Ep. 70 Can Exercise Reset Your Teen’s Hunger Hormones?

Are you wondering if exercise can help hunger hormones in teens? 

How much cardio is really enough for teenagers? 

Can too much cardio mess with puberty hormones? In this episode, I break down:

• What the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 
• The difference between moderate and vigorous activity 
• How cardio impacts hormones like leptin and insulin 
• Creative ideas to help your teen move more — even if they hate the gym 
• How overtraining can harm metabolism, especially in teen girls 

I’m Dr. Jenny Gourgari—pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine and a health coach.
After helping hundreds of teens struggling with their weight and hormones, I’ve created a whole new path by doing what most programs miss: balance puberty hormones naturally and create habits that actually last.

Here's what makes this different:
✅ No dieting. No calorie counting. No shame.
✅ No more food fights between parents and teens.
✅ No weight obsession—just healthy habits
✅ Real science behind how puberty hormones affect weight
✅ A safe, supportive approach that prevents eating disorders

Because when teens understand their hormones and get the right support, they don’t just lose weight—they gain strength, energy, confidence, and freedom!

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Transcript

 What is the right amount of cardio exercise a teenager can do so that they can balance their puberty hormones?

Is there a magic number for how many minutes cardio is enough for teenagers? And do most teenagers meet that benchmark? And also, is it possible for a teenager to have too much cardio that can actually mess up their metabolism and their hormones? And what is the best way to make a teenager more excited to meet the goal of the daily exercise . Can three minutes be enough? So let's dive into it. First of all, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a minimum amount of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise for teenagers that want to stay healthy. Now, what do we mean when we say moderate exercise versus vigorous exercise?

Moderate exercise is the type of exercise that while you are doing it, you can still talk. That's like a simple rule. You cannot sing 'cause singing requires more effort. So you're not able to sing, but you are able to talk now, for example, what are some exercises of moderate activity? It will be like walking fast.

It will be like dancing. It will be riding your bike or walking the dog fast. That would be, examples of moderate intensity activity that when a teenager does, they can do it, and they can still talk but not sing. Now what are some examples of vigorous. Activity. Vigorous activity is the type of activity that you are actually breathing loud.

Your heart rate is beating fast. You find it very hard to talk. You may be able to say a few words, but you can actually hold a conversation. So examples of. Vigorous activity would be if you are running or you're jogging, you are playing basketball, you're playing soccer, you're playing, taking tennis, you are swimming

You are doing high intensive workouts, you are doing any kind of martial arts. these would be examples of vigorous activity. It is recommended that teenagers do a minimum of 60 minutes every day of moderate or vigorous activity every day. Now, do most teenagers hit that goal?

The answer is most teenagers don't necessarily hit that goal , they tend to be more sedentary by playing video games or by doing more homework. They're very busy, so oftentimes it becomes difficult to hit that goal Now. What is the effect of the exercise in the hormones, the puberty hormones, and how can that affect their progress as they're making healthier choices? Now, there has been done research in teenagers on how activity and particularly moderate and vigorous exercise affects the hormone that is called leptin. I have created a previous episode in a previous podcast where I talked about why is it difficult for teenagers.

To moderate their appetite when they are in puberty. And that has to do with what we call a hormone that is very high in teenagers. It's called leptin resistance. And you can go back and listen to that episode. It is episode number 48, and I also talked about how puberty hormones affect teenagers progress towards a healthier goal. That's episode 55 in my podcast. You can go to lifestyle fourteens.com/podcast, or you can go to your favorite podcast provider and find those episodes. Now, the research that has been done showed that when teenagers do moderate or, vigorous activity, they improve their leptin resistance, their leptin levels get lower, and that means their appetite gets better.

So there's a direct correlation between how much activity they're doing and how that can regulate their leptin levels. And they can regulate their appetite that is associated with leptin resistance due to all the pubertal hormones. This was a great study. I'm gonna link to it in the description. It's called effect of different physical exercises on leptin, concentration in obesity, adolescence.

It was done in university of San Paulo in Brazil. Now the other point I would like to make is that, oftentimes it is difficult to go and meet that goal of 60 minutes of exercise, although that should be the goal. You cannot directly meet that goal from special teenagers that actually don't do any exercise and it is not necessary to go and do right away.

60 minutes of exercise. If you're not doing anything, you can slowly start to build up the amount of activity that teenagers do every day, even three minutes of walking. Done multiple times per day can improve insulin resistance. That is another reason why it makes it harder for teenagers to get to a healthier weight, and it has to do with their insulin resistance that happens during puberty.

