If you’ve been around the block on various diets over the years, you’ve likely come across a number of fads. Attempting to lose weight is challenging enough without having to figure out which diets you can trust. During your weight loss journey, perhaps you’ve come across the hormone diet.
The hormone diet is a six-week program created by Dr. Natasha Turner. As a doctor of naturopathic (holistic) medicine, Turner set out to help women lose weight by balancing the fluctuations of their hormones.
Recommending a healthy, well-balanced diet, getting good amounts of sleep and exercise, and managing stress are all facets of the hormone diet. These are the points to focus on. Eating to balance your hormones, boost your metabolism, and decrease inflammation are ways to lose weight sustainably. Let’s dive deeper.
Hormone-Balanced Diet in Three Phases
Any woman approaching middle age knows her hormone levels, along with her metabolism, are bound to dip. Estrogen, responsible for female reproductive development and sexual health, takes the brunt of hormone depletion. With Turner’s hormone diet, she stipulates (among other things) that her three-step program is “focused on the essentials of hormone balance for lasting health.”
The hormone diet aims to “harmonize hormones.” How does it do that? The first step in the three-step program is where a conscientious woman might take pause. Turner’s diet begins with a two-week detox. She aims for the dieter to eliminate all gluten, dairy, peanuts, oils, sugars, red meat, alcohol, and caffeine.
Start Slowly and Don’t Eliminate Foods All At Once
On the surface, these seem like foods you should aim to avoid. However, cutting all out of your diet in one fair swoop can be a shock to the system. Rather than go this route, take your new, healthy lifestyle slow and steady.
Also in phase one of the hormone diet, Turner incorporates supplements such as fish oil, anti-inflammatories, and probiotics. It’s true these can be beneficial to an overall healthy lifestyle, but it’s a lot to do at once.
When phase two begins, Turner allows for the reintroduction of some of the foods phase one sought to eliminate. These may include meats, nuts, and even high-fructose corn syrup. This could lead to a number of health-related issues, including the possibility of yo-yo-ing back to your original weight.
While the basic concepts of a hormone-balanced diet make sense on paper, there are ways to balance hormones without restriction. You don’t have to over-exercise or eliminate dairy, carbs, or sugar to lose weight, either. First and foremost, you must create safety for your body. How? Through choosing wholesome foods.
Hormone Reset Diet
To balance your hormones or lose weight, you simply have to diminish stressors, sleep well, eat well, and drink lots of water. A true hormone reset diet establishes safety in the body through eating well and consistently. Intense exercise is unnecessary, too. This will only create more stress for an already-stressed system.
Though certain women have had measurable success with the hormone diet, it is certainly not a lasting way to live. Turner’s diet boasts that women can lose up to 12 pounds in just three weeks. And many do. But then what happens when the diet is over? How does a woman’s body react to such dramatic changes to her body when the structures aren’t in place to continue it? The answers, as you might suspect, are not as easy to come by.
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