Episode 100: Understanding the Healing Phase of Your Metabolism (5 Part Series: Part II)

In Part II of this 5-part series we're diving deep into how to get your body better at burning calories if you’re already eating less and move more, but it isn’t working.

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Transcript

| 5 Part Series Part II Healing Final Mon, Aug 04, 2025 12:16PM 15:58 SUMMARY KEYWORDS weight loss, menopause, caloric deficit, healing stage, metabolism, hunger sensors, maintenance, Ozempic, calorie tracking, energy levels, weight loss cycle, body burning calories, sustainable lifestyle, mind strong, perimenopause SPEAKERS Speaker 1 
 | S Speaker 1 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. And this is part two of the biggest series I've ever done to date, the five part series in what weight loss actually looks like in menopause. So in the last episode. And if you didn't listen to that yet, it's going to be really important that you listen to these in order, so that you understand when I keep referring back to a weight loss cycle, what I'm talking about in the last episode, we talked about how the first thing we have every human that we've ever worked with ever will work with, do eat as you normally eat. Track your food for five days. Do not use the goals I'm going to repeat that a billion times. Do not use the goals that these apps recommend. They are not right. We are only using it to get a feel for our averages. As we talked about last episode, we're looking for two things in there. One, we're looking for what your body's used to, because major life overhauls don't work. And number two, for the purposes of this series, we want to see where you're coming in. Are you eating more calories in your body needs, or are you eating less calories in your body needs? Because, as you heard me talk about in that last episode, I always refer to weight loss as a cycle, and in that last episode, I gave you a big overview of what that means. What we're going to talk about in today's episode is, if you are someone who comes in eating less calories in your body, needs that tells us no wishing, hoping, praying. Science is going to science. Math is going to math. Glaring neon sign your body needs what I call a healing stage. We need to get your your metabolism better at burning calories, so that, here's the whole point, so that the old rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. So today we're going to dig deep into what a healing stage looks like, what that journey looks like and expectations around it. Check it out. This is not an exact stat. One day, I'll actually run the numbers and find an exact set for you, but I would estimate probably 70% 60 to 70% I would say more towards the higher side of the over 3000 women we've worked with are not coming to us eating more calories than their body needs. They're eating less, and as we'll talk about in the episodes ahead, and you heard me say in the last episode, if you're eating more calories in your body needs the journey. I There's a big difference between simple and easy, right? But the journey is a lot simpler, because you get to skip the healing stage that we're talking about now. And it's still important to listen to this, because a version of this is going to come into play when we talk about the weight loss stage. So bear with me, but the vast majority of women that we work with are coming to us already eating low calorie and it's confusing and it's frustrating, because we live in a world that says, 

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Eat less, move more. We live in a world that does not understand metabolisms. We live in a world that certainly does not understand menopause. And on top of that, we our brain has proof that eat less, move more, for to various degrees for each of us, has worked in the past. So now we're we're in perimenopause, post menopause. We're in this menopausal stage of life. We're doing everything right, and nothing is freaking working. And this is where I always come back to that word hope, right? Because I see women give up hope all the time. Well, nothing's working. My doctor must be right that this is just my body. Now. I give up trying. I give up hope. And the reality is I promise you, promise you, promise you, your body is not broken. This is not a death sentence. What your body is telling us, because our bodies are always communicating whether it's what we want to hear or not. What your body is telling us is that it's not very good at burning calories right now. It doesn't recognize that you're in a caloric deficit, right? Because if you're already eating low calorie and you're not releasing the weight again, there's no guesswork here. There's there's literally two paths, and this is my joke. That is absolutely not a joke, right? If you're already eating low calorie and your body is not releasing the weight, there are two paths you can go down. One is the ozempic drug path. I zero out of a gajillion recommend, because that six inch hole is now 60 miles long. I cannot begin to tell you the number of women that are coming to us now saying, I went on these drugs, I lost 40 pounds. I went off the drugs. You have to stay on them for life, and I gained back 80 and now my metabolism is absolutely shot. Is it fixable? Yeah, but it takes about 20 times as long as it needs to. The other option is we buckle in our patient's belt. We know that a healing stage is going to be slow and tedious, and no one actually wants to do it right? You'll hear me say this a lot. No one in the history of ever has come to me and said, Rachel, can you teach me to eat more food without gaining weight? That's not why we're here. We're here to get the weight off, and we physically as humans, cannot run a marathon until we learn to crawl. There are rules of human biology, and this is one of them. If your metabolism is not good at burning calories, there are only two paths you go on a drug, which I do not recommend, or we go through a healing stage, finding peace in the fact that when you do this correctly, purposely, using that word, you will never have to go through. A healing stage again. So let's talk about what a healing stage is. A healing stage, very simply, means we have to get your body better at burning calories, so that, here's the whole point of it, the old rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. So let's say, I'm just going to throw out hypothetical numbers. Let's say you did your five days of tracking. You come to us, we see that you're averaging 1200 calories a day. That's a very common average that we see. Okay, I always like to say there are three types of metabolism coaches in this world. Coach number one does not actually understand metabolisms. Some doctors fall in this category. They're going to say, Oh, 

