You were never meant to live disconnected.

Understanding Your Hormones

Your body isn't working against you. It's communicating with you.

As women, our bodies are constantly communication with us. Our energy, sleep mood, hunger, recovery, strength, and even the way we respond to exercise can be influenced by the hormonal changes happening within us.

For years, many of us have been taught to respond by doing more-exercise harder, eat less, add more cardio, push through exhaustion and ignore what our bodies are telling us.

I did that too.

It wasn't until I began learning about my body, my hormones and signals I has been ignoring that I started looking at fitness differently.

Your body isn't something you have to fight into submission.

It's something you can learn to understand.

What Are Hormones?

Hormones are chemical messengers that travel throughout the body, carrying signals that help different systems communicate with one another.

Even small changes in these messengers can influence how we feel and function-from our energy, sleep, and mood to our appetite, metabolism, reproductive health and response to stress.

But here's something important:

Hormones don't work independently. They work together.

Think of them less like individual switches and more like members of the same team. When our hormones begin changing-especially during perimenopause and menopause-we may start noticing changes in our bodies that we don't immediately connect to hormones.

Sometimes, that's when we start blaming ourselves.

Understanding what's happening inside your body can change the way you respond to it.

Meet the 6 Major Hormones Players

You don't need to become a hormone expert to begin understanding your body. But knowing some of the major players-and recognizing that each has a different role-can help you begin connecting the dots.

Let's meet the team:

When Your Hormones Begin to Change