Guest writer: Katie Braswell, a Holistic Nutritionist

Hormone Imbalance 101

I often touch on the importance of eating breakfast BEFORE drinking our coffee. That’s one of the first things that I tell clients when we’re trying to optimize their hormone health and support digestion. But I often get the question “why is breakfast so important for our hormones?”

For starters, when you skip meals like breakfast, you are setting yourself up for fat gain throughout the day. Here’s why… Though your stomach may be saying, “I’m fine,” your body is interpreting that long 10-hour stretch of no food as famine, and it starts saving and storing fat. It also pumps out hormones, like ghrelin, which scientists call a hunger hormone. 

What Happens To My Hormones If I Skip Breakfast?

The response from not eating breakfast almost sends your body into a “fight or flight” mode where it doesn’t know when its next meal is coming - which causes the imbalance in blood sugar and hormones. Also, making sure you're eating a high fiber, low sugar breakfast like Mylk Labs oatmeal is important to prevent unnecessary spikes in your blood sugar. 

Breakfast foods are also rich in key nutrients such as folate, calcium, iron, B vitamins and fiber. This meal provides a lot of your day’s total nutrient intake. In fact, people who eat breakfast are more likely to meet their recommended daily intakes of vitamins and minerals than people who don’t. 

Essential vitamins, minerals and other nutrients can only be gained from food, so even though your body can usually find enough energy to make it to the next meal, you still need to top up your vitamin and mineral levels to maintain health and vitality. Overall, breakfast is essential for supporting progesterone levels and overall hormonal health and should never be skipped! 

5 Reasons How Eating Breakfast Can Balance Your Hormones

1. Supports Healthy Progesterone Levels

Cortisol increases when meals are skipped and progesterone is impacted. A woman’s menstrual cycle heavily depends on the healthy balance between estrogen and progesterone. If you continuously skip meals, you use up a lot of your progesterone to create cortisol.

2. Decreases Stress Hormones

When you skip a meal, you’re directly affecting two key hormones: insulin and cortisol. Your cortisol increases because your body thinks it’s starving, which triggers a stress response.

3. Balances Blood Sugar

The meal that you consume after a skipped meal can spike your insulin in two ways. First, via increased cortisol, which can also raise blood sugar. Second, people tend to “fast and feast” meaning that after a skipped meal, they go for an easily available carbohydrate-heavy meal, since carbs fuel the brain and muscles.

4. Supports Thyroid Function

Another consequence of increased cortisol is the fact that it directly inhibits something in your brain called the hypothalamus, which can inhibit the release of thyroid hormone. Over time, this can result in suboptimal function of the thyroid gland.

5. Sets the Tone for the Day

Most people report feeling less brain fog and prepped and ready for the day when they have a balanced breakfast.

Mylk Labs oatmeal cups are perfect to start your day with because they're low sugar, ready in 3 minutes and provide tons of nutrients to keep your hormones balanced. Buy their 5 delicious flavors here and reap the benefits of a healthy, easy and delicious breakfast!

 Katie Braswell, of Wild + Well, is a Holistic Nutritionist based in Boulder, CO. Katie’s specific areas of interest are preconception health, fertility, prenatal nutrition and supplementation, gestational diabetes, breastfeeding and postpartum care (focusing on nurturing mama and baby). She specializes in functional nutrition for families – especially the mama or mama to be who is looking to maximize their time adventuring with their little ones! Katie offers one-on-one nutritional and supplementation consultation packages, custom meal plan and prep consults, as well as, private and group yoga classes. Check out her website to learn more or to schedule a free 20-minute discovery call.

**Wild + Well does not provide any medical advice and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your healthcare professional. I am not a doctor nor do I claim to be and nothing you read here should be taken as medical advice.**