The Link Between Your Hormones and Difficulty Losing Weight

If you’ve been struggling to lose weight and the scale just isn’t budging despite consistent diet and exercise routines, the problem is more than just calories in vs. calories out.

You may be facing an imbalance in your hormones that’s putting the brakes on your weight loss. Hormones affect many processes in our body, including how we store fat, how hungry we feel, how our metabolism works, and how easy it is for us to lose weight.

At Phillips Family Medical, Pamela Phillips, Ph.D., FNP-C, and our team understand the link between your hormones and the difficulty in losing weight, which is why we focus on this link as part of our weight loss management program. Here are more details — and what you can do about it.

What hormones are involved?

Multiple hormones in your body can affect your weight. Here’s a quick look at a few.

Insulin

Insulin gives your cells the ability to absorb glucose (sugar) from your blood. If you’re resistant to insulin, which is often the case in people who are overweight or prediabetic, your body will store more fat because it isn’t able to use energy effectively.

Thyroid hormones

Your thyroid controls how fast your metabolism runs. If it’s underactive, your metabolism will be slower (meaning you burn less calories), and weight loss will be difficult.

Cortisol

You have more of this stress hormone in your body when your stress is high. This in turn can increase your appetite, make your body store more fat, and interfere with your metabolism, all of which make it harder to lose weight.

Leptin and ghrelin

Leptin signals when you’re full and ghrelin signals when you’re hungry. If you’re resistant to leptin, your body won’t tell you you’re satisfied. Abnormal ghrelin levels can also lead to overeating because you always feel hungry.

Sex hormones

Changes in estrogen and testosterone levels as you age can affect where you store fat, how well you build muscle, and how well your body responds to your efforts at diet and exercise.

What can you do to lose weight?

Our weight loss management program takes all of this into account. In addition to your diet and exercise, we’ll evaluate your hormone levels, genetics, stress, and more. We’ll do a full battery of lab tests and then build a personalized plan based on the results.

The plan will adjust your diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, and more. If your hormone levels are low or out of balance, we’ll start bioidentical hormone replacement to return your body to its more normal state where your weight loss efforts will have an effect.

We’ll see you regularly to monitor your progress and adjust your plan as necessary. We can address challenges like plateaus, stress, cravings, and more.

When you’re ready to jump into a weight loss management program, our team at Phillips Family Medical is here to help. Call our DeSoto, Texas, office today to schedule an appointment, or pick your own convenient time with our easy online scheduler.