Episode 98: 3 Reasons Why Eat Less and Move More Isn't Working in Menopause

You're eating healthy, eating less, and moving more...but the problem is getting worse. You're not imagining things, I promise. Here's what's happening in your body and, most importantly, how to fix it. 

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Transcript

 | 3 Reasons Eat Less Move More Final Tue, Jul 22, 2025 4:37PM 14:37 SUMMARY KEYWORDS menopause, metabolism, eat less move more, cortisol, calorie intake, weight loss, hormonal shifts, nutrition, adaptation, homeostasis, trust, sleep, energy, fitness, health SPEAKERS Speaker 1 
 | S Speaker 1 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and today we are talking about a heavy hitter topic. If you listen to the past episode so far this season, you know we, we dove right in talking about this concept of gaslighting. And sometimes I'm hesitant to use the word gaslighting, because I think sometimes gaslighting can be intentional. I believe, I want to believe, that the gaslighting that happens for a lot of menopausal women is not intentional. It's the medical industry not as at the time this recording understanding menopause. So doctors sit there and tell us, eat less, move more. Eat less, move more. And we're like, I freaking AM. So in today's episode, we are going to talk about the top three reasons why eat less, move more, stops working in menopause. Check it out. So as you heard me say in an earlier episode, you know, if you are starting to feel like you're crazy, I don't really have a better way of saying that, then when you're screaming into the abyss, I'm eating less, I'm eating healthy. I'm moving more, and it's not working. And every time we go back to our doctor and they they either look at us like they don't believe us, or they're like, well, eat even less, move even more. I am telling you, stop the bleeding if you're already eating low calorie, if you're already exercising out the wazoo, and it's not working. Continuing to do so is going to take a six inch hole and it's going to make it six miles deep. It is a very real truth of menopause that eat less, move more often, stops working. And I will tell you that statement pisses a lot of people off. I have you know, when I put videos out there on Instagram, I get a plethora of comments from women saying this is a complete lie, eat less, move more still works for me, and my copy paste, repeat. Answer for them is, Listen, if eat less, move more is still working for you, fantastic. That means your metabolism is still healthy. I would estimate, this is not an exact data statistic, but data statistic. This is not an exact statistic, but I would estimate about 70 to 80% of the over 3000 menopausal women we've worked with are already eating low calorie and not losing weight. And I'll point to the 1000s of members who come to us. I mean, I've seen people as low as 500 calories a day, and if eat less, move more. Still works. Explain that to me, scientifically, it doesn't. The answer is, for a lot of menopausal women, eat less, move more, stops working. So there are a plethora of reasons that's that this happens. For the purposes of today's episode, we're going to talk about the Big Three Reasons Why eat less, move more, stops working. So reason number one is this, and to put it, my blunt way of saying this is, your metabolism kind of sucks at burning calories right now. Said with love, the good news is it's fixable, right? What we need to understand is that our bodies are absolute powerhouses at adaptation. My favorite 

