How to Balance Hormones Naturally: Myths vs. Facts
If you’ve been online lately, you’ve probably seen posts like:
“How to cycle sync for balanced hormones”
“Drink this every day the week before your period”
“Eat a raw carrot salad for estrogen dominance”
“This supplement is the secret to fixing your cycle.”
It all sounds neat and tidy, but the truth is, hormones don’t work that way.
Before we dive into what truly supports hormone health, let’s start with the basics:
What does Balancing Hormones Mean?
Hormone balance is about having a healthy, dynamic flow where hormones rise and fall as needed, while staying within optimal ranges.
There isn’t one perfect number for most hormones, since levels naturally shift throughout the day and across the month. What matters is that they’re at the right levels for the phase your body is in.
For reproductive hormones like estrogen and progesterone, balance means they’re not only at healthy levels individually, but also in the right relationship to one another. That’s where the idea of “hormone balance” comes from.
What Hormones Are We Balancing?
When people say “hormone balance,” they’re often talking about estrogen and progesterone, but your body actually produces more than 50 hormones, and many of them influence one another.
These hormones work behind the scene as chemical messengers and influence your cycle, sleep, mood, metabolism, digestion, fertility, libido, energy, and more.
A few key examples include:
Cortisol (stress hormone, also makes us feel awake)
Estrogen
Progesterone
Testosterone
Thyroid hormones (controls metabolism)
Insulin (blood sugar regulation)
Ghrelin (hunger hormone)
Leptin (satiety hormone)
Melatonin (sleepy hormone, also a potent antioxidant)
For the purpose of this article, I will be using the term “hormone imbalance” when speaking about an imbalance in women’s sex hormones.
What Affects Hormone Balance?
Your hormones are constantly responding to your environment: what you eat, how you move, how stressed you feel, even how much sunlight you get.
That’s why there’s no single food, workout, or supplement that will “balance your hormones.” True balance comes from creating a strong foundation where your body feels nourished and safe enough to regulate hormones naturally — and addressing the root causes of why that foundation may be shaky in the first place.
When the foundation isn’t solid, symptoms often show up: irregular cycles, PMS, fatigue, low libido, hair loss, stubborn weight changes, or mood swings. These are your body’s way of saying: “I need more support.”
As trendy as “hormone balancing hacks” are, most of them don’t work because they don’t address the root cause. For example, no one has a raw carrot salad deficiency, so it won’t have any significant impact on hormone balance.
Now let’s talk about what actually builds a strong foundation for healthy hormones.
What are the Signs of Hormone Imbalance?
Imbalances in women’s reproductive hormones can affect your cycles, mood, energy, metabolism, and overall health. Common signs of hormone imbalance in women include:
Irregular cycles — long, short, or unpredictable
Missed periods
PMS / PMDD
Mood swings
Spotting before your period
Mid cycle spotting
Heavy periods
Painful periods (menstrual cramps or headaches)
Breast Tenderness
Low energy or fatigue
Weight gain or weight loss resistance
Bloating or Water retention
Digestive issues
Hair thinning or hair loss
Brain fog or forgetfulness
Decreased libido
Trouble sleeping
How to Balance Hormones Naturally — A Root Cause Approach
How Nutrition Affects Hormone Balance
Here’s something most women don’t realize: your body decides whether or not to prioritize fertility based on how safe and nourished you are. And whether you’re actively avoiding getting pregnant or wanting to conceive, strong fertility is how your body makes sex hormones.
If it senses there’s not enough food, it shifts energy and resources away from making sex hormones to other processes that are more important for your survival, and it even slows thyroid hormones — which sets the pace of your metabolism — in order to conserve energy.
That’s why under-eating — whether intentional dieting, skipping meals, or just being too busy — is one of the fastest ways to throw hormones off. You might see it manifest as irregular cycles, PMS, low mood, fatigue, brain fog, hair shedding, or feeling cold all the time.
This makes restoring nourishment step one. That means:
Eating enough calories (you need more than you think).
Eating 3 adequate sized meals per day, plus a snack between each if needed.
Prioritizing protein to build hormones and enzymes.
Filling nutrient gaps — things like vitamin C, magnesium, potassium and sodium, along with proper macronutrient ratios (protein, fat and carbohydrates)
When your body feels safe, it flips the switch back on: thyroid and reproductive hormones rise, cycles regulate, energy improves.
