SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello and welcome back to Empower Your Menopause, the podcast all about health, happiness, and hormones for women 40 and beyond. I'm Coach James Ellis.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

And I'm Coach Julie Medacy, and today we're talking about that magical date that is somehow supposed to fix everything. January 1st.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Oh, yes, I remember this from back in my days of struggling with weight management all the time. So, you know, hands up if this scenario seems familiar, right? You wake up on January the 1st, you've had a big night the night before, you've had a big Christmas and a holiday period, and you think to yourself, in panic, that's it, I've overdone it. I really need to lose weight at this very second. And what you do is you go online or you find a diet that you've used in the past, and you charge into it, you cut all the fun stuff out, you go all in for two weeks, you head down the gym, maybe, and do a couple of sessions, and then real life hits, January hits, the January blues hit. You know, that uh what is it, second, third week in January is meant to be the most depressing day of the year, blue Monday. Exhaustion hits, and suddenly you've dropped off, you've eaten something again, you've drank something again that you supposedly weren't supposed to be because of this diet, and then suddenly you say to yourself, those immortal words that we hear so much from clients and non-clients, I've fallen off the wagon. Um, there's no wagon to fall off, is the truth, but the truth is that that is what most people say. And then once they've fallen off the wagon, then they decide that that's it, free-for-all, for the rest of the month, and then come February, it's start again time. So today we're gonna talk about a couple of things. We're gonna talk about why that keeps happening in menopause, why weight loss might not be what you actually want and what you really should be looking for. The clue is actually fat loss. What to focus on instead, so January doesn't feel like you're punishing yourself for what happened in December. So if you are listening before December 17th, we've also got a free live workshop where we're gonna take and that this is next week, December 17th, before next week's episode comes out on the Wednesday. We've got a free live workshop where this stuff that we talk about today we're actually going to put into practice and implement so you can walk away with a simple realistic plan for 2026. We'll tell you more about that later on. But Julie, before we get into the science, what is it about January that hits midlife women so hard compared to say back when they were in their 30s?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Well, there's a you know, it's interesting, there's a classic pattern, and I can say this because I have lived it myself. You know, we get into December, you've got all these parties, you're exhausted. It's like the culmination of the entire year feels like it's just fallen on top of you. And you get to the point where you feel like, oh, I've blown it anyway. I might as well just let it all go. And then January 1st comes and we step on the scales and we feel really ashamed. Oh my gosh, how could I have let this happen again? And we start that same pattern. So we find that emergency diet, you know, we jump on whatever program happens to be coming our way, or if you look at the advertisements, they've got special earrings you can wear that magically take the weight off, or special supplements, or programs that you don't have to change anything. Somehow everything's miraculously supposed to change. And somehow we think we're supposed to drop, you know, a certain number of pounds or two dress sizes in two weeks, or there's some something that just doesn't even make sense. We don't have a plan that works for real life, that lasts for real life. And as soon as work comes back in and we're taking care of the kids, maybe we're parenting up, taking care of our parents, you know, stress floods back in. Our life doesn't somehow miraculously change because the clock ticked over from December 31st to January 1st. But our bodies are changing, right? So we we know that in menopause, um, once you hit 40 and paramenopause starts, because you know, you may think you're too young for menopause, but the truth is this stuff starts happening long before you may notice what's going on in your body. So our fat distribution starts to change. Our body does that and and preferentially stores uh fat more around the belly, and that's that visceral fat that you know comes in between our organs and that sort of thing. But our body wants to do that because it becomes um an a part of our endocrine system, really, because that's once we get into postmenopause, that's where we produce a lot of our estrogen. When that happens, our appetites can change, our cravings can change, our brain is literally rewiring. So it are it's signaling differently, our sleep may become more disrupted, and you know, stress adds a lot to that, and all of those factors play together, and we end up with more inflammation, we might have more joint pain, we're feeling fatigued, life gets busy, we aren't as active without even really noticing that we're not being as active, and we think, oh, I went to the gym for an hour, right? But that doesn't account for the other 23 hours of your day, especially those evenings where we come home and we just kind of flop to binge watch something to de-stress ourselves. Our metabolism doesn't suddenly just die off, it doesn't just stop. But over time, as we age, especially through menopause, we start to lose our muscle mass if we're not doing something to intentional to maintain it or build it. And between that and less movement, it makes it a lot easier to gain weight and a lot harder to lose.