Dear over-stressed and overwhelmed busy mom:
Are you gaining weight, even though you are exercising enough and eating less? Or, are you having trouble dropping the last 10-20 pounds to get to your ideal weight?
There is a reason why you may be having so many problems: estrogen dominance. All this means is that you have excess estrogen floating around in your bloodstream, and stored in your fat tissues.
You see, when your body gets this estrogen overload from the processed, fast-foods that you eat, or even the self-care and household substances that you use, it tries to protect you from toxic shock by storing excess estrogen in your fat tissues.
This is what stubborn fat is: excessively-estrogen filled fat tissue. Your body doesn’t want to let go of the fat because it’s trying to save you from sickness or death! So, today you will learn how to decrease estrogen dominance using fiber, and how fiber increases metabolism.
How Fiber Increases Metabolism
When you include enough whole grains, fruits, and vegetables into your diet, you get the fiber you need to reduce estrogen overload. Why is this important?
1. Your liver is one of your biggest fat-burning organs in your body! When it’s overloaded with toxins such as too much estrogen, it gets clogged and can’t perform its many jobs very well. It also stores excess estrogen into your fat cells, where it won’t leave until you stop doing whatever is causing estrogen dominance in your body.
2. Estrogen overload can also affect your thyroid gland, which is another important organ in metabolism. Excess estrogen causes your thyroid to become sluggish, thus decreasing how high your metabolism can be. How fiber increases metabolism in this example is by decreasing estrogen levels to a favorable range so that the thyroid can function.
3. Fiber can keep estrogen at a favorable range so that your estrogen to progesterone ratio can be balanced. Progesterone is the hormone that can help you to burn calories versus store them. However, when estrogen dominance occurs, there is too much estrogen for progesterone to keep in check. Food that you eat gets stored versus burned for energy. How fiber increases metabolism in this example is by keeping estrogen at a favorable range so that it can be balanced by progesterone which helps food to be burned as calories.
So you see, no matter what diet or exercise program you are currently using, if you can’t get estrogen under control, or these other hormones in check, then you will struggle with losing those stubborn pounds that you want gone!
Summary
Hopefully today you were able to learn how fiber increases metabolism. One of the best ways to decrease estrogen dominance is by eating more fiber-rich foods, such as whole grains, fruits, and veggies. If you need help with identifying these foods, click here.
Until next time,
Pamela Brown