How Blood Sugar Affects Hormone Balance
Imbalanced blood sugar is the Achilles heel of health and most people are experiencing it without realizing.
Ideally, your blood sugar should look like soft rolling hills: gentle rises after meals, gentle dips between meals. That steadiness keeps stress low and energy stable. But most people are riding a rollercoaster of sharp peaks and deep crashes. This is a problem because every crash is a signal of emergency to your body, spiking stress hormones and inflammation, both of those directly disrupt your reproductive, thyroid, and adrenal hormones.
Something as simple as skipping breakfast can create this problem. When you go too long without eating, stress hormones rise, and this releases stored glucose from the liver. Why? It’s the way your body protects you from blood sugar getting dangerously low and causing serious issues like brain damage.
So to the cutie who is intermittent fasting, skipping lunch, going too long between meals or is running on caffeine, your blood sugar is likely all over the place, even if you’re low carb or sugar free.
“Clean eating” doesn’t protect your hormones the way we’ve been told, and you can actually get high blood sugar without touching sugar or carbs.
In my practice, learning to properly balance blood sugar is one of the first steps we take. We dive deep into how to create balanced meals that support metabolic health, how to eat carbohydrates without spiking blood sugar, proper meal timing, supporting insulin sensitivity and more.
Here are some beginning steps you can take today — and no it’s not eating low glycemic or cutting carbs!
Eat breakfast within 1 hour of waking.
Pair carbs with protein and fat.
Avoid long gaps without food.
Focusing on steady, real meals instead of grazing or grabbing snacks.
When blood sugar steadies out, everything else stabilizes: energy, mood, cycles, fertility. It’s one of the most powerful hormone supports there is.
How Metabolism Affects Hormone Balance
Hormones and metabolism are deeply interconnected, and when hormones are out of balance, there’s almost always an underlying issue with metabolism upstream. When we think of metabolism we usually think of weight, but really it’s the process of turning food into energy, and when that process slows down, we have less energy and a lot more hormone problems.
Metabolism is controlled by the thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland at the base of your neck. If your thyroid becomes sluggish, your metabolism slows down, creating a ripple effect that disrupts sex hormones, stress hormones, and even blood sugar regulation. That’s why addressing thyroid and metabolic health is foundational when we’re trying to balance women’s hormones.
Some signs of a slow metabolism or under-functioning thyroid include:
Feeling cold all the time (especially hands and feet)
Irregular periods
Hormone imbalances
Mood swings
Poor energy upon waking and fatigue during the day
Sluggish digestion or constipation
Hair thinning or loss
Dry skin, brittle nails, or puffiness in the face
Brain fog, forgetfulness or low motivation
Low blood pressure
Low pulse
Low thyroid function is a common issue for women, but because conventional testing is often incomplete, it’s not unusual for a doctor to say everything looks “normal” even when you’re experiencing the classic symptoms. In fact, 60% of women with hypothyroidism never receive a proper diagnosis due to inadequate testing.
That’s why I run full thyroid panels for my clients. Time and again, I see subclinical hypothyroidism in women struggling with hormone imbalances, making thyroid support a foundational part of their hormone-balancing journey. When their thyroid is functioning well again, it’s like turning the lights back on in their body: energy improves, cycles regulate, and they feel more resilient day to day.
If you want to learn more about thyroid testing and what to request, you can read all about it here.
How Detoxification Affects Hormone Balance
Detoxification is a key piece of hormone health, especially when it comes to estrogen. If your liver isn’t working efficiently, estrogen can build up, which can show up as tender breasts, heavy periods, bloating, headaches, or stubborn weight gain.
But you don’t need to “do a detox” to fix your hormones – your liver and gut are naturally detoxing every day. What matters is supporting these natural processes with consistent, daily support.
Before diving into nutritional support, the first place I focus on with clients is bowel health. Regular, complete bowel movements are one of the main ways your body clears excess estrogen. When elimination isn’t happening efficiently, estrogen and other toxins can get reabsorbed and recirculate, worsening symptoms.
Know that constipation isn’t always obvious — it’s not just about hard stools or going less than once a day. Even soft stools can indicate incomplete elimination, which still impacts hormone balance.
