By Anupama Menon, Nutritionist and Food Coach
Sara Gottfried wrote the book called the Hormonal reset diet. The title itself was interesting enough to catch my undivided attention. While it is almost in everyone’s bucket list to lose extra kilos and shed unwanted fat, she took to explaining how to reset your hormones by eliminating certain foods or groups of foods and thus achieve fat loss.
When you read a book you are made aware of or revisit certain thoughts or facts.
But then you build your own perceptions or a path to take based on a culmination of those ideologies and practices of your own. It’s the inspiration drawn from this book that struck me with a very simple thought that if all our hormones don’t really have the same kind of conditioning, then the foods that affect these hormones will affect individual bodies differently.
I used this theory to draw parallels with addictive foods like alcohol caffeine and sugar and also the most nascent form of dairy, milk. The standard practice on weight loss diets have been to avoid all these, especially sugar and alcohol. The first three months of your diet plan you rigidly avoid sugar alcohol sometimes even caffeine hoping it will works wonders on your scale and sometimes it does.
But logically when you look at this theory closely, it’s important to fist understand which hormone is affected by which product.
Example: sugar affects insulin, caffeine affects cortisol while alcohol affects estrogen.
typically when you give up any of these products you are pressing a hard reset on its parallel hormone. So let’s say in body type A, where insulin is not as well regulated and tends to present more than acceptable spikes in the day, giving up sugar can reset insulin and give you a fair advantage in your diet. On the other hand let’s say for women body type B, estrogen and progesterone are in perfect balance and she is supported by a perfectly healthy period, consuming moderate amount of alcohol will not harm her hormonal balance. On the same note, giving up the alcohol wouldn’t give her a weight advantage either. The lack of sleep or the resistance to sleep is emerging as not just a break in a good Lifestyle but as a new age metabolic disorder.
Chronically high cortisol levels, and staying awake onto the dark recesses of the night often shake hands with caffeine, copious amounts of it.
So if you are a night owl or just are under a lot of stress because life happened, eliminating caffeine could reset your cortisol hormone. Ofcourse, this is not a substitute for reclaiming your life from the hands of poor sleep or late sleeping hours. Lifestyle still needs to change.
And just a small disclaimer: You have be on a healthy eating plan already to even begin experimenting with or understanding the 3 addictives. Once you are eating healthy, figuring out which of these 3 affect you negatively can iron out those rough edges and further your health results.
It’s sometimes funny how your body responds to food. You may not be insulin resistant or genetically prone to diabetes and yet you may not be able to process sugar well. Your stress levels maybe within limits and your sleeping pattern may not warrant correction, yet you may respond poorly to caffeine. You can never really predict, the reasons maybe plenty from variations in the genes that metabolize different foods or the kind of gut microbiome one houses.
After having worked with varied clients, all can say for sure is that with food there is never a one size that fits all. Each body is unique and so are the food patterns that suit their metabolism. And hence a gluten free diet may not work for everyone just as detoxing sugar completely isn’t of miraculous advantage to everyone.
How to you apply the above theory
It’s simple. Eliminate and watch. On a simple healthy eating and average exercise routine (40 minutes of cardio 4-5 times a week), eliminate sugar, alcohol-milk (milk only if you are using inorganic pasteurized milk) and caffeine every 6 days from your diet.
Few things to watch out for:
– Your relative weight and fat% change on a BCA machine
– The way your body reacts in terms of acidity, bloating or digestive discomfort.
– Any physical advantage after day 3 of elimination.
Record your advantages before you eliminate the next product. No one knows your body better than you do, you will figure this out in no time. Always trust your intuition. Works every single time.
Once you have understood for sure what doesn’t work for your system, work towards eliminating that addictive from your routine as much as possible. And remember it’s ok to consume the other additives in moderate quantities in your diet.
The advantages? That’s for you to experience. Good Luck!
Anupama Menon is a nutritionist and food coach based in Bangalore, practising globally, offering sustainable nutritional plans with 3 chEATs per week. To book an appointment call 9902060225 or follow her on Instagram @theanupamamenon
