Episode 102: Understanding the Weight Loss Stage (5 Part Series: Part IV)

In part IV of this 5-part series, we’re deep diving into the weight loss stage (everyone’s favorite ;)): how it works and expectation management

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Transcript

| 5 Part Series Part IV Weight Loss Final Mon, Aug 04, 2025 12:42PM 15:16 SUMMARY KEYWORDS Weight loss, menopause, caloric deficit, metabolism, healing stage, maintenance, plateau, exercise, expectation management, cycles, nutrition, body adaptation, sustainable weight loss, long-term health, mindset. SPEAKERS Speaker 1 
 | S Speaker 1 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. We are in part four of our five part series what weight loss actually looks like in menopause. So as you've heard me say throughout this whole series, these are designed to build off each other. So if you haven't listened to the other episodes in this series, make sure to do that first, because you're going to hear me continuously refer back to this weight loss cycle, and have no idea what I'm talking about. So make sure you listen to those first today we are talking about the weight loss part of this cycle, and we work with a lot of women who are here for general health, who are here just to learn to fuel their bodies better. And we work with a tremendous amount of women, and this is what they're here for, right? You heard me say earlier, 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? And as I love to say, the human body is designed in a way in which we cannot run a marathon until we learn to crawl. And if you're already eating low calorie and your body's not releasing the weight, we cannot get to this weight loss stage without going through healing and maintenance first. As slow and tedious as it is, we can find peace in the fact that we never have to go through it again when done correctly. So we talked about the weight loss cycle. We talked about the the healing stage. In the last episode, we talked about maintenance, and today, we're going to dive deep into that holy grail, the weight loss stage. Check it out. I'm going to take you back to that first visualization about the weight loss cycle. Right? We had you eat as you normally eat track for five days, and one of the big things we're looking for is which end of this I picture a circle in my brain. Which end of the circle are you coming in at? Are you at the top, meaning you're eating more calories in your body needs? Are you at the bottom? Meaning we're eating less calories in our body needs, and we need the healing stage. The reason I'm bringing that visualization back to mind is because at this point in our cycle, this is why I picture a circle in my head, we are all back at the top. Okay, so if you came to us eating more calories in your body needs, we started at the top. If you came to us eating less and we went through a healing stage. We went through maintenance in my little brain visualization, we are all back at the top of this cycle. Now we are ready for a weight loss stage, meaning as long as our metabolism is healed, the old rules of eat less, move more, will go back to working. So now it's time to get you in a caloric deficit, meaning getting you to eat less, less calories in your body's burning in a day. Here's the beautiful part of a deficit. With a healed metabolism, we don't have to baby 

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step this down. So if you remember, in the healing stage, we're talking about baby stepping our way up to make sure that we don't gain weight, as long as hunger is okay. And I'm going to emphasize that, because if you're walking around and every human you come in contact with, their head looks like a cartoon chicken because you're starving all the time, you're not going to stick with it. I always say slow and sustainable is infinitely better than overly aggressive, which leads to caving and binging. But as long as hunger is okay, we can be aggressive in that first cut. So I'm just going to speak in in numbers based off this conversation so far, let's say that you're a 2000 calories a day. Okay, so you went through a healing stage. We went through maintenance. You're 2000 calories a day in that first cut, in that first deficit. We can be pretty aggressive. If hunger feels okay, I'm comfortable cutting you to 1700 calories again, as long as hunger is okay, we definitely are not that aggressive with every person. Sometimes we'll draw people to 1800 calories. But let's say you're like, No, Rachel, I have flexed my patient's muscle. I am at my limit. Get this weight off me. So let's say we put you at 1700 as long as your metabolism is healed, your body is going to start to release the weight. Now, at some point you're going to hit a plateau. Plateaus are frustrating as anything, and they're actually a beautiful thing, because, as we know, our bodies are powerhouses at adaptation. That's the reason why it didn't recognize 1200 calories as low calorie. So at some point your body's going to say, Oh, this is who I am and what I do now, and we stop losing weight. That's called a plateau. So we have to keep going. We have to kind of flick it in the butt and say, hey, that's cute. But we're not done yet. There's two ways we can bust through a plateau. Number one, if you're someone who works out, works out, you can amp up your workout a little bit. If you're not someone who works out, or you're happy with what your workouts look like, then we can start baby stepping. So we could take those 1700 calories, we could drop em a little bit. This is I would not be aggressive at this point. I'd go to 1650 give it some time the name of the game. And this is why I don't say this is Rachel the business owner. I say this is Rachel the human who has lived in this world for a long time. This is what the value of one to one coaching. Because when we do this ourselves, we tend to second guess ourselves. Is my body saying this or that? Should I be adjusting? Have I stayed here long enough? Right? When you work with a pro, we have done this 1000s and 1000s of 1000s time. We're like, Oh, this is exactly what your body needs. So I say that 

