The Perimenopause Show with Jennifer Woodward
Hey there, it's Jennifer Woodward, and welcome to The Perimenopause Show – the go-to spot for all things perimenopause. I'm on a mission to demystify this wild ride, sharing stories, laughs, and maybe a few eye-rolling moments. Whether you're knee-deep in hot flashes or just curious, we've got you covered. Expect real talk, expert guests, and a sprinkle of humor because, let's face it, we could all use a laugh during perimenopause. So, grab your favorite drink, get comfy, and let's navigate this rollercoaster together. This is The Perimenopause Show, where we're turning perimenopause into a conversation, not a crisis.
Learn how to gracefully sail through perimenopause with tips on diet, exercise, stress management, sleep, and supplements.
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The Perimenopause Show with Jennifer Woodward
Perimenopause Weight Loss Secrets! 🌺🏋️♀️ Dive into 10 Tips for Safe Slimming and Lasting Results! 💪✨ (Part 2)
Embark on a transformative adventure with me, Jennifer Woodward, as we navigate the often-overlooked intersection of quality sleep and weight management during perimenopause. With a promise to shed light on how the well-being of your metabolism is intricately tied to those precious Z's, we're peeling back the layers on what it really takes to maintain a healthy weight at a stage when hormones seem to have a mind of their own. I'm sharing not just tips, but a comprehensive game plan that includes building lean muscle, the role of hormone replacement therapy, and the art of mindful eating, all while keeping your hydration levels in a happy balance.
Tune in to an in-depth conversation that's about turning the tide on traditional weight loss paradigms. We're tackling everything from cortisol levels and estrogen dominance to the underrated strength training over the typical treadmill trots. Through candid discussions, we'll explore how functional lab tests can guide you in stress management and why it's crucial to embrace a shift from chasing skinniness to cultivating strength and health. I'll also walk you through the practice of 'hara hachi bu' and why a leisurely meal can make a world of difference to your body's satiety signals.
As we close this episode, remember you're not alone in the journey of perimenopause. We are building a community of incredible women who are redefining this life stage together. So, whether you're seeking advice, sharing your story, or just stopping by to say hello, your voice is the heartbeat of this podcast. Stay tuned for our next rendezvous where we'll continue empowering each other through the ebbs and flows of womanhood. Keep thriving, keep questioning, and keep seeking joy in the transformation.
In today's episode we are going to go over why quality sleep is important and how sleep impacts your weight. We'll be going over hormone replacement therapy from your doctor and also bioidentical, over-the-counter hormone replacement therapy. We'll be talking about why and how you need to build lean muscle mass. We'll be going over mindful eating practices, talking about hydration and its role in weight management and really discussing those long-term maintenance strategies and a preparedness checklist for weight loss. So we have a lot to discuss today. I'm so excited to dive in with you. Thanks for joining me today on the perimenopause show. Hey, there, it's Jennifer Woodward and welcome to the perimenopause show, the go-to spot for all things perimenopause. I'm on a mission to demystify this wild ride sharing stories, laughs and maybe a few eye rolling moments. Whether you're knee deep in hot flashes or just curious, we've got you covered. Expect real talk, expert guests and a sprinkle of humor, because, let's face it, we could all use a laugh during perimenopause. So grab your favorite drink, get comfy and let's navigate this rollercoaster together. This is the perimenopause. So grab your favorite drink, get comfy and let's navigate this rollercoaster together. This is the Perimenopause Show, where we're turning perimenopause into a conversation, not a crisis. Hello and welcome back to the Perimenopause Show. I am Jennifer Woodward. It is so good to have you in today's episode.
Speaker 1:We are going to be continuing our talk on weight loss in perimenopause, because it's such a vast and difficult subject, as you guys know already. It looks a little bit different in perimenopause when we are discussing weight loss, when we are figuring out how to actually you know increase our body composition and decrease our body fat. It's way, way different. All right, let's dive in. So on our episode. Last time we talked about some really specific ways of getting into that weight loss groove and perimenopause. We know that the impact of stress and decades of over dieting and over exercising have really led us to a place in perimenopause where it's really freaking hard to lose weight. It's one of the main complaints I get from my women. It's one of the things I don't like to touch with a 10 foot pole because it's so difficult for so many women. But I can tell you there are many strategies that I have used now over the years to work with my clients so that we can experience, you know, study and significant weight loss. I'm going to share some of those things with you, but, as we also know, it's not just like cutting calories in perimenopause.
