Episode 161: The #1 Factor to Success in Menopausal Weight Loss

Losing weight in menopause takes time. After working with thousands of menopausal women over the past decade, here's the #1 factor to success when it comes to staying the course and seeing results. 

If you're loving the podcast, leaving a review is the #1 way to help other women find it! You can do so by clicking the starts on the page where you're currently listening and (brownie points ;)) typing a few words about what you love. Thank you in advance <3

Check out my (free) workshop, How to Fire Up Your Metabolism in Menopause and Beyond right here: www.MindStrongFitness.com

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong: 161: The #1 Factor to Success in Menopausal Weight Loss

0:00  
Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. My name is Rachel, and I'm the founder and CEO of mind strong fitness, where we help Perry and post menopausal women take control their health for life, master this as a skill. So on the other side, they don't need us or anyone else, because, as I love to say, if you know how to ride a bike, try to fall off that bike. So today we are talking about a topic that I can speak with from a place of authority. After doing this, as long as I have as the time I'm recording this episode, mind strong has been in

0:33  
existence almost a decade now. I have been doing this for over

0:36  
a decade, so I've got a

0:38  
lot of data. As a very science,

0:40  
data, brained person.

0:42  
I'm always looking for patterns. I'm always collecting data. And so when I say this today, when I say this is the top we're going to talk about, I say

0:50  
it not so much from

0:53  
Rachel's laws of health and fitness,

0:54  
more from the standpoint of this is the pattern that I've seen time and time again over after over 10 years in this industry and helping 1000s upon 1000s of women and that topic is the single biggest factor to your success when it comes to weight loss and menopause, check it out.

 1:22  
You welcome to the becoming mind strong

1:25  
podcast, the official podcast of mind strong fitness.

1:29  
My name is Rachel, and I'm the CEO of

1:30  
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.

2:20  
So that's a big statement. The single biggest factor to success when it comes to your weight loss and menopause, and sometimes, when I talk about this topic, I get a lot of guesses as to what it is, right? It's not eating carbs, it's intermittent fasting. It's doing more cardio. Or, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, it's healing stage, or listening to your coach, or one of my favorite sayings, time and consistency and sorry to disappoint, the answer is none of those things. Now, before I tell you what the answer is, let me say this, if you are newer here, you will learn, if you like this episode enough to go binge and dive into others that I am not someone who likes pump you up. Fluff. I always like to say, nowhere in my bio does it say motivational speaker. I am a very, as you heard me say in the intro, a very science, a very data brained person. So I'm saying that because the answer to the single biggest measure of success on the surface can sound a little Woo, woo, rainbows and glitter and unicorn. And as we dive deeper in this episode, you're going to see why this is the answer according to neuroscience, not according to pump you up fluff. So that was a big build up. The number one factor to success when it comes to weight loss, specifically in menopause, is your inner monolog, meaning the way that you talk to yourself internally. Now, probably about 70% of people listening to this podcast or watching this video, depending where you're taking it in, just groaned and said, Man, Rachel, I thought you were going to give me an actual key to success. Here's why this is an actual key to success. On this podcast, I talk a lot about something called the pleasure principle. Freud discovered something called the pleasure principle, which means, as human beings, if you have a pulse and a heartbeat, this applies to us. We are designed human nature. We are designed to avoid pain and seek pleasure, which means anytime we try to put ourselves in a state of prolonged pain and let me go down a rabbit hole here for a second. Pain can be physical, right? If I'm recording this episode and I'm sitting on my keys and it's poking me in the rear

4:29  
end, you best believe I'm going to

4:30  
shift in my chair, because that's physical pain. Pain is also emotional, trying to live in a state of restriction, trying to put our horse blinders on and say, this is a good food, this is bad food. This allowed. This is not allowed. That's also pain, that's also discomfort. And as human beings, we are designed all of us, right? You might have more willpower than I do, but all of us are designed to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

4:54  
What does that have to do with the key to success? I have seen

4:58  
1000s upon 1000s. 1000s upon 1000s of menopausal women heal their metabolisms and lose weight for almost a decade now, that is a that is a long period of time that is significant. Sometimes my brain has a hard time comprehending how I'm old enough for that statement to be true. But that's a story for another day when we see women go through this program and they come in with the expectation of, I've been tracking my macros for a week. Why isn't? Why aren't I releasing late? Right? The Journey ain't gonna be so pretty. We there's some deep work to do there around mindset, around expectation management,

5:35  
and what I find 99.999%

5:38  
of that time is that the women who I'm just going to call it coming hot, right, coming with, with not so realistic expectations of how the process works. Of, of, I'm hesitant to say the word demands, but I'm going to say the word demands here. Of, you know, I want these results yesterday. How do we make this go faster? What are we doing wrong? Why aren't we seeing success?

