Women have 52% serotonin compared to men

What we thrive on depends not only on our gender, but also our ethnicity, genes and what our parents ate. The more we understand how to nourish ourselves to feel good in the skin we are in, we will not only look great, but feel great. Why some supermodels remain high-level cognitive functioning their entire life, yet others cave in to drugs, eating disorders etc. and break down - mentally and physically. Simply because they are trying to manipulate their bodies rather than feed it right. Starvation and manipulation is never sustainable long-term.

It is a funny thing: in our quest for all things being equal, we tend to also push the message, that food is food, whether man or woman. That our response is equal, as long as we follow the outlined rules in whichever diet we choose to follow. And if we are not successful, it is because we are not disciplined enough. We have somehow not been perfectly following the diet to the dot. No other explanation. 

What About Asking: Does This Food That I Am Eating On This Diet Actually Make Me THRIVE As A Man, Woman… As A Human Being In This Skin I Am In?

No? Well, then, the diet is probably not right for me. End. Of. Story. Food is food yes, but how it is burnt for fuel completely depends on the engine it is put into aka your body.

Every human will burn food differently depending on their genetic make-up, and that’s ultimately why not everyone responds similar to the same diet. 

One Size Doesn’t Fit All And No Diet Fits All Either.

For every time we engage in a quick fix we pay a price. It’s like the interests you pay on your credit card – is it worth it to use that extra $1000 now, only to end up with a bill that’s 20% higher to pay off the interests? That exact same logic goes for your body as well. When your metabolism crashes getting it back to working properly, requires a completely different intensive approach than simply maintaining stability.

The Single Dominant Predictor Of Future Weight Gain Is In Fact Being On A Diet. 

Women are not men, surprise. Neither psychologically nor biochemically are we wired similar. There is a lot of freedom to be found in accepting that we are different (yet of equal worth), and we need not follow the same paths to succeed in body, mind and soul mastery. And there is a lot of misery in trying to function as men in the work place and also copying the same food behaviors, because it works for them. We need to find our own formula to thrive in the skin we are in – as women and as individuals. There are a lot of studies out there focusing on men – and taking those results as the golden rule for everyone.

Women Have 52% Levels Of Serotonin Compared To Men.

What I’ve come to see in my years of working with men and women of all ages and with health issues a-z is that there are a lot of women, who do not fare very well on the very-low type of carb diets out there.  Especially after their progesterone and thyroid drops. This can happen already at 30 and even earlier for many women. When you go low carb, or at the other end of the extreme: all vegan, you see a drop in serotonin level. After a couple years, we often see severe hormonal imbalances in most cases – and often adrenal fatigue. 

This Is Why More Women Than Men, Struggle With Emotional Eating, Eating Disorders, Anxiety, Insomnia Etc. These Are Serotonin Related Issues. 

Women typically struggle distinctly more with carb and chocolate cravings than men. And many diets push this vulnerability into out-of-control cookie cabinet raiding behavior. This is because women have lower levels of serotonin - the neurotransmitter involved in carb cravings, and thus it is crucial to take this into account when designing a sustainable weight-loss program.

Estrogen, Serotonin And Oxytocin Are Closely Connected. 

When one of the legs of the stool is lacking, all parameters will be out of whack. And what happens when your estrogen level is out of whack? No sex-drive, low fertility, dry skin, brittle hair, depressed mood, bad memory and metabolic imbalance. 

In the food camps right now, we have people, who are caught up in just the neurotransmitters – weight loss is all the brain: Everything is a about a dopamine or serotonin reaction and food addiction is about solving that. Then we have the camp of people who belong to the hormones cure type of thinking – it’s all about bio-identical hormone treatment and Human Growth Hormone injections. Then we have the folks, who are all about leptin and ghrelin. And finally we have the old-school thinking of calories in vs. calories out and that this is supposed to be the key to master your body and weight, everything else is just “bro-science” (…). Quite a typical thinking still found in most doctors’ and dieticians’ offices, unfortunately. The value of food calories were decided in a lab – not taking your gut health, digestive capacity, enzymatic production into account at all. 

Calories Don’t Count And Normal Eaters Don’t Count Their Food In Calories. 

Weighing and measuring everything you eat, is a sick way of looking at food and it further disconnects that body-mind trust we are trying to build by understand our hunger-satiety and connect it with what we eat. 

When it comes to weight-loss, we are often told to follow one diet - whether man or woman is not taken into the equation.

Women Are Completely Differently Wired Biochemically Than Men. 

It only makes sense then, that there is a need for a different approach to nutrition when it comes to burning fat, boosting metabolism and eliminating out-of-control carb cravings to reach whatever weight-loss is desired.

I Encourage You To Look At Food From A Different Angle: Eat What Works For YOU. 

Not what some guru says works for everyone. Stop trying to fit into specific diet regimes.

If You Are Not Thriving, Then Don’t Eat That. 

If every time you eat a certain way, you end up binge-deep and cranky – hello, wake-up call: it’s NOT working for you, regardless of the needle on your scale.

References:
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. May 13, 1997; 94(10): 5308–5313. Differences between males and females in rates of serotonin synthesis in human brain. S. Nishizawa et al.

J Am Pharm Assoc. 2001;41(2). Effects of Estrogen on Cognition, Mood, and Degenerative Brain Diseases. Shepherd JE.

Int J Neuropsychopharmacol 2007;10:309-20. Tryptophan hydroxylase-2 gene variation influences personality traits and disorders related to emotional dysregulation. Gutknecht L et al.

Fertil Steril. 1992 May;57(5):1008-11. Influence of serotonin on progesterone and estradiol secretion of cultured human granulosa cells. Bódis J