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 3)
Embark on a transformative journey with us as we navigate the nuanced world of perimenopause and weight loss. If you've been caught in the frustrating cycle of outdated diet and exercise routines that no longer yield results, this episode promises to enlighten you with tailor-made strategies that harmonize with your body's hormonal shifts. Say goodbye to the one-size-fits-all approach, as we dissect the unique challenges faced by women in their forties, just like our client Emma, and offer a blueprint for personalized success. In the dance of hormones and metabolism, discover why understanding your body's needs is the cornerstone of effective weight management during this pivotal life stage.
This episode is a trove of insight, shedding light on the delicate interplay of hormones, stress, and metabolic health. We tackle head-on the perils of diving into a calorie deficit unprepared, and champion the principles of a safe and gradual approach to weight loss. Learn the secrets behind a metabolic preparedness checklist, the wisdom of a nourishing diet replete with protein, and the game-changing concept of pro-metabolic nutrition. With a focus on long-term sustainability, we guide you through managing a calorie deficit without inviting undue stress on your body, ensuring that your weight loss journey during perimenopause is not just successful, but also a testament to a deeper understanding of your health.
In today's episode, I'm going to give you some long-term maintenance strategies for weight loss. I'm going to give you a checklist to make sure that your body is prepared to go into a cut, into a calorie deficit, and then I'm going to give you the principles of a safe calorie deficit. You have to take really good care of your body in perimenopause. You can't do the same things that you would do to your body when you were in your twenties or thirties. So buckle up, let's talk a little bit more about weight loss today in 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 Show, where we're turning perimenopause into a conversation, not a crisis. Welcome back to the Perimenopause Show.
Speaker 1:I'm Jennifer Woodward, and in today's episode, we are going to continue our exposition on weight loss why? Because it is the number one question that women have for me when we go over our discovery calls. All right, I want to start off today by going over a typical discovery call. I have women book calls with me. They want my one-to-one services. They want to know what's going on with their hormones, they want to know what's going on with their weight, they want to know what's going on with their sleep and libido, but mostly they want to know what's going on with their weight. And so I have this typical client, this client that will call in and I hear the same story every single day and it breaks my heart because women are being sold a false bill of goods. We think that if we do everything right, our bodies will respond in kind. But how do we know that we have it right? Clearly, if it's not working for us, we don't have it right. So if you are being told to just cut calories and exercise more, you don't have it right. So if you are being told to just cut calories and exercise more, you don't have it right. If you are being told to eat a perfectly clean, balanced diet and you're not losing weight, you probably don't have it right, as I just went over, like not 10 minutes ago, with an HTMA client, you can have this perfectly clean diet that you know would take every box on an orthorexics. You know meal plan, right?
Speaker 1:Orthorexia is that phenomenon where people are overly obsessed with the quality of food. It's not that they're concerned with, like calories or macronutrients or micronutrients. It's like is my food clean enough? Right, and your food can be clean enough, but again, according to whose standards? But you still, number one, might be eating too much of it, you might be insulin resistant or you might be stuck in sympathetic nervous system dominance where your body just can't lose weight Even if you cut calories down to, you know, 1500 or 1200 a day.
Speaker 1:So let's go over the typical case of you know a Jennifer Woodward nutrition client who calls me and it's like hey, so nice to meet with you. I want to find out what's going on with my hormones, code minion. I want to find out what's going on with my weight. So here is Emma's intake, you know, and I've changed her name for privacy, but basically she told me she's been working out, she's been eating great. No matter what she does, she has a spare tire that she cannot get rid of this is what else she told me. Monday through Friday, she eats great. She's like on plan, she does all the things. Then she gets a little off track on Saturday and Sunday, you know, eats a little bit more sugar, drinks a little bit more alcohol, because she's tried so hard during the week that she's like screw it, I'm going to do, you know, whatever I want on the weekend, cause what I'm doing during the week is I'm working anyways, right, so I'm just going to eat whatever I want.
Speaker 1:Emma's 41 years old. Two years ago, at 39, her doctor said she might be in perimenopause and asked her what test did your doctor run to corroborate this? What information did your doctor give you to tell you that you were in perimenopause? And she said oh, nothing. She just said you're about the age where you might be in perimenopause. So here's some birth control. And Emma was like no, I don't want to go on birth control. I would like to try to do this a little bit more naturally, because Emma's history had been that of IVF. So she has tried, you know, multiple times to get pregnant through IVF five rounds of IVF and didn't really feel at this point like birth control is the answer. All right. So here's Emma's like daily.
