The Hormone Reset Diet by Sara Gottfried Read Free Book Online Page B

can determine if you are estrogen dominant.
    When I completed my medical training, no one talked about estrogen dominance. They weren’t ignoring it; I simply don’t think anyone knew anything about it. I was taught to prescribe birth control pills for women with ill-defined hormone problems up until age fifty, and hormone replacement therapy after that. I knew that birth control pills balanced out women who had too much estrogen, so the term “estrogen dominance” had a context in my mind. But as I learned more about the particular issues women face—difficulty losing weight, breast tenderness, ovarian cysts, premenstrual syndrome, endometrial polyps, fibroids, endometriosis—I realized that estrogen dominance was the elephant in the room that most of modern medicine was not addressing, and meat consumption plays a key role. With this chapter, my hope is to right this wrong.
Estrogen Dominance Is Personal
    Even though I’m a medical doctor, I didn’t know I had estrogen dominance until my midthirties, when I couldn’t lose the baby fat. To get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, I became increasingly desperate and decided to try eating only raw food for ninety days. Although I had more energy eating this way, I felt like a slave to the endless preparation it took to make my meals. Not to mention that it cramped my social life: I was the weird guest at the dinner party who couldn’t eat anything the hostess offered and pulled out my own little glass containers of organic vegetables from my purse. To add insult to injury, I didn’t even lose weight!
    After three months of eating raw, I decided to change course and shifted to being a vegan—no animal products, not even eggs. I probably didn’t get enough protein because my energy soon plummeted, and I felt even worse than when I had a newborn and was a sleepless zombie. It turned out that my iron was low, so I couldn’t get oxygen to my brain or muscles. Although I didn’t lose weight eating vegan, I did have some significant changes to my body: the fat from my breasts had mysteriously moved to my waist. Not exactly the change I had hoped might happen!
    At the same time I was struggling with my resistance to weight loss, I noticed that many of my patients had similar challenges. They told me South Beach didn’t work anymore. They were tired of Atkins and all that meat. Like me, they felt stuck. They would start a new diet on a Monday with great intentions, and by Wednesday, they went to bed lost, angry, and frustrated that they couldn’t muster the willpower to restrict the calories or the carbs.
    Since veganism wasn’t working for me, I had the idea to start adding fish and crustaceans, and within a matter of days, I lost 5 pounds. I knew I was onto something, and I presumed seafood offered a better type of protein or fat for me. Then I added anti-inflammatory meat, like wild game (elk, moose, and wild bison), pastured eggs,bone broths, and grass-fed beef. My iron normalized, and I wasn’t as tired. I stopped eating conventional meat at restaurants, which often cook foods in industrial seed oils—a deadly, inflammatory combination. Industrial seed oils are linked to higher rates of inflammation and problems with insulin and leptin—and they flip the hormone metabolic switch to make you fat.
    I was making progress, but it wasn’t until I passed on the alcohol for three weeks and started eating a pound of vegetables per day that my estrogen got back to its rightful place. I lost 25 pounds and became lean and energized.
    I’ve been where you might be: hopeless and perhaps somewhat despondent about looking plump and middle-aged well before your time. By taking control of your meat and alcohol consumption in the first three-day reset, you can have similar results. In this chapter, we’ll focus on how going meatless jump-starts a series of beneficial events in your body that triggers your estrogen system to reboot. If you’re like the majority of overweight