top of page

    How To Boost Your Energy & Support Your Hormones

    info651080

    Nutrient-Rich Foods to Boost Your Energy and Support Your Hormones

    There are a whole host of nutrient-rich foods to boost your energy and support your hormones. Today we are going to talk about a few of those foods and hopefully, you are already eating a few of them! Many women are tired, always running on empty, and can’t seem to figure out why! Well, it begins with the food you are fueling with. If you are eating mostly processed rice cakes, oatmeal, crackers, and peanut butter and jelly, you can be sure that your body is not getting what it needs to fuel your cells with the energy they need! And something most people don’t realize is the food we eat determines the hormones we make and hormones help regulate our energy output!

    What foods are Best for Hormones and Energy?

    We will begin with the effect of healthy fats like Extra-Virgin Olive oil and Avocado. These are both great sources of cholesterol and cholesterol is a precursor to estrogen! I am talking about the good kind of cholesterol, High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL). So if you are trying to support healthy estrogen production you need to be eating good-quality fats. My ladies out there going through menopause that tip could really help you during this season!

    Olive Oil and Avocado

    Let’s talk about Extra-Virgin Olive oil. You should be buying single-origin, cold-pressed, unrefined olive oil. It should be in a dark glass bottle and have a peppery taste. If it is in a clear container you should not buy it. More than likely it’s rancid. Light causes oxidation and oxidation is no good. But back to the spicy, peppery taste. This is a plant compound called oleocanthal. It helps our body stimulate repair mechanisms and is highly anti-inflammatory! It’s great for your brain health, blood vessels, and liver! Olive oil also contains something called hydroxytyrosol, which helps prevent visceral fat in the belly!

    Then there are avocados. Avocados are rich in Vitamin E and Potassium (twice as much as a banana), and they contain a good amount of fiber. They increase your brain processing speed, and they also help the absorption of fat in the gut and help to lower blood glucose. These characteristics, in turn, help your body to use fat not store it!

    Nuts and Seeds

    Aside from being great sources of fiber, nuts, and seeds are little powerhouses of vitamins and minerals that can support not only our sex hormones but our thyroid hormones as well! This is a big deficiency for a lot of people, especially women, and specifically women with thyroid dysfunction. Nuts and Seeds to have in your diet include Brazil nuts, almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and flax seeds.

    Nuts

    Almonds are actually one of the highest foods in potassium, they also contain vitamin E, B2, calcium, and magnesium. We need all of these for heart health, specifically blood pressure and electrolyte balance. Brazil nuts are high in selenium, which supports your thyroid health. Walnuts are a great source of omega-3 fatty acids, although not the same type as found in wild-caught fish, but are still good for you, especially your brain.

    Seeds

    So seeds are interesting because they can actually be very powerful for helping to regulate your menstrual cycle. Pumpkin and Flax seeds are thought to support estrogen in the first half of your cycle. Pumpkin seeds contain zinc, iron, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus. Flax seeds contain copper, manganese, phosphorus, and magnesium. Then you have sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. These two types of seeds help to support progesterone in the second half of your cycle. Sesame seeds are high in vitamin E, B6, and calcium. Sunflower seeds contain B1, B6, Iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and Selenium! Not only do nuts and seeds contain the vitamins and minerals we need for healthy hormones, but they are also full of fiber. But here is a tip, if you are going to consume these, you should be buying raw, organic seeds. Grinding them up is a great way to eat them because you can just add them to yogurt or a shake!

    Cruciferous Vegetables and Dark Leafy Greens

    Vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, bok choy, arugula, swiss chard, mustard greens, and radishes are all full of helpful vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Not to mention, they are full of fiber. But specifically, cruciferous veggies contain a compound called sulforaphane. Sulforaphane is a powerful modulator that activates our antioxidant pathways. So, it helps fight oxidative stress and for women, it helps us detoxify estrogen. Which, if you have read my other blogs or know about your “estrobolome” you know that we need to be getting rid of estrogens once they’ve been used. Dark leafy greens contain the vitamin folate, which is essential for methylation, and critical for detoxification.

    Blueberries and Dark Chocolate

    Aren’t you glad these two are on the list? Let’s start with blueberries! Blueberries are one of the highest anti-oxidant foods because they contain a high amount of flavonoids. Flavonoids are a class of polyphenol compounds. Anthocyanins are the most abundant in blueberries and they just so happen to be able to cross the blood-brain barrier. Which is important if you want to enhance your memory and brain health. Just make sure you are buying organic blueberries, and wash them before you eat them. Next up, chocolate! Yum! Cacao beans are rich in magnesium and contain an abundance of flavonols, also a polyphenol. These specific polyphenols help with nutrient absorption, vascular function, and insulin sensitivity, and they have been shown to reverse the signs of cognitive aging. Need I say more? You want to opt for good quality dark chocolate, 85% or darker, sorry ladies no Hersheys. Always look for chocolate that has not been processed with alkali, as it greatly degrades the phytonutrient content of the cacao. Also, make sure you buy one that is lower in sugar. I love Theo Organic Dark Chocolate.

    Wild-Caught Salmon, Grass-Fed Beef, Eggs

    We will start with wild-caught salmon. It is rich in EPA and DHA omega-3 fats and a carotenoid called astaxanthin. This comes from krill, which is the main food for wild salmon and it helps your brain function, protects from skin damage, reduces inflammation, and provides powerful antioxidant effects. It has been shown to switch ON genes that protect against DNA damage and the stress of aging! And who doesn’t want that?

    Then there is beef. Beef gets a bad wrap, but I’m not advocating for eating commercial grain-fed beef, that’s not the same as grass-fed. Why not? Well, cows that eat grass are healthier, happier, and make more of the branched-chain amino acids that our bodies need to make DNA and RNA. Not only that, but grass-fed beef is rich in a lot of different vitamins and minerals such as iron, and zinc (not the same as iron and zinc from spinach and legumes) sorry vegans! It also contains omega-3 fats, vitamin B12, and vitamin E. And let’s not forget about creatine! We use creatine for muscle energy, storage, and brain function. As you age, you convert less of this, so increasing protein intake is pretty important for overall brain health.


    Last, but not least, Eggs. Just for the record, eggs are not bad for you or your heart and they don’t cause heart attacks. Please update your nutrition facts. Let me start with the anatomy of the egg. The yolk contains cholesterol, vitamins, and minerals, the white contains most of the protein. Studies show that long-term consumption of eggs actually boosts cognitive function and reduces markers for cardiovascular risk. Eating eggs reduces insulin resistance, raises HDL, and increases the size of the LDL particles, which is what you want. The egg yolk contains literally every vitamin and mineral the body needs! We’ve got vitamin A, B12, vitamin E, selenium, zinc, choline, lutein, and zeaxanthin (these two are carotenoids). So, start eating eggs. But pastured-raised, or better yet, buy local eggs if you can. Cook them gently to preserve the nutrients in the yolk.


    Start Eating These Foods Today!

    Hopefully, you read all of this and learned a little bit about how the food you eat has a huge impact on your hormones, metabolism, and ultimately your energy output. Remember all of these things are connected. If you want to feel great and have the energy you know you should, feed your body the fuel it needs! If you need help navigating the right plan book a FREE call here!

    4 views0 comments

    Recent Posts

    See All

    Comments


    Functional nutrition coaching certification
    bottom of page