Former Women's Health cover star Millie Mackintosh is known for taking her health and fitness seriously. She’s previously opened up about everything from alcohol and her journey to sobriety to crippling anxiety, panic attacks, motherhood and postnatal body insecurities – as well as her love of Pilates and strength training. So when she shared a new approach to eating, it piqued our interest.
In an Instagram post titled ‘What I eat in a day to balance my hormones’, Millie explains how she's been doing a lot more work on understanding her body, and has ditched the strict keto diet she followed for around a year after reviewing hormone testing and blood work.
‘I realised I needed to shift my focus,’ she wrote. Working with Women’s Health Coach, Georgia Ellen Smith, made her realise that ‘like a lot of high-achieving women juggling work, kids and life, my body had essentially been stuck in “survival mode” after long periods of stress. When your nervous system is constantly switched on, it can affect everything from energy and mood to hormone balance.’
So instead of restricting food, the focus now is on nourishing and stabilising the body, she explained. ‘That means consistent, warm, nutrient-dense meals built around: Protein for hormone production and stable energy. Healthy fats to support brain and hormone health, and fibre and complex carbohydrates to balance blood sugar and support the nervous system.’
What Millie eats in a day
Morning shot: olive oil, lemon and cayenne drink
Breakfast: Greek yoghurt, berries, granola and nut butter
Supplements: Magnesium glycinate, L-Theanine gummy, Broccoli sprout extract, Happy saffron, B-complex, Vitamin C, Omega-3, Vitamin D
Coffee: Chicory coffee with oat milk
Post workout snack: Whey protein and creatine after exercise
Lunch: Eggs, bacon, sweetcorn fritters, avocado and tomatoes
Snack: Medjool date and Brazil nuts
Dinner: Chicken broth bowl with vegetables and brown rice
After dinner snack: Nut-butter chocolate
What does ‘hormone-supportive’ eating actually mean?
‘We need adequate energy, protein, essential fats, vitamins and minerals to make hormones, metabolise them (meaning break them down) and support the many systems that communicate with our endocrine system,’ explains registered naturopathic nutritionist and author of The Hormone Balance Handbook, Jessica Shand.
‘Food can also influence things like blood-sugar regulation, inflammation, energy, digestion and satiety, all of which contribute to how we feel day to day.’
However, Shand stresses that hormone health isn’t about keeping every hormone at the same level. ‘Our hormones naturally ebb and flow throughout the menstrual cycle and shift during pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and menopause,’ she says.
Shand compares our hormones to a symphony orchestra. ‘We don’t want every instrument playing the same note at the same volume all the time. Each instrument has its own part to play. When they’re communicating and working together at the right time, we get harmony and in terms of the orchestra we get the joy of hearing beautiful music.’
In practical terms, that means there is no single magic food that will ‘rebalance’ your hormones. We all need to eat a healthy and varied diet to provide us with enough energy and a range of nutrients that support our bodies, but it isn’t a treatment for an underlying hormonal condition.
So, can we eat our way out of ‘survival mode’?
‘Survival mode’ obviously isn’t a medical diagnosis, but it’s a phrase a lot of us use to help describe that feeling of being constantly switched on, overwhelmed, depleted, ‘wired but tired’ or unable to properly relax, says Shand. ‘I think so many women will relate to the phrase survival mode!’
Long-term stress can, of course, have genuine physical effects. The body’s stress response involves the nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, with cortisol playing an important and entirely normal role, explains Shand.
‘When stress is ongoing and we’re not getting enough opportunity to recover, it can affect sleep, appetite, digestion, mood and food choices,’ she says. ‘People can respond very differently: one person might lose their appetite, while another feels hungrier or craves quick-energy foods.’
While food can’t remove the sources of stress from our lives, eating enough, having regular nourishing meals, getting plenty of protein and high-fibre colourful plants and avoiding that cycle of under-eating, relying on caffeine and then crashing later can certainly help the body feel better supported, says Shand.
‘Stress resilience as a much bigger picture,’ she adds. ‘Nutrition is one piece, but sleep, movement, rest, psychological wellbeing, relationships, boundaries (often overlooked!) and addressing the actual source of stress all matter too.’
The bottom line
There is a lot to like about the foundations of Millie’s approach to healthy eating, says Shand – ‘she’s focusing on nourishment via balanced meals and giving her body the nutrients it needs and her hormones are able to thrive from, rather than following an extreme or restrictive diet, and these are exactly the foundations I encourage women to come back to when supporting their hormone and overall health’.
As Millie puts it: ‘The goal isn’t perfection. It’s giving my body the building blocks it needs to feel safe again, regulate properly and rebalance hormones over time.’