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah, so if you're doing what worked at 30, at 48, and it's still not working for you, that's not really down to you. It's physiology, it's nature, it's how things are as we get older. And so basically the approach has to change as much as anything. So I suppose let's start off then by talking about what you might actually be chasing in January. Is it really weight loss or is it something else? Now, most people who come to us to see us, most women, come to us because they want to lose weight. There's no doubt about it. And most women say that to us I want to lose weight. What they usually mean is I actually want less body fat, especially around the middle, clothes that feel better, more energy and confidence, and better health markers. So we've been conditioned over the years to think about all of those things as weight loss being the catch-all term for them. It's a term that most people tend to use, right? So the thing with that is that your scale weight is just your body's relation to gravity, basically, right? It includes your fat, includes your muscle, it includes bone, it includes water, it includes the food in your gut. So it includes the lots and lots of different things, and you can stay the same on the scales, but lose fat and gain muscle. Huge, huge win. Or you can also do the opposite, right? The scale can look down, the muscle mass can be down, your energy can be down, and you can actually look bigger, more bloated than what you did previously. So that is absolutely not a win. Now, Julie, I know you call this scale gaslighting, so why don't you explain what that is a little bit more?

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, absolutely. I have I have a very different relationship with a scale after years of having this same battle. The scale is the number one gaslighter in your life. It's brilliant at telling you, as James said, your relationship to gravity at a specific moment in time. It gives you that number with zero context. It doesn't talk about how much of your body weight is fat. It doesn't talk about what an amazing person you are. It doesn't matter about your skills and your qualities. It doesn't talk about how much of that number is the bloat from last night's pizza and prosecco. You know, inflammation carries a number with it. So letting that number decide the trajectory of your day, whether you're a good person, or what you're allowed to eat is completely unhelpful. I'll just leave it politely at that, right? You're allowed to want fat loss. That's perfectly fine. And you don't have to, but your worth is not measured in stone kilograms or pounds, right? We we need to get rid of this scale-only dieting because it doesn't, it doesn't pay attention to how our bodies actually work in midlife. You know, we talk people say muscle weighs more than fat. Well, it doesn't actually weigh more than fat. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, but it takes up a lot less space on your body. So if you have lots of muscle, your scale weight may actually increase while your body circumference and your clothing sizes decrease fairly substantially. And I can say that because that has been my personal experience over the last many years. So if the real goal is fat loss, you want to be healthy, you want to feel like yourself again, then what actually works in menopause?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Well, I suppose we better start off here by taking a little bit of a step back. The reason that most diets tend not to work is, or they tend not to work in menopause at least, is that they rely on something that in the fitness industry we call psycho, calories in versus calories out. And we've all heard of this now, right? It's what every single calorie counting app has been promoting for us to do for ages, and it's just have a moderate to extreme calorie deficit in your diet, and that will help you lose weight. Now, that is basic thermodynamics. There is some truth behind that, but the problem is that this concept of psycho is not wrong, it's just it ignores all the other stuff that affects both sides of that equation in midlife. So, yes, psycho as a concept holds where it breaks down is in midlife because things that affect both sides of the equation actually change the balances. So let's just talk through some of those from a headline point of view because you're probably wanting to hear about what you should be doing at this point in life, and we'll get onto that very, very shortly. But first of all, so hot your hormones are going to change how and where you store store the fat. So that all that concept of deficit is equal and easy loss just really doesn't work anymore because it hits quite different. You likely lost some muscle as you you're getting older, so your engine, you know, your metabolism, the thing that's keeping you going, is smaller, even if you're eating the same as you were before. Stress and bad sleep, they really crank up things like hunger and craving. So you could accidentally eat more than what the maths are saying in your bed, and in your head. Sorry, you've got more processed on-the-go food in modern diets, and particularly in midlife, where we tend to find it hard to break down foods, those same calories hit harder and keep you less full than home-cooked stuff. You've got what is called um non-exercise. I forget what the apple is. Yeah, non- see, it's so complicated, I can't remember it. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is the movement that you do outside of the gym, those other 23 hours that Julie was talking about, that tends to drop as you hit midlife. So lots and lots of things affect that calories in, calories out equation much, much more. So Julie and I have developed what we call a five-star-step hierarchy of fat loss in menopause. We're going to take you through that quite quickly. Julie, let's get straight into number one. Step number one then. What is it?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

