Grocery Staples for Happy Hormones
Whether you are trying to beat brain fog, achieve your ideal weight, regulate your cycle, or clear up hormonal acne, addressing your hormone health is an excellent starting point.
Nourished, happy hormones are the key to you feeling your absolute best day in and day out. But with so much conflicting information coming from your best friend, mom, Instagram influencers, doctors, Tiktok, glossy magazines, and television programs, it can be anxiety-inducing to discern how exactly you should be fueling your body.
Luckily, eating for healthy hormones actually comes down to a pretty practical formula. Once you are familiar with the formula, knowing what to stock in your fridge and pantry becomes second nature.
The formula is this:
Protein + Carbohydrates + Fat = Balanced Blood Sugar
Balanced Blood Sugar = Happy Hormones
Now that you know the formula, food is about to become less stressful or boring and more fun and functional!
Protein
The foundation of every meal you eat (and there should be three to four each day) is a quality protein. This often comes as a surprise to women, but women need to be eating twenty to thirty grams of protein per meal to maintain healthy, balanced hormones and ideal weight.
Why? Because protein provides the essential amino acids necessary for repairing and maintaining your hormones, muscles, organs, nervous system, immune system… basically keeping your body in working order to have regular, healthy periods.
Personally, my relationship with protein has evolved over the years. I grew up eating a midwestern diet that included meat. I strayed into vegetarian and vegan territory during my ballet career and again as I began my own hormone healing journey a few years ago. Regardless of my vegetarian/vegan/omnivore status, I was never too concerned with how much protein I was eating.
I was also constantly hungry, wondering what and when I would eat next, battling major sugar cravings, and dealing with absent periods and major mood swings.
Shifting to a diet rich in high-quality proteins is a total game changer.
Seriously, who doesn’t want to feel satiated and eliminate cravings??
Whether you like to meal plan for the week or have options on-hand to create off-the-cuff meals, high-quality animal proteins are a must. Animal proteins are complete proteins, meaning they naturally contain all of your essential amino acids.
As you implement a diet rich in animal protein, reading labels is incredibly important. It gives you an indication of what life was like for that animal before it arrived in your local supermarket. Animals that live a high-quality life provide better quality nourishment and you will notice a difference in how your body feels, too!
When making your selections at the grocery store, here are a few key words that you should look for on the label:
Grass-fed: This means the animals were fed grass, their natural diet, rather than grains. In addition to being more humane, grass-fed meat is leaner and lower in fat and calories than grain-fed meat. Grass-fed animals are not fed grain, animal by-products, synthetic hormones, or antibiotics to promote growth or prevent disease; they may, however, have been given antibiotics to treat disease. A grass-fed label doesn’t mean the animal necessarily ate grass its entire life. Some grass-fed cattle are grain- finished, which means they ate grain from a feedlot prior to slaughter. Look for grass-fed and grass-finished.
Sustainably or wild-caught: These fish live and are caught in their natural habitat where they grow eating their natural diet which means they are healthy and nutritionally dense. You can get more details on sourcing your seafood responsibly at seafoodwatch.org.
Certified naturally grown: an alternative to Organic, this label is for farmers who may find maintaining the USDA Organic label too costly or time consuming. Regardless, foods with this label were grown using responsible soil management practices, without the use of pesticides on plants or hormones or antibiotics on animals and plants were grown without GMO seeds.
Organic: this label promises that animals were raised with outdoor access and pasture, without antibiotics or hormones and fed 100% organic feed.
Pasture-raised: livestock and poultry that was pasture-raised were given the freedom to roam and graze naturally.
I personally love the convenience of meat subscriptions like Butcher Box and Good Chop. When my freezer is stocked with ground beef, steaks, chicken, salmon, and the occasional pork roast, it becomes quite simple to plan meals for the week and make a grocery list of the other items needed.
Carbohydrates
Carbs have long held a bad reputation- between low-carb diets like Atkins and keto and the gluten-free movement, they have definitely been demonized in the media and culture in the last two to three decades.
If you’ve been clinging to your carbs or secretly wishing they would make a comeback, you will like what I have to say next: carbs are the good guys!
Carbohydrates are owed many credits like providing energy, supporting immune function, calming your nervous system, and aiding the production of thyroid hormone. They are a necessary input to be a healthy, functioning woman.
It is no surprise then, that eating low-carb long-term can actually have harmful hormonal side effects like irregular periods and anovulatory cycles because your body registers the lack of carbohydrate energy as a stressor. If you are also under a lot of stress mentally, physically, or emotionally, the issue is compounded.
