How To Lose Weight With Estrogen Dominance Naturally.
As the days grow longer and the warmth of spring returns, conversations around weight loss and body shape start to resurface.
The pressure to fit into a certain size or look a particular way can feel overwhelming, especially when the world around us promotes quick fixes and restrictive diets.
While rejecting diet culture is empowering, it’s also important to acknowledge the reality that many women experience changes in body composition during menopause.
Frustration can set in when the usual strategies such as cutting calories, increasing cardio, or following the latest diet trend no longer seem to work.
The temptation to return to these old habits is strong but often leads to more disappointment than real, lasting results.
Weight loss during menopause is different.
The body is governed by hormones, not calories.
Estrogen dominance and imbalances in progesterone and insulin, play a significant role in how the body stores fat and uses energy.
Ignoring these factors and focusing solely on calorie restriction can leave women stuck in an endless cycle of frustration.
There is a better way.
By understanding how estrogen dominance impacts metabolism and insulin sensitivity, it’s possible to work with the body instead of against it.
A personalised, hormone-focused approach offers a sustainable path to feeling stronger, healthier, and more in control—not just for a season, but for life.
The Problem With Diet Culture & Weight Loss Myths
Every spring, diet culture re-emerges, promoting restrictive meal plans, calorie counting, and extreme exercise routines as the path to weight loss.
Many women who experience weight gain due to hormonal imbalances feel pressured to follow these outdated methods, hoping to return to reach an arbitrary number on the scales.
However, these approaches fail to address the root cause of body composition imbalances — hormone levels and their impact on every system in the body.
The body’s ability to regulate body weight is driven by hormones, for instance when estrogen levels or progesterone levels are out of balance, the body may hold on to excess body fat, particularly in the hips, thighs, and abdomen.
Fat cells themselves produce estrogen, creating a cycle where excess estrogen leads to more fat storage.
Traditional calorie-cutting strategies ignore this dynamic and can even have a negative impact by increasing stress on the adrenal glands, which further disrupts hormonal balance.
Another common mistake is ignoring the role of insulin resistance.
Many women dealing with symptoms of estrogen dominance, such as mood swings, irregular and heavy periods, along with fatigue and hot flushes, don’t realise that their blood sugar regulation is also affected.
High levels of estrogen can interfere with insulin function, making it harder for the body to use glucose efficiently. This contributes to metabolic syndrome, making weight loss even more challenging.
Instead of falling into the trap of restrictive dieting, it’s essential to take a more informed approach.
Addressing hormone imbalance through aligned lifestyle adjustments, is far more effective than reducing calories.
Understanding Estrogen Dominance & Its Impact on Weight
Many women struggling with weight gain don’t realise that their hormone levels play an important role in metabolism, fat storage, and energy regulation.
One of the most common types of hormonal imbalance affecting body weight is estrogen dominance—a condition where there is too much estrogen in relation to progesterone levels.
This imbalance can occur due to excess estrogen production, impaired estrogen detoxification, or exposure to synthetic estrogens from personal care products, birth control pills, and environmental disruptors found in phytoestrogens, mass-produced animal products and plastics.
When high levels of estrogen are circulating, the body tends to store more fat, particularly in the hips, thighs, and abdomen.
This creates a cycle where fat tissue not only stores estrogen but also produces it, leading to further hormonal imbalance.
Another key factor in weight loss resistance is insulin resistance.
High amounts of estrogen can make the body’s cells less responsive to insulin, causing blood sugar levels to fluctuate.
Over time, this leads to metabolic syndrome, increased fat storage, and a higher risk of conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and type 2 diabetes.
Women with estrogen dominance often experience cravings, fatigue, heavy or prolonged periods and difficulty losing weight due to these metabolic shifts.
Since high estrogen levels can make weight loss more difficult, supporting the detoxification of estrogen is crucial.
The liver and digestive tract work together to process and eliminate excess estrogen, but poor gut health, a sluggish liver, or a diet lacking in fibre-rich foods can slow this process.
Consuming cruciferous vegetables like Brussels sprouts, adopting a fibre-rich diet, and incorporating healthy fats from olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, and fatty fish can have a positive effect on hormonal balance.
Understanding the connection between hormone levels and body weight is the first step to breaking free from restrictive diets that fail to address the root cause.
Why Insulin, Not Calories, Is the Key Player
For decades, women have been told that weight loss is simply about eating fewer calories and exercising more.
While this might work temporarily due to our primal survival systems, it fails to address the deeper issue—hormonal imbalances that influence how the body stores and burns fat.
Insulin resistance, which often goes hand in hand with estrogen dominance, plays a far bigger role in body weight than calorie intake alone.
Insulin is the body’s fat-storage hormone.
