Sugar Cravings and Hormonal Imbalance: How Sugar Cravings and Sugar Addiction Affect Hormone Health

Are you struggling with constant sugar cravings at night or during your period? Is sugar addiction taking over your life? Are you drowning in sugar cravings and hormonal imbalance, and wondering why you haven’t lost the stubborn weight? Don’t worry. You’re not alone. You’re not bad, weird or any other label. Your body is just sending you a message.

And before we get started, I want to remind you that Sugar Cravings are not bad because sugar itself is bad. Natural, real food is vital for our wellbeing. Natural sugar, which is found in fruits, grains, vegetables and other real food, supports your body to absorb the nutrients it needs to be optimal. This post is focused on Processed Sugar Cravings and its connection to hormonal imbalance, as well as the simplest ways to curb these processed sugar cravings before they sap our energy, increase our waistlines, steal our youth and derail our health.

I cannot tell you how many female entrepreneurs I’ve talked to who feel like they’re constantly tired or always getting sick and their hormones are all over the place. And this doesn’t’ include all the women suffering from insomnia, high blood sugar, painful cramps, painful bloating, gas, dry, patchy skin, premature aging and acne.

The interesting thing is about sugar cravings and hormonal imbalance is that many women reach for the next detox or master cleanse, more food, caffeine, medication, or glycolic acid to look more refreshed. But here’s the not-so-sweet deal. The possible culprit of all of this? Toxins that prevent your body from functioning properly – thanks to good ole sweet Sugar.

The whole body is connected so when one part is out of balance, then all the systems go crazy. In the next part of this post, we’ll identify a few ways that sugar messes up our system to create weight gain, and hormonal imbalance.

Sugar Cravings and Hormonal Imbalance

When it comes to our bodies, hormones run the show. That’s why understanding how what we eat interacts with our hormones is important to being healthy, maintaining a naturally healthy weight, looking younger and enjoying youthful glowing skin, having more energy and better focus, and balancing our hormones.

Life so much more than food and our physical bodies, but we can’t ignore the basic fact that food, our hormones and our health all work together to keep us Healthy and Well. And Sugar is a big part of this wellness cycle because Sugar is one of the biggest culprits for Hormonal imbalance.

You may like 7 Habits to Stop Sugar Cravings for Good.

What are the Symptoms of Hormonal Imbalance?

Hormonal imbalance is responsible for anxiety and mood swings, insomnia, fatigue and lack of energy – constantly feeling like you need another cup of coffee to keep going, headaches and migraines, the stubborn belly fat that refuses to go away no matter how many diets you’ve tried, how many weights you lift or how many planks you do, low sex drive, persistent sugar cravings that always have you reaching for sugar-filled Starbucks drinks, chocolate or cookies, high blood sugar, premature aging skin, dry aging skin and chronic acne, painful cramps and bloating, Heavy and irregular periods and those drenching night.

There are many more symptoms of hormonal imbalances, but we’ll address those later. Based on this brief list, how many of these hormonal imbalances are you or the women in your life dealing with every day?

Sugar and Hormone Health – Insulin

Have you noticed that your sugar cravings get more intense at night or you may be one of those women who cannot stop thinking about chocolate right before or during her period?

If you feel absolutely terrible before your period, or your mood is all over the place and you feel like a Tasmanian devil in lipstick, you’re not going crazy. And if you’re dealing with poor sleep and wake up every day feeling like the Walking Dead, then you can bet that the way you’re feeling is tied to the amount of sugar you’re consuming (creating unbalanced hormones).

The most powerful hormone in the body is, you guessed it, Insulin. Known as the fat storage hormone, good ole insulin regulates blood sugar and stores all the excess processed sugars and refined carbs as fat. Our bodies rely on hormones (especially insulin) to keep glucose balanced for energy.

When we eat too much processed sugar or sweets, our bodies go out of balance and this imbalance is the key reason for your lack of energy, brain fog and constant irritability and moodiness. Excess processed sugar is the perfect storm for high blood sugar, which increases insulin and leads to stubborn weight gain.

This one of the reasons why many women keep dieting and working out without any results. And that’s one of the reasons why focusing on diets is such a huge mistake. Removing major food groups from your lifestyle creates unhealthy unhappy hormones, and sugar cravings on mainstream diets like Keto. It’s a vicious cycle that forces women to either stay on diets or jump from one to the next hoping to crack the ideal weight loss code.

Because insulin is a fat storage hormone, the more sugar we eat, the more insulin spikes and the more we lose energy, have more cravings, and eat more foods that lead to weight gain. Keeping insulin in check makes it easier to lose weight, manage our cravings and ditch those annoying PMS and menopause symptoms.