Speaker 1:You know I always ask my clients like what do you eat on a Tuesday? What do you eat on a Saturday? Let's go through a typical day of eating. So here's her typical day of eating on a weekday she has coffee in the morning. She gets up early, she works out on a fasted you know, like empty stomach uh, one cup of coffee and then when she gets back after a workout she has a smoothie, she has athletic greens, she has frozen blueberries, spinach, protein powder, banana and that keeps her full for a while. She has that protein powder. Right Lunch she has a yogurt bowl with some flax seed and some chia seeds and cinnamon and nuts. Sometimes, if she's hungry, midday she'll have a kind of bar. Dinner is always something really healthy, so it's like ground Turkey and cauliflower rice or a salad or you know some other protein and vegetable and they eat at home most days. So this is a really typical client. Right by the time Emma gets home from work, you know she goes to the gym, she gets home, she goes to work and she picks up her daughter between three and 4 PM and then she's running her daughter around the rest of the day, like raise your hand if that's you, and she just doesn't know why she's not losing weight. And this is like such a typical client.
Speaker 1:I can't overemphasize this. You guys, you're doing all the things, everything you read in like self magazine and shape magazine and see on Instagram. You're doing and you're wondering, like what is going on with my body. And I will tell you the number one you're stuck in sympathetic nervous system overdrive, like I again can't emphasize that enough. Number two you're probably pretty dang insulin resistant. You know you have spent decades under, sleeping, over exercising. You know kind of relying on coffee and sugar and, for a lot of us, alcohol for a period of time and that worked for you for a period of time. But really what that was doing was, you know, increasing insulin resistance over a period of years or decades to now, where you can't get that glucose into the cell where it belongs. You're storing glucose in your fat tissue instead of in your liver and in your skeletal muscles where you can use it for energy because you become insulin resistant.
Speaker 1:Uh, and that's another reason that women can't lose weight and that's another reason why I don't see in my practice women losing a ton of weight when they're on a super like balanced diet, right. We really have to emphasize protein in the diet and, as I tell my women like you, can go one of two ways in perimenopause you can either prioritize protein and eat more fat and less carbohydrates, or you can prioritize protein and eat more carbohydrates and less fat. But if you're eating like a typically balanced diet, like a 35, 30, 30 macronutrient breakdown, or you know something worse than that, where you're not getting anywhere close to 35% of your calories as a protein, then you're probably overeating one of your macronutrients and your body is really resisting the mechanism of action of insulin. So, again, you're storing any sugar that you do take in and your fat tissue instead of in your liver and your muscles, and that is a big bummer. So that's it in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:But again, you need to be working first and foremost to get out of sympathetic nervous system dominance. You need to be working first and foremost to get out of sympathetic nervous system dominance. You have to be working on your stress management. So your outside time, your breath work, your leisure time, your Epsom salt packs, your prioritizing protein, these are the things that really get us out of that fight or flight mode and you know, really telling your body hey, you're okay? How many times throughout the day?
Speaker 1:If I were just to call you or text you and ask you like hey, if you were to check in with yourself and ask yourself do I feel okay right now? What would the answer be Right? If I were to be like hey, jennifer, hello, it's 10, 47 AM. Do a self-check. Ask your body, am I okay, am I safe? And more than likely, your initial reaction is going to be no, I am not. I'm stressed out, I haven't eaten enough food, I have too many things to do, I'm pulled in too many directions. I am not safe.
Speaker 1:And that is the signal that we are giving our body every single hour, every single day, every single month. And we wonder why our hormones are all jacked up and why we can't lose weight. Well, we are stuck in that fight or flight mode. So that's why the whole purpose of what I do, what Jennifer Woodburn nutrition, is to get people women specifically out of fight or flight mode so that their bodies are resilient enough to lose weight. And again, if you want more information on specifics, go back and listen to the last two episodes that we have published.