Next, it’s important to look at what toxins you’re exposed to in your diet and environment. Reducing these ensures that supporting detoxification nutritionally actually works — otherwise, it’s like washing the tub while still adding mud.
How Gut Health Affects Hormone Balance
Your gut is central to hormone health. When it’s imbalanced, it can slow detox pathways, worsen estrogen dominance, increase inflammation, and interfere with the absorption of nutrients your hormones need to function properly.
But supporting your gut isn’t just about taking probiotics – it’s about looking at the bigger picture:
Are you breaking down and absorbing your food properly?
Are you having healthy bowel movements?
Is there inflammation in the gut?
Is there harmful bacteria that needs to be cleared?
Is there an abundance of beneficial bacteria?
Watch out for these signs that your digestion or gut health may need support:
Bloating or gas after meals
Irregular stools, constipation, or diarrhea
Digestive discomfort or cramping
Burping or acid reflux after meals
Skin issues like acne or eczema
Fatigue after eating or throughout the day
Digestive issues are often complex and require a tailored approach. If you’re struggling to resolve gut concerns, professional guidance can make a big difference.
How Stress Affects Hormone Balance
You can eat perfectly and exercise wisely, but if your nervous system is stuck in fight-or-flight, your hormones will struggle. That’s why managing stress is such a key part of the hormone-balancing journey.
When most people think of nervous system support, they imagine meditation or carving out rest time, and those things help but are only one piece of the puzzle. Physical stressors, like blood sugar swings, nutrient deficiencies and over exercising impact your nervous system just as much as emotional stress.
That might feel overwhelming at first, like “oh god, now I have all these things to fix,” but the truth is, it’s actually empowering: there are so many ways you can lower stress in your body, even if you can’t control your job, relationships, or other external stressors.
The #1 place I have clients start is back to the foundations we’ve already talked about: eating enough, prioritizing protein, not skipping meals, and keeping blood sugar steady throughout the day. These are essential for helping your body be safe and nourished enough to prioritize hormone production.
What I Don’t Recommend
These are some trendy hormone “fixes” I don’t align with:
Cycle syncing with food. It’s super trendy in the wellness space but it’s just cutely packaged baloney. You don’t need to eat specific foods to support estrogen metabolism during your follicular phase, or vitamin C during ovulation for healthy progesterone, or any other “perfect timed” foods. Your body benefits from support all of the time, not just on certain days. Cycle syncing food takes a lot of effort for something that will never deliver results — meaning it’s a total waste of time.
“Magic” foods. Raw carrot salad, flax seeds, broccoli sprouts — they can be supportive, but they’re sprinkles on the cupcake. Without the cupcake (a solid foundation) those extras do almost nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I do recommend broccoli sprouts and flax seeds to clients, but not until weeks into working together.
Extreme elimination diets. Cutting out gluten and dairy can sometimes be helpful, but it’s not the universal solution. Too often, women end up under-fueled, stressed, and with worse symptoms. And I’ll never recommend cutting out sugar entirely, that’s just unnecessary.
Going on birth control to “regulate hormones”. This one is a myth. It’s impossible for hormonal birth control to balance your hormones because what hormonal birth control does is shuts off your natural hormone production. You can read all about hormonal birth control and what it does in your body here.
How to Balance Hormones: Key Takeaways
Hormone health isn’t about quick fixes or following the latest trend — it’s about building a strong foundation for healthy hormone production. That means eating enough, keeping blood sugar steady, supporting thyroid and gut health, ensuring safe detox pathways, giving your nervous system the support it needs, and addressing any other barriers that may be impacting your hormone health.
When you focus on these foundations, your hormones naturally stabilize. Cycles smooth out, energy returns, fertility improves, and mood lifts.
This is the work that lasts — whether you’re preparing for pregnancy, navigating cycle symptoms, or simply wanting to feel better in your body.
Ready To Take the Next Steps?
I know this was a lot, but balancing your hormones doesn’t need to be complicated or overwhelming. I’ve helped dozens of women break free from hormonal chaos and build a foundation for steady energy, balanced cycles, improved fertility, and a strong metabolism. You can see what my clients are saying here: Testimonials.
If you’re ready to address the root causes of your hormone imbalances and create a plan tailored to your body and goals, book a free consultation below and let’s get started ✨