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you're eating 1200 calories. Go eat 900 calories. Run, don't walk run away from that coach. They do not know what they're talking about. They're digging that hole deeper. There are plenty of metabolism coaches out there who say to you, all right, we're going to raise your calories 100 calories a week, come hell or high water. And when you ask, like I when you ask these coaches, how do you do that to someone? And there's two reasons I say. How do you do that to someone? Number one, if you're not hungry at 1200 calories, you are not going to be hungry at 1500 calories three weeks later. Right? We have sensors in our brains and in our bodies whose sole job is to communicate hunger and because humans are pleasure seeking creatures, if you've been under fueling your body for years and years and years. What it's not going to do is keep pushing on that bruise. Right? Never again. Never in the history of ever have I had someone come to me eating 1200 calories a day saying, but I'm starving all day. What every single I'm going to purposely say every single woman, because I've never seen 

otherwise, maybe it exists. But what I hear time and time again is, yeah, but I'm not hungry? And the answer is, of course, you're not hungry because those sensors shut down, which is one of the reasons you'll hear me talk about this later. In our world, we celebrate hunger because it is a glaring knee online that your metabolism is coming back online. So I'll ask these coaches, how do you do that to someone? Because if they're not going to be hungry, and reason too, is if you move that quickly, you are absolutely going to gain weight. If you are raising your calories 100 a week, and you're not a very active person, you are absolutely going to gain weight. And the response that I hear, and it's still to this day, makes me like hand on my heart gasp, is, well, I don't care if they gain weight, because they're going to lose it on the other side. And if you could see my face, I'm Ooh, right? Like, I care if they gain weight, they certainly care if
 they gain weight. The name of the game with the healing stage is we need to get your body better at burning calories without gaining weight. Now there's a caveat to that, right? If you haven't listened to my episode on the scale, it's a really important one to listen to. The scale is always going to fluctuate one to six pounds every day, even if you're doing this, quote, unquote perfectly. If you have your macro plan and you're getting 000, which is not the ultimate goal, but let's say you're doing it that meticulously, it is still the scale is still going to fluctuate one to six pounds every day. So when I say without gaining weight, yes, there's going to be some fluctuations there, but the name of the game is to get your body better at burning calories without putting on the 10 to 15 pounds that you absolutely will if you go quickly. So the way we do this is so Uber personalized to the individual. First and foremost, we're going to meet your body where it is right if you're coming to us at 1200 calories, I am not going to start you at 1400 calories, you're not going to be hungry and you're going to gain. So I'm going to start you right there. Maybe we bump up to 1250 now our goal. And now I'm speaking very specifically of how mind strong does this Our ultimate goal is? We would love to bump you up 50 calories a week. Does that happen for every woman? Absolutely not. There are lots of people who, number one, it takes a little longer for their hunger sensors to come online. And number two, sometimes there's a lot of resistance, and I get it right, it is a scary thing to hear me sit here and say, we're going to raise your calories when you came to me to lose weight. And in almost a decade of this industry, I've looked at the data for every single woman who has come through my program, and what I see time and time again. And this is a conversation we have with members up front like I know this is easier said than done. I know this is scary, and the women who move significantly quicker through a healing stage are the women who come in with this mindset of, look, you're the experts. I hired you because this is your zone of genius. I am putty in your hands. Let's get to work. There are a lot of people, though, and again, I understand it. It's not ideal, but I understand the the mindset. Who are like this feels scary. I don't know. Are you sure this is going to work? I don't know if I want to raise my calories. We are never going to square, Peg round, hold us right. If you're feeling resistance, we're going to go at your pace. If you're putting in our hands, we're going to move a lot faster. If your hunger sensors are coming online faster, we're going to move faster. If you're not feeling hungry again, we're not going to square peg, round hole. It at the end of the day. The beauty of this is, it's human biology. 1011, of my favorite sayings is, if I tell you you're going to be a billionaire sometime in the next six months, sure we want the money to hit our account sooner than later. But what we. Really
 want is the peace of mind that the money is going to hit our account. And this is how I describe a healing stage. It can be slow, it can be tedious. It's never as fast as we want. And at the end of the day, when done correctly, when you walk the path, the old rules of eat less, move more, will absolutely go back to working. So sure, we all want this to go as quickly as possible, and I'm always a fan of flowing with your tendencies. Never square peg, round hole, because it's a sustainable lifestyle. I My other favorite visualization is climbing a mountain, right? Climbing a mountain takes forever. It's slow, it's tedious. I don't believe anyone really wants to do it. Maybe there's I'm sure there's people out there that sounds exciting for but if you're 75% of the way up the mountain and you're feeling exhausted like logic would say, let's set up camp and 