Speaker 1:But let's just say that you are wanting to go into a cut, that you are wanting to reduce your intake of food just a little bit so that you can, theoretically, lose weight. You can only do this after you've been nourished for a period of time. I will not have any of my clients go on a cut unless we've spent at least two or three months eating approximately 2000 calories a day Sometimes it's 1900, sometimes it's 2200, but we have to get up to a physiologically healthy level of calories before we can even think about going into a cut. And what does that look like? Like? How do you know that you're actually ready to lose weight? Well, the work of a researcher and clinician Ray Pete is one of the. You know, one of the men the gurus that really informs what I do with with nutrition is the father of pro metabolic nutrition. There are many fantastic clinicians out there who really adhere to a pro metabolic way of eating. I've done it for a period of time.
Speaker 1:I felt better while I'm doing more pro metabolic eating, which is more carbohydrate heavy, a little less protein, a little less fat, a little more carbohydrate heavy, but really focusing in on your biomarkers and making sure that your body's in that healthy spot in order to lose weight. So let's talk about what that looks like. We want to make sure that our basal body temperature is at least 98 degrees, like 97.6 or above. So the way you can do that is actually like you can measure your body temperature. I actually keep this in my drawer. I had my own coach and I had to measure my body temperature. This is just a little cheap. If you can't see me, cause you're listening to a podcast, I'm just holding up a cheap thermometer I got from Amazon for like $5. This is a bond care brand and if you take your body temperature before you get out of bed in the morning and it's significantly lower than 98 degrees, then your metabolism is not yet healthy enough to go into a cut. Now.
Speaker 1:The next thing on your preparedness checklist would be to have a really stable mood, good energy and a strong libido. Likely, if you're listening to this podcast, that is not you right. Your mood sucks, your energy is tanked and you don't even know what a libido is at this point in your life. When you're metabolically healthy, all of those things are going to feel quite robust, and once those things are robust, then you know that you're probably ready for the stress of your body to go into a little bit of a calorie deficit. We have a huge you know part of our checklist here at Jennifer Woodward Nutrition because we focus on periods like perimenopausal period health. So if you have a painless and symptom-free regular period relatively regular period then you're probably healthy enough to go into a cut. If you don't, then you're not. If you're pooping normally, then you're ready to go into a cut.
Speaker 1:Now this is like the bane of my existence. This is why I hire all of my own coaches, cause I'm continually trying to find out WTF is going on with my gut health. I've done all the things, everything. Right now I'm in a pretty good group working on some of this pro metabolic stuff with my coach, kathleen. So shout out to Kathleen if you ever listened to this. But working on, you know, getting a proper amount of protein and proper amount of carbohydrates and fat, really focusing in on, you know, stress management and autonomic nervous system regulation like way to work through some kind of like heavy emotional and mental stuff about it, a history of a firstborn people pleasing you know, perfectionist type, a kind of person that I am, and the way that really impacts your autonomic nervous system and your your bowel habits. Really it makes you constipated. So so there you go, everybody. That's maybe the first time I've said constipation on the show, but it certainly won't be the last. So, everybody, that's maybe the first time I've said constipation on the show, but it certainly won't be the last.
Speaker 1:If you're pooping, normally one to three times a day, then we know that your metabolism is revving high enough for you to go into a calorie deficit. If it's not, then wait and pause. You're not healthy enough to go into a cut. If you're sleeping at least six to seven hours a night, relatively uninterrupted, maybe you get up to go pee or drink in your bagel water bottle. You know, all day long you get up and you go pee once or twice a night, but you go right back to sleep. That's normal sleep. But if you're up, you know, from one to 3 AM, or you get up at four, 30 and you can't go back to sleep, or you just can't fall asleep. Your body is too stressed out. That is fight or flight mode and you are not ready to go into a cut just yet. All right. And then, finally, if you're managing your stress wall, every little thing makes you fly off the handle, you are not ready to go into a cut.
Speaker 1:If you feel like you can handle with resilience and grace most of the stressors that come your way because every day for us woman is going to be stressful Then it's probably an okay time for you to think about a little bit of a calorie deficit. So that is our preparedness checklist for weight loss. We want to make sure we focus on body temperature being 98.6 or 98.0 degrees to 98.6 degrees, or even beyond. We want stable mood, good energy, a strong libido. We want a painless and symptom-free menstrual period, satisfying and normal bowel movements, one to three times a day, seven hours at least, a quality sleep every night and effective, proper stress management. Now, if that is you, then you are probably ready to go into a little bit of a cut, and I really do recommend you know, work with someone. Of course, I would love to work with you, but there are many people who can work with you on an effective deficit.
