HAPPILY HORMONAL | hormone balance for moms, PMS, painful periods, natural birth control, low energy, pro-metabolic

E63: The 4 Things to Start with to Eat for Your Hormones

• Leisha Drews, RN, FDN-P, holistic hormone coach, period expert

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Let's get back to the basics today and talk about what it really looks like to eat for your hormones! These 4 things are where I start every single time someone comes to me with hormone imbalances, and can improve energy, mood, and periods - especially when combined with the other steps of my Nourish Your Hormones method.

Resources from this episode:

Nourish Your Hormones Course

Restored mini-course (free access when you send me a screenshot of your pod review or share on your IG story and tag me @leishadrews)

NYH Recipe Guide

LMNT mineral/electrolyte packets - free sample pack with my link!

Connect with Leisha:

Website: www.leishadrews.com

IG: www.instagram.com/leishadrews


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Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Happily Hormonal Podcast. Now, if you're a little iffy on whether or not the word hormonal is a good one, you're in the right place. My name is Leisha Drews, registered nurse and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, turned holistic hormone coach, and, after going through my own hormone journey and having my three babies, I actually believe that our hormones are one of the greatest gifts that we've been given as women and that, no matter what you've been told, it's possible for you to have thriving energy, good periods and the stable mood all month long. And I am here to show you the way. I think it's time to change the narrative around words like hormones and hormonal and start to reclaim the power that we truly have as women, which is a power to change not only our own health but the health of all of our family for generations to come. Hormone balance doesn't have to feel hard. It can actually feel simple and fun when we do it in a way that aligns with how our bodies were made. If you're ready to start trusting your body again and feeling really good in that beautiful body that you've been given, then grab yourself a yummy drink and maybe a snack, and let's do this.

Speaker 1:

One question I have been getting a lot lately is where do I start with food to balance my hormones? This is a really great question, because even if you're just wondering in general, where do I start to balance my hormones? Food is going to be the place that I'm always going to tell you to start. There's some really key things, four key things that I'm always going to be checking in with you on, no matter where you are, with nutrition and exercise and living a crunchy lifestyle, wherever. That is, whether you literally have just heard of hormones and you're starting out from zero, or you've been taking care of your body well for several years or 10 years or more and you're still having some hormone problems. These are the questions I'm going to ask you and these are the things that I'm going to recommend for anyone who is having hormone issues. And when you want to go deeper and be more personalized, then nourish your hormones is the next step for you. I've created nourish your hormones for you.

Speaker 1:

If you have low energy, bad periods, you know your hormones are out of balance and you need this step by step. You don't want to be searching around on the internet forever. You don't want to be looking at everyone's TikTok and getting confused because everyone's telling you different things. This is a blueprint stepped out for you so that you can come into the course, watch the first video, start implementing and truly start to see results within that first month, and sometimes even that first period can be better, but I routinely see my students and my clients have better energy within a few weeks to a month and their periods start to get better within those first few months as well. That includes PMS, that includes mood symptoms, that includes the irritability and the anger that come with PMS so often and make us feel like really bad moms. I've heard this so many times lately, but truly the root cause of all of this is that your body is undernourished, overstressed and often detox pathways are not open. And this is what we do in.

Speaker 1:

Nourish your hormones is simple, step by step, focused ways to support your body so that your hormones can be balanced, your energy can be great and you can start to feel like the woman that you want to be, or feel like yourself again, if you remember what that feels like. So join us inside. Nourish your Hormones. I have a coupon code in the show notes for you. I would love to see you inside. We have a great group of women in there and we're ramping up for some really fun things this fall. So join us in Nourish your Hormones, and I'm going to dive into the four things that you want to do when you're starting to eat for your hormones today.

Speaker 1:

So number one, the thing that you need to understand and you probably do if you are my podcast people and you've heard me talk maybe even one time blood sugar balance is going to be huge when it comes to hormone balance, and that is because when you have imbalanced blood sugar and this looks like feeling hangry, feeling irritable before meals, getting shaky, having energy crashes, a 3pm energy crash is not a normal part of everyone's life, even though a lot of people think it is All of these are generally signs that blood sugar is imbalanced. This doesn't mean that you have diabetes necessarily. It could, but it doesn't always mean that but what it does mean is that your body needs some support when it comes to blood sugar, and where we start with that is by really being consistent and focused with the way that you are eating, and so my biggest recommendation here is that you start to pay attention to the macronutrients that you're getting, and so that sounds fancy, but it truly just means make sure that you are getting both a carb and a protein at your meals and snacks. Now, when you dive into neurohormones and you want more in-depth support with this, we can look at your specific macros and what you're actually getting. But to start, you need to be making sure that you're getting some carbs and some protein, and somewhere around an equal-ish ratio is where I like to start and see how that feels to you, and that needs to be right away in the morning, within 30 minutes of waking up, and then every three to four hours during the day.

