A Scrumptious Bowl of Happy Hormones
5 easy, delicious ways for you to understand and take action on your hormone health
Edited & approved by Rosa Keller, PhD RD, Nutrition Science
Approved by Dr. Claire Packer, OBGYN Resident at Mass General Brigham (Harvard)
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In our MWN conversation each week,
I share verified, *easy* nutritional tips that can *truly* improve how you feel everyday, followed by a simple, delicious recipe à la moi – an award-winning, professional chef.
From our 5 pillars, this week we talk about: Women’s hormonal needs - Let’s go!
If you’re busy and doing a quick skim, you can jump to the tasty recipe I’ve developed this week or any section that seems most interesting.
Jump to:
→ What is a Hormone?
→ Nutritional Impacts on Our Hormones
→ Your 5 Takeaways to Balance Your Hormones
→ The Recipe: Happy Hormones Bowl
I want to feel like a Taylor Swift song makes this crowd feel everyday (!!!):
Who wants to join me??
Guess what this crowd all has in common: Insanely stimulated dopamine and endorphins. And what are these things? Hormones! (source 1, source 2)
We all have hormones, and we can have a massive amount of control over them — whether you want to face it or not.
What this newsletter today is telling you is that you’re finally going to understand a little bit more about whole new part of you, a light at the end of the tunnel, just like T-Swift talks about in her song Daylight:
“I don't wanna look at anything else now that I saw you
I don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you
I've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night
And now I see daylight, I only see daylight.”
Yes. Hormone clarity, understanding and action, here we come. Thanks, Tay.
So…what’s a hormone?
Hormones are little messengers in your body, connecting your organs, tissues, and brain. They help you be YOU and feel like you.
“Hormones” have a funny connotation, and it’s usually negative — like when we were 13 years old and our moody selves were blamed on our hormones. But what did that even mean??
In reality, our hormones can be very positive! They make us feel happy, passionate, excited, emotional, jazzed! Let’s face it, all of Taylor’s songs are really about hormones. And I dig it.
They control our metabolism, stimulate our appetite, and tell our brain how hungry or full we are, too. And they regulate our blood sugar and help process our nutrients in our body.
They also tell us when we’re stressed, when we need to shake out our energy on a walk, how hot or cold we feel, and how well our brain will function today.
You’ve probably heard of cortisol, thyroid, insulin, leptin, dopamine, estrogen, testosterone…all hormones.
What you eat can either benefit or harm these hormones – so let’s focus on feeding them to help us feel more positive rather than negative.
For example:
I was on my period this weekend and started to get a massive headache in the afternoon. I realized my low-protein lunch and cold fingers (a common issue for me) likely meant I needed more protein and iron, to calm my headache and better circulate my blood.
So, I scooted by the store, grabbed a few ingredients, and whipped up a Palak Paneer for dinner – a spiced spinach stew with cheese. I added some protein-rich beans too. After eating, I felt jazzed enough to take a nice long walk with Spencer, my husband, to watch the sunset. Instant relief by nailing down what my body needed and regulating those hormones. Mission accomplished.
This comes with practice — noticing your body’s signals and listening to them.
Hormone imbalances can lead to health issues like excessive fatigue, headaches, weight gain, mood swings, and brain fog (source). And yes, friend, these can be significantly improved by what you eat.
So let’s use nutrition to manage and correct our hormones.
Here are a few nutritional impacts on our hormones:
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