Speaker 1:There are so many contributing factors to a healthy metabolism a healthy autonomic nervous system and really working on getting out of fight or flight mode. And it's when we get out of fight or flight mode that we are able to feel safe enough. You know that our nervous system and our brain or thyroid are able to feel safe enough in order to lose weight. So let's start with sleep. Let's talk about sleep first. Now, what is good sleep? Look like I have an aura ring. I track my sleep every single night. We laugh as practitioners because sometimes, you know, we'll ask each other how'd you sleep last night? And we'll say, wait, let me check my aura ring. Like we don't know how I slept last night without our aura ring data. However, you know, using a little bit of data can be really, really helpful for a period of time because you can see, you know how long you're in deep sleep and light sleep and REM sleep. And what we want in perimenopause is not just sleep. We want quality sleep. So we want over an hour of deep sleep every night. We want plenty of time spent in REM, where we are in that rapid eye movement and our bodies are getting that rest and repair that they actually need. It's in the sleep that we're able to fully sink into our parasympathetic nervous system and if you're waking up a lot during the night or you wake up in the morning and you don't feel rested, then you likely haven't spent enough time in that rest and digest or parasympathetic nervous system dominant state and you know, to be able to lose weight, effectively, make new healthy hormones and really feel good in perimenopause. So we want, between you know, six and eight hours of sleep.
Speaker 1:I was working with my own coach a few months back and I was telling her you know, I'm only getting seven hours of sleep a night. She's like Jennifer, that's amazing. Why are you complaining that you're getting seven hours of relatively unbroken sleep every night? I'm like I don't know cause I'm a big baby. But most of her clients were also in perimenopause, you know are experiencing really broken sleep, maybe getting four or five, six hours of sleep at night. So if you're getting seven or eight hours, that's pretty dang good. If you're not, we want to talk about strategies to increase the length and depth of your sleep. So let's start with that. The first thing I have my clients do is realize that deep sleep at night starts first thing in the morning. So first thing in the morning I have my clients expose their brains and their eyes to outside light.
Speaker 1:Uh, if we're inside all day long and we are just sitting in our computer and we're looking at our phone and we're under led lights at an office, then we're not getting that pineal gland activation in order to create, you know, proper amounts of serotonin and proper amounts of melatonin so that our bodies have a normal diurnal cortisol pattern. Our sleep wake cycles, you know, are relatively efficient, meaning that during the day, you know, we're secreting cortisol from the time we wake up in the morning until about 2 PM in the afternoon, and then our bodies taper off with that cortisol secretion and start increasing melatonin. Um, and melatonin is our sleepy hormone. Melatonin and serotonin are actually created from the same core products and they are, you know, brain hormones, but they're actually start, the creation, starts starts our gut and our microbiome. So we really, you know, see that the body is holistic, sleep is holistic, and so in order to get a good night's sleep, we want, first thing in the morning, to get exposure to bright lights to outside, like that full spectrum of sunlight as early as possible. If it's winter, if it's a cloudy day, you can still go outside. Even if it's overcast and cloudy or relatively dark in the morning, you're still getting a better wavelength, broad spectrum wavelength of, you know, the full rainbow, all of the lights. If you're outside rather than inside, you can also kind of, you know, circumvent that with some daylight inside your office. You can get lamps for inside your office that you know, mimic that full spectrum wavelength. It's not going to be as effective as you actually getting outside, but it can still be really helpful. The sun lamp is one that you can get off of Amazon or online. That can really help mimic that daylight, that full spectrum wavelength, so that your body starts secreting the hormones that it really needs in order for you to sleep well at night. And keep in mind as you are, you know, integrating some of these sleep hacks. It's going to take a couple of nights, it's going to take maybe a couple of weeks. Don't be discouraged. You know, sleep kind of happens on a continuum and even if it's not perfect, with the first couple of hacks that you introduce, you will get there.
