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Healthy Hormone Hacks · Fit for Hiking

• Hi, my name is Brady, and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one-stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female. Wellness, trail talk and adventure hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel, and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Fit for Hiking podcast. 1s Welcome back to the Fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady, and today we are going to be diving into a kind of unique topic. Not necessarily a super outdoorsy, hiking based topic, but it is one that is so important for women's health. Like, it needs to be addressed. And 1s I have so many women in my DMs and that I talk to all the time, clients, prospective clients who are dealing with hormone issues or suspected hormone issues. And so I wanted to give some hacks for healthy hormones because I feel like it's such a daunting thing, right? Like, we're just put on birth control at a young age as women, and then if we have these symptoms, we're like, well, is this normal? Is this just how it is? Am I supposed to just have super painful periods all the time? Am I supposed to have irregular cycles? All of these things. It can be very daunting to try to look these things head on and say, okay, this doesn't feel normal despite it being common, right? And just a little bit of a backstory of why I'm even passionate about this. I experienced years of hormone disregulation that led to not having a cycle in my early 20s for about four years, literally no periods. And it was all stress related, like the doctors ran. 1s Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of labs every week trying to figure out why is this, like, very, like, normal weight, like 20 something female, not having a period. I knew that it wasn't a normal thing and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. And in addition to that, I was very puffy and inflamed and struggling with these other symptoms despite, 1s you know, not being on birth control and 1s not being an unhealthy person. I worked out a lot. I was very conscious of what I was eating. I was a personal trainer. Like, I was in the gym all the time, and I was really struggling with some of these symptoms and just not having a cycle. And I really had to get to the bottom of it kind of on my own because I was falsely diagnosed as hypothyroid, put on medication. That really messed me up for a bit. And there's just a lot that can be very frustrating if you're working with Western medicine, trying to get to the bottom of some of these things. You can have labs that look normal, quote unquote, but you know that things aren't normal. 1s I know what it's like to deal with this for years. And a lot of the women that come through our Mountain metabolic coaching program are there because they want someone to actually listen to their pain points around this instead of just being told, well, you just need to eat less and move more, right? And we address that so heavily in what we do with that program because it's almost impossible to look at female health without addressing the nuances of metabolic and hormone regulation as well. And so this is a space that encompasses all of these things for female wellness, health, and fitness. So I wanted to talk about this today for anybody who. 1s Maybe feels like they're having some hormone imbalances, knows that they are, has been struggling with this. Or maybe you just want to learn more about how to keep your hormones healthy. If they're in a healthy place, awesome. Like, let's keep them there. What does it take to have healthy hormones in general? And I also want to say I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. I'm simply someone who's learned through a lot of my own experiences working with clients. One of the women on our team is a functional practitioner. She literally is a hormone specialist. So there's a lot that I've learned over the years, and I just want to kind of share some general tidbits for how you can really optimize hormone health as a female. So let's get into it. 2s So I have six hacks for you. And sometimes when people say the word hack, I'm like, okay, yeah, this just sounds like a gimmicky thing that's not legit. So hack is just a way to say these are six things that you can and should be doing as a female to have as healthy of hormones as you possibly can. And a lot of them are like, probably things that hopefully you're already doing if you are focusing on your health and that's awesome. You can just keep it up and be aware that I'm supporting my hormones by doing these things. So you number one is solid protein consumption. So one of the most important functions of protein is providing the amino acids necessary for hormone production in the pituitary gland, which is often referred to as the master gland of the endocrine system. 