Losing weight can be tricky. I get it. After having my second son my hormones were out of wack and losing weight felt near impossible for over 2 years until I discovered the weight loss secrets I am sharing with you today that changed EVERYTHING!
As soon as I shifted these things I lost 50+ pounds and have kept it off for years creating a wellness lifestyle around keeping my hormones happy.
You may be one of the thousands of women who do not even realize that your weight is directly linked to hormonal imbalance.
Or you may be like me when I discovered 10 years ago now after having my youngest son that your hormones are way out of wack, for me that was Hypothyroidism (more on this later in the post).
Where ever you may fall on the scale from Hormonal Imbalance to full-out Autoimmune disorders which require medication they both have this in common – Hormonal Weight Gain.
Is Hormonal Weight Gain a Real Thing?
Is hormonal weight gain a real thing?
Y-E-S
Many people have never heard the term hormonal weight gain and the odds are pretty good if you have been carrying extra weight for more than 6 months and have been actively trying to lose weight and nothing seems to be working you fall under the “hormonal weight gain” umbrella.
Please do not panic!
It took me 2 years and thousands of dollars in hopes the doctors could “fix me”.
After all of that time and money, the conclusion was,
“Sorry K’Lee this is as good as it gets and just something you will have to live with (on medication) for the rest of your life. As far as the extra 50+ pounds of post-pregnancy weight since using your thyroid medication 4 times did not work we can put you on medical weight loss medication (aka diet pills).”
As you can imagine this was devastating news.
After a week or two of wallowing in my self-pity (lol being honest friends) something inside of me awakened. Like wildfire, it spread hope through my mind and I decided that this was the doctor’s conclusion (or opinion).
I knew that if I could find one other person who had healed their Autoimmune System naturally then by God I could too.
This blood-hound-like researcher came to life inside of me that I had no idea existed.
Fast forward within 1 year I dropped 50+ pounds and hand my thyroid medication cut by more than half (this was in 2014). It took me another couple of years to slowly, with doctor supervision and regular blood work, wean myself completely off the remanding half of the thyroid medication.
But I did it!!
And if you are looking for that glimmer of hope like I was allow me to be your one!!
I did it and you can too.
I cannot promise you a timeline for your journey but I can offer you exactly what I did and if you follow it with consistency I believe you too will end up exactly where you want to be!!
How Can I stop Hormonal Weight Gain?
Here are a couple of steps to take to STOP Hormonal Weight Gain:
First Step: If you have not seen a doctor and had what is most commonly referred to as a Full Hormone Panel (bloodwork) done this is your first step. You can have this blood work done by your current doctor or you can do this from home yourself (which I recommend as doctors tend to scare the crap out of us about the results of any test, and always seem to want to prescribe medication even if it is not needed in which case causes more harm than good)
If you are interested in At Home Hormone Tests this is a great source for the top 4 by Healthline.com “The 4 Best at Home Hormone Test Providers”
If you already know you have a hormonal imbalance or hormonal disorder and are on medication for it or actively monitoring it then skip down to step two.
Second Step: Eliminate foods and toxins that are the root causes of hormonal imbalance. I have many posts here on the blog that covers both of these topics in great detail (you can click here for “Hormonal Imbalance Diet” and here for finding and click here to read more on “How to Find Toxins in Your Everyday Products” (plus a bonus printable checklist).
In short, I always point my readers and coaching clients to The Custom Keto Meal Planner for Weight Loss
Again, for a deeper dive into the Hormonal Imbalance Diet click here to read that post.
The goal when eliminating foods that are harming our hormones is to eliminate all inflammatory foods first. Inflammation is our Endocrine system (aka our hormone factory) worst enemy.
Clean Keto is the easiest way to do that and to flip the switch from our bodies burning glucose (turning our food to fat) to ketosis (burning fat for fuel).
Clean Keto means being low carb, as per the norm on keto, but also eliminating dairy as it is highly inflammatory and processed food.
That resistance you just felt welling up when I said eliminate dairy and the thought, “no way I love cheese ice cream, milk, or fill blank with what dairy food your not wanting to give up.
It is normal because dairy is highly addictive (lol bet you did not see that response coming).
Many of the foods that you will eliminate on the Clean Keto eating style are highly addictive, this is why so many people “fall off the wagon” when it comes to a wellness lifestyle.
These Frankin’ Foods are what is called Hyper-palatable.
Meaning they were cooked up in a lab somewhere, have little if any actual real food in them, could last on the shelf for a decade, and from the color, smell, and size they are tested to see which version is the most addictive.
Literally, the scientist at these food companies brings in taste testers to run these tests!!
The great news is after eliminating these foods for 60-90 days the cravings go away and it gets really easy to pass on them.
Hormonal Imbalance In Kids
Children are much more resilient than adults when it comes to tolerating these Frankin foods.
However, that doesn’t mean the underlying issues are not there for them too.
