Episode 110: 3 Things That Ruin Weight Loss in Menopause

After working with over 3,000 menopausal women, there's a theme to those who get results...and those who don't. Here are the top 3 things that put you in the category of the latter. 

If you haven't yet check it out, my free training, How to Fire Up Your Metabolism in Menopause and Beyond, is the perfect next step. 

Watch it here: https://www.mindstrongfitness.com/how-to-fire-up-your-metabolism

Reserve your spot in my free 3 day Runway to Summer Metabolism Boosting Challenge here: https://www.mindstrongfitness.com/challenge

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Season X Episode 114

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
menopause, weight loss, metabolism, calorie cutting, intermittent fasting, keto diet, nutrition, macros,
healing stage, expectation management, diet culture, intuitive eating, mindset shift, fitness podcast,
weight loss cycle

SPEAKERS
Speaker 1
Speaker 1 00:00
Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. Later on this season, we're going to do an
episode about the three biggest factors to success when it comes to losing weight in
menopause. We've been doing this a long time, over 3000 women coming up on a decade,
which is bananas. And in that time, you see some trends. You see what what hinders people,
and you see what leads to success. So later on, we're going to talk about the successes. But for
today, we're going to talk about the roadblock. So today we are diving into the three biggest
things that ruin your results when it comes to weight loss in menopause. Check it out.
Speaker 1 00:42
You welcome to the becoming mind strong podcast, the official podcast of mind strong fitness. My name is Rachel, and I'm the CEO of mind strong and we are here for two things. We're here
for hope in a stage of life where it feels like we are doing everything right and nothing is
working. I am here to tell you you are not broken. This is fixable, and I promise there is hope.
And number two, we are here for truth in an industry that is designed to keep us confused with
shake systems and point systems and frozen meals. I promise you it doesn't have to be that
difficult. Someone can teach you the skill of riding a bike, someone can teach you the skill of
knitting, and I can teach you to master the skill of nutrition. So are you ready? Let's rock and
roll. You
Speaker 1 01:44
I much like everything I teach. This is not Rachel's laws of health and fitness. This is as a very
data brained, pattern driven person in helping as many people as we have over the years.
Again, you see some patterns. You see what are the factors that lead to success, and what are
the roadblocks, the bottlenecks, the things that stop people from being successful. So let's dive
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into the top three that I have seen over the years that slows down or hinders progress
altogether. First and foremost, the heaviest hitter is continuing to do things that aren't working.
And I want to be very clear here, there is no shame, blame, guilt associated with this, right?
You. I've talked about this a lot in the podcast, so if you go back and listen to older episodes,
you'll understand more of the why under the surface. But one of the things you hear me say
time and again is that we are not broken in menopause. And it is true that the tool bag of our
20s, 30s, early 40s, it doesn't work anymore, right? It doesn't mean we're broken. It means we
need a new tool bag when it comes to health, when it comes to weight loss and menopause,
the problem is nobody's talking about this stuff, right? We're not teaching med school. Our
doctors aren't talking about it. 30 year old Jane Smith, trainer on social media, who's nowhere
near menopause has no idea about this stuff, so they're spitting in our face, screaming, eat
less, move more, keep cutting calories, and it's making the problem worse. So there's a few
places that this really manifests. From what from what we've seen from doing this again for
years and years and 1000s of women, number one is obviously cutting calories, right? If you're
already eating low calorie and not losing weight. Continuing to cut calories is making the
problem worse. It's the same conversation with cutting carbs. It's the same conversation with
intermittent fasting. It's the same conversation with keto. And when I tell this to women like
intermittent fasting is one of the worst things you can do for your body in menopause, keto is
terrible for your body period and in menopause, right? Your body needs carbs in a menopausal
stage of life. The thing I hear time and again is, but Rachel, it worked for me in the past, and
kind of my cheeky answer is, how's it working now? Right? If it was working, we wouldn't be
here. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast, and I get it again. There's no shame, blame guilt
