Foods to Balance Hormones at Mid-life for Weight Loss
What foods should you eat to balance your hormones for permanent weight loss even in midlife? That's the question we're answering today. In this video, I'll explain three points. Number one, why not eating much or saving calories during the daytime is just wrecking your hormones at midlife. Number two, what your body is really craving and needing when you feel hungry (besides the obvious answer of food) and how the approach that you're taking right now that is probably slowing your metabolism and confusing your stress and your weight loss hormones just results in weight gain. And number three, we'll talk about five nutrient dense hormone balancing foods that you can include in your daily diet to rev up your metabolism and support permanent weight loss in midlife. I hope you're ready.
My Client, Angela, Lost 20 Pounds!
My simple and unique approach to balance hormones and to lose weight permanently by eating brain and body smart foods allowed my client, Angela, to lose 20 pounds. You can watch her share the story of her journey right here, or keep reading.
Angela was feeling unmotivated and almost depressed because she'd been struggling with health and confidence issues working with me. She shed 20 pounds and now she feels healthy and confident at her goal weight. It's what we all want. She told me I feel so much healthier and fitter than I have in years, and I credit Kristen with a lot of that. I'm not sure I would have gotten there without her hump. How great. This is what we all want and it's possible even in midlife. If you want to get my latest videos designed to help you overcome food addiction and to lose weight permanently, even at midlife, all while you have a busy demanding corporate job, just be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you can continue to get access free access to more tools and more help for weight loss.
The Daytime Eating Pattern That’s Wrecking Your Weight Loss Progress in Midlife.
As a successful corporate woman in midlife, your demanding on the go schedule likely leaves you very little time to plan for eating healthy meals, so it's easy to use that age old formula just to limit what you eat, right? Just don't eat much. Well, that's pretty easy to do when you stay busy and distracted all day long with your job, but you might not realize that your stay busy daytime approach to restricting foods hits really hard at night and then it takes a toll on your diet each weekend because you don't have a consistent healthy eating routine all week long thinking that you worked hard all day, you ate very little, and then believing that you can eat less healthy foods at night is not true. This thought that you saved up the calories sounds really good because your brain likes fast and easy solutions, fast and easy pleasure, but this approach is actually wrecking your hormones, especially at midlife.
Let's look at a common example of how a low calorie diet in your fast-paced day can sabotage staying on track at night and then wreck your hormones. Consider this, you have no time to plan for and pack a healthy lunch, so you just go through the drive-through, grab a Chick-fil-A grilled chicken sandwich on a multi green bun.
Sure, it might be touted for high protein and it's lower calorie count, but you have no healing nutrients in that chicken sandwich such as fiber, vitamins, minerals, or antioxidants, and it's high in salt with half your daily limit of sugar. Let's be honest, there are really no healing fruits and veggies in a grilled chicken sandwich or other popular fast food, healthy options, healthy options. In most takeout restaurants, you might think that you don't have time in your corporate job to plan for a healthy, fast and affordable meal, but consider how easily you can layer a large mason jar first with your favorite whole foods dressing from the refrigerated produce section. Then half a can of rinsed chickpeas, your favorite pre-sliced greens and veggies, next feta cheese, and then pre-cooked seasoned organic chicken from the deli. This mason jar chicken salad is full of fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and even compounds that balance your hormones, boost your metabolism, and even help you to establish healthy supported blood sugar levels.
Each of these are important actions for less impulsive and compulsive cravings, for less emotional, anxious, and stressful eating and permanent weight loss, and just think your fast and easy home spun salad takes less than a few minutes to prep the night before and it contains less calories, less salt, and less sugar than a grilled chicken sandwich. It's a whole lot more affordable to your wallet and your waste too. Truly, it pays to know how to choose the easy, fast, and affordable foods that are nutrient dense with no added sugar. These are the foods that keep your insulin low and that's a fat storage hormone, and these foods keep your body burning fat for a healthy approach to weight loss.
If you notice that you're struggling with eating foods that support your hormones at midlife and you're unsure of how to nourish your body, just click on the link below to join my Free Crush Your Cravings program. This is free to everyone. In this program, you'll get a free five day video series to help you crush any craving that pops up, including sugar cravings. Plus you get access to me with a FREE, private coaching session.
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What Your Body Is Really Craving When You’re Hungry, Besides Food.
Here's what you need to know about hunger, what your body is really craving and needing when you feel hungry, besides that obvious answer of food and then how the approach you're taking right now that is probably slowing your metabolism and confusing your stress and weight loss hormones. It just results in weight gain. Let's break this down. When your body is hungry, it actually wants nutrients, not just calories. Your body needs nutrients, especially when you're at midlife and either trying to avoid weight gain or reach your goal weight. After I explained this, keep watching this video for the five nutrient dense hormone balancing foods that you can include in your daily diet to rev up your metabolism and support permanent weight loss even in midlife.
Unfortunately, most women, especially my busy corporate go-getters at midlife continue to believe that restricting calories is the most effective plan for losing weight, so they just stay busy and distracted to eat very little or they exercise off calories to create a deficit, but this approach does not work long-term because when you starve your body of calories, you also starve your body of nutrients and specific nutrients either positively or negatively influence your hormones, including weight loss hormones. Starving and inconsistent nutrient patterns actually make it harder to lose weight. It's very common to be frustrated as a midlife woman who has successfully used calorie restriction in the past. Not only do traditional and fad diets ignore the simple concept that nutrients influence your hormones, your metabolism, your health and permanent weight loss. Traditional diets also forget that your brain causes unstoppable urges and cravings, especially when deprived of nutrients giving everyone the same weight loss plan does not work, and midlife women have unique nutritional needs.
