If you are constantly stressed, tired and feeling under the weather, you could be in a state of hormone imbalance. Our hormones play a huge role in how we feel mentally and physically, and directly affects our mood, how alert we are, our energy levels, hunger, how we sleep, and our ability to build muscle and lose fat.
1. Ensure Your Meals Contain Protein, Vegetables And Some Healthy Fats
To prevent metabolic slowdown from a loss of lean mass, it’s important to make sure that your meals contain a good serving of protein. Protein provides the building blocks necessary to rebuild muscle in our body, which is constantly in a state of breakdown and repair, as well as providing satiety and blood sugar regulation.
However, while protein is great, ultra lean protein such as egg whites can be difficult to handle by the gut which may affect absorption and digestion. In nature it’s rare to find ultra lean proteins, and even in plan proteins, fat is always there to go hand in hand. Further, adding vegetables ensure you get further satiation benefits as well aiding in digestion, so next time you eat, try to focus your meals around these 3 key areas.
3. Try To Minimise Refined Foods In Your Diet
It’s important to understand that one single food won’t dictate the quality of your diet. However, it’s common to see people have a diet of where a large portion of their calories come from refined and processed foods that often lead to deficiencies in nutrients, which can ultimately lead to hormone imbalance.
Refined foods rarely contain magnesium, vitamin B, and bioavailable zinc and iron, and is therefore key to ensure the majority of your diet is sourced from whole foods. Animal proteins also contain omega-3 fat DHA, creatine, vitamin B12, vitamin D and carnosine that is difficult to obtain from sources other than supplements.
It’s important to note that moderation is key, as with most things in life, and even things like artificial sugars that you might think is safe due to the lack of calories, can have the effect of disrupting the bacteria in your gut that can have domino effects you might not even know is causing!
4. Use Supplements To Fill Your Nutrient Gaps
While ideal to be getting all your micronutrient needs from foods, it sometimes is the case that you may need to supplement, and that’s no issue. Sometimes hormonal imbalances such as high cortisol levels from stress that could affect sleep or fat loss can be addressed by magnesium supplementation. Thyroid and insulin management can be improved through vitamin D supplementation, and the list goes on.
