SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello and welcome to Empower Your Menopause. It's coaches Julie and James here from Fabulous Beyond 40. Now we've all been told that weight gain is just about calories in versus calories out, or psycho, as they call it in the fitness industry, calories in versus calories out. But if that were the whole story, midlife weight gain wouldn't feel like such an uphill battle. The truth is that hormones play a huge role in how your body stores fat, how it burns energy, how it regulates appetite, and all kinds of other things. And that gets much more complicated during the menopause transition, as that fall in sex hormones can affect all of the above. So no one said this kind of stuff was going to be easy, right? And that is the kind of thing that we see from many of the women who come to see us at Fabulous Beyond 40. But fear not, today we're going to talk about going beyond calories to discover what the real hormonal drivers are when it comes to this midlife weight gain. And most importantly, more than anything else, it's what you're here for, after all, what you can actually do about it. So grab a cupper and a pen to make some notes if you feel like you need one, and let's crack on.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah, so we know that weight gain in midlife is a common frustration for many women because we see this all the time in our practice. And the usual advice of just eat less and move more really doesn't work because there's a much more complex interplay of hormones at work here at this stage of life. So today we're going to talk more specifically about how hormones can affect your weight gain, why traditional dieting fails in menopause, and some practical strategies for success. So we'll talk about which hormones impact your weight gain and how. We'll talk about why that standard calories in, I love that psycho, C-I-C-O, not P S Y C H O psycho model isn't good enough at this phase of life. And we'll share some science-backed strategies to support your body's natural balance so that you can make weight management a little bit easier for yourselves. So before we move on to that stuff, let's talk about some real life examples of what we're talking about here because we've got plenty to share. James, you want to start?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah, if you're anything like most of the women who come to us, you're probably thinking that your body is working against you where nothing seems to work anymore. Well, the truth is that's a real thing. You're not imagining it. Your hormones are really, really powerful. And I think the biggest challenge here is one we alluded to before. Your endocrine system, the one that makes all your hormones, it doesn't just work in silos. It's not as simple as looking at hunger hormones or sex hormones or any other of your hormones. There's a whole cascade of interactions and feedback loops, both positive and negative feedback loops, that come into play. So your hormones dictate whether you're hungry, whether you're satisfied, how your blood sugar is going to react to the food that you eat, how you react to stress, what happens when you sleep, what happens when you rest and digest, and much, much more. And it can even have an effect on your thinking. So when things are not going your way, it can become really complex. And one of the best examples that I can think of when it comes to trying to describe how this hormonal system works for people comes from Jo Gamble, she's a respected nutrition therapist in the UK, and she talks about hormones being like uh an orchestra, how they all work together. And there used to be a TV show here in the UK called Maestro a few years ago, where they actually got some celebrities who knew nothing about music or knew stuff about music but didn't know about classical music to get them to learn how to become conductors. And so you could see quite quickly that when hormones weren't, or sorry, when mu musicians weren't being conducted properly by these people, the sound was an absolute cacophony. And it's a bit like that with your hormones, really. If they aren't being conducted in the right way, they start to play up. And when they start to play up, it causes a real issue. So Julie, many of our clients face this problem. Tell us about Lisa, one of our clients.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah, Lisa's a favorite story because it's really, I think, a classic story and an experience that much mirrors my own. So, 48 years old, mother of two, very dedicated professional woman. And she did everything by the book. So when she started gaining weight in her mid-40s, especially that midlife belly bellied weight, um, she just doubled down on all of what we know as classic advice. Eat less, move more. She cut her calories way back, um, probably under 1200 a day, started going to the gym and really cranking out on cardio about six days a week, thinking that those extra calories she burned were going to really help her. And, you know, followed all of this conventional weight loss wisdom, which we know doesn't really work at this phase of life. So instead of losing weight, she was feeling like cranky and exhausted and constantly hungry. And the scale wasn't moving. She was very frustrated about that. When it when she did finally lose a little bit, she'd gain it back just as quickly. So when she joined Club Fabulous Beyond 40, she was very frustrated at first, but we she started learning about insulin resistance and some of the hormone shifts and menopause, things that we share with our members. And we helped her make some pretty key adjustments. So things like blood sugar balance, focusing on that