rebalance your hormones with weightlifting

Our hormones play a vital part in living a happy and healthy lifestyle. If you’re feeling fatigued, irritable, you’re gaining weight or you’re having trouble sleeping, it could be a sign that your hormones are imbalanced. There are many ways to ensure you keep the right balance of hormones, including keeping your gut healthy and exercising regularly. 

Below, I talk about what our hormones do, how they can become unbalanced, and what we can do to help keep our hormones at a healthy balance.   

What are hormones?

Our hormones are chemical messengers secreted by various glands throughout the body, constantly working to regulate the different bodily processes and coordinate our metabolism, fertility, growth and more. The hormonal system is very complex, but in Lyman’s terms, they help our bodies stay steady and happy by keeping our organs synchronised and working together. 

We need all of these hormones to be at normal levels in order for our body to keep working as it should. This includes hormones like adrenaline, insulin and thyroid, as well as the sex hormones testosterone, oestrogen and progesterone. Cortisol has a bad rep, and it’s true that you should keep this stress hormone low in order to keep your mind and body healthy, but our bodies still need a bit of it to keep regulated – in fact, it helps our fight or flight mechanism! Hormones also help give our brain messages, including when it’s time for our body to sleep, and when we’re hungry and need food.  

Here is a run-down of the different hormones and how they help our bodies:

• Cortisol – As mentioned above, cortisol controls our stress levels, and whilst a little bit helps, we have to make sure this hormone stays quite low.

• Serotonin – Struggling to sleep? Your serotonin levels might be the answer. Serotonin acts to regulate your sleeping cycles, mood and appetite.

• Estrogen – This hormone is commonly known to regulate women’s menstrual cycles, but it also controls the sex drive in women and men. 

• Testosterone – This is another hormone that helps control your sex drive.

• Melatonin – Keep your melatonin levels right and you’ll enjoy a regular sleep cycle and a natural circadian rhythm. 

• Leptin – This is one to look out for whilst eating, as it helps to signal when you’re full.

• Ghrelin – On the other end of the scale, ghrelin signals when you’re hungry.

• Insulin – This hormone responds to the sugar in your bloodstream, and it’s commonly known to effect those with diabetes. 

How do our hormones get unbalanced?

There are many factors influencing our hormone balance – and some of these are natural, including aging. However, there are a few key factors that we have a bit of control over, including our stress levels and nutrition. A lack of sleep, a lack of exercise and a poor diet that doesn’t benefit the good bacteria in your gut can also cause an imbalance. 

The endocrine system is very complex, and it’ll work hard to keep your body balanced and healthy. But, there are ways in which we can help our body do its thing – especially through diet and exercise.

Though there are a few common life transitions that can cause a hormonal imbalance, such as menopause or pregnancy, you can struggle with such a problem at any point in your life. Both men and women can experience hormonal imbalances. Children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly may also suffer.

How do you know your hormones are unbalanced? 

There are many symptoms indicating your hormones are unbalanced, and they depend on which hormones aren’t communicating correctly. When your stress levels are high, it can cause side effects including weight gain around the stomach, whilst sex hormones in women naturally fluctuate monthly to indicate menstruation – causing symptoms like abdominal cramps, low moods and bloating.

A few other symptoms that can indicate hormone imbalance includes mood swings, trouble with concentration, hair loss, fatigue and even infertility. The best way to find out is through blood tests with your GP, but look out for the symptoms above to know when’s best to book an appointment. It’s totally normal for your hormones to fluctuate from time to time, but if the symptoms are harming your everyday life, it’s good to get them in check.  

The more harmful symptoms to look out for include:

• Changes to your mood, including depression and anxiety

• Fatigue or difficulty concentrating 

• Changes to your appearance, including dry skin, unexplained weight gain or weight loss, and thinning hair

• Pain in the body, including stiff joints, tender muscles and a change in your heart rate

Thankfully, there are many ways we can help keep our hormones happy and at healthy levels – mainly through diet and exercise. Below, I talk about some of the best ways to ensure your hormones stay balanced.

How does diet affect our hormones?

Diet plays a huge role in keeping our hormone levels normal. According to an article written in the Journal of Medicinal Food in 2014, the good bacteria in the gut produces many of our hormones – so what we feed our body plays a huge part in keeping everything balanced. 

Of course, there are many ways to keep our gut healthy. The first is to ensure you’re enjoying a balanced diet, filled with delicious whole foods, fruits and vegetables. Whilst too much saturated fat can contribute to an unhappy gut, this doesn’t mean you should be afraid of all fats – our bodies need essential fats for normal hormone production, including foods like avocado, vegetable oils, seeds and fish. 

Fermented foods have recently become a trendy part of the health industry, and for good reason. Foods like kombucha, sauerkraut, kefir and kimchi help to increase the friendly bacteria in your gut with their rich probiotics, therefore upping your immune system and keeping your digestion in working order. 