Speaker 1:I speak from experience. It also takes a lot of energy to sleep well. It takes a lot of calories, it takes a lot of stored energy inside of our bodies to have a really deep, good night's sleep, and so the other thing that I recommend for my women is getting adequate calories, adequate protein and adequate carbohydrates. If you don't know what that looks like, go back to some of our previous episodes and listen, because I do give you recommendations on what I want you to eat during the day in perimenopause. You know to. To synopsize that and put it in a nutshell, it's getting at least a hundred grams of quality animal protein every single day. It's getting somewhere between 1800 to 2000 calories or more every single day. If you're in a deficit, you're in 1600, 1500, 1400 calorie a day deficit for an extended period of time. One of the first things your body is going to do is shut down healthy, quality sleep, because it's a compensatory reactive mechanism from the body where the body's like. You got to get up right now and get me something to eat. I am starving, I have malnourished, so it's time for you to get your booty out of your warm bed into the kitchen or into that hunter and gatherer mentality and give me some calories so that my nervous system can calm down and I can sleep.
Speaker 1:We do know from published literature that the simple act of eating can reduce cortisol. And if you're not sleeping well at night it's generally because you've got a stress response. You're in that fight or flight mode Cortisol has secreted, you know, unnaturally or abnormally. Again, we want plenty of cortisol during the day, but not at night. If you're starving yourself during the day, if you're working out too hard, if you're under eating, then that cortisol response is inevitably going to happen during the night hours. And when cortisol is high it's also cortisol is also called nature's alarm clock, right. So when cortisol is high, it's also cortisol is also called nature's alarm clock, right. So when cortisol is high we are amped up, right, our nervous system is activated. So you know we're going to feel like we can't sleep. We might feel like our heart is pounding, we might feel like we're sweaty or we're wide awake. We call this tired but wired. Obviously you're exhausted but you can't get to sleep, and so eating just a simple snack can reduce that cortisol and help you get to sleep. So some of the snacks I recommend at bedtime or in the middle of the night if you're up at 1am, 2am 3am, you can't sleep. Get out of bed, get one of these snacks and try to go back to sleep. After a few days you'll be able to train yourself to do this.
Speaker 1:I have one client who had been eating a 1500 calorie diet for an extended period of time and one of our main complaints was that she could not sleep. So we upped her calories, we upped her carbohydrates, we gave her a bedtime snack, because she had trained herself from the time that she was a teenager and beyond not to eat after dinner. But by adding in her bedtime snack, increasing her calories, increasing her protein, she was able to start sleeping for the first time in ages. And guess what? Last time I talked to her, she was down three or four pounds as well. She's a very slight, petite woman. She wanted to lose a little bit of weight, but she doesn't have a lot of weight to lose. So the fact that her her weight had started, you know, mobilizing after really years and years, was really encouraging to her. Sleeping Well helps to to help us lose weight right, or it leads to to weight loss for a lot of women.
Speaker 1:So some of the snacks that I recommend at bedtime or in the middle of the night would be number one the adrenal cocktail. We can post that in our show notes. So the adrenal cocktail is a mixture of orange juice or coconut water plus cream of tartar plus salt. You can add some collagen If you would like. All of those things the sodium, the potassium, the glycine in the collagen all calm the body down and allow you to sleep a little bit better. To see, the act of getting a little bit of sugar and calories palms down the cortisol response and helps you sleep. You can also do something like nuts and fruit. That's a really nice combination. You can do cheese and fruit another good combination or lunch meat and fruit. So whole foods you know at night or if you wake up in the middle of the night, can be really helpful at getting back to sleep All right. So getting early morning sunlight and getting plenty of outside time during the day, plenty of movement throughout the day, is also helpful. Walking your 10,000 steps a day, every single day, outside, could be very effective for, you know, calming the stress response and getting enough movement in the body to where you're able to sleep at night and then also eating a little bit something, a bedtime snack or something in the middle of the night if you're not able to sleep well. Little bit something, a bedtime snack or something in the middle of the night if you're not able to sleep well. So that's what we want to do, because if you sleep well you are more likely to lose weight, if that's what you're trying to do. So sleep really is key. Let's move on to hormone replacement therapy.
