How to Balance Hormones With Diet and Exercise-What You Can Do NOW!

Hormones and Your Fat Cells

I tweeted a very interesting article yesterday that was about a recent study published in the prestigious Journal of Internal Medicine, about how what you eat and how you exercise can actually CHANGE what hormones your body makes, and more specifically, how much of on hormone called leptin in relation to a second hormone called adiponectin, your body makes.  I’ve had loads of comments and questions and interest in this article in the past 12 hours, so I wanted to help explain it a bit more so you can use this new study to make a difference in your own life starting NOW!

So first, I want to go over some Key Ideas to help you understand this better!:)

1. Basically, our fat cells, are not just to store fat, they are actually their own hormone factories!  Each fat cell is a mini hormone factory, and it makes hormones that influence everything from your appetite to how your liver handles cholesterol and blood sugar!
2. Not all fat cells are created equal–‘visceral fat’ (the fat around your organs that’s BAD) and central tummy fat–the kind that contributes to the ‘spare tire’ and having a ‘gut’ produces more bad hormones that say, fat cells on the back of your arm or on your butt!   Now, I’m simplifiying things here–no hormone is truly ‘bad’ but if it’s produced too much, than it can BECOME bad!
3. One hormone that your body can make too much of is called leptin, which when there’s too much of it can make you fatter, and may be ‘pro-cancer’ (we want ANTI cancer hormones folks!!)
4. One of the things that decreases the amount of leptin your body makes is……you guessed it!!  A Healthy diet and daily exercise!  Obviously that’s being a bit vague, and in fact, one of the major things I work with clients on is giving them easy, simple strategies for diet and exercise that they actually ENJOY doing and don’t take hours a day to do.  But you can start simply with cutting out white flour, white pasta and pastries, and walking briskly for 20 minutes every day!
5. One of the good hormones made by fat cells is called Adiponectin, which we want MORE of, because it helps prevent diabetes, and helps you from wanting to overeat.  The study found healthy diet changes and daily exercise also actually Increased how much Adiponectin the body made
6. So, Avoid refined flour, baked goods and WALK briskly to your fave tunes every day to make your fat cells actually do your body GOOD!

Reference: Clare Abbenhardt, Anne McTiernan, Catherine M. Alfano, Mark H. Wener, Kristin L. Campbell, Catherine Duggan, Karen E. Foster-Schubert, Angela Kong, Adetunji T Toriola, John D. Potter, Caitlin Mason, Liren Xiao, George L. Blackburn, Carolyn Bain and Cornelia M. Ulrich. Effects of individual and combined dietary weight loss and exercise interventions in postmenopausal women on adiponectin and leptin levels. Journal of Internal Medicine, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/joim.12062