The appetite hormones messing with your hunger in perimenopause (and how to spot them)

Is your hunger real, or are your hormones playing tricks on you?

If you’re constantly feeling hungry or craving carbs, even after eating well, it’s not about willpower - it’s about your hormones. In this episode, I’ll help you understand why your appetite is suddenly out of control and what’s really behind those cravings.

Key takeaways
In this episode, we break down the science behind your appetite and cravings, especially in perimenopause. You’ll learn:

• Why intuitive eating might not work for you during perimenopause - your hunger signals aren’t always reliable when your hormones are imbalanced.
• How key appetite hormones like leptin and ghrelin get disrupted, causing constant hunger, intense cravings, and even weight gain - no matter how well you’re eating.
• What you can do to identify the signs of hormonal imbalance and start taking steps to regain control over your appetite and your body.

If you've been wondering why your usual diet isn't working, why you're constantly hungry, or why you're gaining weight even though you haven’t changed your eating habits, this episode will provide the answers you need.

Sneak Peek
"There's lots of body positive practitioners who encourage or focus on that intuitive eating, call it like an anti-diet approach… I think this approach is short-sighted because it overlooks a crucial reality: when your hormones and biochemistry are out of balance, your hunger signals aren’t reliable."

If your appetite feels out of control and your cravings are making it harder to stay on track, understanding what’s happening inside your body is the first step. This episode is packed with insights to help you understand the root cause of your hunger and give you the tools to start making changes.

Listen to the full episode to learn how you can spot the hormone shifts messing with your hunger and start feeling more in control.

Links & Resources Mentioned in the Episode:
• Ozempic episode
• Free training: "Why you’re gaining weight after 40: The 4 hormone shifts you need to know"

Find out more about Sarah, her services and the Freebies mentioned in this episode at https://www.ThePerimenopauseNaturopath.com.au

• PerimenoGO (because who wants to pause anyway?!) Discover how to use food as your most powerful medicine, smoothing hormonal fluctuations and easing perimenopause symptoms naturally. (Yes, you have more options than hormone therapy!) Say goodbye to feeling out of control and hello to feeling more like your old self every day.
• The Perimenopause Decoder is the ultimate guide to understanding if perimenopause hormone fluctuations are behind your changing mood, metabolism and energy after 40, what phase of perimenopause you're in, and how much longer you may be on this roller coaster for.
• For more, follow on Instagram at @theperimenopausenaturopath.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Chaos to Calm podcast episode number 67. I'm Sarah, The Perimenopause Naturopath, your guide through this wonderful journey of perimenopause. So if you're over 40, feeling like your changing hormones are hijacking your mood, your energy, and your weight, and you want to change that in a holistic way, This is the place for you then my friend, because each episode I share with you my views on what the heck is happening in your body, why are you feeling the way that you are and what you can do about it. Always with actionable advice to help you feel more calm, in control, less stressed and more comfortable in your body. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really glad that you're here. Let's get right into discussing today's topic so we can start shifting your perimenopause journey from chaos to calm.

Today, I want to talk about why eating until you're full bad. is doesn't always work or eating intuitively you might've heard the advice before to just listen to your body, eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full, trust your body to tell you what it wants to eat. It's a really popular mantra from social media influences.

There's lots of body positive practitioners who encourage or focus on that intuitive eating, call it like an anti diet approach. And while I completely agree, our bodies are spectacular I think they're wonderful and they do incredible things even without ideal support or without ideal nourishment.

I think this approach is short sighted because it actually overlooks a crucial reality. And that is when your hormones and biochemistry are out of balance. Your hunger signals that what you think is that intuition about what you want to eat might not be reliable. In fact, it isn't reliable when your hormones and your biochemistry are out of balance.

And so that's what I want to talk about today. Some of your appetite hormones and help you understand why this might be the case. So trying to eat intuitively or go with the flow. It's not always reliable. And in perimenopause, it can be worse because we have these hormone fluctuations.