I’ve had a love affair with carbs for as long as I can remember. Potatoes were my favorite food when I was a little girl and my love for french fries has endured.
So when I dove into my hormone healing journey some years back, one of my biggest fears was that giving up gluten would actually solve all of my problems… thereby eliminating them from my life forever.
When I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I mustered up the courage to give up gluten for four weeks. To my surprise (and horror), I lost close to ten pounds of water weight and most of my digestive symptoms cleared up.
Fortunately for me, I do not have Celiac disease, so I’m not allergic to gluten. Since healing my digestion, I have been able to tolerate high-quality gluten in moderation. Sourdough and semolina flour pasta are not daily staples, but are in regular rotation in my diet with little to no symptom flare ups.
This is evidence that while some carbohydrates containing gluten can have negative, inflammatory effects, not all are created equal.
So if carbohydrates are not the problem and gluten is not the root of all evil, how do you begin choosing which carbs to keep in the house?
It’s safe to say that most of the carbs you find in the produce section of the grocery store are green light complex carbohydrates. Sugar is the carb you need to be on the lookout for, especially in packaged foods where added sugars are sneaky and abundant.
Sticking to complex carbs can actually have an anti-inflammatory effect on your body. Some examples of complex carbohydrates are:
Whole grains: quinoa, brown rice, jasmine rice, basmati rice, black rice, wild rice, millet, buckwheat, gluten-free oats
Starchy vegetables: sweet potatoes, butternut squash, acorn squash, corn, yams, pumpkin, potatoes, beets, turnips, carrots
Fiber-rich fruits and veggies: apples, bananas, berries
Legumes: lentils, split peas, adzuki beans, black beans, navy beans, chickpeas, cannellini beans, great northern beans lima beans, mung beans, kidney beans (including rice or chickpea pastas like Banza)
Whole grains and starchy vegetables make excellent side dishes to complement your protein.
Using the EWG’s Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen lists is an easy way to determine which items should be purchased organic and which conventional varieties are low in pesticides. Buying from the bulk section can be a money-saver in this department!
Dr. Lara Briden suggests women get around 150 grams of carbohydrates each day. When you stick to whole-food sources of carbohydrates this is a pretty generous amount, including at least a serving at each meal. If you are very active or working out a lot, your needs may increase.
Fats
Growing up in the nineties, fats were villainized. Everything was low-fat or fat-free because the narrative went that eating fat “made” you fat.
Once I got to an age where I was more aware of these narratives around food, I remember becoming incredibly self-conscious about my food choices, feeling guilty for choosing more fatty foods like nut butters, cheese, and even avocados!
The truth is that fat is vital for brain function, hormone production, metabolism, energy, immunity and inflammatory response, all pretty important bodily functions.
It’s the source and quality of the fat that matters.
Good fats are rich in omega-3 fatty acids that are anti-inflammatory.
Healthiest sources of fat:
Avocados
Olives
Coconut
Nuts and seeds
Raw nut and seed butter
Oils (avocado, olive, coconut)
Grass-fed butter and ghee
Fatty fish like salmon, mackerel and tuna
Eggs
As an added bonus, rounding out your plate with a healthy source of fat will contribute to your feeling of satiety and keep you feeling fuller for longer.
A healthy amount of fat is about 75-80 grams per day. Think of it more as a condiment or finishing touch for your meals.
Unfortunately, many packaged foods in the grocery stores are adversely high in omega-6 fatty acids which are pro-inflammatory. They are often full of industrial seed oils derived from GMO crops that are oxidized and then laced with additives to hide how rancid they are when you consume them.
Unhealthiest sources of fat:
Canola oil
Corn oil
Cottonseed oil
Grapeseed oil
Rice bran oil
Safflower oil
Soy oil
Sunflower oil
The next time you go grocery shopping take a moment to read the nutrition labels and scan the ingredients list for these oils. You might be surprised at what you find!
So that’s it! Grocery shopping for balanced hormones comes down one simple formula:
Protein + Carbohydrates + Fat = Balanced Blood Sugar
Balanced Blood Sugar = Happy Hormones
Stick to the formula and you will notice changes in your energy levels, mood, cycle regularity, and body composition. Food is fuel, you just need to know which foods will provide the purest sources of energy!
To get more in depth information on all the extras: snacks, beverages, herbs and spices, and even a sample shopping list, check out my guide, Grocery Shopping for Happy Hormones!