When we eliminated gluten, dairy, most grains, and all processed sugar from my son’s diet almost 4 years ago what happened shocked us.
We did not follow any strict eating plans but for the most part, they ate Paleo.
They know they are free to eat those foods at birthdays or sleepovers if they want to……..yet they still choose not to!!
If an 11-year-old and 14-year-old can do it my friend so can you!
I would also love to note that this was for both of their health, not weight loss.
At the time my 14-year-old was 11 years old and lost 19 pounds in 2 months.
This was SHOCKING to all of us!!
He was a bit husky up to this point in his life, but I had no idea how much the foods he was eating were affecting him physically and affecting his weight.
The photo above was just before we switched his diet (age 11), the one on the right was this year (age 14) to show you how he has maintained the lean body type for almost 4 years now!
The night seats were gone.
The redness and bumps on his cheeks were gone.
The biggest factor though was his mental changes. He went from insecure, and introverted, and when he would get frustrated he would often react out of anger begin yelling, stomping off, slamming the door, and then begin to cry.
He was just unable to process emotions.
After eliminating those foods he turned into a completely different personality!!
Quick Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor. I am an everyday person just like you, who was frustrated and did not want to be on medication my whole life without ever actually fixing the problem. I call my posts I share how I used food as medicine, clean nontoxic living, and modern scientific tools and research to heal my autoimmune system and be free of all medication in hopes that you can find your own healing journey too.
Which Hormone Causes the Most Weight Gain?
The Top Hormones that cause the most weight gain are:
- Thyroid
- Leptin
- Insulin
- Estrogen
- Cortisol
- Progesterone
The thyroid is the #1 reason in most women by far.
However, when one hormone gets off track it is like the dominos effect throwing all of the other hormones all out of wack too!
Another biggie for women is estrogen, which is on a seesaw with progesterone so if one is off the other is too guaranteed (see what I mean about the hormonal dominos effect).
Post to read next: Estrogen Dominance Treatment & Progesterone Deficiency
If you remember above in the Clean Keto – Custom Keto Meal Plan for Weight Loss (click for your 7-day free trial) section I said how eliminating the foods that are burning glucose (which turns to insulin then to fat…ekk) to eating foods that burn ketones or put us in ketosis where Keto got its name, lowers inulin!!
Eliminating another of the hormones that cause weight gain listed above!
Puberty, Pregnancy, and Menopause (pre-menopause)
Women most often experience major hormone changes at puberty, but our young teenage bodies are so resilient for most of our bodies that the hormones popped back into balance. Though we are seeing more and more teenage or even younger girls and boys that are struggling with hormonal weight gain.
Pregnancy. We again see some big changes in our hormonal balance when we are pregnant as I did and more than half of women have some form of hormonal imbalance for a prolonged period after giving birth.
Hormonal imbalance does not just affect our weight, hormones play a HUGE role in our mental health.
Post-partum depression is directly linked to hormonal imbalance as either the cause or the effect of hormonal imbalance is at play.
Fertility issues, miscarriages, hair loss, adult cystic acne, and the list goes on and on.
Our hormones are at the core of EVERYTHING!!
Around Age 40 aka pre-menopause / menopause – I went pretty in-depth on How to Lose Weight Over 40 in this blog post so I won’t go deep here, but in short, many women in perimenopause and early post-menopause gain fat mass as estrogen levels drop.
Women of childbearing age tend to store fat in their lower bodies (“pair-shaped”), while both men and women postmenopausal store excess fat in the abdominals (“apple-shaped”).
Estrogen imbalance around menopause can have big effects on weight gain or the inability to lose weight over 40. (See the link above for the deep dive on Estrogen if this applies to you)
And if one of those three did not get you stressed very well could have.
Big stressors such as weddings (yes even “happy” stress), new jobs, or job losses, death of a loved one, or other trauma can kick our hormones right you of wack too…..
Before it feels like the world is out to get you or your hormones are the enemies we have to remember the rapid pace lifestyles we live did not exist even 100 years ago!
There was no fast food, junk food, or Frankin foods back then!
The food they ate came from the ground, or animals who ate from the ground (lol).
Humans were not in this dog-eat-dog rat race to the top cramming every spare second of their schedules with “to-do lists”.
Between the SAD diet, Standard American Diet – and no sister I am not making this stuff up the actual acronym for how Americans eat is SAD and the complete chaos that most of us call our schedule our bodies were not made for that kind of beating.
If you are seeing the dots starting to connect on why the weight loss is not happening for you and hormonal imbalance could be it let me tell you a little about the HB-5 Hormonal Harmony Supplement, aka the multi-vitamin for your hormones.
When you click on the link above and start reading story after story of weight loss let me tell you this is not a “diet pill”. Nor would I ever recommend diet pills as they have nasty harmful ingredients and wreck your metabolism.
Hormonal Harmony is 100% all-natural and was formulated by doctors for women to help in rebalancing their hormones.
