7 min. Read

Hey you Gorgeous Curvy Women!  

Hormones and Weight Gain. I know that losing weight isn’t easy…but I found hormones had a direct effect on my weight gain, metabolism, stress, and mood swings.  Diet after diet failed, strenuous exercise programs failed, health products helped some, but didn’t solve my problem.  When I learned how my hormones were effecting my body and how to lose weight my health journey turned around.     

If you are:

• a woman that is tired and stressed out  

• need a plan not centered on exercise

• feel controlled by your emotions

• struggle with losing weight

• constantly overeating even when you don’t want to

• have a sweet tooth that wont quit

• want to figure out what is stopping you and holding you back from having a body you feel confident in…

Then this article is for you! 

I get it!  I have struggled with losing weight most of my life!  

As a tired stressed out mom, I have spent years dieting and doing all the right things at least to the best of my ability. 

I have tried so many diets.  Counting calories, Weight Watchers, Lowish Carb, Keto, Whole 30, Paleo, Clean Eating, The Venus Diet… I’m sure even more than that. 

The journey through all of those taught me so much about my body.  I could tell some things weren’t effective, and other worked great.

It was terribly frustrating to never see long term progress. 

So as I became a health coach I learned more about my hormones, my habits, and looking at my weight loss and health as a complete mind, body and soul approach which is what I blog about here. 

All the key things I have learned that have helped me. 

Here is the thing…

Even with habit change and clean eating, I still found the last 50 pounds hard to shed.  I hit a nice plateau after my 30+ pound weight loss. 

That is when I started looking at my hormones and the effect they had on my body because I was already doing all the right things.

Most of the time I…

• Eat organic veggies, beans and grains (if the budget that week allows)
• Eat Grass Fed Beef (This is an always for us.  We prioritize this.)
• I honor my hunger.  I rarely eat when I am not hungry. This took time, but with body awareness I have learned this.
• I honor my fullness.  Practicing 20 minute meals helped me to stop overeating.  (Get my guide on the 20 minute meal here, with my freebie, “How to Lose Weight When Nothing Else Works”)
• I was doing yoga and moving my body and most days getting 10K steps.
• I was meditating, visualizing, praying and getting self care time in.  Well as much as I could being a mom of two boys that works full time and blogs on the side.  But I really tried.  I could tell my stress level was significantly lower.  I was happier and not as moody. 
• I was drinking my water.  I even reduced my coffee and replaced it with warm lemon water in the mornings to start off.  I would still have coffee, but first warm lemon water to nourish my body at the start of the day.

I felt like I was doing it all.  What else could I do?  That’s when I started learning about hormones and weight gain, specifically about insulin resistance with Dr. Fung’s The Obesity Code.

It was like reading about myself. 

Why it Matters

Why is this critically important? Because understanding how insulin resistance effects you will help you figure out  what to do about it.

Imagine insulin as your friendly neighborhood mailman.  After each meal he delivers your mail.  When your muscles, brain and blood cells are healthy and not overloaded from years of overeating sugar and refined carbs, then the insulin “mail” gets routinely delivered.  

But what happens when the mail box is full from years and years of the modern diet (sugar and processed carbs) out cells become resistant to storing the insulin.  The cells or mail box is already completely stuffed full of the glucose that is produced form too much insulin.  So when the mail box is full the insulin is then shipped of to the fat cells that are happy to have it.  Hello muffin top!!! 

The knee jerk response for most of us after learning this is to avoid all carbs and sugar.  Yes, that can help with weight loss.  It can be a sticky balance to find what is right for your body.  That’s where working with a health coach can help.  I do exactly that for my clients.  Help them figure out what their body needs.  

Generally, I would suggest to start with detoxing from the sugar and carbs for a while.  If you are obese like I was, then I would also experiment with some intermittent fasting.  This will really help lower the insulin levels and use up the fat stores. 

For a more detail plan and help with a figuring out what would work for your body when nothing else seems to be working.  Join my Uncovering Weight Loss Resistance Online Master Class.  It is an go at your own pace training that will help you go through a 30 day detox, and set you up for a kick start on your total transformation.  It’s the ideal set up for someone that doesn’t have a one on one coach to help them through the process.