How To Build Hormone-Balancing Meals
The type, quality, and quantity of the food you incorporate into your diet can all have a profound impact on hormone balance and hormonal acne. But, did you know that the combination of foods you eat can also influence your hormones? Nutrients interact with each other in your body, creating a combined effect that impacts their absorption and utilization, and ultimately, your hormonal landscape. That's why, when it comes to building hormone-balancing meals, it's essential to consider how different nutrients work together to support hormone balance and skin health.
MACRONUTRIENTS & FIBRE TO SUPPORT HEALTHY SKIN
There are three primary macronutrients: protein carbohydrates, and fats. Together, these macronutrients make up the foundation of hormone-balancing meals. Each plays a unique role in supporting hormone balance and overall well-being, and, as mentioned, each interacts with the others in a way that can help regulate blood sugar levels, improve nutrient absorption, and make you feel fuller. So, whether it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even a midday snack, it's important to try incorporating foods from each category in every meal. Focusing on a variety of sources within each macronutrient category will help ensure you're maximizing your nutrient intake.
Fibre, while not traditionally classified as a macronutrient, acts as a "bonus" component that further enhances the hormone-balancing effects of your meals. Fibre is not digested by the body but plays a major role in supporting gut health, including both digestion and excretion. This is particularly important for anyone struggling with estrogen dominance (an excess of harmful estrogens) and its various symptoms, like hormonal acne. When these excess estrogens aren't removed from the body, they can be reabsorbed into the bloodstream, accumulating and perpetuating estrogen dominance and hormonal acne. Consuming high fibre foods is one of the best things you can do for hormone balance.
Let’s explore these four food categories in more detail to understand their functions, interactions, and some healthy food options within each.
THE 4 KEY COMPONENTS OF HORMONE-BALANCING MEALS
COMPLEX CARBS
Carbohydrates are essential for providing sustained energy and supporting healthy cortisol (stress hormone) levels. Maintaining healthy cortisol levels is important because high cortisol can disrupt the production and balance of estrogen and progesterone. This disruption often leads to estrogen dominance, where estrogen levels become disproportionately high compared to progesterone. Estrogen dominance is a common hormone imbalance among adult women that can trigger hormonal acne.
However, when consuming carbohydrates, there are two important points to keep in mind in order to maximize the benefits. The first is to ensure you're consuming complex carbohydrates, like whole grains, sweet potatoes, quinoa, and fruits, and not simple or refined carbohydrates, like white bread, pasta, and pastries. Complex carbs provide a steady release of energy, while simple carbs, are quickly digested and absorbed into the bloodstream, leading to rapid spikes in blood sugar levels. These spikes not only lead to energy crashes later in the day, but they also trigger a corresponding increase in insulin production, which can disrupt hormone balance over time, including cortisol, progesterone, and estrogen.
The second is to ensure you're combining those carbs with quality protein, healthy fats, and fibrous foods. These combinations promote stable blood sugar levels, better vitamin absorption, and satiety.
Complex carb sources: Whole grains (such as whole wheat, brown rice, barley, oats), quinoa, sweet potatoes, legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas), whole grain pasta, whole grain bread, bulgur, farro, and buckwheat.
QUALITY PROTEIN
Protein is essential for hormone production and regulation. It plays a vital role in ensuring that our livers are functioning properly, which is crucial for processing excess hormones and toxins. Additionally, protein is important for brain health and the digestive system.
Adding protein to carbohydrate-based meals helps slow down the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream, preventing spikes in blood sugar levels and subsequent surges in insulin. As we know, stable blood sugar and insulin levels are crucial for maintaining balanced cortisol levels, which in turn helps keep estrogen and progesterone levels stable. Protein is also known to increase satiety, which helps you feel full and satisfied for longer periods. This effect can help ensure you're not filling up on nutrient-weak calories.
Quality protein sources: Organic meats, poultry, fish, tofu, legumes, eggs, nuts, seeds, and tempeh.
HEALTHY FATS
Healthy fats are crucial for hormone production and the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. When it comes to hormonal acne, healthy fats not only help regulate hormones, reducing breakouts, but these fats can also improve skin health directly by supporting the skin's natural moisture barrier and calming inflammation.