When you eat, particularly foods that raise blood sugar quickly, insulin is released to help transport glucose into your cells for energy.
However, when high levels of estrogen are present, the body can become less sensitive to insulin, leading to insulin resistance.
This means that instead of using glucose efficiently, the body stores it as excess body fat, making it harder to maintain a healthy weight.
Over time, insulin resistance contributes to metabolic syndrome, making weight gain, fatigue, and sugar cravings more likely.
Women experiencing symptoms of estrogen dominance are often unknowingly battling blood sugar dysregulation.
When hormone levels are out of balance, particularly with high amounts of estrogen and insufficient progesterone, the body struggles to regulate blood sugar effectively.
Add to this a cycle where chronic stress, poor gut health, and inflammation from processed foods and toxic seed oils, you get further hormonal disruption.
The adrenal glands also play a role by producing the stress hormone cortisol, which, when elevated, can worsen insulin resistance and make weight loss even more difficult.
How to Support Estrogen Detoxification & Balance Hormones Naturally
If you’ve been trying to lose weight but nothing seems to work, it’s time to shift the focus from outdated calorie restriction to understanding how hormonal imbalances—especially estrogen dominance—affect your metabolism.
The body isn’t driven by calories; it’s run by hormones. This is why one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work.
Instead of jumping from diet to diet, the key is to create a sustainable strategy that supports your unique hormonal landscape.
In my SHIFT System, I guide women through the Ignite Pathway that helps address the root causes of weight gain, sluggish metabolism, and insulin resistance.
This isn’t about restriction, it’s about working with your body, not against it.
What’s Keeping You Stuck?
When it comes to hormone balance, there are several areas that could be influencing your ability to lose weight.
Following are the 8 steps that all my clients go through in the Ignite Pathway of the SHIFT System.
- The Strong Foundation – Are you eating in a way that supports stable blood sugar, minimises insulin resistance and supports hormone production?
- The Flora Formula – Is your gut microbiome working for you, or is poor digestion slowing down estrogen detoxification?
- The Detox Formula – Is your liver efficiently clearing high levels of estrogen, or is it overloaded with toxins?
- The Immunity Formula – Are chronic inflammation and stress contributing to cortisol levels that disrupt metabolism and quality sleep?
- The Intuitive Nutrition Guide – Are you honouring your body’s needs instead of following restrictive diet rules?
- Intermittent Feasting – Are you giving your body enough time to rest, digest and heal while also improving insulin sensitivity?
- The Cyclical Approach – Are you working with your cyclical rhythms, whether you have a menstrual cycle or not, in a way that naturally promotes harmony?
- The Slow Living Lifestyle – Is chronic stress keeping you stuck in survival mode, making it harder for your nervous system to function optimally?
Each of these micro strategies plays an essential role in bringing your hormones back into harmony so your body can naturally maintain its optimal weight and more importantly be free from fatigue, brain fog, hot flushes and the general lack of joy and motivation that too many women experience going through the menopause transition as well as post menopause..
This isn’t about quick fixes, but about addressing the root causes of your symptoms so you can finally break free from the cycle of dieting, frustration, and metabolic resistance.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
You don’t have to waste time searching the internet for solutions that may not apply to your unique body.
What works for one woman may not work for another, depending on factors like stress levels, insulin resistance, thyroid hormone function, metabolism, and more.
The key is finding a personalised approach that aligns with your goals, lifestyle and your body’s needs.
If you’re ready to stop guessing and start taking action, my SHIFT System is designed to help you find clarity, take control of your menopause hormonal health, and build a sustainable strategy for feeling your best.
You can find out more HERE.
Taking Action: Creating a Strategy That Works for YOU
If you’re tired of guessing, searching for answers, and feeling frustrated by the lack of progress, it’s time to take a different approach.
No more internet rabbit holes, no more “quick fixes,” and no more wasting time on plans that aren’t designed for your body.
Inside my SHIFT System, I help women uncover the root causes of their hormonal imbalances and create a personalised plan that aligns with their unique body and lifestyle. This is about:
- Understanding what’s driving your unique set of menopause symptoms and where to focus first.
- Learning how to support hormone harmony through food, movement, and aligned lifestyle changes—without restriction.
- Addressing insulin resistance, adrenal health, liver and gut function to restore your body’s natural rhythm.
- Finding a sustainable way to feel energised, content, and confident in your body without obsessing over numbers.
If you’re ready to step off the dieting merry-go-round and take a strategic, holistic approach, my SHIFT System can guide you every step of the way.
Take the first step today and download my free eBook, The Menopause Nutrition Reset, Real Food, Real Balance, Real Results. Discover the missing piece to your natural menopause health.