instead of low-fat, high-carb meals, replacing those with uh more balanced meals with more protein, healthier fats, and um fiber to keep that um insulin stable in her um throughout the day. And then instead of doing this endless cardio that's so stressful on the body, she started adding in strength training. And that helped her rebuild quite a lot of muscle and boost her, boosted her metabolism, which was a good thing. And she stopped starving herself. So we looked at more nourishing meals and um it prevented those blood sugar crashes that she was experiencing before. So her cravings were almost non-existent, you know, after even just a few months, and she felt better, her energy was more level. It was a pretty remarkable transformation, actually, in a fairly short period of time. So she lost inches around her waist, she had that, like I say, everything was on a much more even keel. But she the most important part of that was that she started to understand finally that weight management in this phase of life is about working with the body, with her body, not against it. Because I know we we tend to like try to force our bodies into doing what we want them to, and that's just not how nature works. Yeah, but I know you've got another story about Sarah.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Um it's always interesting, I think, that you know, with somebody like Lisa, you can see almost immediately what's happening, right? She's not really eating the right things to serve her body, and we helped her understand that a little bit better. Sometimes you get cases like Sarah, who's a 50s, mid-50s business owner, she really prided herself on healthy habits. She was one of these people who actually never felt for fad diet. She exercised pretty regularly, she did a lot of strength training, um, she wasn't doing a ton of cardio, but she still wasn't losing the weight, the weight that had crept in in the late 40s, and she was convinced that she was doing something wrong because, according to all the good advice, she was doing everything everything right. When we dug deeper, we found out that there was one thing, or maybe two things that really stood out. The first one was a lot of stress, she was a high-powered businesswoman, she uh was an ex an executive, uh working in marketing for a really large telecoms company here. She had terrible sleep, she was absolutely running on adrenaline and cortisol. She worked long hours, she always felt overwhelmed. Most nights she was getting four or five hours sleep because her glut her role had a global capacity, and therefore she had to be on calls or answering emails into the night, and because of all that stress, she'd often wake up feeling tired, she'd rely on caffeine to get through, and she'd use that to power her workouts as well when she was really exhausted. So we talked about all this, and we worked out these sky high adrenaline cortisol levels were actually working against her, they were really keeping her body in a hormonal disruption, her insulin was off balance, a leptin, which regulates appetite and metabolism was off balance as well. So we cut back on some of the high-intensity workouts, and we swapped that in a bit of yoga and some restorative movements, some really simple breathing exercises. We put in place a relaxing evening routine, our 3-2-1 routine that we talk about quite often. Three hours before bed, your last meal, two hours before bed, cutting out work, really, really important for this lady, and then an hour before bed putting your screen down. We also got her to add some magnesium into her diet and lots of protein-rich meals, even more protein than she was already in on in the evenings to help balance her cortisol and blood sugar overnight. And after a few weeks, she started sleeping better, she started feeling calmer, and then that is when the weight started to shift. What had seemed impossible suddenly felt effortless because she tackled the root course, and that was her body's stress response. So, let's talk in depth then a little bit about kind of what the major hormones are that come into play here in midlife weight gain. We've talked about a couple of them in that section there with our clients, but to give you some more clarity on these, first of all, you've got insulin. Insulin is the hormone that helps your body deal with blood sugar. Most of the food that we eat turns into sugar in the bloodstream, particularly carbohydrates, and then that goes around the blood and creates is used for either energy for the bodily tasks that we do or when we're working out and things like that, and then any excess is shuttled off to be stored. Um, up to around 2,000 calories or so gets stored in things like your muscles and your liver, and then after that, it starts to be turned into fat. So insulin is a really, really important one. Now, one of the challenges that in midlife, as oestrogen levels fall, you become more susceptible to what is called insulin resistance, anyway, and that is your body not really understanding what the hormone insulin is doing. So if you couple that with potentially not eating in a way that serves you at this time of life, along with the fact that estrogen makes your insulin resistant naturally go out of whack, then you've got two things there that are a challenge. So insulin is really, really important to think about on that idea of blood sugar balance. Then you've got cortisol, our old friend. We talk all the time about stress and how we need to reduce stress at this time of life in our clients. And if you're a listener and you're stressed out, then absolutely it is something that we need to look at. Cortisol encourages fat storage and it also increases our um