1s Estrogen, insulin, thyroid hormone prolactin and the growth hormone are just a few things that rely on protein. So these play a crucial role in regulating multiple physiological processes, including energy, metabolism, appetite, stress, growth and more. So while protein may be a buzzword in the fitness industry for building muscle, you might think like, oh, my gosh, everyone's just telling me to eat more protein. I'm so overhearing that. It really does matter for not only your body composition and supporting, maintaining and gaining muscle, but it's also important for so many functions in the body from a hormonal standpoint. So one thing that you can try to do is just a quick, easy hack, is aim for a minimum of 20 grams of protein per meal, and an ideal daily range would be 20 or sorry, it would be 80 to 100 grams per day. If you are a larger person, if you're already eating like 100 grams, maybe try to up it. An ideal, like, super ideal range would be to have about 1 gram per pound of your goal body weight. If you're a smaller person, then if you're in the 100 to 150 pound range, then you could go 1 gram per pound of your body weight. That's a really good goal to work up to. But first, just start by seeing where you are. This is something I have my clients do when they get started in the Mountain Metabolic program, and a lot of times they're shocked when they look at realistically how many grams of protein they're getting in in the day is so low. So if we're not monitoring it, it's really hard to manage it. It's really hard to see how we can improve. So take a realistic, an honest look at how much protein you're getting and see if you can up it a little bit. 20 grams of protein per meal, three to five times a day is a really easy way to do that. 1s All right, tip number two is avoid under-eating. Oh, man, this is a big one. So our second key to hormone health is avoiding under-eating chronically. So skipping breakfast every day or eating a low calorie diet for months or years on end is bound to wreak havoc on your hormones and lead to a lack of reproductive function when taken too far. A key signal for this is losing your menstrual cycle or having irregular cycles. So basically, when the body senses that it is under stress in that way, it doesn't feel safe. One of the first functions that it's going to lose is things like your reproductive function or your menstrual cycle or you might experience hair loss. These are all signs that your body feels very much unsafe, and so these things are the first to go. So if you're experiencing things like that, it's probably a stress issue. Like for me, when I lost my period, I actually wasn't underweight, but I was tending to under-eat and then I would like, binge later. And that was a lot of stress on my body in addition to all of the exercise that I was doing, plus the emotional and mental stress that I was going through at that time in a relationship. So all of that stress compounds and under-eating can kind of just be that tipping point. If you're chronically under-eating and then just having like, caffeine in the morning or whatever it is to get you through and not having any sort of real meal until 01:00 P.m. Every day, that's a lot of stress on your body, especially if you're a highly stressed person. Highly intense exercise, especially when paired with under-eating, can tend to have this effect on women where you lose your cycle or it causes some hormonal imbalance. So while not having your cycle might feel like a nice perk, it's actually a sign of an underlying issue that needs to be addressed. 1s Women just do require more body fat than men in order to maintain normal hormonal function. So, like I said, this is something that we address pretty heavily in mountain metabolic coaching with our hormone specialists. So if you have a feeling that your hormones may be in distress from years of dieting and or over exercise, this is something you need to work with an expert on. It's really tough mentally and just physically to kind of get yourself out of that place by yourself. You need that support. So please, seriously DM me at ponytail underscore on a trail, and you can just say metabolism, and I will connect you with our team. We'll get you on a call, and we'll go from there. I'm also going to link where you can apply for that program in the show notes. So a hack for this is to just start your day with protein and healthy fats before having your coffee, before jumping into a workout, and ideally, within an hour of waking, you want to wake up hungry. It's a good thing. It's a sign of a healthy metabolism. And especially if you are someone who is high stress or has tended to be high stress like type a type of person, then you're probably going to need to support your body a little bit more. In this way, it is not one size fits all. Some people can literally do amazing with fasting and high intent see workouts all the time, but typically those people tend to be like very low stress, kind of chill people in general, and you have to look at your whole stress bucket instead of compartmentalizing exercise and dieting from the rest of your stress in your entire life. Okay, I'm so passionate about this because I feel like it's so under-looked at and for women, this is huge. We have to address the stress issue. 2s Okay, the next one is regular exercise. So exercising regularly has huge benefits. 1s So one of the biggest benefits of intentional exercise is the use of excess insulin in the bloodstream throughout the day, resulting in more balanced blood sugar and hormone levels. So as women age, we also experience a decline in estrogen production. So you can come combat this by exercising regularly for at least 30 minutes a day to boost estrogen levels and help with menopause symptoms if you are in that season of life. Regular exercise also helps balance cortisol and thyroid hormones, along with providing a boost of endorphins, serotonin, dopamine norepinephrine to the brain. The benefits of intentional movement never cease to amaze me. Seriously, it's crazy. And it really helps drive my passion for this because there are so many benefits beyond just body composition. Like, if that's all that we're looking at, we're really missing the mark here. Another really amazing part of exercising and sweating is getting rid of some of those endotoxins, those excess hormones that build up. One of the best ways, other than using the bathroom, going number two daily, to excrete these excess hormones that can kind of cause some imbalances in the body is sweating. So regular exercise is just seriously a miracle worker. 