So the step number one is the nutrition. That is your foundation. Every cell in your body has to be replaced, and it's replaced based on what you put into your body. So, what we promote is eating the highest quality food you can afford, ideally cooked from scratch where possible, because that's going to better support your hormone health. Your body recognizes and knows what to do with it. It's going to reduce inflammation and help your energy, your bone health, your digestive health, all of the things that matter. Macros are going to be a little different in midlife. We want to focus on protein first because it's crucial for preserving your muscle mass, supporting your metabolism and keeping it active. It's going to help with fat loss and recovery. It will also keep you feeling fuller longer. So your energy will be better when you get sufficient amounts of protein. And we tend to under-at protein anyway, especially in midlife. Healthy fats, of course, we get we're still fat phobic from the low-fat craze of, I don't know, was it the 80s or 90s? I don't remember. But we have to have healthy fats to produce hormones. We need them for our brain and heart health. We need them for fat-soluble vitamins so our body can absorb them and use them. And carbs are not the enemy. Thank you very much. When we focus on the right kinds of carbs, very high fiber carbs in the right portions, and that's really the key, we can eat carbs and enjoy them. So when we look at simple ideas for portion sizes, we look at palms of protein, so the size of your hand minus your fingers, the width and thickness, is a serving of protein for you, which is great because it's scalable to your body. It's always with you, I hope. And you can gauge, sort of eyeball your protein servings that way. Fists of vegetables, again, sized for your body, cupped hands of starchy carbs, a serving of carbohydrates is what fits into your cupped hand. Most people are very shocked by that. And thumbs of fat, one to two of each per meal as a starting point. And then you can adjust depending on how that works for you and how it feels and how that shows up in your body and your energy and your sleep and the way your clothes fit and all that sort of thing. And then we also emphasize slowing down to speed up. People are like, how can I lose weight quickly? The fastest way to lose weight is to slow down. Eat mindfully, take time with your food, chew it thoroughly so you can digest it well, put your cutlery down in between bites. Don't eat in front of a screen so you're paying attention because we also eat with our eyes first. So when we look at the plate, we're set, we see colors, we have smell the food, and then we slow down and really enjoy that. We feel much more satisfied with less when we go more slowly. And that also gives your hunger and fullness cues a chance to really show up. There's about a 20-minute lag between your gut and your brain when your gut tells your brain you've had enough to eat. So if you're shoveling your food down, you could be eating two or three times as much as you actually need or want. And that makes a big difference, of course. So if you if you skip your nutrition focus and jump straight into exercise thinking you're gonna burn it all off, you're basically trying to build your house on sand without a foundation. That's all I've got to say.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Thank you. So step two then. Um most people thinking, do exercise come in now? No, exercise doesn't come in just yet either. Uh step two is actually your unsung fat loss hero, and it's sleep. So sleep is kind of like the cornerstone of good health for everybody, particularly for women in menopause. Poor sleep wrecks your mood, it wrecks your hormones, increases your cravings, affects your appetite, affects your energy levels, your recovery, everything you need for change to take place when it comes to your body composition is governed in some way, shape by sleep. And if you're regularly getting under seven hours, it's a massive, massive drag on fat loss. Now, that is not just Julian I saying that there are tons and tons of studies that show this. Why does it happen? Well, first of all, bad sleep increases your hunger, especially for quick carbs, it absolutely tanks your whip willpower and any impulse control that you might have. And there's evidence as well that it sort of like makes your menopausal symptoms worse too, and that can lead to just more comfort eating and less movement. So lots and lots of practical midlife-friendly tweaks that you can make. Um, the key one that we tend to teach to people is a 3-2-1 style window. So three hours before bed, no food, two hours before bed, put away your um work, no more work, and then one hour before bed, take away screens. Keep your bedroom darker and cooler, phones off or in airplane mode, none of that doom scrolling in bed, all those kind of things can help sort out your sleep. Now that's not just gonna make it easier and nicer for people to be around you, but it's gonna make every other fat loss habit easier as well. And of course, light with sleep is um step three, Julie.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yes, this is our favorite one. Step three is stress. When we can lower the stress load, everything can change. Everything we're trying to do is going to land better and more effectively. We have to acknowledge the reality of midlife, right? We're nobody is short on stress. And every workshop we've ever done, we ask, who's not stressed? Raise your hand, and never a hand goes up. We have careers and jobs and partners and kids and aging parents and health stuff and community and household and you know, pets, everything. You name it all at once, and it just seems to pile on the more life goes on. And stress is going to block your fat loss because you're getting less sleep or poorer sleep, which leads to more emotional eating because you're and more cravings. Your body just wants something to soothe itself, whether that's emotionally or energy-wise. Your blood sugar is going to be jumping up and down because of the menopause transition and the changes in your hormone levels. And that makes everything more erratic, including your appetite. So bear in mind that when you're intensely exercising, you know, I see a lot of people doing HIIT training, high intensity interval training, or um CrossFit or