Episode 104: The 3 Biggest Weight Loss Mistakes Women Make in Menopause

After working with over 3,000 menopausal women, themes come up time and again. Here are the 3 biggest mistakes we see (and how to avoid them).

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Transcript

 | 3 Biggest Mistakes Final Thu, Jul 31, 2025 12:52PM 12:30 SUMMARY KEYWORDS Weight loss, menopause, metabolism, calorie cutting, carbohydrates, cortisol control, exercise, nutrition, healing stage, low calorie, low carb, estrogen drop, energy source, biological changes, gentle parenting. SPEAKERS Speaker 1 
 | S Speaker 1 00:00 Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast today, we are talking about the three biggest mistakes that I see women make when it comes to weight loss and menopause. And I want to be abundantly clear up front before I dive in, this is not your fault. And I want I harp on that statement, because, you know, whenever you hear things like, you know, the three biggest mistakes that people make in X, Y and Z. It's very easy to take that as shaming, blaming or putting guilt on and you've heard me say this a lot this season, and it's something I will preach from the rooftops. Nobody taught us this stuff, right? If in our 30s, people were teaching us how to take care of our metabolisms, how to keep them healthy for life, then, yeah, maybe we could get to this stage of life and be like, oh, you know what? I didn't really follow the rules. I take the blame here. But nobody has ever taught us this stuff. So we have gone from to various degrees. For a lot of us, we've gone a lifetime of knowing what works for our body, knowing what doesn't work for our body, right? Some of us, some of us haven't. Some of us have struggled with this our whole life, and we're just learning this information now, and many of us have had results in the past, and suddenly that stuff isn't working anymore. So when I come along and say, Hey, after working with over 3000 menopausal women, here are the three biggest mistakes that I see women make. In no way, shape or form is that intended to shame blanket guilt. This is me saying to you, hey, nobody taught us this stuff before. There was no way for you to know this, right? It's like a child who has those parents who just ground them no matter what happens. Well, if they were never taught what's right or wrong, how do they know Right? That's the beauty of gentle parenting, of seeing everything as learning lessons. This is a learning lesson. This is not why are you doing this? This is incorrect. Again. We don't know any better. We have a lifetime. Many of us of proof that these things have worked in the past. So logic would say, of course, I should keep doing them. So today, we're going to dive into the three biggest mistakes that I see women make when it comes to weight loss in menopause and most importantly, how to avoid it. Check it out. The number one biggest mistake that I see menopausal women make when it comes to weight loss, if you've been paying attention, it's probably of zero surprise, and that's continuing to cut calories. And I'm going to try not to go too deep down a rabbit hole on this, because if you've listened to the other episodes in the season so far, you've heard me say it again and again. We have grown up in a society that says, Eat less, move more, and most of us have years of of proof that when we want to lose 

some weight, we just eat less and move more. So menopause hits not everyone, but a lot of people are already eating decently low calorie right? The textbook definition is under 1600 calories a day. I tend to see trends that are a lot higher than that. I've seen women as low as 17, 1800 calories a day. Need metabolism healing, so they come to us already eating low calorie or they haven't come to us yet. They're in their their pre ignite journey. And what do they do? Well, my body's not losing weight. I should probably cut some calories. So we cut some calories. Still doesn't work. We go to our doctor, our doctor says, Well, you know, your weights creeping up, you better cut some calories. So we cut some more. This is why, I mean, I've referenced in past episode, I have seen women as low as 500 calories a day. That's an extreme, but it is not an extreme. The number of women that come to us between 913 100 calories a day, that is the norm. That is the sweet spot that we see time and time again. And if you listen to the five part series that we just wrapped up in this season, you understand why that's taking a six inch hole and digging it six miles long. If you're already eating low calorie and you're not losing weight, you're making the problem worse by continuing to cut calories. And again, I don't say that to blame I don't say that to fear monger. Nobody taught us any differently, but this is how a menopausal body works. This is how a body whose metabolism is not good at burning calories works. We have to stop the bleeding, meaning stop dropping your calories, and we need to start going through a healing stage. Mistake number two of the three biggest mistakes that I see menopausal women make when it comes to weight loss is cutting carbs. And obviously this is a controversial, controversial subject, because number one, we live in a society that demonizes carbs. And number two, once again, right? This all comes down to neuroscience. This all comes down to the proof our brain has. For most of us, we have proof that, yeah, but in my 20s, maybe my 30s, maybe even my early 40s, I went on a low carb diet, and I lost a lot of weight. And when people come to me at this menopausal stage of life, eating low carb and clinging to that, right? But in the past, you know, sometimes they look at them and lovingly joke. Well, how's that working out for you now? Right? Because the reality is, if we can emotionally disconnect for a second and zoom out, if it was still working, we wouldn't be here. The The proof is in the pudding. If you're already eating low carb in a menopausal body and it's not working, I promise you it's not going to work. Cutting out carbs. And this is where I make a lot of people angry, but I will die on this sword. Cutting out carbs in a menopausal body is one of the worst things you can be doing, short of cutting your calories, lower, lower, lower, which I would label as the worst thing. Cutting out carbs would be second in line. In my opinion, we are living in a body. I'm going to repeat what we talked about in past episodes, right? One of the big biological changes that happens in menopause is that our estrogen naturally drops. One of the big roles among many, many roles, but one of the big roles of estrogen is to help control cortisol. Carbs are our body's natural energy source. When your body needs energy, it goes to carbs for that energy first, I have episodes. I have tons of episodes about carbs, about keto, about all of that. Why I'm not a fan for anyone, that is times a billion when you get in a menopausal body, because if carbs are a body's natural energy source, and we're already living in a body where the name of the game is, how do I control my cortisol if you are not giving your body its natural energy source, what do you think you're doing to your cortisol levels? Right? I used my cheesy but favorite analogy of slamming the gas pedal on a sports car, when the car, when the tanks on E that's what we're doing. I have to this day. And I'm sure there's, there's a couple out there, and I'm sure if I put this on social media, I would get a backlash of comments to this day, I personally have not met a woman who's eating low carb and successfully losing weight in menopause. It is one of the worst things you can be doing for your body. Now, that sounds really scary for people who have their bodies become accustomed to low carb, right? A lot of times I say to people you need you need carbs in menopause. And their answer is, my body doesn't do well with carbs. Anytime I try to add in carbs, you know, I get super bloated, I gain weight, whatever the 