Speaker 1:I'm not a doctor, so I can't diagnose, treat or prescribe. I do work with some bioidentical over-the-counter hormones because they are available in the United States to non-licensed practitioners. They're available to you as a lay person. You can walk into a health food store and buy a progesterone cream if you'd like. You can walk into CVS and buy some DHEA if you'd like. Obviously, I would never recommend you doing that without testing, but that's something that you know we FDNs will work with.
Speaker 1:In our practice are targeted over-the-counter hormones, as a you know, based on the results of your functional lab tests. So I do see that some of the things that are really helpful in my women are supporting abnormal cortisol levels. So either bringing down high cortisol through diet, rest, exercise, stress management supplements or raising up low cortisol it's just as hard to lose weight. Their cortisol levels are low as when they are high. So really balancing out those cortisol levels through supplements and and then the dress protocol and again, dresses, diet, rest, exercise, stress management and proper supplementation based on lab work diet, breast exercise, stress management and proper supplementation based on lab work those can be really really helpful to you know, start that weight moving.
Speaker 1:You know, the other things that I see based on lab tests, especially the Dutch test, are when estrogen levels are sky high as opposed to progesterone levels that are low. You know, we can call that estrogen dominance. It's really hard for women to lose weight because estrogen is a growth hormone, right, it's promoting growth. And for women in perimenopause, you know, we're not trying to get taller, right, we're not trying to grow bigger hips anymore. We did that in puberty, but in our forties we don't need that anymore, and so the growth tends to affect our fat cells instead of things that we want it to affect, right? So bringing down excess levels of estrogen and bringing up insufficient levels of progesterone can be a really helpful way to help mobilize weight too.
Speaker 1:Now if you are, you know, bent on going to your doctor and asking for prescription strength hormones, things like, you know, estrogen, estradiol can be really helpful as you transition into menopause itself. Low progesterone, you know, definitely needs to be addressed as well. My personal recommendation is based on the work of Dr Geraldine Pryor, dr Laura Bryden so these are experts in the space but I would never, ever, ever, recommend going on estradiol or estrogen without some protective progesterone. Again, that's not just me as an FDN practitioner, that's based on many, many you know doctors who have, you know, been in the space for a long time and know that progesterone is very protective against the you know, possible harmful effects of too much estrogen. So if that is the route you want to take, you want to go to your doctor. That's reasonable.
Speaker 1:I can tell you that after working with so many women, I have never seen hormone replacement therapy, either, you know, over the counter or prescription, solve a weight problem like, in and of itself, right. It's not like you go on hormones and boom, your weight neutralizes that. That just does not happen. So don't put all of your you know stock and hope and thinking well, once I get on estrogen or once I get on testosterone, you know, or once I get on progesterone, my weight's going to normalize. You know, in select cases it probably has an effect in and of itself, but most of the time it ends up to be more of a holistic picture.
Speaker 1:For women in perimenopause, just that addition of hormones, again over the counter or prescription, generally doesn't fix weight problems, so that's a bummer. But it's also encouraging that there are so many other things that you can do to manage weight and perimenopause. One of them is building lean muscle mass. This has always kind of been important for women. You know, we spend our twenties, generally in our thirties, trying to be as skinny as we can, right Like we don't want muscle, we don't want to look like bodybuilders. We're trying to diet down to fill the least amount of space as possible. But then in our forties something really tends to change. I see a lot of women start picking up, you know, lifting and strength training in their forties because they like the way it makes them feel. They are no longer as concerned with just being as skinny as possible. They want to be as strong and as healthy as possible, and that's my personal thought. That is, you know, my personal goal and then my goal with my clients.
