How Women Need to Eat to Balance Their Hormones
- Hilary Elmer
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Weight gain
Mood swings
Painful periods--or for older women, menopausal nightmares...
Have you even felt like being a woman is a cruel joke? You and I know that those three points barely skim the surface.
It's so hard being a woman!
But it doesn' have to be. We need to normalize talking about how to balance our hormones as they surge and wane over the course of our cycles and empower women to live a lifestyle that creates balance and harmony in their body, rather than endless roller coaster misery.
Dr. Mindy Pelz, author of Fast Like a Girl and The Menopause Reset, emphasizes how women can eat and fast in a way that builds good hormones and helps us reach our best emotional and physical health. She says that we should all be taught this from puberty. It would save us so much anxiety and physical afflictions.
Dr. Pelz has helped thousands of women in all life stages.
Recently I have started to notice signs of decreasing hormones, so I turned to The Menopause Reset. I quickly saw results from applying her recommendations. Here is a summary of how Dr. Pelz says to eat in a way that will build hormones during the times that they need building and detox your body when it needs detoxing.
A 28 Day Cycle (older women, don't skip this!)
If you have a cycle, your cycle starts Day 1 on the first day of your true period. If you have spotting prior to it, that does not count. The real bleed is Day 1.
Days 1-11 are a powerful time to do extended fasts and eat keto (low carbs).
Days 12-14 you eat to build estrogen.
Days 15-20 are also a powerful time to do extended fasts and eat keto.
Days 21-28 you eat to build progesterone.
Estrogen Building Days, eat:
flax seeds
sesame seeds (including tahini)
soy/edamame
garlic
dried apricots, dates and prunes
peaches
berries
cabbage family like broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts
raw milk (this is my addition)
You should always "eat in a window", including during the estrogen building days, meaning that you wait to have breakfast until 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning, and you don't eat anything after dinner. Do not do longer than a 24 hour fast during this time.
Progesterone Building Days, eat:
sweet potatoes
beans
potatoes
squashes
quinoa
tropical and citrus fruits
raw milk (this is my addition)
As always, eat during a window during these days. Do not do more than a 24 hour fast in your progesterone phase.
During the rest of your cycle, you can enjoy all the benefits of eating keto and doing longer fasts. Eat in a window during these times, too. More than 50% of your calories can be from healthy fats like grass fed butter / milk, grass fed beef fat, pasture raised pork, olive oil, coconut oil, nuts and avocadoes. Eat plenty of good proteins during this time also. (Many sources of fat are also sources of protein, sorry for the overlap!) Minimize the carbs you eat.
Failure to eat in a way that builds healthy hormones causes the body to produce too much cortisol--the stress hormone. Life is stressful enough without adding diet induced cortisol to it.
If you have not been tracking your cycle, start now. Put on your calendar when you should eat for estrogen and when you should eat for progesterone. When you go shopping, make sure you buy those foods ahead of time so you will have them in the house when the time comes that you need them.
What if you have an irregular, or no, cycle?
Good question, I'm glad you asked.
It is just as important for you to eat for hormones as it is for younger women--maybe more so. Do you wish that you could stop having hot flashes, sleep better at night, gain back muscle tone, lose weight, and have less wrinkly skin? Because your hormones are beginning to decrease it's more important to eat and fast in tune with your cycle than ever. Balancing your hormones will help all of that.
You still eat with the 28 day cycle.
I found that eating in a window was the key to maintaining a healthy weight when I began slowing down hormone production, where it had been easy to maintain a healthy weight before without eating in a window. I have begun to not only eat in a window, but not nibble during that window. I restrict my eating to three meals. I am so in control of what I eat now--food no longer controls me.
If you have irregular cycles and you don't know when you will bleed again, just dive in and start at Day 1. The next time you bleed, whenever that is, restart at Day 1. You might find that in addition to easing some miserable menopause symptoms, your cycle will return. If you don't bleed at the end of 28 days, just keep following the 28 day cycle and when you do bleed, go back to Day 1.
If you are post menopausal and haven't bled in over a year, you still benefit from having both cleansing/detox days and hormone building days. The simplest way to make sure that you do this is to still follow the 28 day cycle. It's not as important that you stick religiously to it, but giving yourself days of cleansing, estrogen building, and progesterone building are still important. It's just that the exact timeline is not as critical anymore.
You Were Designed to Be Healthy
Our bodies are amazing. When they malfunction, it's usually because of a problem in our diet or because of environmental toxins. You can live in a way that allows your body to heal itself, detox, and function the way you were designed to. If hormones are making your life miserable, it means that something is wrong.
If you want to be healthy, YOU CAN BE HEALTHY.
Eating with our cycles is a big step to help women get there.
I wrote on my fridge what to eat during the days of my cycle so that it would be easy to remember. I also add where I will be in my cycle to my calendar so that I know when different days are coming up. There is an app called Clue that tracks it for you. Do something to make it front of mind for you, too!
Here are blogs about fasting and eating healthy if you want to know more:
Eating in a window:
One day fasts:
Extended fasts:
Eating clean:
Dr. Pelz's book The Menopause Reset has a lot more great information on aging gracefully.
What hormone related misery do you deal with?
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