Speaker 1:

This is going to depend on you and how unstable your blood sugar is, how much you're stressed, how undernourished you are. Some women will need to eat every couple hours for a little while and they'll be smaller meals. Some women will do great with every three to four hours. But if you're routinely, if you look at your day, you look at the way your meals are spaced, you're routinely going more than a few, like four hours. Maybe you're going five to six hours between your meals.

Speaker 1:

You often are not going to have the blood sugar balance that you really want to have to have those balanced hormones. And again, the reason that blood sugar balance is so important for hormone balance is because when your body has these crashes of blood sugar, it spikes cortisol, and that spike in cortisol tells your body that there's an emergency, keeps you in fight or flight, and the more times you're in fight or flight throughout the day, the less you're going to have signals that things are safe, that your body is safe and that your hormones can be balanced. And that's absolutely not what we're looking for when we are trying to have balanced estrogen and balanced moods and balanced periods, and so blood sugar balance is really really huge and really key. So one of the first things that I always say is that you need to be eating consistently throughout the day and you need to make sure that you have balanced macros and you're not just eating, you know, an apple for a snack by itself mid afternoon and there's no solid meal. You know, from 11am to 7pm. On either side of that, that's just going to cause a spike in your blood sugar and then a drop, and I'm using an apple as a really healthy example. But that also is like your afternoon sugary coffee or a muffin mid afternoon, like those type of things that are sugary and our carbs are going to cause your blood sugar to be dysregulated. Also, if you're just like severely under eating carbs, depending on your diagnosis and all the things in your life severely under eating carbs, though, long term, is going to also cause stress on the body, and protein is something that your body can break down and use for energy, but it is more work to break down that protein. So if you have some carbs on the side with your protein, then your body can break down those carbs for quick energy and then break down the protein for a little slower energy and just makes everyone so much happier and it truly makes a huge difference in blood sugar balance.

Speaker 1:

So that is the basic place that I always recommend, starting with eating for your hormones, essentially Okay. The next thing that I'm going to be looking at when eating for your hormones is quality of your food, and this is a deep dive, to be honest, and is a step by step thing, and so I go over this very in depth and nourish your hormones in module two, and we really talk about what that looks like, what that means to eat for your hormones and to eat quality food for your hormones, and how to get the right foods in, and the basic overview that I can give you in a podcast episode is that you want to be eating real food, essentially so things that come in a package, a box or a bag and have a lot of ingredients. Even if they say gluten free, even if they say organic, you want to make sure that you can actually understand what the ingredients are, and then it's not like random things that you truly don't even know what they are. So, for example, the easiest way to do this is to focus on high quality animal proteins so pastured eggs, organic poultry, grass-fed beef, different types of seafood that are going to be wild caught all of those things as a kind of starting place for your food, and then focusing on adding in that's gonna be your protein, and so adding in some healthy carbs I really like fruits and root veggies as healthy carbs. I like them to be in season when possible and learning how those actually work for your body and how they work for your blood sugar and how they work for your gut.

Speaker 1:

All of those things by essentially experimenting, but also doing some research and understanding a little bit about how these foods can be so supportive for mineral balance in your body. And when you're getting animal products that are higher quality even higher quality dairy organic dairy, raw dairy is my favorite and definitely grass-fed you are getting a completely different product than when you are buying dairy that is homogenized and ultra-pasturized and essentially, is broken down into really a food that is not totally recognizable from the original form. And so, really, when we're looking at our food, we want it to be safe, of course, but we also want it to be unprocessed as much as possible and we want it to be as close to the source as we can. So foods that are local, that are in season, it are going to be really, really ideal. And if you shop at Costco, like I do, it's a little bit hard to tell, to be honest, if they're local and in season. So it takes a little bit more research on your part to think about like, oh, these are. You know, obviously berries are ripe in the summer and peaches are late summer and things like that, and just kind of letting your body crave the things that are natural with the seasons and eating them in other times of the year is also fine, but just thinking about how our bodies were actually made to function and what was available to us and what is available to us in the areas that we live can be helpful as a guide.

Speaker 1:

And then I also always just recommend that, especially when you are eating grains which I think you know are a totally fine part of many people's diets to eat that you're looking at those as well and making sure that they're organic, so they're not sprayed with excess pesticides, and also that you're not just excluding other types of carbs by eating grains. And oftentimes I see that it's really easy to eat grains every single meal of the day. And grains, you know, while they can be fine, they're not gonna be as nutrient dense as something like a sweet potato for your carb or some fruit or you know something else that's going to actually have some minerals and nutrients in it. And so just being aware of the variety in your diet and the quality of your food and really staying away from things that are boxed in bags even if they are you know, quote unquote healthy, they still are processed foods, and so the more that you can have your kids eat an apple and a cheese, a piece of cheese for a snack, versus, you know, some sort of even healthy processed snack, it really can make a difference in. You know, your overall essentially like whole food consumption as a family and same for you, of course.