Speaker 1:So this is one of the reasons that we would stop doing so much chronic cardio. Number one because it keeps you in the stress response, right, keeps you in fight or flight. And number two, because it's not doing anything for your body composition. It's not doing anything for long-term weight loss, right? If you're just doing an hour of cardio every single day, you are training your body to need that much cardiovascular exercise just to keep your basal metabolic rate where it's at. You're also breaking down muscle tissue because, remember, you know, exercise increases cortisol and cortisol is catabolic and the catabolism you know that the catabolic action of cortisol actually breaks down your skeletal, skeletal muscle tissue and decrease the muscle that you do have and make you feel and look a little bit more flabby. So there's really no reason to do lots of cardiovascular exercise in perimenopause.
Speaker 1:You know we want to walk 10,000 steps a day or more and we want to strength train, to get strong as hell. So you are not doing, you know that that body pump that we did in our twenties and thirties where you're just like spending an hour lifting pretty easy weights, right, or maybe that was just me, maybe you lifted hard weights, but I was like I'm just here for the music, lifting like five and 10 pound weights. But now in perimenopause we want to be as strong as possible, and you'll do that, you know, through progressive overload, where you find a trainer in your local gym or you get on. You know online find a trainer online and you start actively and, you know, very intentionally, lifting heavier and heavier and heavier weights so that you build muscle. If you are building muscle and eating plenty of protein, you should be able to keep relatively uh, similar body composition that you've had in your twenties and thirties. But if you're not lifting weights, it's going to be a little bit harder and you are going to feel a little bit flabbier. Now, muscle it burns a lot of calories too. So the more muscle you have, the more you can eat, which is really fun, right, like, don't you want to be strong and cut and eat whatever you want? Like, you can actually do that If you are strength training as part of your exercise routine, which is very exciting. We'll talk more about that in coming shows, but that's essentially one of the things that you really do need to be doing in perimenopause in order to lose weight and keep it off.
Speaker 1:Let's now shift over into mindful eating practices. Now, oh man, there is so much that can be said about this. Like, I find that women in perimenopause are not very mindful. They are busy. They're too busy to be mindful. I myself fall into that same trap. It's very hard for us to find time to just sit with our thoughts, to sit with, you know, stress reducing or stress relieving practices throughout the day. So it's one of the harder things to do to incorporate some mindful eating into our day. But you have to do this.
Speaker 1:I teach my clients, as we switch over to eating, you know, whole foods with plenty of protein, that they need to start paying attention to their hunger and fullness cues. We have two hormones that regulate hunger and fullness in our body. We have ghrelin, which is our hunger hormone. I like to think of it as, like grr, I'm hungry ghrelin. And ghrelin, when it's secreted by the body, it makes us go out and hunt for food. We're hungry. And then leptin is the hormone that shuts off that hunger mechanism and tells us hey, we're full, we're done Right.
Speaker 1:And I want you to take this thought exercise right. How many times have you been sitting with, like uh, chips and salsa, or like cereal or candy, or you know, some sort of dessert, ice cream, and you you know, theoretically know you're full of your brains Like you need to stop eating, but you just can't. You can't stop eating Like you're, you just keep going. There is a place for that next scoop of ice cream. You don't know where it came from, but it's somewhere in your tummy. Now think about you eating a you know ribeye steak a fatty ribeye steak and you being full after eating that ribeye and thinking to yourself I'm going to take one more bite of ribeye. And then your body's like no, I can't do that, like I physically cannot eat another bite.
Speaker 1:We want to stay in that kind of fullness arena. You know, in perimenopause we want to be so satiated that the body is able to pay attention to its leptin signals, shut off that hunger and be done with the meal. So this is why protein is so important, because protein will activate those enzymes, that that key YY which will shut off our hunger. It's just going to stop it. Like you can't eat another bite, which is really really great, right? If you're eating a ton of carbohydrates and you know not enough protein, then you're going to have that ghrelin be over activated and the left-in signal suppressed. It's going to be really hard to participate with mindful eating if you're just freaking hungry all the time. So I would encourage you number one, get that protein, a hundred grams or more per day. And number two, stop eating when you're about 80% full.
