How a Hormone Imbalance Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss Efforts

Weight loss is difficult even under ideal circumstances, and all the more if you have a hormone imbalance. Most often, hormone imbalance goes unnoticed. You may struggle to lose weight without realizing that hormones are sabotaging your efforts. 

Here at Essentia Healthcare PLLC in Everett, Washington, our team takes a comprehensive approach to medical weight management to give you the best chances of losing weight, keeping it off, and feeling good in the process. 

Hormone imbalances can occur in both men and women. Issues may develop at any age, but hormonal imbalances are more frequent in your 40s and 50s. They can even occur in your 30s. 

Symptoms may be hard to spot early on, but before you realize it, you may feel tired, out of sorts, and find yourself gaining weight. 

Take a moment to learn how hormonal imbalance can hinder weight loss, and what you can do about it.

Hormone imbalance is more common than you may think

Hormone imbalance happens more often than you might know. By the age of 45, about 40% of men have testosterone levels that are below normal. Around 2 million women enter menopause each year, but many are unaware that hormone levels drop progressively for several years before that.

Hormones can have a major impact on how you feel and function, throwing you off and keeping you from living life to the fullest. 

You may not be able to pinpoint the cause, but you may notice that you’re no longer your typical self. Perhaps you've noticed a decrease in libido, a shift in mood, or that the scale won’t budge. A hormone evaluation is a sensible first step toward finding solutions.

As part of our weight management services at Essential Healthcare PLLC, our team evaluates your hormone levels and offers expert management for hormone imbalance. 

How hormone imbalance impedes weight loss

Women going through menopause and men with low testosterone often notice unexpected weight gain, and while you may have chalked it up to growing older, it may come down to sluggish hormones. 

Hormonal imbalance can get in the way of your weight loss efforts in a number of ways. A drop in hormones can increase the loss of lean muscle, which in turn slows down your metabolism, making it harder to lose weight.

Hormones also impact fluid retention, and when they’re unbalanced, your body may tend to store extra fluid, adding pounds to the scale. 

What’s more, hormones impact where the body stores fat. Men and women with hormonal imbalances often develop an increase in fat around the midsection — the type of fat that when high is linked to an increase in heart disease. 

Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy

The Essentia Healthcare PLLC team uses bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) to give your body back the hormones it's missing to restore hormonal balance. BHRT, as opposed to traditional hormone replacement, uses hormones that are molecularly identical to those produced by your body. 

As part of a medical weight management plan, rebalancing your hormones can aid in weight loss success.

To learn more about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and our individualized medical weight management plan, reach out to our office by calling or booking online today. Trust the experts of Essentia Healthcare PLLC to help you reach your weight management goals, and boost your health and well-being.