Episode 99: What Weight Loss *Actually* Looks Like in Menopause (5 Part Series: Part I)

Real talk: weight loss in menopause *does not* work the same way it did in our 20s and 30s. We’re not in the same body we were back then! In this 5-part series, we’re diving deep into how weight loss actually works in menopause

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Transcript

 | 5 Part Series Part I The Weight Loss Cycle Fi Thu, Jul 31, 2025 12:47PM 14:57 SUMMARY KEYWORDS Weight loss cycle, menopause, healing stage, maintenance stage, deficit stage, metabolism, caloric deficit, weight loss stages, expectation management, food tracking, low calorie, weight loss series, menopausal women, weight loss strategies, calorie burning. SPEAKERS Speaker 1 
 | S Speaker 1 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast, and today's episode is kicking off a whopping five part series. I don't know that I've ever done a five part series before. I think our max has been three. And this five part series is called What weight loss actually looks like in menopause. Now, in the last season, I did a three part series where I talked about this concept, but man, oh man, I have never gotten more requests to go deeper into a topic than I did with those those last episodes. So in this five part series, I'm going to talk about those stages that we addressed last season, about the healing stage, the maintenance stage, the deficit stage, we're going to go deep, and this is one of the most important conversations we can be having on this podcast. Because, as many of us know, one of the biggest frustrations at this menopausal stage of life is the old stuff isn't working right. I'm doing everything right, and nothing is working. And I am a big believer that life is all about expectation management. When we know what to expect, when we know what this actually looks like, we can better mentally prepare. We can set ourselves up for success instead of the shoulds, the mutts, the half dues, the Why isn't this working and all the frustration that comes with this. So in today's episode, we are going to kick off the five part series what weight loss actually looks like in menopause. We're going to start really big picture as an overview in this episode, and then in the episodes ahead, we will, of course, get our hands in the dirt more, and we'll dig into each part of this cycle. Check it out. Before I fully dive into this five part series, I want to put a disclaimer in here. And honestly, behind the scenes, I thought about copying and pasting this disclaimer into each of the five sections, and decided that would be really annoying, so I'm going to say it
 here. I'm going to put it in the show notes. I'm sure I'll still get questions about it, but I'm going to do my best in this five part series. I'm going to speak in specific numbers, and for years and years of having mine strong, I've avoided doing that. The reason I'm going to do that is because I get asked so much about specifics. Now I'm saying this because I would hope it would be obvious, but I'm going to say it out loud that every person's journey is incredibly different, right? If you're five foot one and weigh 120 pounds, and if you're six foot five and weigh 300 pounds, your numbers are not going to be the same. The fuel, the calories that your body needs, are going to be wildly different. The specifics that I'm going to talk about in this five part series are the averages that we see time and time again in working with over 3000 menopausal women, you see a lot of themes. You see a lot of patterns. So the numbers that I'm talking 

S 

about ahead and you'll hear, I give you some ranges. I give you my preferences. They are not set in stone. They are going to be very different for very different individuals. And I decided to go ahead and speak in terms of what we generally see after working with this many women. So it can be used as a guideline. At the end of the day, everyone's journey is going to be very different. And at the end of the day, again, this is Rachel the human, not not Rachel the business owner talking. This is why I'm such a believer in one to one coaching, because doing this yourself, you might second guess yourself. What should my numbers be? When should I change them? When you have a pro, you have a pro, right? And we do this day in, day out, and while everyone's journey is different, again, you see some themes in over 3000 women, but nonetheless, in the episodes ahead, I'm going to get a lot more specific than I have in past episodes, which is very, very much by popular demand, but I'm putting a disclaimer out front that everyone's journey is going to be very different. In the intro, I referenced, I think it was the actually the last three episodes of The Last season where I talk about the three stages of weight loss. So as mentioned in the intro, we are going to dig deep into each of them in this five part series. I want to get a lot more hands in the dirt. I want to get a lot more in detail, because this is the topic I get perhaps the most questions about for the purposes of this first episode in the series, I want to zoom out and take a big picture, look at metabolisms and at how a weight loss cycle works. And you're going to hear me use that term a lot, weight loss cycle, and that's what this series is going to be based around. Now if you scroll through social media right your your feed probably looks similar to mine, where it's every 20 and 30 year old trainer out there saying, just eat less, move more. Weight loss is calories in, calories out. And that is absolutely true. Weight Loss is calories in, calories out, however, however. Big, big caveat here, if you are already eating low calorie and your body is not releasing the weight, calories in, calories out, doesn't apply right now. And here's why, by definition, our metabolism is how good our body is at burning calories. That's what your metabolism is, is how good your body is. Burning calories. So if you're already eating low calorie and your body's not releasing the weight, that is a clear neon zero guesswork involved sign that right now, and it's fixable, so don't worry. But right now, your metabolism is not very good at burning calories. And this is where most women get it wrong, right? Most women say, Okay, well, I'm not releasing a 1200 calories. 