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Speaker 1 06:47 

story is. And the answer is, of course, because your body's not used to them, it, you know, comes back to that trust conversation. It's been years, maybe even decades, without carbs. So what we're not going to do is come in and see you're eating, you know, 50 grams of carbs a day, and say, Well, you need 150 you need 200 No, like you're never going to stick with it. You're going to bloat out the wazoo. You're going to gain weight. Just like everything we do, we need to meet your body where it is, and we only need to baby step our way up as your body tells us it's ready for more. But if you're already doing low carb and it's not working, hear my words, just like the low calorie conversation, stop the bleeding. It is not going to work. It's one of the worst things you can be doing for your menopausal body. Mistake number three that I see most when it comes to weight loss in menopause is increasing exercise, and this very much goes hand in hand with that cutting calories conversation, right? The the theme of social media feeds for a lot of us is eat less, move more. Those two things go hand in hand. And again, I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but the the challenge for us is not only that everyone's telling us this, it's not that it's only because it's all over our social media feed, or only because even our doctor is telling us it is everywhere that we are being told, eat less, move more. So not only do we cut calories down to 1200 1900 calories, but we ramp up exercise, right? We start doing cardio out the wazoo. We start going to these HIIT workouts, these boot camps, whatever the case may be and I will forever. This season is a lot of me repeating myself. Come back to the sports car on E if you're already under fueling your body, if you're already not giving it the calories it needs just to get through a day, just to wake up and brush your teeth and maybe take the dog for a walk, right? Forget about exercise. If you're eating 900 calories a day, I'll go back to the bigger picture conversation we had, your body doesn't trust you. It does not trust that it has what it needs to get through the basic tasks of a day, and it's not going to release the weight. Now, if we start pushing it to go to a 45 minute high intensity cardio class, on top of that, holy cow number one, talk about trust being out the window. And number two, your cortisol levels are sky high, and it is very difficult. I'm trying very hard not to use the word impossible. It is very difficult to lose weight in a menopausal body where your cortisol levels are that high, it doesn't mean don't exercise, right? I did an episode earlier this season, where I talked about exercise, specifically in menopause. Exercise is fantastic for you, but if your game plan right now is just to continue to cut calories and just continue to ramp up exercise to get this weight off, I'm telling you right now, I'm going to save you a lot of heartache. I'm going to save you a lot of bleeding. I'm going to save you a lot of digging the hole deeper. If it's not working, it's not going to work. We have to stop the bleeding. We have to go the opposite way again. I'm not saying to stop exercising, keep exercising, but we have to get your nutrition in check to support that the number of women who come. I mean, the number of women is the understatement of the year, the vast, vast majority of women who come. To us and on the other side, I mean, this is nearly all. This is 99.98% of women we work with who are like I cannot fathom that I'm eating this much more food and how good I feel in my body. And the answer is, of course, you are right. You put gas in the tank of your car, it's going to run the way that this fancy sports car is meant to. But when your body is fighting against itself, of course you're feeling like garbage. Of course you can't sleep. Of course your energy shot. Of course the weight isn't coming off. All of this comes down to nutrition. When you start fueling your body the way it's meant to be fueled in your menopausal body, holy cow, you will be a different person. And that is not hyperbole. So with all of that, said, again, I preface this, and I'm going to repeat it here. This isn't our fault. Nobody taught us this is not like. Someone taught us these rules in our 30s, and then, you know, we hit menopause, and we're like, Well, I know better. I'm just going to do differently. Nobody taught us this stuff. So, of course, it makes complete sense why we keep cutting, cutting calories. It makes complete sense why we keep cutting, cutting, 

cutting carbs. It makes complete sense why we amp up exercise when nothing else is working. But in this new body that we're in now, in biologically, it is not the same body doing the stuff that used to work. If it is not working for you, it is not going to magically wake up and a switch is flicked and it's working now every day that we continue making these three big mistakes. I don't say this to fear monger. I say because it's biology that hole is getting deeper and deeper. Can we climb out of it? Absolutely. But let's think about this logically. If you come to us eating 1400 calories a day, doing a moderate amount of exercise, cool your healing stage. If you didn't listen to the episode on healing stage. Go back and listen to it. It's not going to take as long. Your path is going to be a lot smoother. But if you've put your head down and said, No, I can figure this out myself. I'm just going to keep cutting exercise or cutting carbs and cutting calories and amping up exercise, and you go another year, another two years doing this, and by the time you come to us, you're eating 900 calories a day, doing high intense cardio, five, six days a week. Can we fix it? Sure, but we just doubled, tripled, the amount of time that that healing stage is going to take. And again, I don't say that to fear monger. This is human biology, and I've seen the stats of every single one of the 3000 plus women that have come through us. The sooner we can nip this in the bud, the sooner we can get you into healing stage, the sooner those old rules of eat less, move more, will absolutely go back to working and you will have a metabolism that is on absolute fire. Mm.