Hormones- my studies so far

In order to improve body composition, for me, the most important aspect to look at is optimising hormones. This is such hormones as insulin, leptin, cortisol, testosterone, oestrogen, growth hormone and many more…

When looking at most clients current eating habits I tent to find they are eating far to many carbohydrates and not enough fats and proteins. Do not get me wrong carbohydrates have their place in a persons diet but eat too many of the wrong carbohydrates and your hormonal balance will be affected and thus you will not make great gains towards your goal of a great body composition.

With hormones not performing optimally we are not functioning at 100% and this leads to other problems such as leaky gut syndrome, low testosterone, insulin resistance and metabolic damage to name some.

So if you have spent many years, eating a lot of bad carbohydrates, trying the new diet of the month and steadily increasing your body fat then chances are your hormones are not working as they should.

To improve hormones to improve client health and body composition it is best to start by looking at insulin. Insulin controls everything from how quickly you can lose fat and gain muscle to whether the food you eat gives you energy or makes you crash. Insulin is produced in the pancreas and is released in our bodies when we eat carbohydrates. Insulin is responsible for the uptake of nutrients into cells in your liver, muscles and stored fat. For this reason it is known as the gate keeper hormone.

The more we eat carbohydrates the more inulin is released. After years of not effectively using carbohydrates our bodies become insulin resistant. This means that your body uses insulin less efficiently, so you need to produce more in order to digest and utilise carbohydrates effectively. You do not want more insulin pumping through your body. You only want insulin effectively shuttling the foods you eat in an advantageous way. So because a client is producing more, it just means the foods you eat are more likely to be stored as fat.

The goal is to make your body insulin sensitive. When insulin sensitivity is high, you need less insulin to get the same effect. High insulin sensitivity is the easiest way to ensure that you’ll gain muscle, not fat.

In order to improve your insulin response clients follow a series of protocols over time to bring down their body fat. These protocols are very individualised but many will utilise carbohydrate timing even zero carbohydrate protocols and adding in some resistance based training.