How to Balance Hormones – A Few Tricks
- Keep a Set Schedule – This helps to balance cortisol, your chronic stress hormone. Do your best to wake up and go to sleep at the same time – even on weekends! Aim to keep your meals and snacks at regular intervals. This can be hard to do during the newborn days, so ask for help!
- Keep a Record of Your Symptoms – Tracking your cycle and symptoms can give us information about your hormones and their metabolism.
- Have Your Building Blocks Tested – Iron, Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, and thyroid function are all important building blocks that can influence your hormones. During pregnancy and birth, your body will make sure that your baby has the nutrients they need – which can leave you feeling depleted. A simple blood test can give us useful information to ensure you have the correct nutrients you need to recover.
- Support Your Microbiome – Believe it or not, balancing hormones actually begins in your gut! If you needed antibiotics in your pregnancy, labour and delivery, or post-partum, your microbiome might need a little loving. Ensuring you have the right bacterial balance in your gut is the first step in hormone healing.
Seed Cycling Snack Balls
Menstrual cycles are governed by a group of hormones which ebb and flow at different times during the cycle. Subtle manipulations of diet and choosing different food groups at different times of the month can assist the body in achieving a natural and more harmonious cycle.
1 ¼ cups Nut or Seed butter (Almond, Cashew, Sunflower, Pumpkin, Tahini, etc.)
3 ½ tbsp Maple syrup to taste
1 ¼ cups Flax & pumpkin seed meal *day 1 to 14 of your cycle (1:1 ratio) or
1 ¼ cups Sesame & sunflower seed meal *day 14 to 28 of your cycle (1:1 ratio)
1 cup Dried fruit (Cranberries, Raisins, Currants, etc.)
¼ cup Dried, unsweetened medium shredded coconut
Spices and seasonings (Cinnamon, Cocoa, Nutmeg, Ginger, Vanilla)
- Mix nut/seed butter and maple syrup together and stir well.
- This is the time to add chosen seasonings should you wish even though the snack balls are tasty enough on their own!
- Gradually, stir in the seed meals until evenly distributed throughout the nut butter mixture.
- Stir in dried fruit.
- Form into 1” balls and roll in coconut.
- Store in a dark container in the fridge and have one ball daily.
These snack balls make a quick, easy, yummy snack that you can turn to in the event of a sweet craving or a dip in energy!