Now this is what I actually want to speak to you all about, as people do not realize that foods can affect their hormones. When we are trying to gain lean mass or even drop body fat, there is one hormone you do not want too much of, and that is ESTROGEN. Estrogen is your female hormone and also one of our most potent fat storing hormones (apart from insulin), so we do not want to increase it by the types of foods we eat.
1. Wheat / estrogen
Wheat as we all know is what bread is made from, but what you might not know, is that it increases estrogen. So if you are a woman that carries heavily on the thighs, or even a male that carries body fat like that (so your typical pear shape), you should avoid wheat as much as possible. Rather eat rye bread, rice or potatoes.
2. Animal fat / cholesterol
If you are trying to get rid of the dreaded abdominal fat (so apple shape), then animal fat is your down fall. Cut out butter, fatty meat, chocolates, too much cheese, cream sauce etc, and rather substitute with avo, peanut butter, nuts, protein bars, ect but make sure that it is only 1 portion of fat you get in per meal (1/5 avo, 2 tbs peanut butter, 30 – 50g nuts, 3 tbs lite mayo, and so on)
3. Fruits / liver
One second last food substance I want to share with you is fruit. We are told to eat 5-8 fruits / veggies per day. The vegetables I agree with, but the fruit? If you are struggling to drop body fat, then that might be the other reason you are not loosing. The reason is, fructose, one of the sugars found in fruit, gets stored in your liver. The liver can fill up with up to 3 kg of fructose and every time you go for an hour of fat burning, your liver will just release the fructose as energy and you will never get to burn any fat. Cut back on the fruit ! You might even have to cut the fruit down to once a week in order to drop body fat. Make sure to take a multivitamin-B supplement to make sure you are getting in enough vitamins, as this might not be balanced enough, but if you want to shift, you have to sacrifice a bit for a while, until you are where you want to be.
4. Sugars / insulin
People don’t know how bad sugar is for you when trying to drop body fat, or just in general. Sugar increases your blood sugar level at such a rapid rate that it makes your body release INSULIN. Insulin is one of our other potent fat storing hormones, so try and cut the sugars as much as possible, or totally. Substitute it with a sweetener or even fructose will be better (it is a slow release sugar, but don’t get too much of it in, as I mentioned above). For those that want to add more muscle, avoid sugar too, as it can be increasing your metabolism to the extent that you are finding it difficult to gain any muscle at all. To keep any hormone balanced, we also need at least 1 – 3 tbs of omega 3& 6 in your diet. If you have a stubborn body part like stomach or thighs, you will not get rid of that fat if you do not get in at least 1 tbs of cold press flax seed oil (EFA - omega 3&6) per day.