Speaker 1:

So really I would say honestly, keeping it simple as much as possible is really, really helpful, and I've mentioned these before. But if you need help with meal planning, I really like the meal plans from Fed and Fit. You can just go to her website, fedandfitcom, and there's a link to download her weekly meal plans and she has all whole food ingredients and really fun meal plans that have a grocery list and everything. So I'm always going to plug that when people are asking me you know how do I start and how do I like come up with ideas and recipes. That is a really good resource. Also, we have the Nourish your Hormones Recipe Guide available just by itself. If you want to grab that recipe guide before you jump into Nourish your Hormones, we will link that in the show notes too.

Speaker 1:

I have lots of good recipes in there, including some of the things that I'm going to talk about next, which are foods that are supportive for hormones are also really important, and so eating, you know, kind of like a general whole food diet, 100% on board with that. And then also we need to make sure that you are getting the nutrients and minerals that your body needs to make hormones, but also to detoxify hormones. So minerals are really really important for liver support and if you don't have adequate mineral stores in your body, which so many of us do not at this point for many reasons that I won't get into this very second. I think it was episode I don't actually know the episode number but there is an episode I want to say in the 30s or 40s that is on mineral balance and why that's so important for your hormones. So make sure to go back to that one if you want to know more about minerals.

Speaker 1:

But some of my favorite, some of the best things that I've done to support my hormones and to support my energy and my stress, is by adding more minerals into my diet, essentially, and so I like to get those from fruits and veggies, I love to get those from bone broth, I love to get those from whole food options. I really always love adrenal cocktails. I have recipe for that in my recipe guide. I have some other mineral mocktails in there as well, and then I also really think that it can be helpful to get some additional supplementation sometimes, depending on you and your needs. I really like the potassium support that's called pickleball from jigsaw health. And then I also really love the LMNT electrolyte packets. Those are primarily sodium, but they do have a decent amount of potassium and magnesium as well, and those have really gotten me through this summer. To be honest, I really love those, are really refreshing when we spend time outside, which we do all the time. So I'll link those for you too.

Speaker 1:

So minerals are super important, and then other foods to support your hormones include foods that are going to help your body Detox, and so even minerals are going to help your body detox, because your liver needs those minerals. But there are going to be other specific foods as well that are going to help with specific estrogen detox and With just general detoxification as well, and the biggest problems that I see so often For my women with hormone issues are that they are not making appropriate amounts of Hormones. So whether that's too much estrogen, not enough estrogen, not enough progesterone, there's some sort of issue there, which oftentimes comes from stress and nutrients, and then they're not detoxing hormones. Well, which also comes from stress and nutrient deficiencies most of the time, and so we've got to hit it from both angles and when we're looking at it from a food perspective. One of my favorite ways to help support the gut and detoxification of estrogen is, of course, the carrot salad.

Speaker 1:

I have an episode I want to say maybe episode 15 where I talk about liver detox and carrot salad. So go back to that one if you haven't heard that. But there there are seriously a few foods like that that can actually really move the needle when it comes to hormone balance, and so, again, you want to be making sure that you've got this Consistency down with your food. You want to keep improving the quality as much as possible and then really focusing on a couple of things that are going to Support your hormones as a whole, like minerals and nutrients, in opening those detox pathways With you can do all of this with food. Those are really going to make a big difference, and so you, I would just encourage you to take what you need from this episode and Take a small step forward and then reach out and get support when you're ready and join us in, nourish your hormones so that you can really, you know, make that long-term change in your body and in your family, so that you're not dealing with these symptoms anymore and you can move on with your life and essentially look back in six months or a year and Forget that you ever had these hormone problems in the first place.

Speaker 1:

That happens all the time and it's always really fun when I finish up with my clients after six months and we go back over all the things that they were dealing with and half of them they're like I didn't even remember that I had these symptoms, and that's one of my favorite things about working with my one-on-one clients and I actually have a Couple of spots left for fall.

Speaker 1:

So if you've been thinking about working with me one-on-one, I have not had spots open in a little while and I do have some spots open now. To make sure to reach out, there's a link in the show notes to book a call to talk about that. I would love to support you as you're going into this fall season. I know that it can be busy, but it also can be a season where you can start to make some changes and new routines and you know, kind of like renewed season is always an energy that promotes change. So Reach out. I'd love to support you and, as always, send me a DM with your questions and ideas for another podcast episode, and I will talk to you next time.