cravings for um sugary and high foods. Then, of course, you've got our old friend estrogen. We know that oestrogen peaks and spikes a little bit through perimenopause, and then it starts a steady drop off through menopause until your ovaries stop producing it altogether. So, as levels drop, your body compensates for that because it stores more fat, particularly visceral fat that's fat around the middle. Why is that? Well, fat becomes part of your endocrine system when your ovaries are no longer producing estrogen. Your body fat produces estrogen for you, and then the other place that uh estrogen is produced is also in your adrenal glands, which happen to produce cortisol. So, again, you can have a double whammy there. If you're stressed out and you're starting to lay down fat, then that is again another reason because cortisol and estrogen on why this can be a real challenge. Then you've got progesterone, as progesterone starts to drop, that can contribute to all kinds of things like bloating and water retention and slowing your metabolism down, and then finally leptin and ghrelin. They're the hunger and fullness hormones, and how they shift in midlife can make cravings stronger and it harder to regulate your appetite. So we need to make sure that all these are playing nicely together. And the good news is that they tend to play nicely together with some of the advice that we're going to put out there to you soon. But before we do that, Julia, why don't you just take us through why our good old friend Psycho, then that calories in, calories out thing, breaks down for many people at this time in their life.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Yeah, sure. And it, you know, I kind of like this, I don't know if you call it a metaphor or simile. The the calories in, calories out, psycho really makes you feel psycho, P S Y C H O, because it just doesn't work for us the way that people say it should. And we cannot um what do I want to say, negate the laws of physics and thermodynamics, but you know, because energy balance does matter, but your hormones are going to decide how those calories are used, whether they're stored or whether they're burned for energy. And our metabolisms are going to shift at this time of life. So when we are um losing muscle mass, if we're not doing strength training to maintain it, our metabolism is naturally going to slow down. And because we're preferentially storing fat, because of the drop in estrogen, the potential increases in cortisol, as James was just mentioning, you know, the same kind of approaches that we've been using are more likely to backfire. Our metabolisms are simply different. We're using the calories in a different way. And so, especially with chronic dieting and over-exercising, these are this will give you the double whammy or triple if you include the hormonal fluctuations, because chronic dieting is going to stress your body, you're going to under eat, and then binge, you're going to be up and down with your weight, and it's going to cause your metabolism to be a little bit out of balance. And then add to that the super cardio queens that we see all the time. I'll just do extra cardio because it burns so much more, so many more calories. Um, but the truth is that's just another form of stress on your body. So if you're doing excessive cardio, you're increasing your stress levels, you're increasing the rate of muscle wasting, and it's just going to turn into this cycle that that continues to frustrate you because you need to learn how to break out of that. And chronic dieting, you know, well, we know that if diets worked, the industry wouldn't be worth tens of billions of dollars. So muscle loss in midlife, because that is a natural part of the aging process, affects our metabolism. Muscle is metabolically active tissue, it burns more calories at rest than fat tissue does. So maintaining muscle and doing strength training is going to be your metabolism's best friend. So that's why strength training is so essential now at this time of life, more than it ever was. And you don't have to go to the gym for hours and hours and look, you know, try to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. That doesn't, it would be very difficult to do with the way our bodies are designed anyway. And um, the the amount of time you need to devote to that kind of strength training doesn't need to be excessive. It's something you can learn to work into your regular days. But there there are some there are some practical strategies that will help you support your hormones and sustain your your weight. I mean, we can only lose weight for so long, right? And then we have to learn how to maintain it. So that's one of the one of the important factors that that James will talk about now as far as midlife hormone balance.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Absolutely. It's interesting as well, is that you'll see loads of people out there and loads of supplements claiming that they can balance your hormones. And the truth is nobody can balance your hormones. We don't have a scale that sits there, and on one side we can stick half of them, or on the other side we stick half of them. And there's too many of them for a start. So, what you can do is you can adopt certain strategies that can support better hormonal balance. Okay, so just to make sure that's that's clear. Nobody's coming along with a magic wand. These kind of things are strategies that we need to employ, and we need to employ over some time, I'm afraid, and to try and install these good habits slowly over time so that we get better and better. But the first one, I think, is to look at that concept. We've mentioned it a few times so far