here. What? How are we supposed to know this? It worked before logic would say it should
work. Now our brain has a lot of proof, and we need to stop the bleeding. So if you are doing
things that used to work and they are no longer working, stop doing them. You are digging the
hole deeper. We're taking a six inch hole and we're making it six miles long. Roadblock.
Number one, that I see time again is trying to do the things that used to work and aren't
working anymore. Number two, when we're talking about things that that block us from being
successful in weight loss, in menopause, is expecting to release weight the way that we used
to. And again, all of these are going to tie together very similar conversation of the Yeah, butts,
yeah. But Rachel, in my 20s, you know, I could eat healthy for a week and, you know, cut out
some junk food, eat a few salads, maybe do a bit of cardio. My body released the weight. And
again, my kind of cheeky answer is, well, in my 20s, I could stay at the bar until 4am and wake
up at seven and be fine, like we are not living in the same body that we were. It doesn't. Work
like that anymore. So if we are expecting I'll just go low calorie and stay there as long as I need
to. My body releases the weight. Number one, you're going to do more harm to your
metabolism, right? The reason a lot of us need what we call a healing stage. And go back to
earlier episodes, and I'll go deep into a healing stage, but a big portion of that is that our body
is a powerhouse in adaptation. So if you stay low calorie too long, your body says, Oh, this is
who I am and what I do now. This is my maintenance. This is homeostasis. So staying low
calorie too long is doing a disservice. It is ruining your metabolism. And number two, you're not
going to release the weight. You're just going to dig the hole deeper, but it's not actually going
to work. One of the big mindset shifts that we especially have to address in menopause, in
reality, this is the thing I pray we start teaching women in their 30s, is that when done
correctly, weight loss has to be a pop in, pop out kind of deal. Last season, I did a whole five
part series on what I call the weight loss cycle. This is how we I hate the word should, but I'm
going to use it here. We should have been approaching weight loss our whole life. We get into a
deficit, we lose some weight. We have to go back to maintenance in the name of keeping our
metabolism healthy. So if we're coming in with this mindset of, yeah, but Right, there's the red
flag, yeah, but in my 20s, I just stayed low calorie until I hit my goal using those same methods,
it's not going to work. You're going to be frustrated and you're going to do more damage. We
have to come in with expectation management. In menopause, weight loss takes longer. We
have to heal our metabolism first, if we're already eating low calorie and not losing and we
have to start thinking of weight loss as a pop in, pop out kind of deal. If you have just a few
pounds to lose, sure, you might lose it in your first go around on this weight loss cycle. If you
have 5080, 100 pounds to lose, there is no world in which you were going to lose it in that first
go around. It might take a couple cycles to do it and and by a couple, I mean a few, if it's a
large amount of weight. And the beauty of this is its biology. When we can play long ball, when
we can understand the name of the game is, the longer I do this, the longer I keep my
metabolism healthy, the faster and better results I get, the more successful we're going to be,
real quickly before we keep going in this episode, we are talking a lot about metabolisms in
menopause in today's episode. So I want to offer you a chance to deepen your knowledge. If
you haven't yet checked out my free workshop how to fire up your metabolism in menopause
and beyond. It is one of my go to favorite pieces of content that I have out here in the
interwebs. You can use the link in the show notes below, or go to mind strong fitness.com and
you'll get a cute little pop up that'll get you straight into the workshop. Now, let's get back to
the show.
Speaker 1 07:49
And number three, when we're talking about the biggest roadblocks to being successful with
weight loss, this one's a no brainer, giving up one of the things I love to say to people. You
know, when we teach people how to track macros, and we talk a lot about getting away from
diet culture, there's no good food, bad food, allowed food, not allowed food, right? We will
never use those words. It's nutritious and less nutritious. And you cannot mess this up unless
you quit. If you know me, you know I love me some donuts and some whiskey, right? Do I eat
and drink it every day, absolutely not. And if I choose the power of choice to have a donut or
two and a glass of whiskey or two, I didn't cheat, I didn't splurge. I don't have to start again
