How to Fix Your Hormones and Lose Weight

Hey everyone. Welcome to my weekly house call. Your chance to ask me your questions. And today I want to talk about weight loss resistance. I've been getting a ton of questions about stubborn weight loss, especially from people who seem to be doing everything right like eating the right foods and exercising. Now I've talked about different reasons for weight loss resistance before and there are lots of things that have nothing to do with how much you eat are how much you exercise that makes it hard to lose weight. There's things like nutritional imbalances, chronic inflammation, problems with metabolism in your mitochondria, a leaky gut, changes in your microbiome, environmental toxins, genetics and all sorts of things. But today I want to talk about one of the number one reasons for weight loss resistance, hormonal imbalances. Now, the biggest hormone that causes weight gain and disease is too much insulin. It's your fat cell fertilizer. My new book, Eat Fat, Get Thin is all about how to naturally regulate insulin to shift from fat storage to fat burning. Now there are lots of other hormones that are dynamically interacting every minute that affect your weight and your health. And the three biggest hormones that affect your weight are thyroid cortisol, which is your stress hormone, and your sex hormones. Now I've written a lot about these before in other books like the Blood Sugar Solution, but here's the Reader's Digest version of how to assess and treat imbalances in these three hormones that affect weight and metabolism. Alright, let's start with thyroid. Low thyroid hormone function affects 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men. And guess what? It's not diagnosed in over half the cases. In my ebook the Ultra Thyroid Solution, which I'll link to below, I explain how diet, nutritional deficiencies, stress, even environmental toxins impact your thyroid and how to address these problems. One of the most common causes of hypothyroidism or low thyroid function is gluten. It accounts for up to 30% of the autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid. That's called Hashimoto's. Now, pesticides and heavy metals, they can also interfere with thyroid function. And also your thyroid needs specific nutrients to run properly, including selenium, zinc, iodine and omega 3 fats. And also most docs, they don't test for thyroid function correctly, so they'll miss a lot of it. And once they find it, they don't actually treat it effectively by optimizing thyroid function through diet, supplements and the right thyroid hormone therapy. Well, here's a quick guide on how to assess and treat Your thyroid. First, do the right tests. Check something called TSH, free T3 and free T4, as well as thyroid antibodies, including TPO or thyroid peroxidase and antithyroglobulin antibodies. It's a mouthful, but it's all in my ebook. Now, some may need to take a special test called Rock Reverse T3 to learn if the thyroid hormone function is being blocked by something like heavy metals or pesticides or yeast or nutritional deficiencies like selenium, vitamin D or zinc. Reverse T3 is the brake on your thyroid hormone. It's kind of designed to stop your thyroid hormone from working at the right times, but it often increases in the face of things like toxins and inflammation. So if the reverse T3 is too high, even if your regular thyroid tests are normal, your thyroid's not working right. Second, eat right for your thyroid. Limit your intake of soybeans and raw kale and other cruciferous veggies. Not the cooked ones, but the raw ones, because they contain thyroid blocking compounds called goitrogens. I read a report in the New England Journal of Medicine about a woman who thought that bok choy was healthy. So she ate 2 pounds of raw bok choy every day and she went into a hypothyroid coma. Also, I want you to eat fish and seaweed for iodine. Now, that's what your thyroid hormones are made from. And since people are eating less iodized salt, many people are iodine deficient. Also enjoy pumpkin seeds and oysters because they have zinc and Brazil nuts which have selenium, because that's what's needed to convert T3, I mean T4 to T3, which is really important. Third, you should supplement for your thyroid. You can take a good multi and that should contain all the above things I said, like the iodine, selenium, zinc, you should take fish oil and you should take extra vitamin D. Now, some may benefit from extra iodine supplement, but be careful not to OD on that because they can mess up your thyroid. So get your iodine levels checked regularly. Also, replace with the right thyroid hormones. Most doctors just like to prescribe only T4, Synthroid or Levoxal, which is the inactive form of thyroid hormone. And then your body has to convert that to T3, which is the active form. Now, most people do better when you combine the bioidentical hormones together, like a combination of T3 or T4. That could be Armour, Westeroid, Nature throid or compounded thyroid. This has to be done with a personalized prescription from your doctor who understands how to properly balance your thyroid. Okay, that was all about the thyroid. Let's talk about the other main hormone that causes weight loss resistance called cortisol. That's the stress hormone. You actually can think yourself thin or fat, depending on your thoughts. The science is actually there. Stress and stressful thoughts activate metabolic pathways that cause weight gain and insulin resistance. I once had a patient whose daughter lived in Israel and she gained 40 pounds. And as soon as she moved back, when all the bombing stopped, she lost 40 pounds. Any form of meditation or yoga or deep relaxation activates pathways that promote weight loss and promote health. Remember, stress is not real. It's a perception. Stress is defined as the perception of a real or imagined threat to your body or your ego. So it could be somebody putting a gun to your head or a thought that your boss is mad at you, even if they aren't. I mean, think about the response of James Bond to a gun