SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode, in fact, episode 27 of Empower Your Menopause, where we bust myths, break down barriers, and give you tools to thrive in this next phase of life. It's Coach James and Coach Julie here, my fabulous business partner, and today we're taking on one of the biggest misconceptions that's out there, and that's that eating less automatically means weighing less. And spoiler alert, it's not really that simple, especially if you're a woman who's navigating perimenopause or menopause or even postmenopause. So in this episode, we're going to break down why an old myth that in the fitness industry we give an acronym to, we call it Psycho. That's got nothing to do with your mood swings. It means calories in, calories out. And why that model doesn't actually work for women over 40 anymore? Because hormones, metabolism, and lots of other things play a role, and most importantly, what you can do to feel confident, healthy, and empowered instead. So if you're ready to rewrite the rituals, let's dive straight in. I'm just gonna go straight over to Julie. Julie, before we move any further down this, how the heck are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I am doing very well. I'm having fun with our own uh program. Um it's all it's all very good. We've got sunshine here, even though it's very cold. And I love this topic so much because it is that um perennial, whatever you want to call it, um, argument that we see going on so much so often between coaches and trainers and clients, and especially the clients that we have coming to us saying, but I'm only eating a thousand calories a day.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, what's in those calories can be quite important though, obviously. Um I think it's worth saying at this point that it's never our focus with our clients just to work on weight loss alone. I think there's a lot more about the menopause transition that's really important when it comes to how you feel. And you know, scales really should be for fishes more than anything else, right? Yes. Uh the many other ways of being able to measure your progress, how strong you are, how resilient you are, how rested you are, how ready you are for this next phase of life. So why don't we start off then by just doing a little bit of myth science busting, if you like? And it's true, we can't break the laws of thermodynamics. There is an equation there that says energy in, energy out, and you know, that does play a role in all this. But why is it not the only thing that works in, Julie? What else is at play here?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Well, we've got a lot of things going on in our bodies. First of all, not all calories are created equal, as much as we would like to think that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. The truth is that the what we're eating and the way our body breaks it down will determine in great part how those calories affect us. But the the truth is we've got things going on through menopause, like especially with stress, because we talk about stress, our number one enemy, um, we're producing more cortisol, and um that it has an effect on the way our body processes calories and stores fat. Um, we also have um issues like insulin resistance, perhaps. And hormonal shifts generally are going to change a lot of the way that our body processes the things that we take in, and it changes the way we store fat and the shape of our body, and that's intentional because um, as we've mentioned in other episodes, that fat tissue becomes an active endocrine organ and produces estrogen for us when our ovaries are no longer producing them. So our body wants to hang on to what it can to try to help us create more estrogen, even though we may not like it, what it decides to do very much. So, but it, I mean, the good the good thing is that it's not the end of the world, right? We can we can work with our body instead of constantly fighting against it. And I think that's a big a big thing to remember because it seems like there's the battle of the bulge, right? We're fighting this aging, we're fighting the weight loss, we're resisting, resisting, resisting, and creating more stress in the process, which is as opposite of what we need to be doing, really.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I mean, yeah, it's a challenge. I I I guess one of the challenges here is really that idea of diet culture whereby we've got into some kind of weird cycle in the food, the nutrition, the diet industry, particularly when big books are at play, whereby if you aren't doing everything right, you're automatically deemed to be a failure. And then, as you were just saying, the actual levels of stress that throws into the equation, and of course, something else that we've also talked about in these episodes before is that it's not only your body fat that helps produce estrogen once you're over it stop producing, but it's also your adrenal glands as well. And of course, the more stressed you are, the more they are likely to prioritize producing cortisol, which is a stress hormone, which is what they're there for in the first place, over any estrogen. So you've kind of got this double whammy of things going on that's exacerbated by a diet industry that promotes ideals over health, I'd say, uh on a lot of occasions, but also it's kind of set up to make everybody, but particularly women at this age, potentially fail.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Well, yeah, because otherwise we we don't keep coming back and spending our money with them. And you know, not to diss health coaches and trainers, because I mean we we are part of that of that world, but a lot of times the argument is you cannot not lose weight if you're if you're taking in fewer calories than you're burning. But the truth is it isn't our bodies can't just do simple math equations. We we are full of all kinds of different chemicals and things that have to work together. So um, you know, one of the fun analogies we say is we're we're not we're not a math problem or a bank account. We're more like a chemistry lab, and we have to get that mix just right for our individual needs. But yeah, the the diet industry is constantly selling us promises that it can't deliver on. And unfortunately, so are some of the um lesser trained coaches that we see out there. I guarantee you'll lose 30 pounds in a month or whatever, some crazy promise. And and especially at this time of life, it's just not it's not possible and it's not realistic. There are too many other factors involved.