Speaker 1:The Japanese have this practice of hara hachi bu. I like to talk about it with my clients. It's roughly translated of I eat till I'm about 80% full. Right, and I also like to call this the Chipotle burrito phenomenon. Where you are hungry, you decide, since you're hungry, you're going to eat an entire Chipotle burrito. And 20 minutes after you've eaten that burrito you think to yourself I have made a terrible mistake. Your tummy hurts so bad you feel awful. That's because it takes about 20 minutes for the brain to use the vagus nerve to signal, or the stomach to signal through the vagus nerve to the brain that you're full but that leptin has been activated that the meal is ready to be done. So if you are scarfing down a Chipotle burrito size meal in five minutes, you're never going to have time to allow your body to feel satiated. So I encourage you sit in a quiet place to take your meals. Refuse to eat in your car. Refuse to eat standing up.
Speaker 1:Give yourself that Downton Abbey experience of like a meal at least once a day where you chew your food. You set your fork down in between. You know bites. You have a little sip of water in between bites. Maybe you have a little bit of conversation with someone else in between bites. You enjoy your meal.
Speaker 1:This is the first step in mindful eating. All right, mindful eating doesn't mean you have to be like, oh, I'm going to do breath work and, you know, have a mantra. No, it's just like can you eat slowly enough to where your body pays attention to its hunger and fullness cues? So eat until you're about 80% full, take at least 20 minutes with your meals and make sure you're chewing your food until it is chewed up. All right, I really, really cannot emphasize this enough. This will help with cravings, it will help with overeating, it will help with making sure that you have a root at room for enough protein in your meal and in your day. So that's the first step, for mindful eating is just making sure that you take at least 20 minutes in a quiet environment to enjoy your meals.
Speaker 1:All right, next up, let's talk about hydration. Hydration is important. This is my fun Stanley cup. You can see it says Jennifer Woodward nutrition on it. I love this cup. You know all my kids are into Stanley, so I was like why not hop on the train? And even though it's ginormous, I feel like I drink more water with it and I love it anyway.
Speaker 1:So get a fun water bottle, all right, and drink your water. Now you can over drink water. This is such like an American woman sort of thing. I tell you drink more water. You're like great drink like you know 120 ounces of water a day or more and you don't necessarily need that much. You should be drinking until you've satisfied your thirst.
Speaker 1:Not over drinking, not pounding water Like it's going out of style or like it's your job. But stay hydrated. This will cut back on cravings, it will help your metabolism, it will help your digestion. But don't over drink water because if you over drink water you're actually peeing out all your minerals. We find this a lot on the hair tissue mineral analysis that we run that women have very depleted levels of sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium. That is because they are so stressed and they're overexercising and they're under sleeping and they're drinking too much water and they are peeing out all of their healthy minerals.
Speaker 1:So one of the things I like to recommend is either adding some electrolytes to the water or adding just a little pinch of sea salt to your water. So for something like a 40 ounce water bottle you'd add probably like an eighth of a teaspoon of great Celtic sea salt or Redmond's real salt, just to get those trace minerals and those electrolytes into your water. And that way you're keeping minerals in the body as you're hydrating it, instead of just peeing all of them out. We need those minerals in order to be able to lose weight. So you have to have healthy levels, especially of potassium, especially of magnesium and of sodium, because those regulate your adrenals and they regulate your fluid balance and they regulate how your body responds to stress. And remember, if you're stuck in fight or flight mode, in stress mode, then it's going to be damn near impossible to lose weight. So we want hydration, but we also want minerals.
Speaker 1:All right, now, moving into kind of those long-term maintenance strategies, things that I recommend doing is do the Betty white. I read this like five years ago and I love what Betty white did. She was in television her whole life and she knew she had to be in front of the camera and she would not allow her weight to increase or decrease by five pounds at any given time. She would weigh herself every single day. But you know, buddy, I was a pretty happy lady, right? I'm sure she didn't like let the scale dictate her whole day.