And my focus is not on trying to balance your hormones in perimenopause because that they're not meant to be in balance. It's a time of change in flux. And just like in puberty, we don't try and balance them. We tend to accept for our kids or when we were going through puberty, it is a time of flux, but we can smooth that flux in puberty and in perimenopause as well. 

And we can help our bodies adapt and adjust better to these changes. And that's where the magic happens, where we get that relief of symptoms and, get them reduced or gone altogether. So it's not necessarily about trying to balance all of our hormones, particularly our female hormones, the main players being estrogen and progesterone.

But our other hormones, particularly appetite hormones, we do want to get those back in balance. We do want to work towards having them balance, because that's when you can eat intuitively. That's when you inherently know what your body needs. And I will say like, that's what my clients, what we're aiming for there.

I always say to them we start off focused, we're doing things in a particular way. You're going to eat according to what I tell you, but I'm going to teach you why those things are important. That's I always want people to know. I want my clients to understand the why of why we're doing things, not just the how or the, or this is this is what I want you to eat.

This is why, and this is why we're doing things in a particular order and doing them this way. Because it is about helping to restore that balance in your biochemistry and smooth those hormone fluctuations of our female hormones and bring balance to some of our others there as well. And so, yeah, so understanding what you're doing and why is really important along with the how.

And yeah, so I want my clients to understand all of those things so that they don't have to think about it in the long term, like when they've created that new normal for themselves, that long term healthy lifestyle, they inherently know they, they intuitively know what their body needs because they've learned it.

So it's unconscious. When we learn a new skill, let's say like riding a bike, it can be anything that you're learning. At first, we really have to think about it like it's really difficult. It's really hard. Our body doesn't know what to do and we have to teach it. We have to practice it over and over and over again with thought.

And then over time it becomes easier. And so our brain can assign less resources to thinking about it. But we have to think about it less until you can just hop on that bike and just ride. You're not even thinking about it. You might be thinking about where you're going or what you're doing or listen to the birds or look at the trees and the sky.

It's so beautiful. It's similar when you're driving as well. Think back to when you had your L's. I have, well, I have two children on their L's. One actively Learning and driving and it's hard and they keep telling me that driving is hard and I keep saying Yes, it is. It is difficult when you're learning it.

There's so much to think about and your brain is getting tired because you've got all this incoming information that your brain hasn't learned how like what it needs to do with it. So I can't just automatically or go on autopilot and deal with it in the background for you there. But it does get easier.

Like think about it now, like how long have you been driving? I've been driving. Oh, wow, 34 years. And and so I Sometimes you can get places. You don't even remember the drive or how, like, how did I get here? What did I do? Cause it's all autopilot. You can listen to the podcast while you're driving.

So it's the same with eating and food and looking after our bodies. I don't believe that's an unconscious or intuitive process for people. So when people say like eating intuitively, I think of it more as like that it's that unconscious skill. You don't have to think about it so much. You just know, you know how to put your plate together.

What works well when you're eating out what you like to choose, but you also know how to eat out. If you want to have an indulgent meal or you want to have some wines with your meal, you know how to do that. So that's really important. Intuitive eating isn't just like, Oh, today my body is telling me I want to, I don't know. I need to have some chocolate and some chips and sure that you might be craving those things, but like if we're then not necessarily eating intuitively with that stuff. And the reason that we're getting cravings for those things is because our life is out of balance. It's probably too much stress or too many stressors and our body is out of balance, our hormones are out of balance as well. So I have gone on a complete side quest there on intuitive eating. Let's get back to these appetite hormones because it is really important to understand there's a lot dry. Our bodies, like I said, spectacular machines for want of a better word.

There's a lot of hormones. It's like a symphony, a whole orchestra of hormones telling you you're hungry. You're not hungry. Eat some more. Don't eat some more. All of that sort of thing. So you might be thinking sometimes you might notice that you're still hungry, even after a full meal, or maybe you've got sugar cravings or those crunchy, salty carb cravings and, you don't need to eat those.

