We just saw that estrogen dominance is the biggest factor in why women find it so hard to lose fat after age 40. Before we look at how to solve this and start shifting that fat, let’s consider the 3 reasons why estrogen comes to be so dominant in our bodies as we pass the year 40 marker.
Why We Become Estrogen Dominant, Reason 1
The biggest cause of estrogen dominance is simply getting older, and the difference that makes to our fertility.
We think of the menopause happening around age 50, and it does, on average. But the menopause is the end of a long process of slowly dropping ovulation levels that start around age 30—yes, as early as that. Right around this age you start to skip ovulation some months. That’s when the body releases an egg, so that you can get pregnant.
For most women, there’s no noticeable change yet, because the monthly periods go right on happening on schedule. But if you are tracking your fertility, by the time you are age 30–35, you are likely to see that ovulation doesn’t happen with absolutely every cycle anymore, and it gets less frequent as time goes on.
Why is this important? Because there’s an estrogen surge before ovulation is due. Then when ovulation happens, progesterone increases, counteracting the extra estrogen. So if ovulation happens on cue, as it pretty much always does when we’re younger, fat creation and fat burning are kept in balance, and we have to eat a lot to gain weight.
But as you get older, that ovulation isn’t happening every time anymore. So you will have fewer progesterone surges to stimulate the thyroid and keep fat under control.
By age 40, you’re likely to notice the difference—in extra fat around your hips and thighs!
Why We Become Estrogen Dominant, Reason 2
The next major cause of estrogen dominance is the change in our food supply and environment that’s happened in the last few decades. This includes around 80,000 chemicals released into our world that were nonexistent or only present in tiny amounts one hundred years ago.
They’re in plastics, pesticides, food additives, personal care products, cleaning products, and even in the air we breathe. A lot of these chemicals infiltrate our bodies, mimicking the effects of thyroid-blocking estrogen.
Sometimes the link is even more direct. Cows are milked even while pregnant, when their bodies are producing huge amounts of estrogen. Chickens need to have high estrogen levels all year round if they are to lay eggs every day—so farmers make sure to keep their estrogen high. Chicken manure is often used in feed for other animals, so that estrogen gets into all animal products–dairy, meat, eggs.
All of this totally messes with a woman’s metabolism and her ability to burn fat. For guys there are major effects too–the estrogen they consume can affect their fertility and contribute to “man-boobs”.
Even some of the fish in our lakes and rivers are changing from male to female from all the excess estrogen and estrogen-mimicking substances in our water!
Why We Become Estrogen Dominant, Reason 3
The final big cause of estrogen dominance that stops us losing fat as we get past our early youth is stress.
Whenever you’re stressed, the hormone cortisol circulates around the body at high levels. This suppresses the metabolism and the digestive process so that the body can concentrate on the life-preserving actions you’d have needed to take if you were attacked by a tiger or faced some other serious threat back in the dawn of time.
Back then, it wasn’t an issue. You’d fight the tiger or run away, using up the cortisol, and the metabolism would return to normal when you were safe.
But these days, major physical activity like fighting or running away is not an appropriate response to most of the stresses we face. When your stress is caused by sitting in heavy traffic or a showdown with your boss, you pretty much have to sit there and take it.
So there’s nothing for the cortisol to do. The body keeps producing it and never using it. So the metabolism is constantly on a go-slow.
And what’s more, guess where the body gets the biological material to produce cortisol? That’s right, some of it is diverted from producing progesterone! So your progesterone levels fall, leading to another cause of estrogen dominance.
Plus lower progesterone means lower thyroid function. That’s like taking the foot off the gas for your metabolism. It slows down even more, and fat accumulates, right where you don’t want it.
How To Solve Estrogen Dominance and Kick-Start The Metabolism
The good news is that it’s possible to deal with many of these causes of extra estrogen, so your body can begin to burn all that pesky fat off of your belly, hips, butt, and thighs.
Here are two simple things you can do right now.
First, avoid estrogen and chemicals that mimic it by cleaning up what goes into your body and onto your skin. That means looking at labels on beauty products and cleaning products, for example.
When it comes to food, you may want to choose grass-fed beef over regular, and cut down on other animal products such as chicken meat, milk, and eggs. All of these contain large amounts of estrogen, even if they are organic, because the estrogen doesn’t depend so much on what the animals are fed. Their bodies have to produce hormones for them to produce eggs and milk.
Second, work on reducing your stress levels. There are two ways to do this. One is to create boundaries around what you do, so you say “no” more often and make time for yourself. The other is to include some stress-reducing activities in your daily schedule, such as yoga, meditation, or breathing exercises. This will keep your cortisol levels down, giving your thyroid a chance to work as it should.
How to Get Fast Fat Loss Results
However, some of the reasons for having more estrogen as we grow older are unavoidable–such as the natural changes in our own bodies, or the need for protein which will mean eating at least some animal products.
Plus, we might want to get quicker results. Many women are very estrogen-dominant by the time they reach age 40+, and it can take a long time to get rid of that by using only the above two methods.
So you’ll want to look at faster ways to burn fat by boosting the metabolism. For that, we recommend Metabolic Renewal.
With weapons like this, you are NOT doomed to gain weight as you age.
You could even lose the excess fat you’re already carrying!
Why not give it a try?
