Women's hormones, gut + metabolism

Stop Trying to Make Fasted Workouts Happen!

But Laura, how else am I supposed to burn calories from yesterday? ✋🏻🙄

I can’t believe diet culture has spewed such bullshit information without any consideration for female physiology.

Whether your goal is to lose weight, feel better, balance hormones, fix your gut, lessen anxiety or depression, etc.. Working out fasted will not help the situation and will probably make matters worse overtime while it continues to suppress your metabolism.

If I had a dollar for every time a client comes to me feeling like complete shit and puts on a solid amount of weight after months or even years of fasting. I’d be a rich bitch.

Something we fail to recognize is that fasting is a massive stressor. Add this stress on top of all the other stressors we are exposed to from EMFs, blue light, toxin exposure, fight with family or friends, meeting deadlines at work, social media, speaking poorly to yourself, you name it… Hans said it “to be totally without stress, is to be dead.”

Girl, you’re stressed in some way shape or form. The world we live in is stressful.

The female body is super sensitive to stress. And anytime it perceives something as a threat it holds on to weight for dear life and will also start sending you signals that it’s not working through symptoms.

But Laura our ancestors fasted all the time. Oh gosh, silly me. Where our ancestors exposed to all the stressors we are today? NO.

More stress = a higher mineral/ nutrient burn rate aka you require more nutrients, more often.

So let’s cut to the chase, what happens when you fast?

You are forcing your body to go through a super stressful process to create it’s own fuel rather than just giving it what it needs this creates a rise in cortisol. As a result your thyroid activity is suppressed and your hormones are affected, estrogen rises and progesterone drops.

And no, your coffee doesn’t cut it as pre-workout, I don’t care if you put an entire cows worth of creamer in that sucker. Coffee after a full meal, always.

Girlfriend, stop trying to make fasted workouts happen. It’s just not going to happen.

Your body deserves to feel happy, safe and nourished. Don’t force it into an unnecessary famine.

What Is Your Happy Weight?

Raise your hand if you really know your happy weight. I mean really know.

I’m talking the weight your body FEELS it’s best, the weight your body feels nourished, safe, energetic, happy and less symptomatic.

As women we have no idea what our happy weight is.

We have had negative thoughts around food and our bodies since we were in grade school.

We have been restricting, over-exercising, under-eating and starving ourselves for the majority of our lives because society tells us we need to be skinny to be worthy and the wellness industry promotes things like juice cleanses, low carb diets and fasting to be “healthy.”

Our bodies change. We cannot compare our bodies to others, to what we looked like in high school or hell what we looked like two years ago.

The problem is, once you start nourishing your body often and giving your body what it needs for the first time EVER, you will put on weight. Duh.

The other problem is, we think this is a bad thing but actually your body is thanking you for giving it energy, giving your cells life and nourishing it.

In most cases this is just safety weight, weight your body will shed as soon as it feels safe enough to do so.

As soon as she trusts you again.

We so quickly forget how much better we feel. Having healthy pain free periods, the brain fog has lifted, our skin is glowing, our digestion is on point, we have energy and a zest for life again.

Instead you are so laser focused on the scale and regardless of how far you have come on your health journey, you still believe that losing weight is what will truly make you happy.

But will it? No.

Nobody gives a shit if you have a six pack or are skinny if you are boring and no fun to be around because food has taken over your life.

Stop fighting against your body and start working with it. And most importantly give yourself grace during the healing process.

Your best weight is the one where you can live a fulfilling happy life, free from restriction, free from obsessing over every little thing that goes in your mouth and really enjoying food again.

If you have to restrict to keep your desired weight. It’s not the weight for you. Period.

Hormone and Gut-Friendly Exercises

I know, I know “But Laura, I love HIIT + running”

Do you actually love these types of workouts or are you in the constant mind fuck of whether or not you are doing enough to earn your food and think intense exercise is the only way?

I’ve been there. I used to be a HIIT + running machine. If I didn’t get in an intense enough workout I was a failure, the guilt would kick + I would instantly be questioning every single thing I put in my mouth for the day.

If only I knew the damage I was causing to my metabolism.

What if I told you that all these high endurance exercises could be one of the reasons your hormones + gut are F’d up?

Why? Because these workouts are STRESSFUL. I can guarantee 99.9% of us are stressed out in one way shape or form (the damn world we are living in right now is stressful).

Add in these demanding workouts on top of other stressors in your life + you are asking for a disaster. During these workouts your body releases the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol while suppressing your thyroid. What does the thyroid do? Well, it’s the main conductor of your metabolism, in other words, it is responsible for every single process in the body.

If you already have stress driven hormonal conditions like PCOS, HA, endometriosis, low progesterone, estrogen dominance, struggling with infertility… Let’s be real, all hormonal imbalances are stress driven- these workouts are not doing you any favors.

Our hormones are very sensitive to stress. For example, as the body uses up more progesterone to manufacture the stress hormone cortisol it will leave us with an excess of estrogen aka estrogen dominance.

Wondering why your digestion sucks?

During these high intensity workouts + running blood gets diverted away from your digestive system to your working muscles. Stress hormones are also released as your bodies main concern is making sure your muscles are functioning optimally so you can run away from that invisible bear. Stressed out body = poor digestion and absorption of nutrients.

Before you start thinking you need to run your body into the ground (literally) just know you don’t need to run, do HIIT or crossfit to be “healthy.”