One of the things I learned when I was thinking of quitting processed sugar after a 44-year sugar addiction, was that Sugar was the culprit for my high estrogen dominance and was responsible for 90 percent of my hormonal imbalance symptoms, including anxiety, insomnia, and irritability.

Sugar and Adrenal Fatigue

Adrenal fatigue is the most common hormonal imbalance in women, probably because we do so much and are often under chronic stress.

Adrenal health is pivotal for ensuring your hormones are working as they should. Sugar robs the adrenal glands of the nourishment they need and creates even more stress in the body.

When women entrepreneurs are stressed out, the body looks for any resource to create a quick fix to get us out of “fight or flight” mode. And it needs quick fuel to start the process. For us, that fuel is usually sugar. In fact, your body starts to warn you around 3.pm. Raise your hand if you’ve ever reached for the cookie or any other processed sugar treat at 3.30 or anytime during the late afternoon slump.

How do you deal with this to curb weight gain and balance your hormones? Learn how to Curb Sugar Cravings and End Sugar Addiction for Life.

You can also read 21 Habits to Lose Weight and Look Younger: Add Foods that Curb Sugar Cravings and Reset Your Hormones (Part 2)

Stress can be chemical, physical, emotional, and sometimes even spiritual. Whether you’re feeling tightness in your chest or clenching your jaws while you work, chronic stress is bad for you and can kill you.

The stress hormone, Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress. High levels of cortisol mess up thyroid, progesterone and estrogen hormones and create hormone imbalance symptoms like weight gain, chronic insomnia, hair loss, infertility, and stubborn belly fat.

Low cortisol levels on the other hand, cause lack of energy, chronic stress, constantly experiencing cold and flu symptoms, depression, and low blood pressure, among others.

How Sugar Affects Your Brain

Have you ever been in one of those mid-day slumps where you can’t seem to think straight? You can’t concentrate and you struggle to get through sales calls and client conversations? You reach for sugar-filled lattes and muffins or cookies in a hazy daze and you desperately want more caffeine.

I get it and I’ve been there too. If you haven’t already read my 44-year sugar addiction story, you can read it here and here. And no, you’re not craving cocaine even though, according to my doctor, I was experiencing the same symptoms with my sugar addiction as a cocaine addict did for a cocaine addiction. Crazy, right?! My experience with overeating processed sugar impaired my ability to focus and deal with stress.

As I write this post, it’s been almost 17 months since I’ve had any processed sugar and my brain fog is giving way to better focus, higher concentration and I’ve traded 1 to 2 hours of sleep with 7 hours of restful sleep every night.

When sugar is your primary fuel source, you’re a slave to energy highs and lows and you convince yourself that you really love those sugar-heavy drinks and Starbucks is your favorite place in the world.

But here’s the tooth decay deal. Not only is it damaging you on a physiological level, but it’s also screwing up your metal state and keeping you fat. For me, I put on 28 lbs. and went up 12 dress sizes within 5 months. Vacillating between cycles of low energy and then eating more sugar and getting high again wasn’t sustainable for my health, life or business. I lost coaching clients, dropped the ball on meetings, procrastinated because I was too tired or couldn’t think clearly and spent way too much time and money on tooth extractions and root canals, which were not only painful, but they also took too much time away from my work.

Curbing processed sugar creates more sustainable energy that allows us to maintain better focus, sleep and a naturally healthy weight. You’ll find out how to curb these constant sugar cravings in the The Quit Sugar and Glow Factor.

How Sugar Affects Your Digestion

Healthy vital digestion is crucial for looking and feeling your best. It’s an essential part of the detox process as well as making sure your body gets all the nutrients it needs. When your digestion is not working as it should, your whole body suffers.

Sugar’s effect on the digestive system has less to do with the system’s mechanical functions, and more to do with the important elements that keep things working as they should. Specifically, your gut microbiome.

The little bacteria that live in your gut are linked to more than just digestive health. These little microbes are essential for a healthy immune system and overall hormonal balance. When the bad bacteria in your gut outweigh the good, your inner ecosystem loses balance and the results are poor digestion, candida overgrowth, parasites and more serious digestive issues like leaky gut syndrome or IBS.

Even minor symptoms like gas, bloating, and skin problems all link back to an imbalance in the gut microbiome. Sugar is the main culprit that throws off this delicate internal balance

Bad bacteria in the gut feed on Sugar because it supports them to thrive, while good bacteria love healthy foods high in nourishing fats and fiber. When you end sugar addiction or quit processed sugar, you’re starving the bad bacteria and gaining back your health, radiant skin and youthful glow and energy.

The bottom line? Curbing processed sugar is one of the best ways to get ditch sugar cravings and hormonal imbalance symptoms.

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