Speaker 1 04:53 

because what we don't want to do is say, oh, it's been three days with no weight loss. Let me cut calories more. Let me cut calories more. Like you're going to do damage to your metabolism each time you do one of these cuts. We need to give it time. We need to let our body respond, okay, but for the purposes of this cut, we're going to be aggressive with the first one as much, I don't want to say as much as hunger or lettuce, because there's a limit. Do not try to go from 2000 to 1500 calories, but dropping 200 calories, maybe even 300 you'll be golden. We're going to sit there for a while, let our body release some weight. Then when we hit a plateau, we can amp up exercise. We can lower calories a little bit. There is a limit to how low I take people. As a general rule, I try not to go below 1500 calories. Have I done it before? Absolutely. But I don't like going below that number. If I do, it's a very specific reason. It's a very specific conversation. And most importantly, there's a time frame around it. I'll tell them, Look, we got a week left in this deficit. Let if your game like we can be aggressive. Let's see how much more weight your body's going to release. But we're not going to go lower than that. We're not going to stay there that long, okay, but the name of the game is, we're baby stepping as needed. Now here's one of the most important things I'm going to say in this series. What we do not want to do is keep cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting calories and staying there indefinitely. Because you will absolutely if you weren't someone who came to us needing a 

healing stage, you will become another woman who needs a healing stage. If you just went through the flexing your patient's muscle of a healing stage, and then you stay low calorie indefinitely. Again. You're going to need another one. Nobody wants to go through that again. What we have to start thinking of weight loss as as cycles. It is a pop in, pop out kind of deal. So when we get into this weight loss stage, the textbook rule is no longer than 12 weeks. I have definitely stretched that to 14 weeks for people, but I don't go beyond that, because what's going to happen again? Our bodies are powerhouses of adaptability. Eventually, your body's going to say this is who I am and what I do, and the deficit is not going to work anymore. So 12 weeks is great. 14 weeks maybe push to as long as your body's still responding. If it stopped responding, don't keep pushing it. That's the end of your weight loss stage. And I want to, I want to stop here, and I'll tell you what to do on the other side in a second. When the reason I titled this series what weight loss actually looks like in menopause is because what weight loss actually looks like in menopause is not what weight loss actually looks like in our 20s and 30s, right? For a lot of us, and this is true to various degrees, and it's not true for everyone, but for a lot of us in our 20s and 30s, if we wanted to lose weight, we just stayed low, we went low calorie, and we stayed there until we hit our goal weight, right? We could. We stayed there indefinitely, which is why most of us knew the healing stage. But in one weight we didn't think of it as cycles, but in one weight loss, quote, unquote cycle, we just stayed there till we hit our goal weight. That is not how it works anymore, right? When people say yeah, but in my 20s and 30s, my answer is yeah, but in my 20s and 30s, I could, I could go out to the Bartle four in the morning and wake up at 7am the next day like, I can't do that anymore. It's we're not in the same body that we used to be, right? And it's the same thing here. There is no way anyone who tells you you're going to lose X amount of pounds and X amount of time, they're completely lying to you. What we can't predict is how quickly, or simply, your body is going to release weight if you only have a couple pounds to lose? Yeah, it's very possible you're going to lose all of it in one weight loss cycle. For most women, however, it's going to take a few cycles, a few of these rounds, to hit your goal weight. And that is one of the biggest pieces you heard me say earlier. I believe life is all about expectation management. That is one of the biggest mindset shifts, where we can either cause ourselves a world of frustration, or set ourselves up for success. Because in a first weight loss cycle, if your expectation is I'm going to go into this 12 to 14 Week Weight Loss cycle and lose 50 pounds, you're going to be wildly disappointed. But if you can go in and say, You know what, let's see how much my body releases this time, knowing that every time I go through a cycle, it gets faster and easier, and I'm going to talk about that next. Okay, so expectation management is one of the holy grails of life, I believe, and we have to start thinking in cycles. So you go through your weight loss cycle, you do your your big cut initially, you baby step as needed, through plateaus. On the other side of this. You've stayed there for 12 weeks, maybe stretched it to 14. If your body's still responding, I would not go further than that. Now we're going to baby step our way back up to maintenance. Now, couple thoughts on this. Number one, it doesn't have to be as slow as it was the first time. This is not really a healing stage. This is getting back to maintenance. So the things we have in our favor this time is number one. Adding more calories in typically doesn't feel as difficult as it did the first time, because you've already done it. So when we went through a healing stage, those of us who did it was we were fighting against getting those sensors back online, right? It was, well, I don't feel that hungry. I don't know if I can do more food. For most people, baby stepping back. To maintenance or getting back to maintenance is not as big of a deal, because your body knows what it feels like to have more food, and it's ready for more. And number two, it's just it's not as scary. It's not as much of a mindset strain, because we've, we have the lived proof now of how this works. So yes, you can go 50 calories a week, but if you're finding that you're not gaining weight and your hunger is there, you can definitely go faster than that. Now here's the fun part. And I use fun in air quotes because I have a nerdy nutrition brain that not everyone shares. If you want to play long ball with this, this is where we get to play long ball. I 