You're not actually really hungry. What's going on in the background. So when your appetite hormones in the two, there's two main players of this. And like I said, there's a full orchestra. So there's many in the background as well, but we're going to talk a bit about leptin and ghrelin today. And when they're out of balance, listening to your body, eating intuitively, it's not going to work as expected and same with your other major hormones as well.

Around stress and, blood sugar levels. So in other words today, we're talking about why you're hungry. Even though, even when you know, you shouldn't be, you just ate and the appetite hormones behind your ravenous hunger. So what are leptin and ghrelin? Let's talk about those ones first. 

Alright, so first up, we've got leptin and this is your satiety hormone. It's produced by your fat cells and it tells your brain that you've had enough to eat. So the more fat cells that you have in your body, the higher your leptin is. But think of leptin as an off switch for your appetite. So when it's working properly, you feel full, you stop eating.

Now ghrelin, is referred to as the hunger hormone. Ghrelin is produced in your stomach. It sends signals to your brain when it's time to eat and ghrelin ramps up your appetite. So it's your on switch for hunger. I like to remember when I was learning about these things, I thought of ghrelin as the grumbly one, like it makes your tummy grumble.

Now I did mention that leptin and ghrelin aren't the only hormones in charge of your appetite. And that is true. There's lots of lesser known hormones that perhaps don't have such a main function. We've got neuro peptide Y and that's produced in your brain and it makes you crave carbohydrates, especially during periods of stress.

So normally leptin inhibits neuropeptide Y, but chronic stress or if you're eating a lot of refined carbohydrates, a high sugar diet, that can stimulate the release of neuropeptide, neuropeptide Y and enhance those intense carb cravings. So you could get stuck in a loop. And that's why it can feel difficult when you're trying to wean off those products as well.

So do you see how like if you're trying to eat intuitively, but it's a stressful time, your brain is literally driving you to get those high sugar the highly refined instant energy foods. Glucagon like peptide one GLP-1 is produced in your digestive tract and it regulates blood sugar and slows your digestion.

And that helps you feel fuller for longer. So that's why a lot of the new medications on the market act on, on that there. But in, when we're in obesity and type two diabetes, for example, the release of that GLP-1 is impaired and it makes it harder to stay satisfied. So that's why you might eat and you're full, but within an hour you're hungry again.

And there's an imbalance in the GLP-1. Now we've got cholecystokinin, and that's again in your digestive system as well. Gosh, all these big words making my mouth jumble today. So I'm going to call that CCK, and it stimulates the gallbladder and the pancreas to digest your fats and proteins, but it also helps to reduce your appetite.

And again, if you have an excess of fat cells, so if you're obese or if you just have a large number of fat cells, it can make you less sensitive to its effects. And I'll talk about this a bit more in a minute, but we used to think about fat as an fat cells as inert, they didn't do anything.

But I think from the last few episodes and research you might, you will have noticed hopefully, but research is telling us as well. And from what we understand of human physiology, it's not in it. And it's actually an endocrine organ, a hormone producing organ in and of itself, but it's not.

Always in a good way. As you can see, it can contribute to an imbalance. There. So the last hormone I wanna touch on is Peptide-YY And that's produced in your small intestines and it reduces appetite and slows the movement of food through your digestive system as well. So low levels are often seen in people with obesity and type two diabetes, and it makes it hard to control your hunger.

Just like Neuropeptide-Y is driving you for craving like cravings for carbs, glucagon like peptide, that GLP-1, and cholecystokinin. If they're out of balance, it's going to be difficult for you to eat intuitively because that intuition, what is happening in your brain and your body is going to be driving you to want to eat more and more of the foods that don't necessarily serve you or your health overall.

So let's talk about why leptin and ghrelin get messed up. Yeah. So when, they're functioning as they should, like you'll have that healthy balance between your hunger and fullness. You can eat like your three meals a day and start to feel hungry in the lead into that meal you'll eat and feel full and be fine again until four or five hours later and you're eating your next meal.

