How Hormones Affect Weight Loss & How to Reset Them

Losing weight can be hard, and sticking to it is most often the hardest part. Some may face other significant obstacles, as I did with my thyroid (autoimmune system) that threw off my hormones making losing weight after having babies feel impossible. 

I have been there.

After having our second son my hormones went haywire and the 60 pounds of baby weight would NOT BUDGE!

After years of doctors and lots of frustration, the only answer was, “I am sorry but this is just something you are going to have to live with and manage, everything with your blood work looks “normal”.

Here is what I am sharing with you today…..

• How to Balance Hormones for Weight Loss
• What Two Areas That Affect Hormones
• How Food Affects Hormones
• How to Reset Your Hormones and Lose Weight for Good

Trust me when I say that besides the alarming 50-60 extra pounds, I had a laundry list of other things that were far from “normal”.

That is when I decided I would start out on my own journey. I was not willing to accept that as my fate. I started researching “how to heal my body naturally“.

It took me several years of trial and error I finally found what worked for my body and am SO EXCITED to share how I did it so you can too!

Let’s take a visual journey as I tell you the personal story of knowing how our hormones affect our weight. Here are a couple of photos of me (age 23, size 4, weight 120pds (ish), the year 2007).

I was “that girl”. You know the one who can eat anything, never work out, and stay skinny effortlessly….. yep that girl.

There were hormonal issues that started for me around age 14, but I did not connect the dots until after having baby number two. But just keep that in mind as we will reflect back on it in a moment.

These photos were about a year after having my first son. There were about 15+ pounds of after-baby weight that would not seem to budge.

Though this extra weight was annoying and frustrating it was something my mind rationalized as “normal” after having babies.

Plus, being fully honest and transparent. I “cleaned up” my eating a bit and was still not working out.

The photos below were after baby number 2 three years after having my first son and pretty much staying at the same weight I was in the photos above.

I will also note these photos were hard to find. I like a lot of moms self-conscious about their weight would run when the words “let’s take pictures” came out of anyone’s mouth except mine.

Because I of course was the one BEHIND the camera when I was taking the pictures.

Notice all the awkward leaning poses (which as I was looking back at these photos I noticed how much worse those poses made it – insert forehead slap).

At 180+ pounds in these photos over a year after having my second son.

After many unfruitful doctors, tests, and specialists visits (and lots of medical bills) to try to “fix” this problem I was left with this as my answer,

“Well K’Lee everything in your blood work looks normal, this is just something you are going to have to deal with and manage with medication for the rest of your life.”

I remember the day that the endocrinologist (hormones specialist) told me that, following 6 different tests all came back showing him my “blood work looked normal”, I thought to myself as I set crying in my car in that parking lot……. NO. I do not accept this!

And that was the day I became a natural healing researcher.

Not for a degree. Not for a coaching certification…… No, I became a natural healing researcher because that was my only option if I wanted to heal.

Here I am age 38, free and off of all thyroid medication FULLY HEALED and 50+ pounds off for over 6 years now!

We monitor our internal health and the last gut testing I had came back that my chronological age (the age my body thinks it is) was 32.

Yes!!!

My body thinks it is 6 years YOUNGER than it is!!

How to Balance Hormones for Weight Loss

Hormones (our endocrine system aka our body’s “hormone factory”) regulate our appetite in order to help our bodies maintain energy levels.

Some hormones stimulate hunger.

Others signal that we are full.

An imbalance in hormones involving appetite control may lead to weight loss or weight gain.

Having a hormonal imbalance can make losing weight even with the use of diet and exercise hard (harder, or near impossible as was the case with me).

This is just one-way hormones perform a task within our bodies. Our hormone factory does hundreds of tasks like this a day for our sleep, energy, mood, etc.

So, how do we balance our hormones for weight loss?

The first place to start (after mindset of course but again this is a whole other post) is

1. Food
2. Toxins (in our homes, personal hygiene, beauty and skincare, and so forth)

I talk all about living a Clean Nontoxic Lifestyle by eliminating these toxins that are wreaking havoc on our endocrine system in many other posts here on the blog (click here to read this post and download the free checklist next).

