Getting good sleep
Eating a “nutritional plan” high in healthy fats(think avocados, coconut and olive oil)
Lower body exercises (think squatting)
High Intensity Interval Training (think sprints or intense fast paced exercise)
However it’s very important to listen to your body on the last two.
If you’re in a place where your sleep is off and nutrition isn’t on point, there’s no point in adding more stress to the body from intense exercise. You’d be better off leaning towards activities like yoga, light jogging, or walking in order to promote more body awareness and positive cellular activation.
2. Estrogen
Have you ever heard of the term estrogen dominant?
This is a state when estrogen levels are too high in the body, which naturally causes a decrease in the bodies’ testosterone levels.
I think we all know that estrogen is the primary female hormone, which in conjunction with progesterone, are the catalyst for reproducing us beautiful humans.
However when estrogen is produced in excess for prolonged periods of time, it causes weight gain, moodiness, and decreases in energy.
Both us men and women carry estrogen, just like we both carry testosterone too.
However the healthy balance of these hormones for each gender is uniquely different and plays a key role in not only our body composition, but also our ability to effectively manage our weight.
Different aspects that can induce estrogen dominance are prolonged stress, consuming too much alcohol (especially beer), or consuming too many carbohydrates and not enough healthy fats.
3. Insulin
The shortest and most suffice way to describe insulin is to say that we produce it ANYTIME we eat sugar.
Alright, got it?
Cool, let’s move on.
All kidding aside, insulin is produced by the pancreas and is one of the absolute (huge emphasis on absolute) reasons why the UnitedStates is the most obese developed country in the world.
We eat wayyyyy too much sugar. Much more than our bodies naturally need.
I know I know…. sugar is amazing!
It provides us energy and makes us happy, and our brains couldn’t operate with out.
While I get it, that statement isn’t entirely 100% true.
We as a society can operate just fine without sugar.
We just “choose” in more cases to heavily rely on it, primarily for three reasons:
It’s cheap
It’s highly addictive
It increases dopamine in the brain
Dopamine is our brains feel good hormone and each time we eat sugar it gives us a nice little spike of it.
This is sugar in all forms too.
Most people aren’t aware that sugar and carbohydrates are synonymous.
Both are processed by the body the exact same way. They release into the blood stream quicker than protein or fat enriched foods, and the body feels it too.
Think of how naturally good, or maybe even high you feel when eating something like ice cream.
Hmm, my mouth is starting to water a bit just thinking about.
A nice scoop (or pint in my case) of vanilla ice cream with little bits of chocolate, banana slices, some whipped cream, presented with a cherry on top.
When consuming something similar to this, your body releases so much insulin (and dopamine) to the point that you may even want to suck your thumb and go to sleep afterwards.
No really, it feels that good in the moment.
But just like in the law of physics; what must go up, must always come down.
Within an hour or two your blood sugar naturally drops and you all you want to do is close your eyes and hug the nearest pillow.
Is there anything wrong with this picture?
No.
However if you’re holding onto more weight than you feel is healthy for you and your energy is inconsistent and comes in waves, then it may be best to consider creating a new foundational habit around it.
4. Cortisol
Cortisol is produced by our adrenal glands and is the bodies main stress hormone. We're all born with two of them (each sitting directly on top of our kidneys) and they are as small as a walnut, while also weighing less than a grape.
Kinda surreal to imagine, but these two miniature glands are directly responsible for regulating ALL the stress in our bodies.
Meaning we produce it any and every time the body is triggered by a stress response.
Here’s the most fascinating (or frightening) thing about this (depending on how you look at it), its production can be induced by stressors on the mental, physical, emotional, and even spiritual level.
So if we’re constantly rooted in negative thoughts or self-talk, that produces cortisol.
If we eat foods that are highly processed or that we’re sensitive too, that produces cortisol.
When we exercise, we produce cortisol.
If we feel anger towards a friend or suppress our deepest emotions, we produce cortisol.
If we feel stressed from feeling stuck or with no sense of direction, rather that be in our careers or in our spiritual compass, we produce cortisol.
Now I don’t want to add any additional cortisol to your lives with those statements, but do you see how important this hormone and how we regulate it is to our overall health?
Low-level stress, when it goes unchecked, develops into mid-level stress, which then transitions into high-level chronic stress.
And when the adrenals are overstressed, they become exhausted (you can read an older blog where I talked about that at length here).
When we’re stressed, the body on a physiological level feels like it’s being attacked.
It goes into defensive mode where it slows down digestion, increases ones heart rate, and can also make us more prone to underlying anxiety.
Here’s the thing, this process doesn’t happen over night.
It builds and builds and builds over time, for several months or years, until we reach a point where this single hormone throws off our ability to effectively produce all other hormones.
Pretty wild when you think about it right?
This one hormone, cortisol, when off balance, affects EVERY other hormone in body.
Which can naturally lead to uncontrollable weight gain, decreases in energy, as well as poor memory and overall brain function.
5. Leptin
Leptin is a hormone produced by our adipose (fat cells)tissue that’s primary responsibility is to decrease our appetite.
Think of it as the natural “appetite suppressor.”
No need to take or buy any exogenous supplements, as every human carries it.
When this hormone is operating efficiently, we feel full and satiated when we eat and can go longer of periods of time without food.
However when it’s out of wack, we can have this underlying feeling of always being hungry.
No matter how much we eat, our body will continue to crave more and more food.
The issue is that this doesn’t stop.
It can make one believe they don’t have enough willpower when it comes to their ever-increasing appetite, however it could truly be a leptin issue instead.
The more fat cells or body weight we carry, the higher our leptin levels.
This means the heavier we are, naturally the more we’re going to on physiological level be enticed to eat.
The leaner we are, the less leptin we carry in the body, therefore reducing the amount of food cravings we have.
6. Ghrelin
If leptin is the “appetite suppressor” hormone, then ghrelin is the “appetite increaser.”
This hormone is also more abundantly carried in individuals who have higher body fat.
This blew my mind when I first came across these two hormones years ago, ghrelin and leptin, as I had never heard of them before.
Like many others, I simply didn’t have an awareness of not only their importance, but also the vital necessity in regulating them too.
I compare ghrelin to the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street.
The Cookie Monster devours food, all day. He was always hungry and no matter what, never turned down any food.
Kinda funny, slightly sad, but informative either way.
Ghrelin is released in the stomach and sends a signal to the brain that you’re hungry.
This process can be an insidious cycle that effects many people for their entire lives without them having any clue as to the why.
I know that was me for many years. Especially when I was almost 60 pounds heavier (like in the featured pic of this blog) and really had a poor relationship to food and my body in general.
My experience has shown me that our lives are meant to be lived from an energetic, creative, and confident state.
As we can truly only show up for others, to the degree in which we show up for ourselves.
When our health, body image, and hormones are operating at a pristine level, we’re naturally able to tap into a more authentic version of ourselves, leading to a happier and more fulfilling life.
However when they’re not, it can feel like a never-ending treadmill of going in a direction that leads us to a place that we truly don’t aspire to be.
A chronic place where we find ourselves operating from a more stressed out and survival way of being, rather than the highly creative and joy inducing state that expands us.
With Love,
Brandon