1s And I recommend for this hack, exercising three to four times a week at least, and 30 minutes per session is great. You really don't have to go like five to six times a week in order to see results. I would rather you just start. Like, if you're someone who doesn't exercise regularly, start with three days a week, literally just three and nail it. Or if even that feels like too much, start with two. It's better than waiting until the perfect time in life, which, spoiler alert, it doesn't exist, and then feel like you have to jump in and do five days a week. Just ease into it and do what you can. Something is always better than nothing. And if you don't know where to start, you can check out my free week of my Fit for hiking workouts. I will link them in the show notes. Totally free, no strings attached. You can just see how you like them. 1s All right. Number four is quality sleep. Sleep and healthy hormones go hand in hand together. And I know that your eyes may glaze over a bit because everyone's always like, oh, my gosh, you need to get more sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep quality. But it is actually one of the most important things ever for just your full body health and wellness. I've experienced this more than ever. Having a newborn, and now a one year old who is not a fan of sleep, and her lack of sleep has definitely disrupted my sleep. And it is crazy how I start to lose perspective. I feel horrible. I feel like I'm getting sick, all of these things, just because I'm needing a good night of sleep. There's so many things that I think can be fixed in our life if we just actually prioritize good sleep instead of trying to get around this issue. 1s So a good night's sleep is honestly vital to producing and regulating hormones. Melatonin is one of the most commonly known hormones associated with sleep. It's produced in your pineal glands and helps regulate your circadian rhythm, also known as your sleep wake cycle. So the sun produces blue light that signals your brain's melatonin secretion. And in today's world, artificial blue light and devices disrupt the cyclical production. So to ensure quality sleep, you want to be mindful of the screens close to bedtime and opt for blue light blocking glasses if necessary. I love my blue light blocking glasses. I got them at target. I will try to link some below, because, seriously, this was, like, one of the best $10 purchases I've ever made. I wear them every night as the sun starts to go down so that I can still watch Netflix and be on my phone if I need to without hindering my ability to enter deep sleep more readily. Because basically, if we're still getting that blue light from artificial lights, either in our house, we're like having all these lights on until we go to bed or looking at all of the devices right until the moment we literally lay our head down at night. Then your brain still processes that. It's like the middle of the day. So we have to kind of stop that cycle and let our brain know that it is time to get into sleep mode. Okay, so not getting adequate sleep is also going to inhibit the production of human growth hormones, which is vital for maintaining your metabolism, immunity, and muscle development. The hunger hormones leptin and ghrelin and insulin are also affected by sleep with cortisol, estrogen and progesterone. So many physiological processes rely on a good night's sleep, so you might hear that you're more likely to gain weight if you don't get enough sleep. That's not necessarily like a physiological response, but it is a hormonal response. So if you get less sleep, then your hunger hormone ghrelin is going to naturally be increased the next day and your satiety hormone, leptin is going to be decreased. So it just makes it harder because you're fighting your hormones, you're fighting your physiology to fight off some of those cravings when you've had a crappy night's sleep. So it's worth winding down and getting into a healthy sleep routine to ensure you're getting quality rest. So, a little hack for this is to take a warm shower before bed and bring your core body temperature down, signaling melatonin production, and aim for seven to 9 hours of sleep in total darkness. Really good sleep quality. And again, those blue light blocking glasses, if possible, is a next level hack as well. Okay, on to number five, which is gut health. Gut health is key to healthy hormones and just basically health in general. It's crazy how much is coming out about the gut and everything that it impacts. It's been a pretty hot topic in the wellness space for a while now, but it's for a good reason because it relates to hormone health in a big way. So. 2s First off, gut health affects hormone production in a multitude of ways. One being the absorption of nutrients that produce and regulate the hormones that we have been talking about so far on this podcast. So we can eat all the healthy, colorful, whole food in the world. However, it's only as effective as our ability to digest and absorb the nutrients, which was kind of mind blowing for me at first. When I realize that if I'm not actually absorbing the nutrients from the veggies I'm eating or the high quality meats I'm eating, then it's not really doing much for me. So your gut microbiome influences your thyroid hormone, estrogen, serotonin, progesterone, and nearly every other hormone in your body. So making sure that you're making mindful choices towards a healthy gut is key. There are so many hacks and we can't even just list one here, so I'm just going to kind of rapid fire a couple hacks for gut health. And again, if you suspect that you have some gut issues to work through, our functional practitioner on the Fit for hiking team in our mountain metabolic coaching offer, she's a gut specialist. She seriously can help with so many of these female hormone gut issues, so she would be a really great resource to you if you're interested in talking with an expert on this topic. Then again, DM me at Ponytail underscore on a trail and you can just send me the word metabolism. 