now, but blood sugar balance is absolutely key. We can't emphasize enough how trying to stabilize your blood sugar balance will help you manage insulin and keep your energy levels steady, and it comes in a number of different ways, but some really easy tweaks that you can make to start off is to prioritize protein as your number one nutrient. If you want to get into the stats and the numbers and all that kind of stuff, you can work it out. What take your body weight in kilograms, multiply it by um two, that's how many grams of protein you need a day. You can sit and start weighing chicken breasts out and cutting blocks of tofu into certain sort of like chunks and things like that. Just start off by trying to get a palm sized portion of protein into your into every meal that you have. So breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Really, really important. Why palm size? Well, your palm, your hand differs depending on size. Me as a six-foot guy weighing 180 pounds. My my hand is a bigger size than Julie's is, and Julie is obviously much shorter than me and more slender than I am. So, your palm is a really really good way of looking at the protein sizes. We've got tons and tons of resources on what different proteins look like, but think about things like chicken, uh, lean red meat, pork, tofu, all those kind of things, eggs, Greek yogurt, all work really, really well. Then you need some fibre in your diet. Okay, so fibre is both gonna help you keep regular from a uh an elimination point of view, if that's a polite way of saying it, but it's also gonna help balance your blood sugar levels because it helps keep things stable. A really, really good source of fibre, which also throws in some good fats, which is my next thing, is flaxseed. It's absolutely great. Buy some flaxseed or grind some golden linseed down yourself and then spread it on your cereals, add it to salads, whatever it may be. But looking at sort of like around 30 grams of fibre a day is what is what you're looking for, and then healthy fats, you know that old advice of all fats being bad, fats make you fat, and all that kind of stuff. It's absolutely BS. Okay, so fat you need fats, uh if for nothing else, that they are a basic constituent of your hormones. So if you don't have fats, this whole conversation uh gets blown out because we're talking about hormones, and without without fats, you can't actually produce them. So, healthy fats, all those things we talk about all the time, you probably know them by now. Things like avocado, things like olive oil, nuts, seeds, all really, really good. And then I think one that for me is an easy practical strategy that's often overrated is the need to eat meals at a regular basis, and by that I mean old-fashioned regular breakfast, lunch, dinner. Trying to snack in between, I know it was all the rage a few years ago, grace throughout the day because it keeps your blood sugar level stable. What that does is it stops your body because you've you've constantly got high blood sugar, you've constantly got high insulin, it can make you more insulin resistant. So try and have those natural gaps in between meals where you actually feel hungry before you go on to your next meal because that um pandering to the very basic starting feeling of hunger goes a long way to skewing up your blood sugar levels. So try and stick to not having a snap between uh between your meals, and if you do make sure it's really, really small. So that's blood sugar balance. Let's talk then about stress management. We mentioned this earlier, helping you reduce cortisol. Just again to reiterate, chronic stress equals stubborn belly fat. So we need to try and reduce this as much as possible. So learning how to say no. Julie always says this. I'm gonna borrow one of her phrases. No is a complete sentence. You don't have to take on a another thing when the PTA comes calling, when you're asked to do another lift, when you're asked to do one thing or another. Try and reduce your stress levels by making sure you've got a manageable calendar. And then introduce some things. You know, a couple of minutes of doing some breathing exercises or doing a 20-minute yoga session, setting boundaries, all those kinds of things really, really help when it comes to stress reduction. It's absolutely key. Now, Julie, I know you did a reel about the next one this week, and you've already discussed it once, so let's bring it back in. The idea of doing some strength training and prioritizing muscle mass over just endlessly hitting that hamster wheel of more and more cardio.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah, it's so I can't emphasize enough how important this is. And you know, you don't, as I said before, you don't need to become super muscle bound. You don't need to spend hours in the gym. But the truth is that muscle is more metabolically active tissue than fat is. So it's going to keep your metabolism revving, which means it's going to burn more fat and calories even when you're at rest. And we, because we lose muscle mass, it also affects our bone density and our joint health and balance and a lot of other things. So we want to make sure that we're doing enough strength training. It can be something simple. You can do body weight exercises, you can get some light, some dumbbells, you can use things you have around the house, put some books into a backpack, you know, water, water jugs, anything that you can hang on to securely, and bands, a set of resistance bands costs maybe $25. But having those things on hand to do what we call functional movements. These are movements that you're going to do on a daily basis. They're going to help you a lot. So it's really one of the best