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, I think it's important to say as well, I understand, having gone through it myself, that when people start off as a personal trainer, as a health coach, as a nutritionist, that is very much the way you're taught to view things when it comes to weight management with your client. It's very much the way that you're taught to market yourself when it comes to how to approach clients. And there's also a snowball effect, and it's very easy for young coaches to get carried away with this mentality of that is the way to go when it comes to weight loss and and eating. And it I always despair when somebody tells me, Oh, you know, I I hit my calorie goal of 1200 in um in my fitness pal or whatever counting app that they're using this this week. And I mean, we've talked about again, we've talked about this before, but those apps can be massively, massively out by up to 20 to 30 percent. And if you're reading the food labels, they are also allowed to be out by up to 20 to 30 percent. So even if calories in, calories out was the only thing that did matter, the equations that people have got to work with are absolutely so fundamentally flawed that even if it was just a simple maths equation, it's almost impossible to get the right answer.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

It's absolutely well, and it it even the wearables that we have, we can't. I mean, this none of these are 100% accurate with the data. So it and especially if you're not using a wearable device, but you're relying on the cardio machines at the gym or something, those numbers are way off because they don't take into consideration your biological sex, your age, your height, you know, your fitness level, and all of the other things that that really matter. So we're looking at we're looking at a lot of the wrong things, I think. Um, and that's why we don't focus on counting calories and we don't focus on even counting macros, um, because those numbers are very nebulous in many cases, I guess. So you may think you're eating 1200 calories and you might be eating 2,000. You don't, you just don't know for sure. Besides the fact it's tedious, and then we start to attach that mind, that diet mindset again. I was good today or I was bad today, and air quotes, right? Because I I ate this particular number of calories. Well, let's talk about what's in those calories. Are you eating whole foods? Or because I remember doing um, well, I won't name the program, but it was initials WW when I when I was in the corporate world, and we did we had group challenges in there all the time, and people spent so much time focused on food, and how can they how can they cheat with their favorite treats and still stay within their daily points? So they would be eating potato chips and chocolate bars and not real food and staying within their points and then being upset because their body wasn't changing the way they wanted it to. So that's that's why we harp on this so much.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah, yeah. And and that idea of good and bad foods as well. I think we really need to try and dispel this kind of language. I know it's an easy shorthand, and we all fall into it sometimes that this is a good fat, this is a bad fat, this is a good carb, this is a bad carb. It really promotes an all-or-nothing and a shame kind of culture. And I'm always astounded that there's another uh rather large weight loss company out there that labels food as a sin. Yeah, it's just absolutely incredible. They count sins, you know. What kind of a way is that to look at food and to try and promote not only healthy eating but a healthy mentality as well, when some things are actually labelled sinful. Um, but I understand where that comes from. I used to be when I first started my own weight loss journey, I was very, very much like that. And sure, you know, I lost some weight at the start, but I've never been more miserable than when I spent every single minute, every single day, weighing out my next portion of chicken and my next portion of salad and my half a baked potato, so I could stay under my calorie goals if uh as much as I could. And then I even uh and then again it promotes this idea when you're calorie counting, I think, of this bank account mentality. So towards the end of the day, I'd be like, I've got 400 calories that I can eat today. What can I pick that's 400 calories and will keep me under my goals, but not always the healthiest of choices because everything in my mind would come down to a numbers game. And I see that in our clients so much when they first come because that is just the way that we've been taught and we've kind of been brought up, you know, since as long throughout my lifetime as well. I think diet and uh has always been talked about in those kinds of terms.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, for sure. And I I've been through the same thing. I mean, at at one point in my life I could call myself a serial dieter because I just went from one program to the next, and and it it can become kind of an addiction, right? We're looking for that quick fix, we're looking for those quick results, but it doesn't teach us how to feel into our body what does our body need? How does our body feel when we eat certain foods? What's our energy like? You know, are we able to do the things that we want to do? I mean, it's it's all well and good to well, first of all, you can't lose weight forever. So if you're only focused on weight loss, that's not going to help you very much because once you get to your goal, how do you know how to stay there? Um, right? And and if you're miserable, like you said, you're miserable the entire time and you're so focused on food and what you can and can't eat that you don't actually get to enjoy your life. Who wants to live like that?