But there's lots of different factors that can interrupt these hormones or disrupt them and trigger you to feel hunger often or feel full and then hungry again soon after your meal. Or just not be able to have that off switch when it comes to eating. So my old friends, stress and cortisol.

I honestly, like I know I touch on it almost every podcast episode. It's the reality of our 24/7 always on highly stimulated on demand life the world we live in and being a woman in your forties and fifties, it's like the busiest phase of life. We have decreasing stress resilience. But we have so many demands on us and our time is not the downtime like we used to have or our mothers used to have, or their mothers used to have as well.

So more stress, more cortisol, it can reduce leptin's effectiveness. And make it harder for your body to signal that you're full and stress increases ghrelin and like I mentioned before it impacts Neuropeptide Y so it can cause hunger and hunger for those carbs and when we have excess carbs we end up with more fat stores. So poor sleep, I know sleep's difficult to get for many women in perimenopause and menopause.

It is really important to prioritize it and work on it and try and get some balance into your body and your life so that you can, because even just one night of sleep deprivation, and so sleep deprivation is defined as anything less than like six hours a night sleep that decreases your leptin and increases your ghrelin.

So you're going to be hungrier. And again, the neuropeptide Y increases hungrier for crunchy, salty carbs and less able to feel full from that as well. So you get stuck in that carb hunger cycle, wanting those high calorie comfort foods. Now dieting and overrestricting your calories, I'm not a fan of calorie counting.

If you haven't listened to the calorie counting episode, then go back and listen to it. I, it was a very long one, just warning because I have a lot to say about it. Extreme dieting can trick your body into thinking it's starving. And that causes a drop in your leptin levels and an increase in ghrelin because your body doesn't want you to starve and also it doesn't want to lose muscle mass either. So it's going to encourage you to eat until your muscle and gets back up to that set point. So weight loss set point that was another episode that I've done recently go have a listen to that as well, you need to nourish and support your body not over restrict it, please, please so many women are under eating You think that it's overeating is the problem or they eating too much?

Look, honestly, most of the time I see that it's under eating and and not addressing those hormones or the imbalances in your biochemistry. Processed foods, well that's probably not a surprise. Foods high in sugar and processed ingredients interfere with leptin. Like, they're designed, they literally have people in those big food companies whose job it is to make a food or help make the food so that you can eat a whole bunch of it and not feel full.

And like, think of that chip in the tube. Once you pop, you can't stop. It's literally designed for you to not stop. So yeah, know that those foods are designed to work against you, but also any processed food is the same. Now, leptin resistance, I want to touch on that because we've talked about say insulin resistance before and in the past as well.

And if you have excess body fat, your fat cells, so you're producing a lot of leptin because it's telling your body, we don't really need to eat. We've got all these fat stores. We can use those for energy. But your brain can't hear the message. To, get you to stop eating. So it's like your, fat cells are shouting, but you know, they have to shout really loudly for your brain to tune in and hear it.

I was like, Oh, Oh, I didn't hear you. Sorry. It's like when you get with the kids, when you're asking them to do something, you're asking a nice voice, like four times. By the fifth or sixth time you're shouting and they're like, well, you don't need to shout. Well, actually I do cause you're not even listening.

And it's the same here with leptin resistance. Your brain is not listening to your fat cells. And so you feel constantly hungry, you're overeat. And, again, you have excess glucose in your bloodstream, which gets stored as fat. So you've got a vicious cycle. You've got more fat being stored, more fat in your body, more leptin being produced, leptin resistance.

And you see, it can be hard to get out of these cycles without some guidance or support or having someone on the outside looking in, just getting you to tweak, what you need to tweak. Now let's talk about how perimenopause, can exacerbate the issue because they do. 

And of course, there's lots of studies that show that women in perimenopause often experience higher levels of ghrelin and lower levels of leptin. And so again, just playing into all the other hormone fluctuations and changes there as well. So it's, that is exacerbated as you move close to perimenopause and as your estrogen and progesterone are declining there as well.

So you might feel suddenly like you're eating the same, you're doing the same things, but it's not working because you're just you're feeling hungry. Those foods and those meals are not satisfying you anymore. And you might then be looking starting to crave other foods too.