gave you that extreme example of a member whose maintenance was 2500 she was losing a 2000 most people don't want to go that high, and you have options. If you want to just baby step yourself back to the same 2000 calories for maintenance. Cool. You're going to stay there again. I wouldn't do not go back for a week and go back into a deficit. It's not going to work. The longer we can hang out and give our body that, that peace of mind, that stretch the more effective it's going to be. We don't want to constantly be cutting and maintenance and cutting and maintenance. Give your body some time so you can go back to the same 2000 you know, stay there for a bit and then start another weight loss cycle. Or, if you really want to play long ball, maybe this time you go to 2100 right? Your brain has proof now that you can do this without gaining weight, and the higher your calories are, the faster your metabolism runs. Every time you do one of these cycles, you can push your calories higher and higher without gaining weight, and every time we get into a deficit from there, you're not going to have to go as low, and your metabolism is now even more fired up to where it's going to respond faster and easier. And I'm going to zoom out for a second and add something to this. If you are someone who came in eating more calories in your body needs the type at the top of the cycle, yes, you got to skip the whole healing stage. That does not mean that weight loss is going to be a piece of cake for you necessarily, because under the surface, we've probably still put our metabolism through the ringer over the years. So in that first weight loss stage, yes, we've seen tons of women get tremendous results right off the bat, and we've seen women where it takes a couple cycles for their metabolism to get completely on fire, and it gets faster and easier. Again, the beauty of this is that it's biology, 101, and the more we can zoom out and play long ball and think of this in cycles, the faster, the easier. I'm using all those terms relatively, because it's never as fast or easy as we want, but the process gets smoother the longer we do this. So you have a choice. We get in a deficit again. We do a decent cut up front, we baby step down as we hit plateaus. We do not stay there longer than 12 to 14 weeks. We get ourselves back to maintenance. You have a choice there. You can either go back to the same amount, or, if you're a nutrition learner, nerd like me, and you find what the human body's capable of to be incredible, maybe you baby step a little bit more. Give it a decent amount of time. Sometimes people ask me, you know, how long do I have to stay there again? The answer is, the longer you stay, the better it is for your body. I tend to a deficit. Is sometimes called a cut. I tend to plan my cuts around my lifestyle, around what's going on. If I know it's winter time and I'm mostly going to be wearing hoodies, I'm not getting into a bathing suit cool. I'm going to take advantage of that time, and I don't need to go into a deficit. I'm just going to enjoy more food. My workouts are going to be more fueled. Like, why stress my body out? Because a deficit is stress on your body, right? We're giving it less calories. If I know I've got a vacation coming up, I'm probably going to want to get ready for that. I know I'm going to get in a bathing suit, so I'll plan backwards according to that. But we don't want to constantly be in this cycle of maintenance, cutting, maintenance, cutting. Your body's going to stop responding, right? It's all about the long term health of our metabolism. The other thing I'll add to this is, when you've hit your goal weight, you don't need to go into don't go into a deficit. If you don't want to lose more weight, you're just going to live in maintenance. And again, we've done this long enough now you've been listening long enough now that we can continue to play that game and raise that maintenance. As long as you're going slowly and as long as you're flowing with your body, you can continue to raise what that maintenance looks like. And in the future, if you ever decide, You know what, I think I'd like to lose just a couple more pounds again, when we get in that deficit, we don't have to go as low. We don't have to stay there as long, but for the purposes of this episode where we're talking about the weight loss stage, it's really important to know it cannot be, well, it can be, but I don't recommend it an indefinite thing, or you're going to need a healing stage. We pop in. We can be a bit aggressive. We baby step. We stay there 12, Max, 14 weeks. We get ourselves back to maintenance. If you want to just stay where you were at maintenance last time. 

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Speaker 1 14:41 

Awesome. If you want to play long ball, if you've got the mindset for it, I recommend it, because the higher your calories are without gaining weight, the faster your metabolism is running. In the last episode of this five part series, we're going to put this all together. So similar to the first part of this series, where I introduced you to that cycle, I'm going to. Walk you through. It's going to be a bit repetitive, because it's what we've been talking about in these episodes. But we've, I've introduced you to each puzzle piece. I want to put it together to show you what a lifetime of keeping your metabolism healthy looks like when we zoom out and look at that full cycle. I'll see you there. You.