Speaker 1:I have had multiple clients who have come to me, though, and I've worked with coaches who just have them go lower and lower and lower in their calories. They're not losing weight, and so their coach is like well, we just need to cut more calories. Well, we just need to cut more calories and after a while, their bodies just burn out, their nervous systems burn out and they're unable to lose any more weight. So that's why I really give you this caveat of making sure that you've got this metabolic checklist preparedness checklist, so that you actually are ready to go into this deficit. And this is what a safe deficit looks like.
Speaker 1:You don't want to cut more than 400 calories at a time and remember this is from an all-time high of 2000 to 2200 calories. Right, if you can stay at 2000, 2100, 2200 calories for months on end and maybe only put on a pound or two pounds or stay at maintenance. That's that's what I aim to do with my clients when we're doing like a reverse diet or or at maintenance. You know we want it. We want the highest number of calories possible without actually gaining a significant amount of weight. That's my threshold. If that's happening for you, then you can probably go into. You know, 300 calorie, 400 calorie deficit it still puts you at 1700 or 1800 calories. That's not anywhere near. You know the starvation number that women go into for months on end, months. You know 1500, 1200, or even lower.
Speaker 1:You can go into a relatively you know heavy deficit for a period of time, but no more than six weeks. You can't handle it. Right, then you're working on increasing your calories again after that. So you want to work down to that target caloric intake and remain in your deficit for really, really only six weeks. I wouldn't do longer than six weeks personally or with clients. Right, you want to do everything you can in that short period of time because you lose a lot of like. You lose a lot of zest for life when you're in a calorie deficit. Right, you can do it. You can go gung-ho real hard for a couple of weeks, but, man, if you have a 12 week cut, you're going to feel pretty crappy. For those last, like you know, month or even two, it's not going to be as effective. So we want maximum efficacy in the shortest period of time. So six weeks is generally the amount of time that I will spend in a cut with my clients. All right, after that six weeks you can take a one week break just to refuel. But this isn't where you go crazy, where you've negated all of your effort. Right, like moi. And so consider this I did a popular shake cleanse.
Speaker 1:After my fourth child, I felt like I was better than everyone else because I lost 20 pounds. I was like, of course you can lose 20 pounds, everyone can lose 20 pounds, you just have to, you know, do this popular shake program. But guess what? Like the day I finished that 28 day cleanse, I remember sitting out in my backyard with a tub of coconut butter, unable to stop myself from eating coconut butter, like who eats coconut butter. It's kind of nasty. And I was just so deprived and so hungry and I didn't have a plan, I didn't have a purpose that I ate that whole freaking jar of coconut butter and I felt really gross afterwards and unsurprisingly tended to, you know, gain my weight back pretty quickly after doing some of those stronger and more you know, just harder, harder diets.
Speaker 1:You don't need to do those things for an extended period of time and you need to have a plan while you're in a deficit and then you need to have a plan for coming out of your deficit. Now also, when you're in your deficit, you want to make sure that you are minimizing your stress as much as possible. When I do the metabolic reset with my clients, which I will do for a select number of clients or we've achieved maintenance for a period of time. It is a lower calorie, like a significantly lower calorie diet, but during that time we're not working out, you're not exercising, you're not inviting extra stress into the body. It's a time of reducing inflammation, reducing food, you know, and reducing stress so that the body can really handle that extra stress of dieting. You don't want to do like an extra stress of dieting and then an extra stress of working out super hard or an extra stress of waking up super early to go do your heavy workout. It really has that. That is the part that has to be balanced. So that is what I really recommend doing with clients, it's what I do myself and it's what I would recommend for you, dear listener or a watcher. I hope those things are helpful today.
Speaker 1:To recap, we've talked about, you know, your preparedness checklist for weight loss, what it looks like to go into kind of that long-term maintenance and then principles of a safe deficit. Now weight loss can be done in perimenopause, but it's much harder, it's different, it looks different than it did, you know, when you're twenties and thirties. So I would encourage you like don't try harder, try different. So we'll include some of that preparedness checklist for you here in the show notes. I would love to hear any questions you have any comments. You know you're free to disagree with me. I would never say that what I do is the only way to do things. It's just one of the ways to do things that seems to work well for me and my clients and something that I just wanted to share with you. But all that to say thank you for listening and join us next time on the perimenopause show. Bye, well, that's a wrap for today's episode.
Speaker 1: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. 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.