Now, the good news is that when your brain and body are optimized with the right nutrients from specific foods, it's also easier to stay on track long-term because cravings and emotional eating also decrease with the right nutrients. I can remember before I was able to keep off 35 pounds, I was trying to survive on a low calorie diet of pretzels and diet Coke and a lot of endurance running to keep calorie countdown. I would force a calorie deficit by starving myself then trying to give my stomach the feeling of fullness using Diet Coke and trying to run with no nutrients and my body suffered. I was hungry all the time. I couldn't sustain my weight loss and my body ached. It hurt. That's because I was focused so much on calories and calorie deficits when my body really needed nutrients. Now that I give my body the nutrients it needs to balance hormones and boost my metabolism, I've kept off 35 pounds for over 20 years, even now as a woman in her fifties.
5 Nutrient Dense, Hormone Balancing Foods For Weight Loss at Midlife.
Moving on to our last point, the five nutrient dense hormone balancing foods that you can include in your daily diet to rev up your metabolism and to support permanent weight loss even in midlife, it's so much easier to shift your focus to what to eat rather than what not to eat. Here are five nutrient focused foods that I include every day, and this is just the start. These are just scratching the surface.
First, cinnamon, which increases feelings of fullness, but cinnamon also regulates blood sugar to help you lose weight. Whether you sprinkle cinnamon on apple slices on your morning oatmeal or a quinoa in a smoothie, a slow roasted veggie pan of sweet potatoes, maybe chickpeas, there are countless ways to add this fat burning spice to your daily meals. We underestimate cinnamon, and the cool thing is the low cost for this superfood. It's already in your spice drawer and your blood sugar levels will be supported to prevent sugar cravings.
Second, include lean high protein foods that support your hormones, keep you feeling full, and rev up your metabolism. My favorite protein rich foods include tofu, chickpeas, peas, beans, legumes, tempe nut butter, broccoli and seeds like kima, chicken, fish, Turkey, eggs, cottage cheese and lean cuts of meat are also good animal sources of protein. My personal favorite is to mix vegan chocolate protein powder with organic Greek yogurt. It's what I eat most days for lunch and it keeps me full and satisfied for hours plus I even like to add some raw cacao, sprinkle it in just to make it even more decadent with maybe some fresh berries and nuts.
And that leads me to the third daily food to include in your permanent weight loss plan, which is dark chocolate, especially raw cacao or ground up cocoa beans. Raw cacao contains caffeine and theobromine, which has been found to boost your metabolism and it reduces cravings as well as increase the production of a protein, which is also a hormone called adiponectin. It's your skinny hormone. Raw cacao is also rich in fiber plus who doesn't like chocolate? I love it.
Berries and especially blueberries are your fourth daily food for permanent weight loss. Blueberries are another great source of fiber to feel full longer. Plus their natural sweetness helps you to minimize sugar cravings while getting a daily dose of those powerful antioxidants according to researchers also prevent weight gain. For example, just one quarter cup serving of blueberries contains 10 milligrams of antioxidants, which is linked to a quarter pound less weight gain over four years. Now, that might seem insignificant, but it can add up with time to prevent the one to two pounds that most women gain annually after age 20.
Finally, our fifth permanent weight loss food is kombucha or any other fermented food. Studies show that daily consistent consumption of fermented foods can lead to permanent weight loss since they improve your gut health and your digestion through the addition of fiber. Fermented foods also prevent fat accumulation by suppressing lipid or fat absorption from the food that you eat. Drinking a daily kombucha is the easiest way to add a sweet afternoon treat while adding fermentation to your permanent weight loss plan. GT's strawberry flavor is my favorite, and this is not an endorsement, but just give it a try. When considering kombucha, start with half the bottle and please don't be alarmed to see sugar on its ingredient list. Sugar is used to make kombucha, but the purpose of sugar's addition is to allow the fermentation process. The yeast actually eats or digests the sugar, both converting it into glucose and fructose, your body's preferred fuel or sugar sources, and also the yeast converts the sugar into a byproduct of ethanol and CO2. In turn, the bacteria eat the ethanol causing the good things that you want to digest, such as electrolytes, amino acids, and vitamins. The punchline with kombucha is that there are different types of sugar. The sugars are high, although it's processed differently than table sugar for women at midlife to balance hormones for permanent weight loss.
Weight Loss at Midlife is Not as Simple as Calories In, Calories Out.
It's not as simple as getting more protein or tracking and reducing calories. I hope you're starting to see why this old approach just to cut calories is not enough to lose weight permanently and certainly not in midlife. Our bodies need more nutrients and you'll get a great dose of them with these five foods. They're just the start. I mentioned my free Crush Your Cravings program earlier in this video and I want to tell you about it again, just in case you missed it. This is a free offering. The work we do in this free program gives you a simple two-step system that you can add to your busy corporate life in just seconds every single day, which will help you conquer any craving that you encounter in your day, whether that's that boardroom with the box of donuts or maybe a tray of cookies or the catered lunches. Click here to learn more about the Free Crush Your Cravings program.
Now, if you've learned something new in this video about my different approach to weight loss, if you are sick of the dieting roller coaster or if you just felt inspired by what I'm sharing today, click on the subscribe button and click to like this video so that I can continue sharing my free videos and my different approach to weight loss with other professional corporate women at midlife just like you.
And if you're a sugar lover and you're wondering just how much sugar you can eat while you balance your hormones and reach your weight loss goals, you'll want to check out my video Daily Sugar Limit for Corporate Midlife Weight Loss. It's a great one and I know it's going to help you too. In this video, I share why it's so hard to conquer sugar cravings, what to eat to help conquer your sugar cravings, how much sugar you can actually eat and still lose weight, and also the types of sugar to eat that will help you be more successful in reaching your permanent weight loss goals at midlife, even with your demanding stressful corporate job.