Step 1 in Balancing Hormones – Food

Did all the weight “fall off in 90 days after some miracle program”?

No.

That would be a fad diet with a start date and end date. This mindset is why the Diet, Weight Loss, and Fitness industry is a MULTI-BILLION (WITH A B…. BILLION) dollar a year industry in the US alone!

We talk a lot about mindset in our wellness coaching programs because if you do not get that right first who cares if you lose 50 pounds, 100 pounds, or even 150 pounds if you do not have the mindset in place first ALL OF THAT WEIGHT WILL FIND ITS WAY BACK!

The way I coach Healthy Hormones in my One-on-One Coaching looks like this:

Month 1: Mindset

Month 2: Food

Month 3: Fitness

and so forth.

These yoyo diets, “fall off the wagons”, fad diets, and the “90-day miracle diets/pills/potions” all have one big thing in common.

They are teaching Step 2 – Food, or Step 3 – Fitness, but did not start with Step 1 – Getting our mindset right before even starting the journey.

For more on my Healthy Hormones Coaching reach out to me by clicking here

I tried many different things through lots of trial and error, thousands of hours over the last 7+ years researching to figure this all out myself.

Slowly piecing together a piece by piece (and the internet and youtube were NOT what they are today…..heck I had never even heard of wellness coaches).

I want to save you a lot of time and effort in figuring it out that you can put toward healing and seeing the weight loss results you are after!

You don’t have to do it alone.

Back to Food. Here is how I used food to reset my hormones.

This is a fast forward because I tried many things that did not work before landing on this eating style that finally did!

Clean Keto (Clean Ketogenic Diet)

Clean Keto is different than just regular Keto because you also cut a lot of the “keto-approved” junk foods and dairy out as well.

I started Keto as the regular old keto (again 6-7 years ago finding information on the internet and Keto itself was hard, clean keto was not even a thing to my knowledge).

I was Keto for close to 2 years before going clean keto for another 4-5 months and then transitioning after further research to a more Keto + Paleo-style of eating.

Keto Breakfast & Lunch. Paleo Dinners. This eating lifestyle has helped to heal any cortisol imbalances.

A cortisol imbalance is having chronically high cortisol levels 99.9% of the time this is caused by food.

The SAD diet (Standard American Diet – appropriate acronym) is a breeding ground for cortisol imbalances.

The abnormally high amounts of refined carbs, sugar, dyes, and loads of other man-made chemicals in the foods in America paired with the crazy busy lifestyles (aka stressful) are the perfect combination for “chronically high levels of cortisol” which leads to cortisol imbalances, which leads to diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes, the one that is a direct cause of a poor diet, in my research I have heard people share how they too healed from type 2 diabetes by being willing to make a lifestyle change.

It may take years as it did for me……but that is better than the alternative right?

“Food is medicine or it is poison it is either healing and nourishing your body or slowly poisoning it” Dr. Mark Hyman

I never counted macros, I never counted calories, I never did any of that.

I knew for long-term results this had to be a lifestyle commitment, not a “diet mentality”.

A Diet Mentality has a start date + end date (with “cheat days” built-in) = results if any that are not sustainable.

If this is how you approach anything with this mindset my friend you are helping the diet and weight loss industry make Billions a year!

They prey on people with this mindset because they know that you will be back.

After you quit one diet after several months or a year of not being happy with your weight you will start the whole process over and over and over……

One of the BIGGEST keys to success is to have a plan.

We live in a very busy very fast pace world and trying to change our entire eating style while simultaneously trying to understand what to eat is almost always the first speed bump that knocks people “off the wagon”.

Don’t be one of those who hit the bump.

I’ve road mapped it like a GPS telling you “turn right” aka go around it!

I LOVE sharing the Custome Keto Meal Plan with my readers because Rachel has done an A-MAZING job working with personal chefs, trainers, and nutritionists, to develop a keto plan that can be customized for anyone’s lifestyle giving a weekly meal plan just for tailored just you!!

