Every few years the fitness industry finds something new to obsess over.
At the moment, hormones are having their turn.
Can’t lose weight? Hormones.
Feeling tired? Hormones.
Hungry all the time? Hormones.
And while hormones are obviously incredibly important, the problem is that the fitness industry has done what it usually does and made something complicated sound like it can be fixed with a supplement, special diet or 30-day protocol.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple.
You don’t have complete control over your hormones.
What you do have control over are many of the things that influence your overall health — and, in turn, support healthy hormone function.
And here comes the incredibly boring part.
Most of them are the exact same things we’ve been telling people to do for years.
1. Get enough sleep to improve your hormones
There probably isn’t a supplement on earth that will make up for consistently getting five hours of sleep.
Poor sleep can affect your appetite, energy, recovery and ability to make good food choices.
If you’ve ever had a terrible night’s sleep and spent the next afternoon hunting around the kitchen for chocolate, you probably don’t need me to explain this one.
Aim for: around 7–9 hours per night where possible.
Not perfect sleep. Just make getting enough of it a priority.
2. Stop constantly dieting
Eating less than you need can help you lose weight.
Eating as little as humanly possible for months on end probably isn’t a brilliant long-term strategy.
Very aggressive dieting can leave you tired, hungry, training poorly and generally feeling rubbish.
For most people, a moderate calorie deficit that they can actually stick to is going to work better than repeatedly going from “perfect diet” to eating everything in sight.
Aim for: slow, sustainable progress rather than trying to lose as much weight as possible, as quickly as possible.
3. You don’t need to be scared of carbohydrates
Carbs have spent plenty of time being cast as the villain.
They’re not.
Particularly if you’re exercising regularly, carbohydrates can be an incredibly useful source of fuel.
That doesn’t mean you need to eat a giant bowl of pasta before every workout.
It just means you probably don’t need to eliminate an entire food group because someone on Instagram told you insulin is making you fat.
Aim for: an amount of carbohydrates that supports your training, energy and lifestyle.
4. Eat some fat
The same goes for dietary fat.
Fat is an important part of a healthy diet and plays a role in normal hormone production.
Again, we don’t need to overcomplicate this.
Include foods like olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, eggs, oily fish and other sources of healthy fats regularly.
You don’t need to drown everything in olive oil.
You just don’t need to avoid fat either.
5. Eat your vegetables
Sorry.
Your parents were right.
Vegetables provide fibre, vitamins and minerals and are generally a pretty useful thing to eat if you’d like to be healthy.
Aim for a few different colours across the day and stop worrying about which vegetable is going to “balance your hormones”.
Broccoli is good for you.
It isn’t magic.
The boring stuff works
That’s really the point of this whole article.
If you genuinely suspect you have a hormonal or medical issue, speak to your GP or an appropriate specialist.
A personal trainer on Instagram probably shouldn’t be diagnosing your thyroid.
But for most of us, the starting point is much less exciting:
Sleep.
Eat reasonably well.
Don’t crash diet.
Eat enough protein, carbohydrates, fats, fruit and vegetables.
Manage your stress where you can.
And do it consistently.
I know that’s not a particularly sexy hormone optimisation protocol.
But that’s probably why it works.
