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Eating doesn't matter if you're 20 or you're 70, to be able to balance your hormones. This is really critical because so many of us are struggling hormonally in this modern world. And my mission is to teach you how to come back in sync with your hormones, so you're going to want to start to bring in these five foods. But I'm going to show you which hormone these five foods are good for; what needle these hormones are going to move for you on which hormones. So let's walk through this together.
Remember that if you have—if you haven't read *Fast Like a Girl*, I don't care what age you are, I highly recommend you read it. Because it talks in that book a lot about what I talk about: how there is a lifestyle that estrogen wants you to live, and there's a lifestyle that progesterone wants you to live. And this has been the missing conversation in hormonal health for all ages. And you think about this through—I mean, this is like something that just blew my mind when I discovered this 10 years ago—we as women have never been taught to vary our diet to match these two hormones.
Estrogen and progesterone are like twin sisters; they look the same. We put them in the same category, give them the same name as sex hormones, but they have massively different personalities. Which means they like massively different food types. I've mentioned this in *Fast Like a Girl*, that with, you know, the estrogen, she loves keto. I call it ketobiotic because I want us always to be bringing more of the polyphenol and probiotic and prebiotic foods into our life to support estrogen. And progesterone loves hormone-feasting foods. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of my favorites specifically for estrogen there, but these two are the two food styles. Think of them as: you're going to pulse in and out of these two food styles. If you have a cycle, great. If you do, and I'll show you how to do it with this—with if you have a cycle. If you don't have a cycle, no problem. I want to show you how to do it based off of the signals that your body is giving you. So the two styles, ketobiotic and hormone feasting, apply to these five foods. So here we go.
Number one: my favorite, an avocado. Okay, so why would avocado be so spectacular for our hormones? Well, the first—I put avocado in the estrogen camp, and here's why: an avocado can help you support estrogen. Estrogen wants you to keep your blood sugar down, and if you add an avocado to almost every meal, you slow the spike of blood sugar. So personally, on the days that I know I need more estrogen—when I was cycling regularly, that was day one all the way through ovulation, somewhere around day 12, 13, 14, 15—I put an avocado with every meal that I had. I love avocado. I was recently—side funny note—I was recently interviewed on the talk—on Tom Bilio's Impact Theory podcast, and at the end he asked me if I had one food I could take on a desert island with me, what would it be? And I said an avocado, because that's how much I love an avocado. So not only does it stabilize your blood sugar, but it also gives good fat to the brain. So remember the brain is 50-50 fat, so it needs it—it thrives when we give it fat; it nourishes the fat in the brain. The other reason I love an avocado is it also—it—it can feed the microbiome, and you need the microbiome to break hormones down, so it's great when we're trying to build estrogen. It fills a lot of different buckets in helping support good estrogen production.
Okay, I gotta interrupt this video because I have a free guide for you so you can master fasting. It's called *A Beginner's Guide to a Fasting Lifestyle*, and all you've got to do is click here and you can jump right in.
My second favorite—and this is more a group of foods that support women's hormones—are bitter foods. This is your radicchio, your dandelion, this is uh, lemon and ginger. These are bitter, bitter foods. And what bitter foods do is not only do they support good gut health, but they support your liver. And we—when we look at hormones—on one hand, we need to make hormones, so when we look at like the avocado, we're helping to support the making of estrogen. When we look at bitter foods and we go, okay, it supports the liver, it supports the gut—that is imperative to be able to help you break down the hormones that you produced. So liver health is key, and there's no better set of foods like bitter foods to be able to help you support a healthy liver so you can break all the sex hormones down, not just estrogen. This would fall into the camp of supporting you throughout your whole cycle. I teach the women in my Reset Academy that the time I like to come in with a big dose of bitter foods is during ovulation. So if you are a cycling woman—I call it the manifestation phase in *Fast Like a Girl*—but if you are a cycling woman, bring it in during ovulation. You have all your progesterone comes in, estrogens that are peak, testosterone's at peak; this is the time to bring in the bitter foods. Whereas we can look at avocado as being really important those first 10 days going into ovulation, during ovulation we really want to make sure that we're bringing in those bitter foods. My post-menopausal women, the bitter foods help you when the hot flashes show up; the bitter foods help you when you struggle to sleep, because we've got to be able to get something to help you break estrogen down. You're getting less estrogen; we need to help support its breakdown, and that's where the liver foods, or the bitter foods, or liver…fibs…maybe I said economic liver fibs…can help you.