Any weight loss the people share from this supplement is just a side effect of fixing the root problem – Hormonal Imbalance.
The Best Weight Loss Meal Plan for Hormonal Imbalance
You may be thinking at this point I am not even sure I have a hormonal imbalance! I just want to lose weight. Well, odds are high that if you have been actively trying to lose weight and nothing seems to be working….. then you have a hormonal imbalance.
It may not be to the point of needing medication for it (yet), but trust me friend it is there otherwise a quick clean-up of the diet and the weight would be gone.
In my journey, I tried several different eating styles over a year’s time frame. I saw absolutely no changes in my weight loss until I started Keto.
This was over 7 years ago now and a LOT has changed for people starting Keto.
There is more research than ever. You can find thousands if not hundreds of thousands of keto recipes on Pinterest or Youtube (PS go follow me on Pinterest I have SO many recipes that I have pinned to get you started).
The term Clean Keto or Dirty Keto were not even a thing yet.
My first 2 years on Keto would defiantly fall under the dirty keto category, and now that I know better I do better.
I also recommend to you start right since that option is available to you.
Clean Keto is the way to go to see both rapid weight loss results and hormone healing effects!!
Finding photos to share with you of me when I started the healing my hormones journey was pretty hard.
As you can see from the photos on the left I did my best to hide the extra 50+ pounds behind my kids. That is when I did not run to say, “no, no, let me take the photo”.
AKA I do not want in it.
The photo on the right is a DECADE after the photos on the left!!
That is all 100% my hair. My skin is flawless, younger, and more radiant than ever, and not only am I 50+ pounds lighter but I even have abs!!
In the photos on the left, I was in my late 20s and my hair was dry, frizzy, and brittle. I had acne for the first time in my life on top of the fact that I was 50+ pounds overweight and nothing I was doing made any difference.
I remember doing a 5-day water fast, this was for spiritual reasons, not a weight loss attempt, and I did not lose even a single pound!!!
How is that even possible, I did not eat for 5 days?!?!?!?!
That was when I knew something was really really off and I had to figure it out.
90-Days is a great start to doing the Clean Keto eating style as it will give you a great starting point to detox from the foods that are wreaking your hormones, and start burning ketones instead of glucous.
After the 90-days you can reevaluate your progress.
Are you where you want to be mentally and physically?
If so great!
Congratulations!!
If not, consider another 90-day cycle.
For me, it took about 6-9 months for the 50+ pounds to come off and another year to be fully weaned off of all thyroid medication.
So I stayed on keto for over 2 years.
This helped me to develop a new relationship and a new perspective on food.
Keto was no longer a diet for me it was a lifestyle.
Mindset matters when it comes to food.
A diet has an end date, a wellness lifestyle doesn’t!
The BEST Weight Loss Exercises at Home 30-Day Workout Program
Ok. Now that we have the food part of it down let’s move on to my favorite weight loss exercises at home.
Daily Goals:
10,000 steps per day or more + add one of the workouts below, most of which are done in 10 minutes!
Workouts should be 5 days per week with 1 recovery yoga, and one non-workout day.
On the non-workout day(s) aim for 15,000-20,000 steps or better by doing something fun outdoors.
How to use this Weight Loss Exercises at Home Post.
Choose one body group per day 5 days per week.
I have also linked my workout favs for easy access to my Amazon favorites at the bottom for you as well.
weight loss exercises at home – Workouts by Body Group:
Full Body Weight Loss Exercises at Home 30 Days | Choose One Per Week
Arms and Upper Body Weight Loss Exercises at Home – 30 Days | Choose One Per Week
Legs & Lower Body Weight Loss Exercises at Home – 30 Days | Choose One Per Week
Abs Weight Loss Exercises at Home – 30 Days | Choose One Per Week
Bands Weight Loss Exercises at Home – 30 Days | Choose One Per Week
Yoga Weight Loss Exercises at Home – 30 Days | Choose One Per Week
My Amazon Workout at Home Favorites
Conclusion
Hormonal health and weight loss go hand in hand. Knowing what foods are healthy for your hormones and which are causing harm to your hormones is key in being able to heal and reset them.
Your hormones have to return to their healthy ‘factory settings’ before hormonal weight gain will come off for good and stay off.
Clean eating allows our body to focus on what it needs, not trying to digest foods that are unrecognizable to our bodies as food with so many dyes, chemicals, additives, and so on.
Comment below with any questions you may have and before you go be sure to search “hormones” in the search above. I have SO MANY posts on how I healed my hormones naturally using food and medicine and clean nontoxic living so that you can too!
xoxo,
K’Lee
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[…] into Hormonal Weight Gain check out this in-depth post Hormonal Imbalance Weight Gain or this post The BEST Weight Loss Exercises at Home Workouts & Hormonal Imbalance Weight Loss Meal Plan where I also share 30-days of the best weight loss exercises at home you can do in 10 […]