analogy for this, and if you've watched my workshop, you've heard me use this exact analogy, is sweating if I were to go for a run, which in my world would mean someone's chasing me, because, you know, your girl hates cardio. But let's say I was going to go for a run and I start sweating. Why am I sweating? Because my body has a natural resting comfort zone, a natural level of homeostasis when it comes to its body temperature. So if I were to run and my temperature goes above that, I start producing sweat in an effort to cool my body down, to get it to its natural resting comfort zone, which we call homeostasis. Well, our bodies also have a natural resting comfort zone, a homeostasis, so to speak. When it comes to calories in, calories out, our body is always looking to find that balance of calories in versus calories out. So here's what that means. Let's pretend, you know, most of us in our 20s, unless you were an extreme athlete, we were not tracking our food. But let's say you were to have tracked your food in your in your 20s, and just throwing out hypothetical numbers, let's say you were eating, I don't know, 17, 1800 calories a day. Okay, then you got a date coming up. You're like, Oh, I gotta look good for this date. And we're in our 20s. So what do we do? What do we do? We eat healthy for a week and we lose weight. Right? Again, most of us were not tracking, but if we did, what we probably would have seen is that we dropped from, let's say, 1700 calories, to 1500 calories, and we stayed there, because it became our new normal. It became our new homeostasis. Fast forward a few years. We got a job interview coming up. We want to look good for the job interview. We got to get into our pants, whatever it is, so we drop our calories again. If we were to track maybe we saw that we went from 1500 calories down to 1300 calories. Fast Forward, year after year after decade after decade, and here comes menopause, with all the hormonal shifts that happen naturally. It happened biologically. And what has happened is that in all those years of dropping calories and not bringing them back up, and I'm going to talk more about that in a second, our body has found a homeostasis. It said, Oh, this is who I am and what I do now, and it doesn't even recognize. Is that you're eating low calorie anymore. I'll take you back to the extreme example. I mean, I've seen women as low as 500 calories a day. How in the world are we not losing weight at 500 calories a day? One of the big reasons is our body doesn't recognize that as low calorie anymore. It sees it as its homeostasis, its natural rest and comfort zone. What we need to do is get your body better at burning calories. We need to raise that number up in the name of getting your metabolism fired up so that the rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. We're going to talk way more about that in the episodes ahead this season. But for the purposes of this topic, the top three reasons why eat less, move more, stops working. Reason number one said, with love, your metabolism kind of sucks at burning calories, and that happens because we have been cutting, cutting cutting calories over time, and we've never brought them back up again. Episodes ahead, I'm going to talk about what I mean about going back to maintenance. But for the purposes of this conversation, our bodies are powerhouses of adaptation. They have adjusted to those new lower calories, and they don't even recognize the deficit anymore. So if you are someone and if you've listened my podcast before you you know I always recommend first five days, eat as you normally eat, pop your food into an app. Do not pay attention to their goals. I'm going to say that again, do not pay attention to their goals. Just take a look at how many calories you're averaging. If you see that you're already eating under 16, 1700 calories, you fall into this category. There's this not a blood This is not a gray area conversation. If you're already eating low calorie and not losing weight, this is one of the reasons why your body has adjusted to those lower calorie ranges. And if you need help with those first steps, I know I just said them quickly, you can always send an email to Team T, E, A, M, Mind, Strong fitness.com, and we'll send you some first steps to take. Reason number two that eat less, move more stops working for many women in menopause, and this, this one sounds kind of weird, so bear with me, but your body stops trusting you, and it's that's a weird thing to think about, right? To think about your body trusting you or not trusting you. My when I do my workshop, I always put this little picture on the screen of someone sitting on a remote, right? You ever do this your partner, 

where you're like, Hey, do you have the remote? And they're like, No, and immediately stand up, right? The trust has gone real fast. Your Body trusts you less than someone potentially sitting on the remote. My favorite analogy for this, because, you know, your girl loves an analogy is, let's say you're living paycheck to paycheck, and maybe you are, maybe this, this resonates with you. When you're living paycheck to paycheck, you know exactly where every penny, every dollar going in and going out is right, because we are holding tight. But let's say I come along, I give you $2,000 and they say, Hey, here's a bonus check. Spend it however you want, because I'm going to be back next month, I'm going to give you 2000 more. Well, in the beginning, you're not going to trust me. You don't know me like I don't know why is this? Rachel should give me $2,000 I do not trust she's coming back. So I'm going to continue to hold tight, but with enough time and consistency, if I keep coming back and I keep giving you that two grand, eventually the trust is there, and you're going to say, You know what, I think I can spend this pretty freely. Because it seems like this, Rachel girl is coming back every month with more, and we start to loosen the reins. We get, we start to release, and we start to spend more freely. Now, if we zoom out and think about this biologically, right, calories are literally our body's fuel, and if your body has been under fueled for a prolonged period of time, for most of us, years 