unknown 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

So at a time then when we have a bunch of clients, listeners, people that we engage with and work with, or women 40 and above. They've got busy lives, they've got families, they've got partners, they've got jobs, they've got parents, they've got friends, they've got the PTA, they've got all these other things that come into it. They're brought up in a culture whereby, through no fault of their own, they seem to see food as a good versus evil thing. They very much feel as angel on one shoulder, devil on the other shoulder. They look at everything from a calorific perspective. How do we roll that back? Because we know that over time that doesn't work for women, you and I, and many other coaches as well. So, what does actually work for women 40 and above then? What can we give the listeners to take away that is going to help out here?

SPEAKER_01 14:22

I think the first thing to focus on is the quality of what you're eating. A lot of times we have cravings because our body isn't getting the nourishment that it needs. And especially if we're eating a lot of heavily processed foods or fast foods, our body we can continue to eat, and our body is still going to make us think we're hungry because it doesn't get what it needs. It doesn't get the vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients and fiber and all of that. So focusing on whole foods, better quality foods, um, can go a long way to actually curbing cravings and curbing your appetite because you're giving your body more of what it needs. So finding a way to get enough protein, and I know women are tired of hearing about protein, it doesn't mean you have to go eat a Bronosaurus burger like Fred Flintstone used to eat, right? Over hanging over the plate. Um, it just means that you need an adequate portion. And we've talked about that before, a palm-sized portion of protein with most of your meals. And we had some people do that who had terrible cravings for sugar and found that that alone, increasing their protein intake, was enough to curb all of their cravings for sugar. So again, it shows that your body is pretty smart, it knows what it needs and wants, and so tuning in will help. So look for focusing on the quality of your food first. And you can do that even if you have to go out to eat quite frequently. Um, learning how to select healthier choices on restaurant menus, I think, is a great skill. So not buying the deep fried things, finding things that are grilled or broiled, um, finding things that are more simply prepared, that you don't have to worry about what's in the sauce, what's in the in this mix of stuff, right? I I think that's a good place to start.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

What about you?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah, well, I absolutely agree. You know, balanced food, trying to cook from scratch, um keeping protein relatively high, having some, and again, I'm gonna use you know, this term of sort of like good and bad, healthy fats, you know, the fats that serve you, you know, fiber, all those kinds of things will play a good part in balancing your blood sugar balance. One of the hormones we know that women over 40 challenge with outside of the regular sex hormones is blood sugar balance, is that balance between estrogen, glucagon, making us feel hungry, giving us cravings and things like that. So that tends to be out of whack anyway, as soon as your hormones start changing. And eating balanced meals, protein, healthy fats, fibre, lots of vegetables goes a good way towards trying to help reduce that blood sugar imbalance that can take place. And as you said, that will stop a lot of the cravings as well. So the truth is none of this is really rocket science, right? It's not we aren't sitting here with sort of like some magic lexia that we can just pass out to to everybody. It's more, like you said, about being in tune with what's going on in your body. And you rightly said that before we were doing our Transforming Four program the other day, and you and I are both following that along with our clients, that four-week kind of like weight management stroke weight reset programme that we run twice a year. One of the lessons the other day was talking about how you actually, rather than focusing just on what you eat, and in our Facebook group, I put a little note in there saying, whatever you do, read today's lesson. It's really, really important because we have got into this mindset as well through modern culture, through this society whereby we've got to be doing a million things at once, and if we don't, then we're once again failing and all that kind of stuff. We've become pressured into eating food within seconds and not enjoying it, or eating it while we're doing something else, eating it while we're answering the email from our boss, eating it um while we're stood up and trying to cook for the kids at the same time. All those kind of things can play a real role. We've talked again talked about this before, but 20 or so minutes for your guts to talk to your brain and tell you that you're full. So if you're eating really, really quickly, even if you're eating the healthiest food possible, it may be that you're actually eating more than your body needs because your body's not actually recognized that yet. So I'd say that's another thing that um really careful to try and emphasize with our clients that it's not just about calories and quality, but it's also about how you're actually eating as well. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah, that's a it's a huge issue. And one of the things we often advise because the the tendency is when we're eating while we're distracted, or we're eating because we feel rushed, our stress hormones are increasing, and that's going to affect our digestion, and that's going to affect, again, those stress hormones and how we process the food once it goes through our digestive tract. So eating when you're stressed is not a good idea. So stopping to just take a few nice deep calming breaths before you eat your meal, even if you don't have a lot of time. I know some teachers who they lit literally get 15 minutes for to eat their lunch. And so sitting down and leisurely eating for 20 minutes isn't an option during the workday. But being able to take a couple of deep, relaxing breaths and calming your nervous system down a little bit will go a long way to helping you enjoy your food and digest it better. So that's um, you know, we're always on about stress, but that that's one place where stress is really key because when your adrenals are are spiking your stress hormones, it's going to it's gonna do what it needs to do to get rid of the stress, and it's not, it's going to shunt blood away from your digestive tract. So it's not going to process the food for you. And that affects not only how much you enjoy it and how you absorb it, but it also can affect the gastrointestinal effects and the discomfort you might feel with gas and bloating and all of those sorts of things afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

So it all plays a role.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Yeah, so often eating like that can actually make you look bigger, even if the scales aren't changing, just because of bloating and uh the bloating that occurs during the day. I had one client who used to rush her food a few years ago, and she would start off with an almost flat stomach in the morning, but by the just before she went to bed, she was eating some some of the stuff that I wouldn't necessarily advise as well, a lot of sort of like quite simple carbs and stuff like that that were obviously fermenting. And by the evening, you know, she'd have a little paunch on her because of the bloating, not because she was overweight in any way, but she hated the way that that looks, and so so move around. The the idea of eating in 20 minutes is it reminds me very much of when I was a student working at pizza, and obviously I'm not a perimenopausal woman, but just to give you an idea of the long term effects of that, I'm now 56, 57 next month. So I'm talking now when I was 20, so 35, 36, 37 years ago, I used to work for a well known pizza chain pizza. We had a 20-minute break, and that 20-minute break in an eight-hour shift, you had to go prepare your own food, get down to the staff room, eat it, and be back on the floor. Now, shamefully, in my early 20s, I was also a smoker, so I had to cram a cigarette into that break as well. And so I would literally, and of course, being a young person with a grow fast metabolism and growing, I would literally inhale food in about 10 minutes. And it took me so long to get over that. And it was only when I started addressing, once I've gone through the whole thing about what I should be eating, that I started addressing how I eat that that really really changed things for me. And so that's something that stuck with me from being a fine man, you know, transpose slightly faster eating to being in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and it can just exacerbate the problems even more because of all the other hormonal changes and everything else that we've talked about. Good. So any other tips around this then? Because it's kind of tied in a little bit with the whole weight loss conversation, isn't it? This idea of the calorie calorie myth. So let's just reiterate, Julie. I'll throw this back to you, about a couple of the other things from a movement and lifestyle perspective that might also help with this idea of regulating appetite and getting into a stage where weight management becomes easier for women 40.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Sure. Movement-wise, strength training is always going to be your friend. Um, if you can fit that in, that will make a big difference in the way your body responds to the food that you put into it, especially if you're getting enough protein. And you'll find that if you ignore, if you can learn to ignore the scale, and that's a whole that could probably be an episode on its own, but if you can learn to ignore the scale, once you start strength training and building muscle, it's much more compact than fat tissue. So you'll see a much better shape, even if the scale doesn't change. Um, so strength training is definitely your friend and and gentle movement. If you don't have time or you don't enjoy strength training, we'll work on that. But uh just getting in regular gentle movement, whether it's having a little dance party in the living room, going for a walk, um, playing with the dog or the kids or the grandkids, you know, um doing housework, like whatever opportunities you have to move your body more are gonna, it's gonna help you a lot. And then lifestyle-wise, you know, we can't emphasize