Okay, number three: this is one that I know not everybody knows exactly how to do, and some people think it's a little controversial, neither why, and that is seeds. And there are two types of seeds I want you to eat, and they—they help two different hormones. The estrogen hero seed of the day are flax seeds. So more flax seeds, specifically flax oil. I love putting flax oil on my salads; uh, sometimes when I'm feeling like I just need to break down estrogen a little bit more—my skin feels dry, mucosal membranes are a little dry—I'll do more flaxseed. And so it's great for breaking down and supporting—it does both—supporting estrogen, whereas pumpkin seeds, which are really yummy, support progesterone and the breakdown of progesterone. So hopefully you've heard of seed cycling; um, it's become a really interesting old healing strategy for supporting hormonal production. I think it's—there's something really interesting about that. Again, we've gotten way too complicated with health; we think it—we have to—especially hormonal health, like we're talking about HRT and bioidenticals and what do you take. I'm here to tell you, let's start with your lifestyle. And when we look at seeds, we can see that cycling in flaxseed in the beginning, cycling in pumpkin at the end, supports the production of these two major sex hormones. So think of it from the seed level. My women that have hot flashes—remember a hot flash, that is low estrogen—so more flaxseed. So—and I mean the other ones are great too, but that's a big one to think about.
Okay, number four: this one is my favorite. It's my favorite. You know, I say that about everything actually; all of these are my favorites. I pretty much eat all these every day. And the fourth one is root vegetables. So this is your squashes, this is your sweet potatoes, these are your potatoes in general. They help support progesterone. Now I can tell you, in my clinic, in my online world, we have done tens of thousands of hormone tests. My favorite is the DUTCH test. If you ever want to do a hormone test, go to my website; you can find it there. We have a whole new health coach that will come and—and uh—break down your hormones for you and teach you how to read them. But this is what I want you to know about root vegetables: is they will support progesterone. And all these hormone tests I've done on women, the majority—99.9 percent of women that we've seen—are losing progesterone. We are in a rushing woman world, and the rushing woman—as cortisol goes up, progesterone goes down. And I am—since *Fast Like a Girl* has come out—I am shocked at how many 20 and 30-year-olds have lost their periods altogether, and that's largely because they're missing progesterone. And you can bring progesterone back by increasing your root vegetables. So sweet potatoes are my favorite. I do all different types. When I go to the store, I get the golden ones, I get the white ones, I get the purple ones. They all feed different parts of my microbiome, and it makes it for a really yummy delight when it comes to the squashes. Same thing; my new favorite one is Honey Nut. I can get them at my farmer's market; oh my God, they're so good. If you haven't tried a Honey Nut squash, highly recommend it. But even acorn and spaghetti and butternut—bringing those in will help you build progesterone. So if you're missing your cycle, if you're anxious a lot, I'm gonna recommend that you bring in more vegetables. I have—I eat a root vegetable every couple of days, and when I eat, I eat it a lot.
Number five: now this might upset some people. I'm just gonna say—gonna say it's got to be said—and number five is meat. And when I say meat, I mean specifically grass-fed steak is phenomenal, but even poultry is really good. Let me tell you why. Vegetarians, don't stop here. I want—I want to walk this through—this through the thought process here. I'm not trying to convert you into eating meat, but I want you to think about this. So what happens when we eat grass-fed steak? You're getting all the amino acids that you need to be able to make hormones. So hormones have fuel requirements, and one of those fuel requirements is amino acids. And a grass-fed steak has all the amino acids that you need to be able to make all three hormones. So super important to be able to get that in your diet. When we look at—at poultry, we're looking at our turkey and our chicken—that has the precursors—has a key component in it—for—called tryptophan. And tryptophan is an amino acid that helps you make serotonin. Okay, my menopausal women, I want you to think about this: as we're going through menopause, we're losing estrogen; that's supposed to happen. And so when we lose estrogen—estrogen is a precursor for serotonin—and serotonin keeps us happy. So if we don't have enough serotonin, we can feel the blues, we can feel a little low. So often what happens to get that serotonin rush is we reach for carbohydrates, but you can get a precursor—a major precursor for serotonin—in tryptophan, which comes in the form of poultry. So I hope you followed me there. If you are looking for a mood boost uh, and—and you're looking to increase not just estrogen but you want to increase serotonin, you need more tryptophan, and that can come in the form of poultry. So a lot of nuance there. I mean, this is a—this is a dense five things. And if you are vegetarian, then what I want you to know is that you might have to supplement with tryptophan. It might be that you gotta slide that in there, so make sure—and you can get that in other supplements—so that you can get that serotonin lift to keep your moods up.
So there you go. Those five—like key, key five—that we have to be bringing in to keep ourselves hormonally balanced. When you're hormonally balanced, your moods are balanced, your cycles are balanced, your cravings are balanced, your—your sleep is balanced. Hormones dictate everything we do in life, and these five foods are massively important for that hormonal balance. So as always, I hope that helps. Put in your notes. Here's what I want to do in the comments: I want to know, do you have any amazing recipes? Let's share—share. I want to know, do you have any amazing recipes with these five foods? How do you use them? Really interesting, and I would be curious to see what we find. As always, hope that—if you love that video and you want to dive into more of the information I have on this channel, go to this video. If you're trying to use fasting as a tool for weight loss, congratulations. It literally is the best tool I have ever seen for weight loss. I think you should start with fasting before you change your food.