Why does the breast enlarge with hormonal changes?

Losing weight, maintaining a nice figure, staying in shape, are sometimes simple matters, but other times they can be terribly complicated. It is true that some people lose weight more quickly than others, some accumulate it especially in the hips, others in the abdomen ... but, why are these differences due? The answer may lie in the, which are sometimes held against to control body weight. However, willpower and awareness are essential to achieve a good result.

• Many hormones have an effect on body weight control, however, they should not be the excuse for not taking care of yourself and making excesses with food.
• Leptin and ghrelin are reverse hormones, the first causing satiety and the second hunger, but it has been seen that people with weight problems have damaged the mechanism of action of these hormones.
• With the arrival of menopause, we lose estrogen and muscle mass, and we gain appetite and abdominal volume. The solution: watch your diet and exercise right from the start.

What influences our body weight

The reality is that overweight and obesity are health problems that have a multifactorial origin, that is, they are not due to a single factor but to several. Genetic inheritance plays a very important role in controlling our body weight, but also environmental factors such as diet and physical activity.

What are hormones and what role do they play?

Hormones are substances secreted by the body's endocrine glands and that fulfill specific functions of our metabolism. There are hormones directly linked to the control of hunger and satiety, hormones that cause glucose to enter our cells and thus the use of the nutrients we consume, etc.

Leptin

It is the hormone responsible for generating a feeling of satiety. Right now, if you have weight problems and you are one of the people who is always hungry, you will be thinking: "Wow, I shouldn't have leptin." Logic tells us that if leptin gives satiety and I am always hungry, it must be that I have very little. In fact, the opposite happens: people with obesity tend to have higher levels of leptin in the blood, what fails is the transport of this hormone to the brain where the feeling of satiety has to be established. What chance do we have in this case? The answer is exercise, since physical activity favors our body's sensitivity to leptin and improves its functioning.

Ghrelin

Just as leptin is the satiety hormone, ghrelin is the appetite hormone, it is generated in the stomach and the feeling of hunger we feel increases, on the contrary its levels decrease once we have eaten. Let's go back to posing ... Does a person with weight problems have high levels of ghrelin in the blood? The answer is again no. The reason is its ineffective function in people with weight problems, not in their blood levels. What is the option in this case? Diets with a higher percentage of protein are known to cause greater satiety and help balance ghrelin levels. It is necessary to go to a nutritionist in person whenever you want advice on a diet of this type.

estrogens, Ghrelin and menopause

With the arrival of menopause, a series of hormonal changes take place in a woman's metabolism. A key one is the decrease in estrogen production. estrogens are inversely associated with ghrelin so that the lower the estrogens, the more ghrelin and, consequently, the more appetite. On the other hand, over the years we suffer muscle deterioration and, ultimately, a decrease in muscle mass, especially if we do not exercise to counteract it. This means that we have lower energy needs. If we are hungrier and consume less energy on a regular basis, the conclusion cannot be otherwise: weight gain. In addition, the hormonal change favors the location of fat at the abdominal level. Therefore, it is essential to control food and practice physical exercise.

Insulin

The role of Insulin in our body is to facilitate the energy use of the food we eat. In other words, it is responsible for making the glucose that increases in the blood when we eat enter the interior of the cells, either to use it or to store it. Thus, significant increases in glucose favor the cellular storage of energy in the form of fat. We must take this into account and not cause sudden increases in blood glucose when eating. We will achieve this by consuming whole grains, legumes and foods rich in fiber and avoiding simple sugars. Other factors that contribute to the stabilization of insulin values ​​are physical exercise and the consumption of green tea.

Yoyo effect

It has been studied that people who tend to gain more weight after following a weight loss diet are those who have low blood ghrelin levels and high leptin values, contrary to what happens in people who maintain weight more easily. and that they have less leptin and more ghrelin.

Is hypothyroidism equal to being overweight?

hypothyroidism is often associated with an inability to control body weight and is used and abused as a justification, but it should not be. Although an imbalance in thyroid hormone levels makes it difficult to control body weight from the beginning, once the values ​​are normalized and stabilized through adequate treatment, no symptoms should be suffered.

Cortisol can be considered the stress hormone, it keeps us alert during the day, increases in stressful situations and decreases at night. If we do not sleep enough hours and / or our sleep is not restful, the cortisol values ​​do not drop enough and we can fall into the problem of constantly having too high cortisol values.

REMEMBER THAT They have a wide range of Nutrition specialists so that you can make any questions about your diet.