Stop Blaming the Hormones

Hey friends! It has been a while since I have chatted about health.

Something has really been on my heart lately and I feel like I need to put it out into the world. 

I was getting my nails done last week (which sounds really weird to say, as my nails and hands usually look like a 90-year-old lady’s hands)….and I overheard two women talking about how they just can’t lose any weight because their hormones are jacked. 

I hear this time and time again that our hormones are to blame for x, y, and z. Now I am presenting this convo with light touch, I know that there are occasions where hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and other “hormonal” instances are at play. 

What I do want to propose is…

Are we too quick to blame the hormones?! 

I remember my first week home postpartum and I was a complete wreck! One day I was crying for no known reason (maybe I had just had a baby, didn’t know what I was doing, and had no sleep but heck)…

Kyle walked into my emotional pity party and asked what in the world was wrong. I proceeded to tell him I had no idea, I think it’s just the hormones. 🙂 

If you know my loving husband Kyle, he is a fixer and wants to help “fix” anything that may be causing me distress. After multiple attempts of trying to talk me off the cliff he responds…”I don’t even know what the F*$! a hormone is!” 

Do you all feel that way sometimes? I sure do! 

As you may know, I have been on a health journey to live my best life.

For Christmas, I asked for a year membership with Wild Health. Check it out here! 

In short, they are a holistic health group of doctors and health coaches that assist you in meeting your health goals. They take fifty million tests including blood work, genetic testing, and epigenetic age testing (which I am one year older genetically than my actual age! Depressing :)) 

It has been extremely fascinating and I recently just had my initial eval with my health coach and doctor.

To my surprise, my hormone levels were junk! 🙂 

Overall I am pretty healthy, but the things that really stood out were my low levels in micronutrients and jacked-up hormones. (So the story seems to go with most women, right?!) 

Here is the fascinating suggestion….it is not my hormones’ fault! 

When our bodies are stressed and trying to tell us that things are not quite balanced, the first thing it does is steal from our hormones to try to keep homeostasis. This is the first sign. If we ignore this signal, it can leads to acute disease which then can lead to chronic disease. 

With all this said, if your hormones are “jacked,” what lifestyle changes have you made…consistently? 

• How is your sleep?
• Are you eating too many processed foods?
• Are you consuming vegetable oils?
• Are you fasting?
• Are you getting enough exercise?
• Are you spending time recovering and resting?

I know it may seem like a lot to tackle most days but choose one thing. Once you have one thing consistently going it will become a domino effect. 

I want to tell you so much more about my Wild Health journey! I will wait for the next Blog post to do just that, but here are some quick takeaways. 

My hormones are jacked because…

• I have a gene from both parents that gives me poor ability to metabolize fats. So a Keto diet would be the absolute worst thing for me (so interesting that all these fad diets may not be good for you personally)!…Due to this gene, my ability to make Choline in the body is poor. Choline is an essential nutrient that is important in many of the body’s systems. With all this said, this is playing into the “hormones are jacked” story. 

• My loving parents also gave me a gene that causes increased dopamine levels in the frontal cortex. This essentially is “filing” things away as stress, which in turn is affecting my stress hormones. 
  *Note-genetics are only 2% of the picture! We can actually change all these things with lifestyle factors and this is exactly what I am going to do! 

• I have extremely low levels of CoQ10 and Omega-3’s which is causing a leaky cell. This in turn is causing an inflammation “strike” playing into the hormonal wreck. 

There are so many other things I am going to work and change for better health. The moral of the story is…it’s not the hormones’ fault! It may just be our lifestyle decisions. A tough pill to swallow sometimes but the hard truth. 

Now the billion dollar question…how do you create behavior change? 

This stuff gets me all giddy inside! Stay tuned for more nerdy health chats next week!

Love you gal!

Taryn