Omega 3s also have an influence on our hormones, especially helping women with ovulation and fertility, including oily fish like mackerel and salmon, flaxseeds, and even just a daily omega-3 supplement.

It goes without saying that the less processed foods the better, not only for keeping hormones level, but for our overall health, too. Saturated fats, sugar and fast carbohydrates. Limit white carbs, processed sugary foods and fizzy drinks from your diet, and you could see a quick change in your mood and weight. 

Diet is a big factor in helping chronic diseases too, which can be made worse through hormone imbalances, including type 2 diabetes. Reducing your carbohydrates in favour of more protein and fat in your diet is one of the best ways to help regulate insulin levels in diabetes patients. According to a recent study at Bispebjerg Hospital in Denmark, reducing carbs and increasing proteins and fats helped their patients regulate their blood sugar levels, which is a sure-fire way to ensure your hormones stay balanced too. 

How does exercise, especially weight training, affect our hormones?

Our hormone levels effect our mood, metabolic functions, appetite and food choices. what better way to regulate them than to follow an exercise regime? Exercise can help an array of ailments. Weightlifting allows you to focus on something else and get in the zone.

In my opinion, weight training is one of the best ways to keep your hormone levels in check. Focusing on lifting your weights with the correct form allows you to escape anything that might be causing your mind stress, therefore decreasing your cortisol levels and waking that good bacterium in your gut. Weightlifting massively influences our emotions and mental attitude, helping us to feel stronger not only physically, but mentally too. 

Strength training even stimulates our growth hormone, which in turn helps us to burn more fat and therefore keep our hormone levels coordinated. Insulin sensitivity is also increased when we lift weights and strengthen our muscles, helping us control our blood sugar. Excess cortisol and insulin are responsible for our bad moods and weight gain, and weightlifting helps to tackle both – making it an all-rounder if you’re looking to keep your hormones in check. 

For women, estrogen is one of the more harmful hormones that need to be balanced in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The primary female sex hormone is responsible for the regulation of the female reproductive system, and high levels of estrogen is usually the cause of irritability, fatigue, bloating and abdominal weight gain. By increasing our lean muscle and decreasing our excess body fat, we can promote a better metabolism, therefore allowing fat-loss hormones like testosterone to shine through instead. Lower estrogen also aids in helping keep our progesterone levels balanced – the sex hormone that influences our menstrual cycles, pregnancy and embryogenesis. 

Can exercise help those with chronic diseases?

Hormones imbalances are regularly associated with many chronic health conditions, giving you another reason to make sure you keep your hormones in check. Chronic diseases include that of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even mental health issues including depression and anxiety. A healthy diet and regular exercise regime really can help to keep these conditions at bay. 

Here are some chronic diseases that are regularly associated with hormone imbalance, and how you can help aid the symptoms:

• High blood pressure – Exercise is the best way to lower your blood pressure, as it helps to make your heart stronger. A stronger heart means your body can pump more blood with less effort, decreasing the force on your arteries. Exercise helps so much with blood pressure that it can even reduce the need for specific blood pressure medications.

• Heart disease – An interesting study in the American Journal of Cardiology states that interval training is significantly effective program for cardiac rehabilitation, improving your body’s tolerance to exercise and giving you more energy daily. 

• Diabetes – Regular exercise is a fantastic way to lower your blood sugar level, reducing your symptoms and reducing risk of heart disease. In some cases, along with a proper diet programme, it keeps blood sugar levels normal - so long as they are continued.

• Asthma – Enjoying regular exercise actually helps to control the frequency and severity of asthma attacks, just take it slowly and carefully to ensure you don’t overdo it.

• Arthritis – Exercise is an effective way to reduce pain in your affected joints, and ease stiffness too.

• Dementia - Throughout your life, a regular workout routine is believed to decrease your risk of cognitive impairment. Those with dementia also benefit from regular exercise, as it is essential for maintaining blood flow to the brain, in turn helping to stimulate the brain. 

How can exercise help people going through the menopause?

I’ve worked with a few clients who have been going through the menopause, and with the right diet and exercise regime we’ve been able to help women feel better and healthier in themselves whilst going through this natural change in hormones. 

So what causes menopause? Our ovaries work to produce oestrogen and progesterone hormones, which both control our periods and ovulation – in very simple terms, the menopause happens when the ovaries no longer ovulate and menstruation ends. 

Common menopausal symptoms include hot flushes, bad mood swings and weight gain. Menopause weight gain is a big risk for other diseases too, including a risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, so it’s well worth making sure your diet and exercise regime is in shape. Menopause also accelerates your risk of osteoporosis, a health condition that weakens your bones and increases their fragility, meaning they’re more likely to break. 

I work with my clients to ensure that they maintain a healthy weight during this change in their hormones, as well as making sure their workout is great for the mind too. I believe strength training is the best way to help, as it can help maintain weight and build bone strength in order to keep osteoporosis at bay.