1s So let's get into these hacks. For a healthy gut, one is eating plenty of fiber. Fiber is a prebiotic, so its main function is to feed your gut's microorganism. So without fiber, the gut flora is just not going to thrive. So eating plenty of fiber incorporating probiotics into your diet, whether it's through fermented foods such as sauerkraut yogurt, kimchi, miso, et cetera, or through a live culture probiotic supplement, adding these into your daily regimen can really help restore your gut microbiome, especially if you've been on a lot of antibiotics. Antibiotics kill not only the bad in your gut, but they also kill the good. So it's important to help restore your gut health. After you've been on a round of antibiotics, you're going to need to make sure you're on a good probiotic, okay? Stress management also has a huge impact on your gut, so finding pockets of being in a state of rest and digest will work wonders on your gut health. So making sure that you're not eating in a stressed out state. If you're eating while in a fight or flight state, your body's not going to prioritize digestion. It's going to prioritize dealing with whatever stress is happening because it thinks that you are under attack. So if you're eating like, in the car while driving through traffic, that is majorly stressing. You out or you're eating literally while doing things in the house, like walking around, getting all stressed out about all the chores you need to do, or just eating during a stressful work meeting. All of these things really do affect your ability to digest properly. Daily walks, time outside, journaling, yoga, meditation, prayer, practicing gratitude, or talking to a trusted professional movement, and other ways or outlets of stress management can really aid your gut health and promote healthy digestion. All of these things are so linked. Like, we can't separate stress from gut and hormone health. They're just intrinsically linked and we have to address them altogether. 2s Okay, last one. We are looking at fat consumption. So healthy fats play a vital role in hormone regulation. So eating an inadequate amount of healthy fat decreases the body's production of estrogen and progesterone. It can also affect serotonin, leptin, and cholesterol production. HGL cholesterol is the precursor to our sex hormones, aka estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Fatty acids are also a crucial molecule that determine your brain's ability to perform and produce hormones. So all of that to say you got to eat a good macronutrient ratio. We don't want to be cutting out fats. We don't want to be cutting out carbs. We don't want to cut out protein. These things are all so important and all play a role in healthy hormone production. So one hack here is to incorporate healthy fats such as avocado, olive oil, ghee, grass fed butter, egg yolks, fatty fish, nuts and seeds into your diet. Aiming for about one to two tablespoons per meal is a good place to start. And just be mindful that when you're cooking food in healthy fats and oil, you probably don't need to add additional fats to the meal. Like, fats are definitely your most calorically dense macronutrient. So there's going to be nine calories per gram of fat, whereas with protein and carbs, there's only four calories per gram. So you don't want to go like hog wild, especially if you are trying to maintain a lean physique or lose weight. But you do want to make sure that you're not intentionally cutting out all healthy fat sources, because fat is not going to make you fat unless you're eating hundreds and hundreds of grams per day. Okay? So it's all about just making sure you're getting those good quality sources and about the one to two tablespoons per meal as far as portion sizes. 2s So I know that the endocrine system and hormones are very complicated, but I hope that these hacks have helped kind of just shed some light on some very practical things that you can do in your everyday life to help regulate your hormones. If you have some more underlying things going on like Hypothyroid or any sort of autoimmune issue PCOS 1s infertility, obviously you're going to want to speak to a licensed provider. But if you are just struggling with body composition goals and you feel like your hormones might be a hindering factor, then our team is an awesome resource. And again, I would love to talk to you DM me metabolism at ponytail. Underscore on a trail. You can also click the application link in the show notes. I'll link that there so that you can schedule a call just to see if the Mountain Metabolic program is a good fit for you based on kind of where you're struggling and see if we can help you out. So again, I hope that this has been an insightful episode on hormones, and if you guys like this type of kind of nerding out on women's health topics, let me know. And if there's anything else that you really want to take a deep dive into, I would love to hear your input. All right, I will see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at ponytail underscore on a Trail. That's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit for Hiking and find more free resources@ponytailundatrail.com. Happy and healthy trails.