What does hormone balance feel like?

Alison Boden, MPH RDN

dietitian for moms

Today, we're defining some hormone goals.

You know I love to talk about whacked-out hormones, feeling hormonal, eating to support your hormones, etc - but I wanted to take a minute to have us all take a step back and first look at our goals. What does it actually feel like to have balanced hormones? What are we aiming for?

These aren’t just pipe dreams, these are the goals. No matter where you are with your hormonal symptoms today, this is what you absolutely can feel like. 

Signs your hormones are happy:

You have energy throughout the day and can wind down at night. 

Now of course there’s going to be some variation here. It’s not a hormonal problem if you don’t wake up with Mary Poppins levels of sunshine. But in general, if you wake up reasonably easy, have an even amount of energy to get sh*t done without feeling totally burnt out all day, I’ll call that good. The time of the day where you should find yourself the most sleepy and slow is the last couple of hours of the night. 

Red flags for hormonally disruptive energy:  Dragging out of bed and being exhausted all day. Brain foggy until the afternoon. Hitting a 3pm energy crash. If you get a burst of energy in the evening and can't settle for sleep, that also hints at a hormonal problem. Energy issues point to unhinged cortisol (high and low), testosterone, and even progesterone!

Cravings are minimal. 

To be clear, ALL cravings aren't hormonal. If you put a donut in front of me, I will absolutely annihilate it. Cravings, especially for sweets, can often be habitual (like if you have chocolate every day after dinner, it’s like you’ve trained yourself to crave it). They can also be related to not eating enough of certain macros. blood sugar crashes, and nutrient deficiencies. So cravings can require a bit of decoding.

If you’ve ruled out all of the above and still find yourself craving sugar, salt, alcohol, or caffeine, there's definitely a link to your hormones that warrants investigation. Generally speaking, I’m raising my eyebrow at cortisol and insulin issues when cravings are out of hand.

You can maintain a healthy weight. 

Weight is not just a simple math equation of calories in v. calories out, especially when it comes to women’s bodies. Is weight management ever super easy? Not in my experience. But I see an increase in weight issues after having babies, and when we enter our late thirties or early forties. Suddenly the same things you did when you were 25 to lose a few pounds don’t work anymore, or you and your husband do the Whole30 together and he loses 15 pounds and you gain 3. Rude, amiright!?

So how do we know if it’s related to hormones? If you are cutting calories and increasing your exercise (aka “doing everything right”) and your weight isn't changing we probably have a hormone problem. Likewise, if you are gaining and gaining without an apparent cause, we must start digging in to see what's up.

Trouble losing weight or even excessive water retention can be due to so many different hormones from leptin to insulin, estrogen, thyroid hormone and even testosterone. This is why it’s really important to run some thorough labs when we’re trying to troubleshoot hormonal symptoms!

Stable moods and a good stress tolerance. 

I’m not going to gaslight you here and tell you that no matter what happens around you, you need to put on a pretty smile and exude toxic positivity. There are many external factors to these that have nothing to do with hormones. 

But if you find yourself getting stressed really easily or becoming moody (easily tearful, running anxious, quick to anger, etc.) and it doesn’t feel like an appropriate response to whatever the context is, there could be a hormonal issue underlying or exacerbating the way you feel. 

Once we get to the bottom of the hormone drama, my patients notice a significant reduction in their PMS, less irritation and stress intolerance, far less anxiety and ruminating thoughts, and typically an improved mood overall.

Most of the women I work with just *know* when their mood changes are hormonal because it just hits different. A couple of days of slightly moody PMS might be considered range of normal, but when that PMS turns you into a different person and lasts 10 days or is clinical PMDD then we want to jump in and see what we can do to fix it.

Hormonal mood can be like hormonal weight issues - related to quite a few different hormones or even nutrient deficiencies. Test, don’t guess!

A regular ovulatory cycle with minimal symptoms. 

What’s regular? A cycle showing up every 26-33 (ish) days, with 4-5 days of moderate bleeding. Some cramping in the beginning is ok but shouldn’t need painkillers to manage. A day or two of spotting on either end of your cycle is fine, but not more than that. 

Not normal: Irregular periods, skipping periods, long or short cycles. Spotting beyond what is mentioned above. Painful cramps, big clots, excessive PMS/ PMDD. Period flow: very heavy (having to change a pad / tampon every 1-2 hours, or a cup every 3-4) or very light periods (only needing the equivalent of 1 super tampon your entire bleed), etc., are all signs of a hormonally unhealthy cycle. As expected, estrogen and progesterone are our key players here.

If you’ve given birth recently this one will be difficult to assess if you are newly postpartum and/or nursing, but once cycles return after the baby, we can add this to the list of things to check.

If you’re diving into your perimenopause years, you may see rapid changes in your cycle symptoms, and honestly all of the symptoms in this article!

—

That, in a nutshell, covers some basics of hormonal balance, and our #hormonegoals.

Do you check off all or most of these balance checks? Or do you have some work to do?

If you find based on this list that you're feeling unbalanced or just feeling off - there's good news. Since these hormones all work together, once we start healing one or two, the others tend to fall in place. So you can feel better pretty quickly if we're targeting the right spot.

But here’s what I don’t want you to do - think that hormone drama is just part of being a woman, or just your new normal now that you… (have a baby, are in perimenopause, are getting older, etc). Most of these symptoms of imbalance don’t lend themselves to medical diagnoses so they are often overlooked by our medical providers. But they can disrupt quality of life in very significant ways, and are often more of a nutrition or lifestyle problem rather than a medical problem.

We can feel good, and functional, and thrive in motherhood. So please take this as a sign to get your hormones checked out by someone who knows how to help you. And don’t take “this is just what it feels like, you’re a mom!” as an acceptable answer. 

What are your hormone concerns? Are you feeling balanced, totally unhinged, or somewhere in between?

PS - if you’d like to work with me, here are some next steps:

Feeling exhausted, burnt out, brain foggy, and moody? Learn more about my comprehensive ENERGIZE program HERE, designed to boost your energy levels, improve mental clarity, and stabilize your mood. Let's feel good again! 

If you’re a new mom, within 2 years of giving birth my Mother Recover program will help you reverse postpartum depletion, support your hormones and help you feel like yourself again. Check out Mother Recover here.

Are you interested in working side by side with me, getting your hormones checked to identify any imbalances, and having a customized nutrition and supplement plan tailored to suit your unique biology? Book a free call with me here, and we'll chat about how my 1:1 program can help you achieve hormonal balance and overall well-being.