things that you can do for your metabolism. And when you feel stronger, you feel more confident, right? And you can do things day to day and will be able to continue to do things day to day, like lifting things onto a shelf or your suitcase in the overhead compartment as you're doing all of your exciting travels when the kids are gone. And trust me, I've been there, I've done that, but cardio in the extreme is adding that stress to your body. It's going to add to your cortisol load. It's going to actually make you retain body fat. So it's just not, and it's not that we're saying cardio is bad, but it should be your focus mainly should be around strength training to help you stay healthy and fit. And then sleep. Sleep, believe it or not, is your weight loss superpower. It's your health superpower. But for weight management, it's going to affect your leptin, ghrelin, and insulin levels. And I like to think about leptin is that satisfaction hormone that tells you I can leave it. I like L for leave it. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone. It's going to stimulate appetite. I call it the gremlin, right? And then insulin, of course, for your blood sugar. So things you can do to optimize sleep is make sure you have a good sleep environment. Keep it cool if you can, as dark as possible. Make sure it's a clutter-free environment. Keep work and television and all of those things out of the bedroom. The bedroom should be for sleep and sex, and that's it. And make sure that you have a nice nighttime routine that helps you wind down. As James mentioned earlier, a 3-2-1 approach. No eating within three hours of bedtime, no working within two hours of bedtime, and shutting down your screens within one hour of bedtime. It's amazing the difference that's made in our clients' life, in my own life, in you know, in our own lives. And it really is essential because sleep is when your body is doing all of its repair and maintenance work. And then, of course, ditching that diet mentality. This is something that takes time and practice to do. We have this, these things about, you know, I need to lose weight fast, or I have to cut out all calories, or food is good or bad. Let's get rid of all of that. Food is food. Food is a way to nourish your body. So learning how to understand how food makes your body feel, what it does for your energy levels, what it does for your mind and your brain function, and focusing on more sustainable habits that are going to nourish your body and help regulate your hormones. I think those would be my key pieces of advice.

unknown 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Okay, thanks, Julie. So we're coming up to the top of the half hour then. So just a few things to recap. You know, we know that weight gain at midlife is a challenge for women. Um, not for all women, obviously, but for many of the people, especially those who come to see. In fact, I'd say it's probably the number one thing we get asked about when people come. And often when we start working with people, it's incredible how it's not just the food and the nutrition and the diet that are important. They are important things, but you know, moving right for this time of life, eating the right things, managing your stress levels, getting the right amount of sleep is all really really important. It's about how your body processes food, how it processes stress, and how it produces energy. So look at all of those things. Obviously, join us if you need some help. You can get in touch with us, you can either join our membership. Julie talked about a couple of people who are in our membership earlier when we were giving those examples and about the strategies that they've employed through the advice that we give them. And the key thing is to remember you can't do this all in one go. These are changes that we need to make as a lifestyle choice moving forward. Now, obviously, that doesn't mean that you can never have a piece of chocolate again or another drink of alcohol or enjoy the occasional treat, but it means being quite mindful with that and actually trying to install some good habits that are gonna serve you long term. Those good habits don't have to be installed from one day to the next. You know, your body is not some sort of like computer machine or device where you can download the latest firmware and it's all gonna start start working in one go. It's more a case of picking some small habits and working on them over time until they become really really sustainable. And guess what? When you do lots of those small bits, one on top of the other, they stack up and they make a massive difference over time. And we aren't interested in helping you lose a ton of weight really, really quickly. We want you to be healthy for the rest of your lives. That is really, really key to think about. Yeah, this is just the start of another chapter in your life. You've got another 40-50 years to live. So make sure that those 40 or 50 years that you live them in the best way possible. Super important, Julie.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Yeah, and if you'd like some support with this, some more information, we've got loads of stuff going on in our Facebook group. It's called Fabulous Beyond 40, the Facebook group. And come and join us there. We do some fun challenges. We'd love to support your journey in any way that we can.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Great. So thanks everybody for tuning into this episode. We'll be back with another episode next week. It's been James and Julie from Fabulous Beyond 40 on the Empower Your Menopause podcast. In the meantime, stay strong and stay fabulous, and we'll see you next time. Take care of you.