Speaker 1:And it becomes a lot easier if you have data like how many times have you gone to weigh yourself and you're like I'm not, I'm not weighing myself till I lose five pounds, but how are you going to know if that happens? Right, if you're not weighing yourself? It's like this, this self-fulfilling prophecy. So just you know, muster up your courage, get on the scale, collect your data on a day, figure out what you want to get to for your healthy weight and then put steps in place to not allow yourself to deviate from that number by five pounds in either direction. If everyone did this, it would be way easier for all of us to control our weights, cause we wouldn't let it get out of control right now. I'm not saying this not like there's a hormonal component and a stress component to weight gain, because of course there is. But you know, just staying on top of your boundaries can be really, really helpful If you were a woman in perimenopause who has, like you know, between five and 11, maybe up to 20 pounds to lose.
Speaker 1:This is going to look different if you've got a lot of weight to lose, of course, but if you just got like a size or two that you've been fluctuating with, you know getting using these principles, getting down to the weight that you want to get to and then collecting daily data so that you can see, man, I'm up a few pounds. So I need to really get my hydration, I really need to focus on my protein, I need to stop eating chips and salsa, I need to lay off the wine for a little bit, get back down to the weight that you know you're comfortable at and then kind of cruise from there. Right, so that's a really good long-term maintenance strategy is the Betty white is weighing yourself every day and not letting yourself fluctuate five pounds up or five pounds under. You know what that set weight is. You weigh yourself in the morning. It's very normal to fluctuate.
Speaker 1:I actually had a different coach One time. We told me Jennifer, it's normal for me, it was normal for my coach to fluctuate up to 11 pounds before her period. Now, I'm not saying that's normal for everyone, but it gave me a lot of peace of mind because I will usually fluctuate between five and seven pounds before my period. Don't freak out. All right, it's totally fine, that's very normal, especially if you are, you know, in perimenopause. Now you can measure your progress by averaging your weight for the week. So if you know you're up a couple pounds and then down a couple pounds, that's really normal. But if at the end of the day you're just about the same, or like a pound up or a pound down, rate right, that's exactly where you want to be at that set point.
Speaker 1:So what we want to do with weight loss is keep in mind our biometrics. So you want to make sure that your mood is good. If you've cut calories too low, if you've cut carbs or fat, you know, or especially protein too low, you're going to have a very terrible mood. If your mood is good too low, you're going to have a very terrible mood. If your mood is good, your energy is good, if your libido is there, if your period is relatively happy, if you're pooping normally, if you're sleeping between seven and eight hours maybe six to eight hours every single night, and if you're managing stress, you should be able to at least move into a bit of a cut so that you can lose weight, and the cut is way easier if you're really, really, really focusing on protein, and so that is the first thing I would really encourage you to do Just check in with yourself.
Speaker 1:Like, how are you doing? What do you need? Ask your body, body, what do you need today? Generally, it's going to be more protein, I'll tell you, but not always, um, you know, making sure that you're you are focusing on that stress management, your breath work, your outside time, your Epsom salt. So those are very, very important if you are trying to lose weight, because without getting out of fight or flight mode, it's going to be really hard for you to lose weight. So that's my story.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed it. There's obviously a lot more when it comes to weight loss, but those are the principles that I use with my clients to help them lose weight. It's not easy. It's really hard in perimenopause, it's not always pleasant, but it can be done. It just has to be done the right way. So I hope you've learned something today.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed our perimenopause show today weight loss let us know, leave us a note, give us ideas for future episodes. We would love to hear from you, but thank you for being here and we'll see you on the next episode of the perimenopause show. Well, that's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed our candid chat about perimenopause the good, the challenging and everything in between. If you found this episode as enlightening and entertaining as I did, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a dose of perimenopausal realness.
Speaker 1:Before you go, remember that you're not alone in this journey. We're building a community of kick-ass women embracing the changes and supporting each other. Connect with us on social media, share your stories and let's keep this conversation going. And hey, if you have a burning question, a topic you'd love us to tackle, or just want to say hello, shoot us a message. Your feedback keeps this podcast fueled and fabulous. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Until next time, take care, stay fabulous and remember perimenopause is just another chapter in the adventure of being a woman. Catch you on the flip side.