Fats and Hormones

Do you find yourself constantly craving sugar, lacking energy, never feeling satisfied after meal or struggling to lose weight even though you’re in the gym 5 days a week and restricting your calories as much as possible? Do you find that your mood is all over the place? You experience bad PMS, constantly feel stressed and anxious and possibly not have a regular period or any period at all?

Then it’s time to assess the amount of fats you are having in your diet. By fats, I don’t mean deep fried food, I mean good quality fats like nuts and seeds, avocado, olive oil, oily fish and eggs.

Following a low fat diet is a hugeeee diet mistake. We need good fats in our diet to assist with hormone production and function. Without it, we place unwanted stress on our bodies leading to hormonal imbalances, an increase in our stress hormone, cortisol, and we are unable to send a signal to the brain to say we are full at each meal.

Ideally, we should incorporate some kind of fat at each meal. By doing so, it helps to balance our blood sugar levels, releases a hormone called leptin that notifies the brain we are full, provides a slow release of energy and creates the building blocks for hormones like estrogen, testosterone and progesterone.

Why is this important? It’s important to stabilise all of these biochemical pathways in the body to reduce inflammation, stress levels, minimise androgens and to have you feeling fuller for longer without over eating. Once the body is able to do this, we will see a decrease in hormonal acne breakouts, increase in energy and mood, decrease in weight, reduced PMS symptoms, stabilised blood sugar levels and cortisol levels and even a regular period.

Some of my favourite ways to boost the fat content in meals and snacks are:

• Adding ground flaxseed to smoothies or a bowl of oats

• Chia seeds in yoghurt

• Nuts and seeds in salads

• Peanut butter on apple slices

Incorporate this into your diet and see what affects it has on your body.

Feeling like your needing some extra help with balancing your hormones? Email latoya@thevirtualnutritionist.com.au to find out how I can help you.

Latoya