5:59  
When you look under the hood,

6:01  
that's usually how they're talking to themselves, right? We are beating ourselves into the ground and thinking that that's going to get us better results, that that's going to make us work harder, that that's

6:13  
going to make us more disciplined. And I'm going to, I'm going to harp on that a lot more in a second.

6:17  
I'm going to interrupt this episode real quickly to ask a 32nd favor if you are loving the podcast, if you can tap that Five Star Review button above, maybe even leave a few nice words, it is the biggest help to getting the podcast out there. As the time I'm recording this, we don't advertise the podcast, so we rely on our old friend, the algorithm, to help get it in the hands of other women. Leaving a review is the absolute number one way to help us do that. Thank you in advance. Thank you. Thank you. Now let's get back to the episode. The kind of other school of women I'm going to call it for ease of conversations, are the ones that come in, and from day one, they're like, Listen. I know I didn't get in this situation overnight. I know from listening to this podcast and reading my book and whatever else research they've done. I know that my metabolism is not working so

7:07  
great right now, and I also

7:08  
know it's going to take some time to get out of that. So I know this is going to be a longer journey. What would help me is to know what to focus on. Right If weight loss is possible, it's biology, it's possible, but it's going to take some time. Where can I put my

Unknown Speaker  7:23  
focus so that I know I'm checking the boxes and I know that I'm progressing.

7:28  
That is a woman who is going to see success, because humans are pleasure seeking creatures, right? I'm going to I'm going to call them woman a and woman B for a second, which I hate categorizing, but we're going to do it here. Woman a thinks that being hard on herself, beating herself up, beating her coach up, setting unrealistic expectations, is going to make the process go faster. Let me ask you a question. I'm going to put yourself back in your school days, right? We all had those teachers who set the bar really

7:58  
high and made us feel really

8:01  
good about ourselves by celebrating our successes on the way, which led us to believe we can achieve that high bar, right? I think hope, I hope you were fortunate enough to have some of those teachers, at least one, I would venture to guess, unfortunately, having worked in the education industry for a long time, I would guess we've also had those teachers who make us feel like garbage about ourselves, who yell, who berate us, who make us feel like mistakes are not allowed. Who did you perform better for right as women, especially, we have this false belief that being a jerk to ourselves, that beating ourselves into the ground is going to make us work harder. Human nature states otherwise, right? We think the thing that is making us successful is Drive, drive, driving ourselves into the ground. When, in reality, if we could learn, when we can learn to be our best coach, we still set that bar high. We can still set that bar incredibly high, but we learn to be our best coach, just like that teacher was what you learn quickly is that beating yourself up was actually the thing holding you back. So I say all that to say, when woman we're gonna call her woman a right, she's coming in hot, unrealistic expectations, beating up everyone around her, and she's beating up everyone around her because, internally, she's beating up herself, right? She is not going to stick with it long term. I can tell you this from experience. She's going to get a few weeks in, she's going to get frustrated, she's

9:29  
going to say the weights not coming off, and she's going

9:30  
to quit, when, in reality, this works for everyone, because biology is going to biology. She's not going to stick with it, not because she's the unicorn that biology doesn't apply to, but because she is still a pleasure seeking human creature who is designed to avoid pain and seek pleasure, and she's already someone living in a lot of pain because she's beating herself up constantly so coming in with unrealistic expectations and focusing. Working on all the stuff that's not working, that's a whole lot of pain, and nobody's sticking with that. By design, woman b Who comes in having done her research, understanding we didn't get in this situation overnight. We're not getting out of it overnight, asking the beautiful questions of what's a true measure of success, right? She's not throwing glitter on the situation.

0:23  
She's saying, Look, I

10:25  
still need to be a pleasure seeking creature. She's not saying in so many words, but I still need to see and feel success. I need to know that I'm walking the path we all do. Who would stick with something if you're working so hard, not seeing results? But her question is, what can I focus on to make sure that I'm walking the path so that I'm seeing results on the other side, knowing it's going to take some time. Now we're going to take this one step further, because you're hearing me say that the biggest factor to success and weight loss is your inner monolog. The other part that comes into play of inner monolog is the power of curiosity, and that's something I talk a lot about on this podcast. Again, I'm going to stick with woman a and woman B. It's kind of wigging me out a little bit because I don't love categorizing people.

11:09  
But for ease of conversation,

11:10  
woman a, the one coming in hot, unrealistic expectations, bashing everyone and

11:14  
everything around her, right?