Here's some signs that your hunger hormones are out of balance. Because you might be wondering, well, how do I know? So I've talked a bit about constant hunger, despite eating full meals or balanced meals, you might still be hungry at the end of that meal or an hour after that meal, just hungry between your meals there as well.

Maybe you've got lots of cravings for sugary or those high carb foods. Like I said, feeling unsatisfied even after you've eaten. Something that would normally satisfy you, weight gain, weight gain can be lots of different things as well. So it's kind of one of those non specific. Science it's worth exploring all the things that might be contributing to it.

Of course this imbalance will drive emotional eating and cravings like I mentioned, but they could be part of it too. But also it could be your emotions that you're trying to buffer against and, ignore or overcome those negative feelings that sadness or, any that apathy that can spring up in perimenopause, you might be trying to hide that with emotional eating, eating those chocolate carbs, those sorts of things to give yourself that dopamine hit.

And yeah, difficulty controlling your portion sizes or stopping eating and just finding that I'm not feeling full like I should, or like I used to before. Understanding and awareness is always the first step in overcoming. And so I encourage you to reflect and think about how you're feeling before, during, and after your meals and in between them, reflect on your stress, your sleep, your diet.

Where are you at in perimenopause? I have my freebie, the perimenopause decoder to help you work out what is it perimenopause for you? What phase are you in? How long is it going to last for? Because once you understand or you know where you're at, then you can understand what your options are there as well.

And you have more options than just hormone therapy. Please always know that as well. Yeah. If you've been struggling with constant hunger, cravings, unexplained weight gain I'd love to know, let me know what you crave or what you think is going on after listening to this episode, because like I was saying, that intuitive eating, or just eat until you feel fully moderation, all those things, they don't work when your body's sending you the wrong signals.

And for a lot of women in perimenopause and menopause, your body's sending you the wrong signals. So understanding how leptin, ghrelin, those other appetite hormones function, what causes them to misfire is really the first step in getting back control or balance of your appetite and managing your weight.

And it's not about willpower. It's not about having to white knuckle it through. It's about knowing and understanding what's happening in your body and being able to help nourish and support your body to get that biochemistry back in balance there as well. So I am, I want to help you with that as well.

And I want you to help you understand why why usual diet or exercise routines aren't working anymore. I'm running a free training soon, and it's called why you're gaining weight after 40, the four hormone shifts you need to know. And in that session, you'll learn the four hormone shifts that are driving your weight gain after 40.

I would hope so. Imagine if I didn't teach you that, and that was the title of it. So you'll definitely learn that. You'll also get to understand why your usual diet and exercise routine is now failing you. Like why it's not working anymore. And I'll tell you the changes that you need to make to work with your body, not against it so that you can take back control and get that balance back in your body without having to be on a restrictive diet or just put more exercise in. So it's not about eat less and move more. Certainly not what I'm about at all. Yeah, so I'm going to teach you the, what is going on and why, and what to do about that as well. 

So if you're struggling with your hunger, with your appetite, this could be your body's way of telling you something is off. I'd love to see you at my free training to help you learn more about the hormone shifts behind your weight gain and what you can do about it, how to work with your body, not against it, not punishing it. So you can find the link to register in the show notes. It's along with the links to those other episodes and resources I've mentioned today.

You can find that at www.chaostocalmpodcast.com while you're there, don't forget to subscribe or follow so you don't miss an episode and leave a review. If you feel that you can, I would love that because that helps more women have the chance to find out about the podcast and learn from it and their options in perimenopause and menopause.

Maybe you could share with a friend who would benefit from hearing more about their options or a holistic approach to perimenopause. So that my friend is all for today. Thank you so much for listening and sharing your time with me. I always appreciate it. I am next time I'm excited to be talking about inflammation and your brain.

So if you struggle with brain fog or you're forgetting like everything in perimenopause, you're going to want to listen until then, keep working on moving your perimenopause experience from chaos to calm.