next Monday. I don't have to go down the rabbit hole of oh, I had one donut. I may as well have
12. This is the beauty. This is why macros are the single thing that in over a decade, this is
what I teach. If there were 12 approaches, I would teach 12, because differentiated learning is
real. I know that macros are the single most sustainable approach to nutrition because there's
no restriction, and they are the necessary stepping stone to get to intuitive eating. I did a whole
episode about what to do if you hate tracking and understanding it's that stepping stone to get
to intuitive eating. So I say that because you cannot mess this up. You are going to have days
where you crush it, you hit your macros, and you are a rock star, and you're going to have days
where you completely blow your macros, you don't even get close. You're going to have days
where you're like, Screw it. I don't want to track my macros today. As long as you get right
back on, you will be fine. Our body responds to what we do on a long term basis, not individual
days. You cannot blow this in a day. The only way you can truly mess this up is say, Screw it. I
give up. You hear me talk about a lot if you listen to those episodes, especially about a healing
stage. A healing stage meaning getting your metabolism better, burning calories, it is slow, it is
tedious. I always I refer to it as climbing a mountain, right? It's slow, it's tedious. I'm sure there
are people in the world that want to do it. I can't imagine that. There's tons of them. No one in
the history of ever has come to me and said, Rachel, can you teach me to eat more food with
little to no weight gain? Most of us are. Here for what's on the other side the weight loss, and
it's necessary, right? We physically cannot run a marathon if we don't know how to crawl. We
physically cannot lose weight without drugs, if we don't have a metabolism that's good at
burning calories. My purpose in saying this is, if you're climbing a mountain and you get tired, it
makes a lot more sense to set up camp and chill and rest before you keep climbing. Versus
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option B, which is, let me roll back down the hill and start all over from the beginning, right?
One of those is much more logical, and it is the same thing here, right? If you blow your macros
one day, if you're getting annoyed by a healing stage, if you're feeling hungry during a weight
loss stage, if you're at maintenance, you're getting bored, it makes a lot more sense to give
yourself a little bit of a break. Maybe it's a day, maybe it's a couple days, maybe it's a week.
You just take some time off, mentally, physically, and get right back to it. The only way you
mess this up is by saying, screw it, I'm done. Roll down the mountain, and then you have that
epiphany moment where you're like, well, crap. There is no plan B, like that was the plan. I
should have just rested on the mountain, because now I just backed up, you know, hundreds of
feet, and I have to start all over. You can't mess this up until you give up. So those are the
three biggest roadblocks to seeing results when it comes to weight loss period, but especially in
this menopausal world number one being determined, I'm going to keep doing the stuff that
used to work, even though I know it's not working. And by the way, it's not working for a lot of
us, means it's actually doing the opposite right? If you're already eating low calorie and you
keep cutting them and you keep amping up cardio, you've probably noticed the scale is moving
in the opposite direction. So it's not just that it's not working. It's making the problem worse.
Stop the bleeding, stop doing the old techniques. Listen to more episodes of the podcast. Email
us, get help. Get help from someone and learn how to do this correctly for menopause. Number
two, expecting your body to release weight the way that it did in our 20s or 30s, maybe even
our early 40s, we have to start thinking of weight loss as a pop in, pop out kind of deal. And
number three, cheesy as it sounds, it is absolute capital T truth. You cannot mess this up unless
you give up. If you need a break, if you're feeling tired, set up camp. Chill. Give yourself a
mental, physical break, but then keep going, and I promise you, your future self is going to look
back at your past self and want to kiss her on the mouth and say thank you. And
Speaker 1 12:30
I am hosting the largest event we have ever done, in mind, strong history, and you don't want
to miss it, from March 3 through fifth, 2026 join me live on Zoom totally free for mind Strong's
runway to summer my three Day Metabolism boosting challenge to join. And for more details,
go to www
12:51
dot mind strong fitness.com/challenge
12:54
or just use the link in the show notes below. You.
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