Consuming fats alongside carbohydrates and protein, helps promote vitamin absorption. Certain vitamins, such as vitamins A, D, E, and K, are fat-soluble, meaning they require dietary fats to be properly absorbed and utilized by the body. These vitamins are crucial for the proper functioning of your body's hormone detoxification system. They support enzymatic processes involved in breaking down and eliminating excess hormones, particularly estrogen, from the body. Fats are also a concentrated source of energy, providing more than twice the calories per gram compared to carbohydrates and proteins, meaning you're more likely to feel energized and full, and have fewer cravings between meals.
Healthy fat sources: Avocado, nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans), seeds (chia seeds, flaxseeds), olive oil, coconut oil, fatty fish (salmon, mackerel), flaxseed oil, nut butters (almond butter, cashew butter), and hemp seeds.
HIGH FIBRE
Fibre is a gut health powerhouse. It helps feed the good bacteria in the gut and slow down digestion. Fibre also helps to ensure excess estrogens, and other harmful hormones and toxins, move smoothly through the gut for proper elimination from the body. It does this not only by supporting overall gut health, but also by actually binding to these harmful hormones and toxins, reducing their absorption in the colon and encouraging their excretion.
Combining fibre with the discussed macronutrients helps slow down the digestion process, facilitating better absorption of essential nutrients and gradual release into the bloodstream. This gradual release applied to sugars as well. As we know, decreasing blood sugar spikes and increasing nutrient absorption both contribute to healthier hormone balance. Like protein and fat, high fibre foods also add bulk to the diet, promoting a feeling of fullness or satiety.
High fibre sources: Vegetables (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, artichokes), fruits (apples, pears, berries), whole grains (barley, oats, brown rice), legumes (lentils, chickpeas, black beans), nuts (almonds, pistachios), and seeds (chia seeds, pumpkin seeds).
A DAY OF HORMONE-BALANCING MEALS
Incorporating these hormone-balancing components into every meal might seem overwhelming at first, but it's simpler than you might expect. Don't limit yourself with what you think should be combined. The right seasoning can make almost any dish taste great!
As you begin noticing the benefits of improved nutrition, satiety, and hormonal balance, you'll look forward to creating meals that help you feel your best. To get you started, here's a practical example of what a day of healthy, hormone-balancing meals could look like.
BREAKFAST
Organic scrambled eggs and spinach with gluten-free whole grain toast, topped with avocado.
Carbs: Toast
Protein: Eggs
Fats: Avocado
Fibre: Spinach
Hormone-Balancing Tip: Cook your eggs in a stainless steel pan. Non-stick pans are coated with chemicals like PFAS, which are known to disrupt hormone balance, contributing to hormonal acne.
LUNCH
Spinach salad with organic chicken, quinoa, veggies (ex. cucumber, radish, snap peas, onion), and walnuts, topped with your favourite oil-based, low-sugar dressing.
Carbs & Fibre: Quinoa
Protein: Chicken
Fats: Walnuts
Hormone-Balancing Tip: When it comes to oil-based salad dressing, the less processed the oil the better. Avocado oil and olive oil are great options, as they are far less processed than most other oils, like sunflower and grapeseed oil.
DINNER
Wild salmon and steamed broccoli on a bed of rice, topped with grilled pineapple.
Carbs: Rice
Protein & Fats: Wild Salmon
Fibre: Broccoli
Hormone-Balancing Tip: Cruciferous veggies like broccoli are not only an excellent source of fibre, but also support the metabolism of excess estrogen, making them particularly beneficial for anyone with estrogen dominance.
STRUGGLING WITH HORMONAL ACNE?
If you're struggling with hormonal acne, assessing the foods you put in your body is a hugely impactful starting point on your journey to healthy, acne-free skin. To keep it simple, a diet of whole, toxin-free foods is going to be the best way to maintain hormone balance. The less processed the better. To take it one step further, focus on a balanced combination of the different food categories (the three macronutrients and fibre) to ensure you're maximizing the benefits of those whole foods.
If you've implemented dietary changes, but haven't seen any improvement in your hormonal acne or other symptoms, consider supplementation. Our hormonal acne supplement, Balance, is formulated with potent hormone-balancing compounds that help flush out excess estrogens and toxins, supporting your journey to balanced hormones and acne-free skin. Taking just one capsule daily can make a significant difference in achieving and maintaining healthy, acne-free skin.