Speaker 1 05:24 

Let me cut down to 1000 calories. Let me go down to 700 calories. What we're doing is we're taking a six inch hole and we're digging it six miles long. Zero out of a billion. Recommend. Okay, so when you go on social media and you see these trainers saying, eat less, move more. Eat less, move more. Sure, in theory, that's what our body needs. But right now, if you have a metabolism that's not very good at burning calories, those rules don't apply for you. Yet, what we're going to talk about in this series, the whole point of this cycle that we're going to talk about, is to get your body back to a place where eat less, move more, goes back to working. Okay, so let me, let me zoom out and talk about what I mean when I say a weight loss cycle. And then in the episodes ahead, we're going to dig deep into each stage in the cycle. If you've listened to my podcast before, if you've been through ignite our signature 12 week program, if you've taken in any of my content, you know that we start every human being with the same quote, unquote assignment, eat as you normally eat. Don't try to be on good behavior. Don't try to make any major life overhauls. Just eat as you normally eat, and pop your food into a food tracking app for five days. Do not use their goals. And if it wasn't annoying, I would repeat that 25 times. Do not use their goals. Any app out there. Their goals are not accurate. It is not personalized enough. If you see my workshop, you see I do a whole thing where I show you the three most reputable calculators and how wildly wrong they are. All you're going to do eat as 

you normally, pop your food into an app for five days. Now, there are two reasons that we start with that assignment for every human we work with. Reason number one is that major life overhauls don't work. So if you come to us eating a tiny bit of protein was most women are, and we tell you to 8x your protein, nobody's doing that. Long term, you're gonna be chugging protein shakes until you want to vomit. It doesn't actually last. The other reason is tailored more to this conversation we're having right now. I am not a person who tries to live in a black or white world. I believe in living in the gray, and this is a black or white conversation. What we want to see is, on an average week, are you eating more calories in your body needs, or are you eating less calories in your body needs? Again, there's no real option. See here. If your body is not releasing the weight, it is one of those two things. Okay, now, if you picture in your brain a circle, what this is going to show us is, what part of the circle are you starting at? Are you starting at the top of the circle? Are you starting at the bottom of the circle? If you're starting at the top of the circle? And again, today's episode, I'm going to talk really big picture. And then in the episodes that follow, we're going to dig deep into which part of the journey you're in right now, if you're at the top of the circle, meaning you're eating more calories in your body needs your path, believe it or not, is a lot simpler, because what that means is that we can get you straight into a deficit. We can get you eating less calories, and your body's going to release the weight now, there's a caveat to your body's going to release the weight right if your metabolism right now is not very fired up, it's not going to be as fast of a process as we want. But when I say it's a simpler process, it's because we get to skip the entire healing stage that I'm going to talk about next. So let's say we look at your five days of tracking and we see that you're eating, let's call it 3000 calories a day, but you're not a very active person. Hallelujah, like doesn't feel like, hallelujah, for you, but hallelujah, we get to skip a whole healing stage. We get you to get you straight into a caloric deficit. Now for someone coming to us eating more calories than we need. The key to this, because this is all about keeping your metabolism healthy for life, is yes, we're going to get you into a deficit. You're going to lose a bunch of weight. You'll hit a plateau, which is very normal. It's part of this process. We'll talk about it more in the episodes ahead. So we'll finagle it a little bit to make sure you keep losing what we cannot do is keep you low calorie forever, because then you will become another woman who needs a healing stage. So for someone who comes in eating more calories in your body needs, yes, we get to get you into a straight up, straight into a deficit. But what we need to teach you on the other side of that deficit is how to baby step your way back up to what we call maintenance so that your body doesn't get accustomed to low calorie as we're going to talk about next. People who come to us eating 900 705 seen as low as 500 calories a day, their body doesn't even recognize the deficit because they've been low calorie for so long. So if you get to skip that whole healing stage, get straight into a deficit. We want to avoid, at all costs, getting to a place where your body just gets used to low calorie so you're the name of your game. Again. We're going to talk about this more in the episodes ahead. Is, yes, we get into a deficit. We cannot stay there indefinitely. At some point, we have to baby step our way back up to maintenance, and then we can do another weight loss cycle. We'll do a whole episode on on maintenance, on weight loss cycles coming up. Now let's say you come in at the other end of the spectrum. You eat as you normally eat. You track your food for five days, and we see that you're eating low calorie. What is low calorie? Well, it's kind of shocking, because we live in a society that tells us to eat 1200 calories a day, but the textbook definition of low calorie is 60, anything under 1600 calories today. Now I've been doing this a long time, almost a decade, over 3000 women, our breaking point for low calorie is closer to the 17, 1800 calorie range. What I have seen time and time again with menopausal women is that if you are eating under 1700 calories a day and not losing weight. Your metabolism is not great at burning calories, and I recognize that that can be a very shocking number, because society tells us that we should be eating 1200 calories a day. But I always like to say math is going to math and science is going to science, and this is what we have seen time and time again. Welcome to a 

menopausal party. So let's say you track your food for for five days you come in. Let's just say your averages are 1400 calories. Now your social media feed again, if it's like mine, is filled with these 2030, year old trainers saying, well, just eat less, move more. Maybe even your doctor continues to tell you, Well, just eat less, move more. So you take those 1400 calories, you drop them to 1000 calories a day, and not only do not lose weight, but you start gaining. The worst thing you can be doing for your body, if you already are eating low calorie, is to keep cutting lower and lower and lower again. I keep going back to the saying, because it's the best one. I know you are taking a six inch hole and then digging it six miles long. What that tells us, if you're already eating low calorie and your body's not releasing the weight, no wishing, hoping, praying, guesswork involved, it is a glaring neon light saying we need to, what I call heal your metabolism. We need to get your body better at burning calories by slowly increasing your calories. So again, if we go back to our circle visualization, you're starting at the bottom of cycle. What the path for you is going to look like is we're going to slowly, slowly, slowly, because we don't want to gain weight through this process. And we're going to talk more about that in episodes ahead as well. We're going to slowly, baby step your calories up, and I recognize that as petrifying, and that sounds very counterintuitive, but bear with me. We are training your body to get better at burning calories without gaining weight. By slowly building your calories up, we are going to build you up to maintenance where your body says, Oh, this is just who I am and what I do now, and at that point you're now back at the top of the circle, right? Our last example of someone who came in with who got to skip the whole healing stage, you have now journeyed to the top of the circle, and you are ready for a caloric deficit. We're going to talk about each of these stages in depth. In this five part series, we're going to talk about what a weight loss stage looks like. We're going to talk about what a healing stage looks like. We're going to talk like. We're going to talk about maintenance stage. And I'm going to get much more in depth, because I've been asked a lot of questions about it since I did that three part series last season. But for the purposes of this episode, you're going to hear me continuously come back to this concept of a weight loss cycle. And in my brain, I always picture a circle at the top is someone who's ready for a caloric deficit. At the bottom is someone who needs a healing stage. We need to get your body better at burning calories, and in that cycle is maintenance, where we're not losing, we're not gaining, we're just kind of sitting pretty. But it is an Uber important must, must, must in this process. And again, we'll dig into the specifics of each of those, but it was really important to kick off this five part, part series with an understanding of what I mean when I say a weight loss cycle, because you're going to hear me dig in deep detail for each of these. Okay, so coming up in the next episode, we're going to talk specifically about the healing stage. And I'm starting with the healing stage, because this is the stage. This is not an exact stat, but I would estimate probably about 70% of the over 3000 women that we've worked with are coming to us at the healing stage, meaning they're already eating low calorie their body's not releasing weight. This is where we get into the I'm doing everything right, and nothing's working. I'm going to talk you through in specifics what a healing stage looks like. From there, we'll talk about the maintenance stage, and then we'll talk about a weight loss stage. So we're going to dig deep. We're going to talk in specifics, but now we understand what I mean when I say a weight loss cycle, and I'll see you in the next episode to talk about the healing stage. You.