whatever. And I'm not saying those things are bad, but in midlife, those things are also stress on your body. So when you're stacking one of those things on top of the other, it can really make a difference in your body's ability to respond and recover. So we like to promote practical ways to support your stress. We say stress is the number one enemy of women in menopause, and firmly, firmly believe that. When you have small, even tiny but realistic stress relief practices in your life, this can make a huge difference. Something as simple as breath work, breathing, breathing in for a count of four, breathing out for a count of six. That additional long exhale actually engages your parasympathetic nervous system and calms you down. Taking brief walks, getting up and moving your body around, setting some boundaries for yourself, learning to say no more often. These are really important things that are going to help you manage that stress load. And, you know, look at where you can remove things or simplify things. Just, you know, not expecting yourself to just cope better or just deal with it or just try harder, right? It isn't about having a stress-free life because that's not realistic, but it is about reducing your chronic stress load enough so that your body actually feels safe enough to change the way you want it to. So that leads into the one everybody wants to know about, right, James?

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Well, it's the one everybody's been waiting for, I'm sure. All the gym buddies have been waiting for. Yes, step four is finally training or structured exercising. And why we left this in place number four, then? Well, because it's really a multiplier and not a foundation. You know, it's really, really important that trait to say that training still matters. Strength training, especially, helps preserve muscle and build new muscle, helps support your bones, it helps with confidence and it helps with longevity. And then you need some moderate cardio as well for things like heart health, stamina, and mood. But the truth is, it's not the main lever that shifts things, it does help a heck of a lot, but it's not the main lever you. You can't out-train a chaotic nutrition program, really bad sleep, and dreadful stress, particularly the latter, because exercise is a stressor as well. It's a good stress, but it's also adding more stress into the equation, as Julie was just saying. So training works really best when it sits on top of those other three steps, not instead of them. And that's a huge challenge that we see with some people. People who, and you might recognise yourself in this, if you're one of those people who spends a lot of time in the gym, but you aren't seeing things shift, it's probably because those other first three levers that we've talked about have not been switched enough. So a simple structure to kind of aim for is somewhere between two and four strength sessions a week, full body, lots of big movements, and as joint-friendly as possible. So we want to protect joints moving forward. Some moderate cardio, and then maybe if you want one or two interval sessions, if your energy and recovery allow those, I wouldn't, if you're absolutely tanked out when it comes to energy and recovery, don't be doing a big interval style session as part of this. Rest has to be part of your plan, not part of failure. So use training to make you stronger, more capable, more resilient, but not as a punishment for whatever it is that you've eaten. Um step five is related, of course, to structured exercise. Julie, take us through non-exercise movement, that quiet game changer.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah, it really is a quiet game changer, too, because this is probably going to matter as much as the training part of this. And as James mentioned before, it's called NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. NEAT sounds a lot easier. Um, it's the movement that happens in the background, right? Because even people who work out a few times a week are still sedentary most of the time. So it isn't going to be the be-all end-all to helping you get into the shape and health that you want to be. So when we sit for long periods of time, it can block our fat loss progress and it can even harm our health, whether you're training or not. It matters because every little bit of movement increases your energy expenditure without hammering your body system all at once. It also shifts your energy. So if you're feeling a bit fatigued or foggy, make doing some kind of simple movement can make a big difference in how that, how your focus works and how your energy works. It's also really good for your joints, it helps your digestion. As I said, it can elevate your mood. Um, so simple practical ideas, right? We need to keep this doable throughout the day because we're all really busy. Walk more, right? If you're doing the school run, if you've got a break at work, you can set a timer. I know my watch buzzes every hour to remind me to get up and move, even if it's just a few minutes of jumping around, taking a few steps, climbing the stairs, going and filling your glass of water because staying hydrated is really important in there as well. Um, you know, dancing while you're doing the chores, park further away. There are lots of simple things that you can do. And we like to call these movement snacks throughout the day. So you just sprinkle them in or exercise confetti, if you will. Um, sprinkle it in throughout the day, especially if longer workouts workouts aren't possible given your schedule. So you can think about this kind of movement as a little gentle nudge that adds up over 52 weeks. I mean, if you burn an extra hundred calories a day, I believe that adds up to 10 pounds in a year if my math re recalls. And that doesn't take a whole lot of extra movement if you change nothing else. So instead of a big two-week January blast that doesn't actually actually last, think about what you can do on a daily basis that's going to build over time. So, how do we turn this into something real, James?