enough the importance of managing stress because this is gonna be, it's not just about weight and where your body stores fat, it's also about cognitive ability as you age. It's about um getting enough restful sleep. So that's really a key part because if you don't get enough sleep, then your body's gonna do a whole other pro a bunch of things that that might not be benefiting your overall um weight and health generally, sleep and stress management are closely tied. And that's self-compassion, because sometimes you're just gonna eat the damn cookie, you know? It's just that's that's life. And that's okay. Understanding that and being a bit more compassionate with yourself is gonna go a long way because one day where you eat things that you might prefer not to isn't going to mess up your progress any more than eating one healthy meal is going to suddenly catapult you to your goal, right? So keep things into perspective as you can. And just remember, we're doing this along a continuum. Some some days the choices are going to be easier to be on the in the direction of your goals, and some days life happens and they're going to be a little bit maybe in the opposite direction, and and that's okay. You know, it's it's the consistency and what you do more often than what you do one time. I think that's that's important to remember.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I think there's probably some people listening there thinking now, you call this episode the calorie myth, and you've told us not to use um calorie calculators, not to measure food, etc. etc. What do we do? So just very, very quickly, again, we've talked about this before. I don't want to dwell out on it too much, but for those of you who don't know, Julie and I recommend using your hand as a sort of portion guide when it comes to what you put on your plate. And the palm of your hand, without the fingers, so from from the from where your thumb joins onto your palm to the top of your fingers, that that's and that thickness is about a portion of protein. The size of your thumb is about a portion of the kind of good fats that we've been talking about, things like avocados, nuts, and things like that. Your full fist is a portion of veggies, and then your cupped hand is the starchy carbs, things like bread, pasta, rice, etc., and preferably whole grain when you're having those. If you start off with looking at your hand like that, and then looking at your plate and getting about one portion of those in as a starting point, maybe one and a half portions of protein, you're probably a good way to get an idea of where you want to start as a woman over 40. What you might then want to do, and Julie and I would always invite you to do this because everybody's individual, is to stick your notional or imaginary white lab coat on and see this as an experiment. So taking some time with those basic portions to try out and then see how you feel. Keep a little note of are you feeling energized? Do you feel as your clothes are fitting better? Along with strength training, are you feeling a little bit stronger? Is your cardiovascular system working better? All those kinds of things from the changes that you're making, whatever they may be in your life, and see how they fit in with this change in. I'm gonna say diet, but I don't mean diet in the sense of diet, this is some sort of extreme crazy eating plan. I mean diet in its true original sense, which is effectively just a word for what you eat. And then start from there and see how you go. So hopefully that's helped a little bit then as we draw this episode to a close. It's not about eating less, it's about eating smarter and listening to your body. And so we'd invite you to think about this in the following way. What if your problem is not your willpower when it comes to all this, but it's actually the approach? And could you try some of the approaches that we've just talked about? Um, so let us know. Leave a comment, leave a question, um, drop us a note, share the episode with a friend, make sure you subscribe and leave us a review if you like us, of course. If you don't like us, please don't leave a review. Um aside from that, one other thing to just highlight. There are a couple of ways that you can get in touch with us. One, you can join our Facebook group, just search for Fabulous Beyond 40 Coaching on Facebook, and you can join us free community. There's about 500 women in there who get together, talk about things. You can you can do that. You can obviously, as I said, subscribe to our podcast. You can book a free call with us. If you need some clarity, you can choose to work with either myself or Julie over 45 minutes, and we'll give you a roadmap to start off your fitness journey as a woman 40 and above. That is at freecall.fabulousbeyond40.com. And then finally, we've got our really successful and popular free workshop coming up in two Fridays' time, Friday the 31st. I should remember that because it's the day before my birthday. Forsecrets.fabulousbeyond40.com, where we're going to share with you four really simple lifestyle hacks that are going to help you get better control of your confidence, your energy, and your menopause symptoms. So that's for secrets.fabulousbeyond40.com. We'll stick all those under the show notes, but in the meantime, it's been James and Julie, hoping you stay strong and stay fabulous, and we'll see you next time. Take care.