1 hormone that ruins healthy weight loss diets

What you eat and what you do can influence your hormones dramatically. When this happens you can either gain weight or lose weight. Avoid these key areas to make sure you lose weight with your healthy weight loss diet. Don't take for granted just how powerful hormones like these are in determining your weight loss success.

Cortisol is the hormone that can be detrimental. Excess cortisol will stimulate your appetite and prompt more calories to be stored as fat, so it is very influential in your weight loss plan. These are 2 things you don't want when trying to follow a healthy weight loss diet. Cortisol also increases protein breakdown within the muscle, which means a slower metabolism and less calories burned. Continuously burning calories by keeping your metabolism going at a fast pace is a crucial component of weight loss success.

It decreases glucose utilization and increased insulin resistance, which means the glucose or sugars in your body are not used for energy as much as they should be. They float around instead and will be stored as fat. This is strike two against your healthy weight loss diet and healthy eating plans.

One thing that directly increases cortisol is stress. Stress is the culprit in increasing cortisol levels and resistance to insulin and leptin. Stress can come from work issues, family issues, medical problems and even unhealthy foods. Higher cortisol levels come from stress-induced insulin resistance and increased leptin. Well, when you have higher cortisol levels your leptin and insulin resistance get worse. It is a vicious cycle that keeps feeding on itself until you are overweight or obese. If stress is a large component of your life, a healthy weight loss diet will be ineffective, despite best efforts at following healhty eating plans.

Those with extra fat in your belly, a round face, high blood sugars or high blood pressure most likely have elevated cortisol levels. These are tips for how to lower your cortisol levels.

Eat every few hours. When you wait longer than five hours between meals your body may start to release extra cortisol, which then increases your appetite. By eating every few hours not only are you going to keep your cortisol levels low you are going to stimulate other hormones that help you feel full for a longer period of time and reduce that urge to keep eating. Also, eat lean protein at every feeding opportunity to trigger certain hormones that will help you to eat less food and burn more calories.

Be aware of the stress in your life and try to control it, as I have discussed how important this is to keeping your cortisol levels low. Reduce stressors in your life, set a regular sleeping schedule, and get plenty of exercise to maximize the benefits of your healthy weight loss diet.

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