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Well, kind of giving you the what on the why there, I suppose. But the missing piece for most women is how does this fit into my actual life? Um we get that. We know you've got busy jobs, you're commuting, you've got kids to care for, you've got parents, you've got your partner, you've got the PTA, you've got your mates, you've got zero spare brain space, really. So part of the challenge is that we adopt this kind of all or nothing thinking, or many people tend to do. If I can't do it perfectly, what's the point? And the truth is we need to reframe that. You know, it's often not that we've failed. Plans like the kind that you get in most diet programmes and stuff have never been built for your reality in the first place. So adopt what we call a positive messy attitude. So doing a little bit better is better than perfect. Get some small repeatable steps in that are going to be all that heroic January suffering, and you will actually see that fat loss can still happen in menopause, and when fat loss happens in menopause, those of you who actually are not convinced and you still want to go on the scale, you will probably see that the scale goes down as well. And to help with all that, that's why we've created the workshop that we're doing next week. So, Julie, why don't you tell people a little bit more about next week's workshop on the 17th, Wednesday the 17th?

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Sure. And and by the way, we haven't completely lost our minds talking about weight in the middle of December, you know, a week before Christmas. The truth is, you know, if you this is about navigating the holidays with a sensible plan so you don't have to give up all of your favorite holiday indulgences. Um, but if you're tired of starting over from zero every January, then you will love this free workshop. We're calling it Five Steps to Master Your Menopause Weight Loss. Um, we don't want you to have to start over in January. We want you to be able to enjoy the holidays as well as start January feeling like you're not starting from zero. So, in about 90 minutes during the workshop, we're gonna help you identify which of these big rocks matters the most for you right now. We're gonna help you choose one or two simple actions that feel doable for the rest of December. Trust me, that is actually possible. And then we're gonna sketch out a realistic plan for 2026 that's gonna focus on fat loss and health and confidence rather than punishment and restriction and misery. So the other thing is if you know you're gonna want more support in January, we'll also share at the workshop how our Transform in Four called T4 program can actually help you put all this into practice without living on salad and self-loathing in January. So there's there's no pressure about any of this. It's just we want to give you some options that will actually support you. So if you want to save your spot, you can go to five steps.fabulousbeyond40.com or clink the link, click the link in the show notes. Um, and if you've got a friend who always messages you on January saying, right, we have to we have to do this new diet, send her this episode and the workshop link as well because the more the merrier. Let's do it differently this year, right? You're not behind, your body isn't broken, there's nothing wrong with you. You just need a plan that matches this phase of your life. So that's what I've got.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Excellent. So that's it for this week. Then hopefully we'll see you next Wednesday on that workshop. That's Wednesday, December the 17th. We will have the link in the show notes. Of course, like and share this episode if you've got anybody who you feel could use the information that we've talked about. And we'll be back next week with another episode, which will be our last one until New Year's. So we're coaches James and Julie of Fabulous Beyond 40. Remind you to stay strong, stay safe, and stay fabulous. And we'll see you next time. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Bye, everybody.