get lean.
Estrogen and Progesterone: Fire and Ice
We’ve established that estrogen is what makes you feminine. When it’s in the normal zone relative to its counterpart—progesterone—estrogen makes you feel happy, sane, slim, and emotionally connected. These hormones are like fire and ice, and when in balance, progesterone is the ice that keeps the fire of estrogen under control.
My research and experience reveal that the majority of women who struggle with their weight have estrogen dominance, especially after age thirty-five, when progesterone begins to wane. Red meat and alcohol exacerbate the imbalance. Pursuing our analogy further,there’s too much fire and not enough ice. You make too much estrogen, and not enough progesterone. The increased fire is not a good thing: it creates inflammation in the body that can be hidden but causes fat loss resistance, mood problems, and gut issues.
Estrogen dominance isn’t just a problem of increased estrogen levels in your body. It can also result from high or low levels of other hormones like excess insulin, medical problems like obesity (fat cells make estrogen), and other environmental exposures, such as skin care products and plastics. We will address these concerns in future chapters.
How Insulin and Estrogen Can Block Metabolism
One reason that estrogen dominance is connected to fat-loss resistance is because of the cross talk between two important hormones of metabolism: insulin and estrogen. When you are insulin resistant, which means your cells can’t absorb the extra blood glucose your body keeps generating from the food you eat, your liver converts the glucose into fat (see chapter 4, page 86). Those extra fat cells are now extraneous estrogen-making laboratories. Rather than being your best friend, excess estrogen does a backflip and wreaks havoc on your ability to burn and lose fat. The best pattern interrupt is to eliminate meat (and alcohol) and increase fiber.
To make matters worse, beginning in your early forties you become resistant to estrogen because your receptors go into semiretirement and your estrogen levels climb higher to try to get the attention of those receptors. As a result, your memory falters, you feel irritable, and fat attaches like Krazy Glue to your waist. You are now officially resistant to fat loss, regardless of your weight, and it gets even worse in menopause.
Put it all together, and you can understand why so many womenbegin to experience slow metabolism and fat-loss resistance after age forty. The solution is to forgo meat and alcohol and consume one pound of vegetables per day.
The bottom line: too much estrogen keeps you fat by creating a vicious cycle, which must be broken to help you lose weight permanently.
ESTROGEN DOMINANCE AND MENOPAUSE
When I broach the topic of estrogen dominance with postmenopausal women, they bristle and tell me they are past all of that. They think of estrogen as a young woman’s hormone, responsible only for menstruation, mood swings, and fertility. Nothing could be further from the truth. Regardless of your age, it’s crucial to understand estrogen and how it is working in your body. Too much estrogen relative to progesterone can cause mood problems, bloating, fibroids, insomnia, and anxiety at any age—until you die. In addition (I’ll repeat myself so that it sinks in),
estrogen dominance is the main reason women have a harder time losing weight regardless of age when compared with men. Lest you are still fuzzy, too much estrogen causes weight gain.
Estrogen, along with other hormones, is responsible for how you respond to food, drink, and supplements. The seven metabolic hormones determine whether the food you eat is burned or stored as fat. So, instead of dismissing this hormone, I implore you to understand what it does and its central role in your weight loss.
The Vicious Cycle of Estrogen Dominance
When you understand that being overweight involves more than just how much you eat and
Estrogen and Progesterone: Fire and Ice
We’ve established that estrogen is what makes you feminine. When it’s in the normal zone relative to its counterpart—progesterone—estrogen makes you feel happy, sane, slim, and emotionally connected. These hormones are like fire and ice, and when in balance, progesterone is the ice that keeps the fire of estrogen under control.
My research and experience reveal that the majority of women who struggle with their weight have estrogen dominance, especially after age thirty-five, when progesterone begins to wane. Red meat and alcohol exacerbate the imbalance. Pursuing our analogy further,there’s too much fire and not enough ice. You make too much estrogen, and not enough progesterone. The increased fire is not a good thing: it creates inflammation in the body that can be hidden but causes fat loss resistance, mood problems, and gut issues.
Estrogen dominance isn’t just a problem of increased estrogen levels in your body. It can also result from high or low levels of other hormones like excess insulin, medical problems like obesity (fat cells make estrogen), and other environmental exposures, such as skin care products and plastics. We will address these concerns in future chapters.
How Insulin and Estrogen Can Block Metabolism
One reason that estrogen dominance is connected to fat-loss resistance is because of the cross talk between two important hormones of metabolism: insulin and estrogen. When you are insulin resistant, which means your cells can’t absorb the extra blood glucose your body keeps generating from the food you eat, your liver converts the glucose into fat (see chapter 4, page 86). Those extra fat cells are now extraneous estrogen-making laboratories. Rather than being your best friend, excess estrogen does a backflip and wreaks havoc on your ability to burn and lose fat. The best pattern interrupt is to eliminate meat (and alcohol) and increase fiber.
To make matters worse, beginning in your early forties you become resistant to estrogen because your receptors go into semiretirement and your estrogen levels climb higher to try to get the attention of those receptors. As a result, your memory falters, you feel irritable, and fat attaches like Krazy Glue to your waist. You are now officially resistant to fat loss, regardless of your weight, and it gets even worse in menopause.
Put it all together, and you can understand why so many womenbegin to experience slow metabolism and fat-loss resistance after age forty. The solution is to forgo meat and alcohol and consume one pound of vegetables per day.
The bottom line: too much estrogen keeps you fat by creating a vicious cycle, which must be broken to help you lose weight permanently.
ESTROGEN DOMINANCE AND MENOPAUSE
When I broach the topic of estrogen dominance with postmenopausal women, they bristle and tell me they are past all of that. They think of estrogen as a young woman’s hormone, responsible only for menstruation, mood swings, and fertility. Nothing could be further from the truth. Regardless of your age, it’s crucial to understand estrogen and how it is working in your body. Too much estrogen relative to progesterone can cause mood problems, bloating, fibroids, insomnia, and anxiety at any age—until you die. In addition (I’ll repeat myself so that it sinks in),
estrogen dominance is the main reason women have a harder time losing weight regardless of age when compared with men. Lest you are still fuzzy, too much estrogen causes weight gain.
Estrogen, along with other hormones, is responsible for how you respond to food, drink, and supplements. The seven metabolic hormones determine whether the food you eat is burned or stored as fat. So, instead of dismissing this hormone, I implore you to understand what it does and its central role in your weight loss.
The Vicious Cycle of Estrogen Dominance
When you understand that being overweight involves more than just how much you eat and
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