11:17  
She gets her her personal nutrition

11:19  
plan, she gets her macro, she plugs it into

11:20  
her app. She does it for a day. It's all over the place. Of course, it's all over the place. We've never thought about this before, right? One of the first things we tell our members, and we harp on this is, if the expectation is just because your coach gave you some goals, you're going to hit them. You were setting yourself up for disappointment. You're setting yourself up for failure. We've never thought about food this way. How in the world would we be good at it? If you've listened this podcast before, I always love to tell this story. When I was a middle school music teacher, my kids every year without doubt, like they would crack up over this, because the first day they got their instruments, these kids are in sixth grade, sometimes fourth getting instruments for the first time. You can imagine what my classroom sounded like. So I would hand them their instruments, and before we did anything, I would tell them this. I go, guys, I gotta tell you something. It is about to sound like complete chaos in this room. Like it is about to sound like a room full of a zoo with dying animals, like I would go to the extreme with it, and there would be giggling, there would be hysterical laughing, and mostly there would be like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe she said that. Right? Because you're a teacher, you're supposed to tell them how wonderful they were. But I would tell them, Look, life is about expectation management, and in this scenario, how could we be good at this? We've never touched a trumpet before. In what world are we going to pick it up and are we going to sound like like Maynard Ferguson, or insert your musician here. And I learned to do that because in my first couple years of teaching, I did not do that. And the first day with their instruments, which was supposed to be a big exciting thing, ended with at least three kids in tears because they had a sound in their mind of what they would sound like. And that wasn't it. And so I know that was my experience with music. The first day in fourth grade, I touched an instrument. I instrument, I came home crying, because I thought, This is what a trumpet sound like. It did not sound like that. So the beauty of this is we turned it into a game. I would record them like the first I'd give them a little count off so that I could protect my ears. I let them go crazy for like 30 seconds, and then we cut it off. And then three months later, when they were prepping for their first adorable, little winter concert. We'd go back and listen to that first day, and they could not believe how far they had come in two, three months, because that is the power of expectation management, and that is the power of curiosity, right? I know I'm not going to be good at this in the beginning. I wonder what would happen

13:40  
if fast forward to three months.

13:43  
So woman a coming in hot expectation that I plugged in my nutrition plan. I'm not hitting them. I can't do this. This is a mess. This is never going to work for me. And there we are. It is never if you if that is the mindset you are right, it is never going to work for you. Woman B comes in with a place of curiosity, huh? What an interesting way to think about food. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, I've lived a whole life of eat this. Don't eat this. This is good, this bad, this loud. Now they're not allowed. It makes sense from a from a science standpoint, that my body's designed to run an unbalanced carbs, fat, protein. Never thought about what that was before. Certainly never thought about food as fitting in a budget.

14:21  
This is interesting.

14:22  
Day one we try it's all over the place, huh? I am not great at this. Interesting. Let me take a look at breakfast and see what I ate that went so awry. Interesting, I didn't know that each egg yolk has five grams of fat. Man, I ate four of them this morning. That was 20 grams of fat right off the bat. Huh? Who knew? It makes a lot of sense now why I was struggling with X, Y and Z. I wonder if tomorrow I make some changes. Looks like egg whites have a lot of protein without the fat. I wonder what would happen if I took those four whole eggs, made them two, filled in, the rest with egg whites. Because you hear how she's already learning right? No one is doubting that tomorrow is going to be better to today than today. She didn't call herself a jerk. She didn't tell her she's terrible about this. She stayed in the power of curiosity. I am telling you from the bottom of my soul. If I had an answer of like the women who are most successful, eat this food, don't eat that food. You know, my logic brain. I share it with you. This is the deciding factor. The women who come in with unrealistic expectations, who wanted results yesterday, who don't have I don't have time to learn a skill, just tell me what to eat, all the stuff that sounds good in theory, but doesn't, doesn't actually work, or we wouldn't be here. You're not going

15:39  
to stick with it, because you might

15:41  
have more willpower than I do, but at the end of the day, humans are designed to be pleasure seeking creatures, the women who come in knowing this is a journey, the good news is it's one and done. Once I have a healed metabolism, that's it for life. Once I master the skill, try to fall off a bike, right? If your brain's wired for the skill, it's hard to do, and like learning any new skill, it's going to take time, it's going to take practice, it's going to take consistency, and we'll take it one step further. The more I can step into a place of curiosity, the more I can practice a growth mindset. I have a whole podcast episode about growth mindset, the more I

16:16  
can be my own best coach instead

16:19  
of a raging jerk, the more I'm going to stick with it as a pleasure seeking human being, the Kinder I am to myself, the more curious I am, the longer I'm going to stick with it, and the longer I stick with it, I'm an intelligent woman. I'm going to keep learning, I'm going to keep tweaking. I'm going to keep adjusting.

16:35  
And that is how we master the

16:36  
skill, and that is how we have it for life. You

16:44  
For more information on mind strong fitness, or to apply for a free one to one strategy session with my incredible all female team, visit www dot mindstrong fitness.com, you you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai