The hormone reset diet pdf download free

Dedication

For my beloved family,

David, Gemma, and Maya

Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Part I: Why Women Need to Reset

1: Women, Food, and Broken Metabolism

2: Prep for Your Hormone Reset

Part II: The Seven Hormonal Resets

3: Meatless

4: Sugar Free

5: Fruitless

6: Caffeine Free

7: Grain Free

8: Dairy Free

9: Toxin Free

Part III: Reentry and Beyond

10: Reentry

11: Sustenance

Recipes

Resources

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author

Praise

More from Dr. Sara

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

The book you hold in your hands may be just what we need to end dieting for women. As I’ve written in my previous books, it’s not your fault that you’re overweight. The obesity rate has tripled in the past fifty years, and it’s not because of a lack of willpower. It’s because your hormones have been hijacked by Big Food—the giant food corporations that are similar to and its efforts to get people addicted to cigarettes. Big Food knows how to manipulate processed food so that it’s hyperpalatable and ultimately gets and keeps you addicted to these harmful food-like substances. The result is that your hormones then begin to work against you.

Enter Dr. Sara Gottfried. As a board-certified gynecologist, she is uniquely qualified to understand the private suffering that women experience with food addiction and body shame. As a Harvard-educated physician scientist, she knows how to separate good science from bad, and can translate the science into entertaining yet accurate language that everyone can understand. As a woman, she has personally struggled with and healed her own food addiction. That combination is extremely rare in medicine—few doctors are willing to admit publically their own stories of vulnerability and recovery. Not only does Dr. Sara share her stories quite poignantly, she puts them to work to change the conversation we’re having about food addiction and what has been proven to solve it.

Women have specific needs compared with men and their needs are largely ignored by the $60 billion weight-loss industry that specializes in perpetuating the food lie that in order to lose weight, you must count calories.

You may have noticed that women tend to trail men when it comes to weight loss—they tend to lose weight more slowly. There are a few possible reasons for this, including:

 Hormones. Women have less testosterone, which boosts metabolism and keeps you lean. Men are genetically programmed to be larger and have more muscle mass and less fat. As a result, men can get away with eating more food, and when they choose to lose weight, they often get quick results.

 Food preference. Generally, men like meat, and women love carbohydrates—though this also may be linked to food addiction.

 Stress. Women tend to have more challenges with stress compared with men, according to national surveys. Their stress response system is more sensitive and vulnerable, which may explain why women are more likely to eat under emotional stress.

 Cooking. Women are primarily responsible for cooking the family meals. That means more work burden on women to plan menus, grocery shop, and prepare meals—plus additional temptation to taste, nibble, and lick food during cooking.

 Dieting. Approximately 80 percent of women are dissatisfied with their body and beat themselves up over a few extra pounds, and most are on a diet. Men are less likely to diet as a hobby. Still, there’s a gender difference in expectation: women have more pressure to look like societal norms of the ideal body.

Fortunately, these gender differences can be addressed and, in many cases, turned into an advantage when you seek weight loss. Dr. Sara is here to show you how.

Remember, it’s not overeating that makes you fat. It’s being fat, and the hormonal chaos that led to the fat, that makes you overeat. Forget calorie counting, and begin to focus instead on the quality of your diet. This is important for both men and women, but women suffer more when it comes to food addiction, and women need a specific fix that speaks uniquely to their circumstances.

If you’re a woman and having trouble with overeating, keeping your portions under control, or sugar cravings, then I highly recommend The Hormone Reset Diet.

I’m in constant contact with people who struggle with their weight. I’ve found that people often know what to do, but the problem is that most people don’t have the discipline to follow through.

So instead, they fall for the tempting illusion of expensive surgeries, over-hyped exercise machines, weight loss pills, or some fad diet . . . and actually end up gaining even more weight.

Stop the madness. Recognize that food addiction has taken over your ability to modulate food, and a approach is needed. Allow the wisdom of Dr. Sara and functional medicine to come to your rescue, and heal your food addiction once and for all. It’s time to reset your hormones with your fork and learn to be lean naturally.

Mark Hyman, M.D.

Lenox, MA

2015

PART ONE

Why Women Need to Reset

CHAPTER 1

Women, Food, and Broken Metabolism

I used to be fat and . . . I’m a doctor. After decades of starving myself and feeling as though I were living in someone else’s bloated body, I quit the war. In the process, I came to understand that what we’ve been taught about dieting is wrong—even what I was taught in medical school more than twenty-five years ago. Harsh deprivation, beating myself up over the waning willpower, daily fights with food and whether to be or in my nutritional choices—these dieting skirmishes actually left me more stressed; worsened my hormonal imbalances, body shame, and food addiction; and kept me out of a genuine conversation with my body and what it actually needs.

It took me many years to learn the lesson, which occurred after trying nearly every diet, including the no-carb, low-carb, carb-cycling, low-fat, high-fat, low-protein, high-protein, no-salt, lemonade and honey, and Mediterranean diets.

The truth? These diets don’t work for most women because they fail to address the hormonal root cause. Hormones dictate what your body does with food. Fatness is the result of major hormonal misfires in women, and forceful approaches to losing weight fail to address the hormonal root cause in strategy, tactics, and delivery.

Fortunately, there is a solution. You can rediscover a body you’re happy with—in which you shed the weight, feel trim and sexy in your skin, and restore your hormones and health—without a daily battle. After earning a medical degree, becoming a wife, birthing two babies, and getting certified as a yoga teacher, I ultimately learned that there’s an alternative to the suffering over weight that doesn’t involve shame or guilt. In short, you need to correct hormonal misfires with your fork. I learned how to eat in a way that optimizes hormones and reinstates a healthy weight in women, and now I want to share my discoveries with you.

As women, we’re at a disadvantage when it comes to getting fat. We are exquisitely sensitive to the ravages of stress and inflammation—you may notice the telltale signs as sugar cravings, extra weight hanging around your waist, moodiness, lack of sleep, or perhaps an overwhelmed feeling. These are clues that your hormones have begun to turn against you, which sets off a vicious cycle of inflammation (the type that makes you overweight) and more difficulty regulating the hormones that help you burn fat (also known as the hormones of metabolism, or the engine for burning calories). When misfiring hormones are allowed to spiral downward, you’re left with hormone anarchy and, ultimately, a broken metabolism; and you store fat no matter what—even when you try popular diets like Paleo or Weight Watchers. Soon the bathroom scale seems weirdly stuck 10 or 25 pounds higher than you’d prefer. If you struggle to get and stay lean, I promise that your hormones are to blame. Your hormones govern nearly all aspects of fat loss, from where you store fat (and how much) to your cravings, appetite, gut bacteria, and even your addictive patterns with food.

The good news is that you can turn this problem around—in twenty-one days. In the pages of this book, you’ll find a novel step-by-step plan that I’ve designed to help women of all shapes and sizes, ages and ethnicities, to lose weight and feel lighter, from your cells to your soul—a formula that has had amazing results for thousands of women just like you. I’m excited to share it with you now.