or Woody Allen to a gun. Same gun, different response. That's what I'm talking about. The key here is that you shouldn't believe every stupid thought you have. You should also learn the skills of active relaxation and also techniques to kind of discharge stress from your body. Most of us don't know how to do that. And for most of us, our stress is not real. It's not somebody chasing us or a gun or a physical danger. It's a worry, a thought, a fear. Our projection of the future, of what might go wrong. There are real stressors that we all experience, but they're often short lived. So the problem is that we carry them with us for a whole long time and we don't know how to reset. Now, if you survive trauma, whether it's physical trauma or abuse or war, it actually can still live in your body even after the original stressor is gone. It's called ptsd. So stress causes a whole set of hormonal responses in the body that cause real weight gain and insulin resistance. Cortisol is an adrenal hormone. It helps you run faster, it helps you see further, it helps you hear better. It pumps fuel in your bloodstream for quick energy so you can run away from a tiger. It also shuts down your digestion and it slows your metabolism. Now unchecked, prolonged stress and high levels of cortisol, well, they cause all kinds of problems like high blood sugar, increased belly fat, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and even muscle loss. So here's a few simple ideas you can incorporate into your life to help reset your Stress response. First fix your thinking. This is the most powerful long term way to be happy and reduce stress. We often get into habits of thinking and beliefs and ideas that just keep us stressed. So don't believe every stupid thought you have. Also, practice active relaxation. It can be as simple as learning deep breathing or meditation or yoga. Also, you can take a sauna or a hot bath. These elevate the body temperature and they help discharge stress from the body and have been shown to help reduce stress hormones. Also make time to be a human being, not a human doing love and connect with your friends and family. Take time with your friends and family to love and be loved. It's powerful healing medicine. All right, let's talk now about sex hormones. For both men and women, sex hormones can cause weight issues. Too much estrogen causes weight gain whether you're a man or a woman. Did you ever know how they get the steer fattened up before market? These are male steer. They implant estrogen pellets in their ears for women and men. Guess what causes high estrogen? Too much sugar, too much refined carbs and alcohol spike estrogen because they increase fat in the tissues and estrogen is produced in your fat. And that's why you see men with beer bellies and man boobs. So keeping the gut healthy is also important for healthy hormone metabolism. And if you don't eat a fiber or if you have too many antibiotics, it can also damage the gut. That can lead to estrogen spikes in the body because it can't be properly excreted or detoxified. Also, environmental toxins like pesticides, they're also known as xenoestrogens or estrogen disruptors because they act like estrogen in the body even at very low doses. So symptoms of estrogen excess in women, they can include breast tenderness, fluid retention, bad PMS or premenstrual syndrome, fibroids, heavy menstrual bleeding. And in men, excess estrogen can cause loss of body hair, including your chest and your legs and your arms. You can get that beer belly, you can get man boobs. And men also are impacted by low testosterone because when you eat all that stuff, not only do you get high estrogen, but it lowers testosterone when you have more sugar and refined carbs. Aging, lack of exercise, alcohol, stress, environmental toxins, or all sorts of diseases like diabetes, even pituitary problems may all cause low levels of testosterone and low levels of testosterone in men. Guess what happens? They lose muscle, they gain body fat, and it kind of leads to sexual dysfunction and low sex drive. And fatigue and even mental fogginess. It also causes even bone loss that can have men get osteoporosis. Now most people don't know that their testosterone and other sex hormones are produced from cholesterol in their body. So eating a low fat diet and taking statin drugs that block cholesterol such as Lipitor, also can have negative consequences on their hormones. It's also important to get tested for hormonal imbalances. In my free ebook called how to Work with youh Doctor to Get what you need, which I'll also post below, I explain exactly how to test for hormone imbalances. But here's a few tips to get started. You want to eat a hormone imbalance balancing diet now the nutritional plan and Eat fat. Get thin is low in sugar. It's high in good fats, high in fiber all help balance hormones. My own Testosterone went up 500 points by eating more fat. Next, I want you to bulk up on fiber. Ground flaxseeds are great for men and for women and they're full of fiber and lignans which balance hormones. You can add 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseeds to your shake or a salad. Also, poop daily at least once because constipation is bad for your hormones. They get recirculated and you get increased estrogen. Take things like magnesium citrate, vitamin C, probiotics, flaxseeds. All these help maintain daily bowel movements. It's a foolproof combo for most people. Also limit and remove alcohol because alcohol also increases estrogen. And be sure to get moving because exercise helps balance the hormones and reduces estrogen. It increases testosterone and helps you lose fat and build muscle. So there you have it. These are the things you can do today to help rebalance your hormones and ignite weight loss. Now I want to hear from you. What have you done to balance your hormones? Comment below or on my Facebook page. And if you like this video, be sure to share with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter and submit your questions to drhyman.com so maybe next week I'll make a house call to you.