With the new year comes New Year’s Resolutions. More often than not, these New Year’s Resolutions include becoming healthier, being more active, or losing weight. At Optimal Bio, we are frequently asked if balancing your hormones can lead to weight loss. Little do people know that weight gain is the most common and obvious sign of hormonal imbalance.

Reasons Hormones Cause Weight Gain
Hormones are responsible for a multitude of things in the body; however, weight gain is the most obvious when it comes to looking in the mirror. Hormonal imbalance might be the cause of weight gain for a variety of reasons.

How unbalanced hormones can lead to weight gain:

Testosterone
Testosterone burns fat, so it helps you change your body composition by burning fat and increasing lean muscle. Testosterone also helps insulin sensitivity and fights insulin resistance, which will help your body make less fat and burn more fat - primarily visceral fat, which kills us.

Estrogen
Estrogen imbalance will affect the gut bacteria called gut dysbiosis, which will increase this beta-glucuronidase enzyme and cause the recirculation of estrogen (enterohepatic rotation), resulting in weight gain. You want to eliminate this type of estrogen in your body.

A Problematic Thyroid
The thyroid gland orchestrates all your bodily functions, including body temperature, metabolism, digestion, cholesterol levels, heart rate, breathing, muscle development, appetite, and the release of your sex hormones. Your thyroid is continually communicating with your brain, your hypothalamus, and your pituitary gland to make all these complicated hormonal changes happen throughout the day, every single day.

Hypothyroidism is strongly associated with weight gain; in fact, weight gain is the most common symptom of hypothyroidism. Additionally, an under-active thyroid (Hoshimoto’s thyroiditis) can make it challenging to manage weight.

The two most active thyroid hormones, thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3), circulate in the body, and they affect your metabolism through their interaction with your:

• Fat cells
• Muscle
• Liver
• Pancreas
• Hypothalamus

Menopause
Menopause is when estrogen hormones in women decline, which can often lead to weight gain. Women gain weight from menopause typically in their hips and thighs.

As men age, their testosterone levels decrease, which results in increased body fat and decreased muscle mass.

Other Symptoms
Hormonal imbalance doesn’t only cause weight gain. Symptoms of hormonal imbalance include fatigue, depression, anxiety, loss of libido, and more. If you’re constantly experiencing low energy levels due to any of these symptoms, it will be more challenging to stay active, which can also lead to weight gain.

Let Optimal Bio help you start your new year on a positive note by balancing your hormones. Contact us today for more information or to schedule a consultation with Dr. Brannon. Here’s to a happy, healthy year ahead of us!