![]() |
Dr. Enrique Jacome |
Every day new patients come into my office wailing about their weight. They eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly and still can’t shed the pounds. What’s wrong with this picture?
Can you blame your hormones for those love handles? Can hormone replacement therapy help you lose weight.
In most cases, the answer is yes! Hormones control your metabolism and where you store your fat, and numerous studies prove the connection between hormones and weight loss. Extra weight on the hips, belly and thighs is often a sign of hormonal imbalance, such as a testosterone deficiency or a drop in female hormones like estrogen. And that can cause the scale to tip in the wrong direction.
While other factors such as low thyroid, insulin resistance, high blood sugar and cortisol levels, insufficient sleep and leptin resistance all affect weight loss, they are often related to hormonal imbalance itself and therefore keep many people trapped in a vicious circle.
Let me explain this further.
The body can’t maintain its normal systemic functions without proper hormonal balance. Simply relying on a crash diet when your hormones are out of balance means that your system cannot derive much benefit.
You can take all the best supplements and do all the exercises in the world and you still won’t lose weight. It’s like pouring high quality oil on a cracked engine; the car still isn’t going to run.
There needs to be more emphasis on the physiologic restoration that hormones provide rather than just the relief of menopausal symptoms since weight loss is a multifaceted issue and slow process. Maintaining a normal physiologic state by balancing the hormones will help to maximize your weight loss efforts.
There needs to be more emphasis on the physiologic restoration that hormones provide rather than just the relief of menopausal symptoms since weight loss is a multifaceted issue and slow process. Maintaining a normal physiologic state by balancing the hormones will help to maximize your weight loss efforts.
Don’t give up! With proper lifestyle changes, monitoring of your hormone levels and the use of precise doses of bio-identical hormones custom-compounded to suit your body’s specific needs, you can start to see the scale swing back to normal.
Here are 5 effective steps you can take right now to promote weight loss:
- Stick to a low-fat, low-carb diet with as much fresh food and produce as possible.
- Avoid refined sugars and starches and processed food
- Bump up your low-fat protein intake. Turkey, eggs, beans and shellfish are good choices.
- Find some time each day to exercise. Just 30 minutes a day in 10-minute spurts of high-intensit intervals will do wonders for your waistline and speed up the weight loss.
- Get a full night’s sleep. Studies show that proper rest is critical to maintain a healthy weight since the body produces metabolic hormones during sleep. Anything less than 7.5 hours per night can disrupt the hormones that affect your appetite and fat-burning capacity.
View our hormonal imbalance symptoms checklist at http://www.sottopelletherapy.com to see if you’re a candidate for hormone replacement therapy. Keep up your ongoing weight loss efforts and remember: You don’t have to live with it!