I created a previous podcast episode episode 11, where I talk about a research study that was done on NIH and showed that even three minutes of multiple times of walking can improve insulin sensitivity in teenagers. So even if you cannot meet the 60 minutes right away, it's okay. You can start with three minutes.

You can start with 10 minutes. You can start with whatever number you can and slowly build over time. Like even over a year, over six months, over three months it doesn't matter as long as there is continuous progress.

What can make it easier for teenagers to sustain their goal? A, an exercise that can be more type of activity instead of being unorganized in the gym.

Sometimes it may be better if it is as a play, if it can be like just going outside and playing basketball with friends, going outside and walking the dog. Go to the beach or to the pool and have some fun by doing some laps and do it as a family. Like those small changes as long as they are continuous, they add up over time.

I also talk about how using active video games can help with that because instead of playing video games and being sedentary over time, teenagers can find video games that create a virtual reality of sports and that gives them some movement or they can try to dance and that can create some movement.

They can also try potentially to walk to school or if you are driving, because school is far, you can stop, 10 minutes before the school so they can walk or they can bike. Like you have to try to be creative so that you incorporate ways that can make it easier for teenagers to stick to those general principles of movement.

What if a teenager hates doing cardio and they don't like to to the gym, that's totally fine. Sometimes some teenagers prefer to do exercise that build strength. They can try to do pushups or be enrolled in sports. It takes some conversation with teenagers to.

Try to find an activity that gives them pleasure, and have them decide also on the type of activity that they want to do. So in my lift program, that's something that I try to do with every teenager is to try to find an activity that fits their personality and fits their motivation style.

What if a teenager is busy with school homework, with other activities, and they don't have time to do any cardio that can stick to it? The answer to this is to create a schedule because if it is scheduled, and the teenager has made a commitment to it, it becomes more aware and it's not something that comes up in the moment.

Oh, let me just go to the gym. It is scheduled that, I have decided I'm going to the every day, or it has been decided that when I'm going to my friend, I'm going bike there instead of driving.

And sometimes oftentimes they can stay up late. They cannot sleep late. Maybe that will be a time to go for a walk. Maybe the whole family can have evening walks or morning walks. That increases also. The relationship between the family and makes it more like a family movement and not something that only the teenager needs to do.

Is it possible that too much exercise can hurt your teenager's metabolism? Is it possible that too much exercise can hurt the teenager's hormones? In fact, yes, that can happen. We have seen examples particularly in teenager girls, that they are competitive athletes in gymnastics or they can be competitive athletes in competitive in ballet.

Sometimes also invoice that do competitive running. There can be excessive weight loss, due to excessive cardio that is not at the same time, they don't get enough calories for the amount of exercise that they do. So the exercise, per se, may not necessarily be always hurtful or there can be some cases that it is really that they don't get the enough nutrition, enough protein, enough fat, healthy fat and carbohydrates that they need so they can end up losing a lot of weight to the point that they can become malnourished of doing.

Too much competitive sports and too much cardio. And in those cases that can interfere with their puberty progression. There are girls that can lose their periods or they may not have periods because of that. There can be cases that they are hurting their muscles because they're overusing.

They're overusing their joints. They can have injuries and they don't get the necessary rest that they need so that their body can recover and they can have a lot of cortisol level and a lot of stress associated with that because it becomes an obsession. So again, if that is the case talk to your doctor to make sure that you're not getting too much cardio.

That can affect your puberty development and can affect your healthy metabolism. Again up to an hour of exercise, daily hour of exercise that is moderate or intense. It is absolutely normal and most likely this will not lead. To unhealthy events is actually recommended. It can boost your confidence, it can boost your mental health, it can boost your metabolism, it can improve your leptin resistance, which the most important thing it can improve your overall cortisol levels.

And it can make you feel overall better and enhance your progress as you are getting into a healthier weight. I hope this was helpful. My take home question to you is what's the one type of activity that you love the most and how much time are you willing to devote to it? As a teenager or as a parent, who can maybe do part of that with your teenager or maybe encourage them by providing them support so that they can do the fan activity that they like to do. Again, if you want more help, you can go to lifestyleforteens.com/free free. You can get the free resources and you can sign up to my newsletter, lifestyleforteens.com/newsletter and we'll send you a weekly email so that you never miss any tips.

Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.