It’s brilliant!

How Does Keto Reset and Rebalance Hormones?

The short and simple answer is by following a keto-type eating style you are eliminating the foods that are hurting your hormones in the first place.

You may be thinking, “well K’Lee if those foods were hurting my hormones why did it just start affecting me now? I have been eating them my whole life.”

I had this question too. It was not until I understood hormones better that I understood that I may have been skinny but that does NOT mean I was healthy!

There is not just one answer to that question either. For me it was pregnancy.

The changes in my hormones during pregnancy triggered the autoimmune disorder that was most likely already there it was just not “bad enough” for me to notice it.

Age is another big factor in hormonal changes in both men and women. Lack of sleep. Assistive or chronic stress, trauma, drinking or drug use, and on and on.

You see our endocrine system, aka “hormones factory”, does not just do one job it does hundreds of thousands of jobs a day. So there are many factors that can disrupt this factory from doing its job efficiently.

There are plastics and fragrances in our personal hygiene products, skincare, deodorants, and even the fluoride in toothpaste all have chemicals that really throw off our hormones.

Note: I go deeper into every single area of focus in my Healthy Hormones One-on-One Coaching sessions.

Click here to learn more about the Healthy Hormones One-on-One Coaching or Our Couples Wellness Lifestyle Coaching

Once we hit certain ages our hormones slow down. Hints at the “40-year-old dad bod” example.

That man ate the same junk food diet his whole life, turns 40, and blows up like a balloon out of nowhere.

Or maybe it was stressors on the body like the mom who after having babies CAN NOT FOR THE LIFE OF HER GET THE WEIGHT BACK OFF.

There are people who lived in a house with mold and that messed up their hormones.

Children who by the age of 2 or 3 have “PANDAS” an autoimmune disease that attacks young children with a laundry list of issues all hormonally based.

For me personally, it was having babies. For you, it could have been one of million different reasons.

By eliminating foods that cause inflammation we get to the root of the problem.

Like pulling weeds if we do not get it at the root it will just keep coming back.

Inflammation leads to a dominoes effect on other health-related issues and diseases the first being hormonal issues we eliminate a cause.

The effect, we all know the law of cause and effect, is that we start seeing healing and outside results such as weight loss.

The next question I get asked is, “for how long?”

My response is always, “for as long as you want to live a healthy lifestyle with a matching healthy weight.”

Here we circle back to mindset. This is why my coaching starts with mindset!

It is SO important to see this journey as a lifestyle change NOT A DIET.

How Long will it take to reset my hormones and lose weight?

That depends on your body and your commitment. After starting keto in my journey it was about 2-3 months and I was down over 30 pounds and my thyroid medication was cut in half.

This shocked both me and the doctor, yes the same doctor that was offering me diet pills since she had no other advice as to why my blood work looked normal but the weight would not come off.

She was so shocked in fact she ordered more blood work and asked me to tell her step by step what I was doing so she could tell all of her other patients with the same thyroid-related problems what I was doing to see this success.

My first “coaching gig” was pro bono for an autoimmune specialist (Endocronoligiest Dr).

Funny right.

Conclusion

There you have it my friends how I reset my hormones, completely healing my thyroid and free of all medications, and dropped over 50+ pounds.

You now have the steps to do the same thing, you have me here to be your coach if you need me, and you have access to a customer keto meal plan to keep you on track and save you a load of time and head ace in figure ing out yourself!

You can do this!

All I needed when I left the doctor’s office that day, after being told “this was just something I was going to have to live with and manage”, crying in my car in the parking lot was – if I can find one person JUST ONE PERSON who has healed their body (autoimmune system) SO CAN I!

Here I am for you now friend. I did it.

I can be the one person who proved to you it can be done, and if I can do it SO CAN YOU!!

I believe in you.

xoxo,

K’Lee

PS don’t want to do it alone? Check out our Couples Coaching Program (you do not need to be over 40…. lol but if you are then you know things change in our bodies over 40, we know it too and we can help navigate those changes while helping you create a wellness lifestyle to make it effortless for you).