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let's chill there for a little bit. Logic would not say, let's roll down the mountain and start right over right. So here's what all that means in terms of a healing stage. Let's say again you came to us at 1200 calories in the weeks ahead our goal, we're paying attention to hunger, we're paying attention to energy, we're paying attention to tendencies. This is again, why online macro calculators do not work. They don't know how to judge for all this stuff. As your body is ready for more, we are slowly increasing your calories. Our goal is 50 a week. Sometimes we go slower than that. Sometimes we've gone faster than that. It depends on the individual we're Climb. Climb, climbing. At some point. For some people, it's like, mercy, wave the white flag. I need a break. It feels like too much food. My hunger sensors aren't online yet. Cool. That's where we go back to the mountain analogy. Let's set up camp there. Let's leave it there for a little bit, and then we'll keep the climb. Some people start raising their calories, and they're like, holy cow, my energy is through the roof. If you're someone who works out your workouts are insanely fired up, because just think about the fuel that's in your body now. And we get to move a little faster. But the name of the game is, if you're already eating low calorie and not losing weight, the worst thing you can do is to continue cutting what we need to do is heal your metabolism. We need to get your body better at burning calories by introducing more calories. Can you do it faster? Sure. But everything in life has light with the dark. If you go faster, you run the risk of gaining weight when you go slowly and only tweak and adjust when your body says it's ready for more. You will get your body better at burning calories with minimal to zero weight gain. That's the name of the game here. That's what we believe in. That's how we do things. Now, in the next episode, we're going to talk about what we call maintenance. And I want to say a couple things about maintenance here before we get to that. A lot of people ask this question backwards. They say, How do I know what my maintenance is? Well, if you're already eating 1200 calories a day and not losing weight, your body thinks that that's maintenance, your body doesn't recognize the deficit. So we need to flip that question. The question is, how do I want to train where do I want to train my body to believe maintenance is that's what we're doing in a healing stage, is we're getting your body better at burning calories, and we're teaching it. This is my new maintenance. Maintenance simply means, at this point, we're not losing, we're not gaining, we're just sitting pretty. So right now, we are training your body to a new much higher maintenance. And again, in the next episode, we're going to go deep into maintenance. The point of maintenance is we want our body to believe this is just who I am and what I do now. I am someone who eats at these higher calories. I haven't gained weight. I'm feeling good. I'm energized. My sleep is better. My energy is better. If I'm working out there, my workouts are through the roof, so that when we get into that deficit, which is coming up in the episode after that, the old rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. We cannot run a marathon if we don't know how to crawl. That is human biology. 101, 

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if you're already eating low calorie and not losing weight, there are two paths. Path number one is a drug like ozempic. I've already driven the point home. I do not recommend it. You have to do what feels good for you. I've seen the data. I've seen the studies, if there was, if I could think of a word higher than gajillion, zero out of gajillion, recommend option two is to go through a healing stage. It's slow, it's tedious. No one wants to do it, and it is a must if we want the old rules of eat less, move more, to go back to working. The beautiful part is just like that billionaire analogy. It's biology, 101, and when we learn this cycle, I'm going to take you back to that last episode, the cycle of weight loss, you are never going to have to go through a healing stage again, because we're going to learn how to keep our metabolism healthy for the rest of our life. The joke, that's not a joke that I referenced earlier, is I always tell our members, I'm like, Look, if there was an option three, there's ozempic, there's a healing stage. If there was an option 

three, I love you all, but I would throw some elbows to get to the front of the line before all of you, because the truth is, my job, my company's job, everyone at mind strong, would be so much easier if we worked with 20 and 30 year olds, where the old rules of eat less. Lumar, go back to working. We are consciously choosing to do harder work, because this is a demographic who needs it, because I have seen how many menopausal women out there have given up hope and they believe they're broken, and they believe this is their destiny, and their doctors are telling them the same thing. So I would rather buckle in my patient's belt with you and teach you how to do this according to biology, 101, teach you the patience to get through a healing stage knowing that it's a one and done deal. Teach you how to keep your metabolism healthy for the rest of your life, even if the work is way more challenging than just telling someone to eat less, move more, because we get to in some ways, give you that spark back. Give you your life back, showing you that there's hope on the other side. So with all that said, we're in the climb. We're going through a healing stage. In the next episode, we're going to talk about how high to climb, how long to stay there. We're going to talk about maintenance, and then we'll go on to talk about a weight loss stage. I'll see you in the next one. You.