and years and years. Why in the world would it release what it has? Why would it release what it's stored from a survival 101 standpoint, that doesn't make sense. It does not trust you that it's being fueled the way that it needs to be fueled, and it is not going to release the weight. Again, this is why we see women at 500 1000 1200 calories a day, and their body not only will not release the weight, but keeps putting on more, it does not trust you right now. Now, the beautiful thing is, we can build trust, right, right? Like most things in life, it may take some time, depending on the severity of the situation, but we can rebuild trust. It does not mean that we're feeding at the same foods every day, but we are feeding at the right proportions, the right amounts, the right total number of calories, the right proportions of carbs, fat, protein. When you are fueling your body the way it needs to be fueled with consistency, eventually your body is going to say, Wait a second, I got what I needed today, and I got what I needed yesterday, and the day before that, I think it's pretty logical to assume I'm going to get what I need tomorrow, and it's going to start to trust and it's going to start to release the weight. So when we're talking about the top three reasons why eat less, move more often, stops working in menopause. Number one, your metabolism kind of sucks at burning calories today. It is right now, it is absolutely fixable. We can train your metabolism to be even faster, even more on fire than it was in your 20s, believe it or not, and we'll talk more about that in the episodes ahead. Number two is a lot less trust in you than someone sitting on the remote right. It needs to be it needs to trust your body. Needs to trust that it's being fueled the way it needs to be fueled. And the third reason is a huge buzzword in social media when it comes to menopause and. It's cortisol. Now, I could have recorded an entire season of this podcast on cortisol, but I'm going to keep it, um, short and sweet, as I like to do in these podcasts. Menopause, we have to I've mentioned this couple times in the episodes before this, menopause is a stage of life where biologically, there are changes that happen in our body, and they are meant to right. Don't shoot the messenger. Whoever designed this thing. Welcome to being a woman. One of the big changes that happens in menopause is that our estrogen drops. One of the main roles of estrogen is cortisol control. So one of the big themes of menopause is, welcome to menopause. How the heck do I control my cortisol? Now there's lots of ways to control cortisol. We can meditate, we can do some deep breathing, we can sing Kumbaya every day and put our feet in the grass. But the non negotiable for controlling menopause, for controlling cortisol, is your nutrition. And again, I'll take you back to the analogy I used in an earlier episode. It's a cheesy one, but it is true. If you buy this fancy sports car and you slam on the gas pedal, but the cars on empty, are you putting more or less stress on the car right in a time of life where we are naturally walking around with Spike levels of cortisol, if we are not fueling our body the way 

S 

that it needs to be fueled, we are spiking those cortisol levels higher and higher, and when our cortisol is Higher, our sleep sucks, right? That one to 3am menopause, wake up. That, that most of us know, 

Speaker 1 11:26 

the lower belly fat that seems to come out of nowhere. We have the most cortisol receptor receptors in our lower belly, so it starts to show up there. Your body is not going to release the weight with the spiked cortisol, which is why we have to get our nutrition in check. Yes, there's a million ways to control cortisol, and they're all lovely. If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of meditation. I am a huge fan of all the mindset work and nutrition is the absolute non negotiable. Your sleep will improve, your energy is going to skyrocket. Your cortisol levels are going to naturally start to balance out. So I say all this to say if you are eating less, if you are moving more, if you are doing everything right, and not only is it not working, but it feels like the problem is getting worse. The good news is, you're not imagining things. The bad news is it is it's getting worse. We have to stop the bleeding, especially if you're someone who you find is under eating. I don't say this to fear monger. I say it because it's biology. Every day that goes by that you are under eating every time you continue to cut calories and exercise more, we are taking a six inch hole, and we are digging it deeper and deeper and deeper. If you're already eating 1400 calories, and your nutritionist, your naturopath, your doctor, tells you to drop to 900 you know how I feel about cardio run, don't walk. And I say that hating cardio run, don't walk because that six inch hole is going to become six miles long. What we need to do is we need to get your body better at burning calories by slowly, slowly, slowly introducing them so that we're not gaining weight again. We're going to talk more about that in the episodes ahead. Number two, we have to get your body to trust you. We not not eating the same foods every day, but getting it to trust that you're eating the right amounts in the right proportions, day in and day out. And number three, just as importantly, we have to get that cortisol in check. There's a lot of ways to do that, but the non negotiable is through nutrition. The good news is this, this is not your destiny, right? There are a lot of doctors out there. I've seen the I've cannot count how many women have come to me and might say, My doctor said, this is just how my body is now. This is menopause. Welcome to it. There is zero truth to that. I wish I could CITIZENS ARREST take their medical license away, because it is false and it is deflating women by the 1000s. The reality is, yes, our body naturally changes when we hit menopause and and it is not a death sentence. I have seen more women than I can count in my almost decade in this industry. Train their metabolism to be on absolute fire. Train their metabolism to be even more fired up than it was in their 20s. And the beauty is, there's no wishing, hope and praying here. What we teach it's biology. 101, I always like to say, the work works when you do the work, yes, it can be a slow, tedious path. Yes, the path is different for everyone. Yes, the speed at which it goes is different for everyone, and it is human biology. 101, the work works. When you do the work, this is not your destiny. You are not destined to be stuck. We can absolutely not only get the rules of eat less, move more, to go back to working, but we can get them back to working even better than they used to in your 20s. There is hope, I promise.