Episode 163: The Talk Tracks Every Menopausal Woman Needs

Many women leave their doctor's office feeling frustrated, unheard, and wondering if they're somehow doing something wrong.

The reality? 

Many healthcare providers were never taught how menopause impacts metabolism, weight loss, or nutrition.

Here are the key conversations every woman should know how to have when "eat less, move more" isn't working anymore. 

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

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Episode 163: The Talk Tracks Every Menopausal Woman Needs

Speaker 1  0:00  
Welcome back to the Becoming Mind Strong podcast. My name is Rachel, and I'm the founder and CEO of Mindstrong, where, as an educator, I am here to give you the keys to the kingdom to master nutrition as a skill in this menopausal body, so we can stop wishing, hoping, praying, feeling like all hope is lost, banging our head against the wall, all the things that come for many women at this beautiful time of life. Today we are talking about a topic that comes up time and time again inside Ignite our signature 12 week program. Earlier, quite a few episodes back in the podcast, I did an episode called What to Do If you're feeling gaslit by your doctor, and by popular demand, I was asked quite a few times after releasing that episode, can you give us some speaking points when that's happening in real time? So, before we dive in fully, let me just back up and give you a clear view of what we're talking about. I have been in this industry for over a decade, and within Mindstrong, we, we've, we're coming up on almost a decade of working with perian postmenopausal women, and the thing that crushes my soul is that doctors are not being taught about menopause in med school. It is a true story that, as of the time I'm recording this episode, we have three medical doctors going through our Ignite program right now, and every single one of them said the same thing. They said, I'm here not just for myself, but because as a doctor, I'm not being taught this in med school, and I feel like I'm doing a disservice to the women that I'm helping, because I wasn't taught how to navigate this with them. So, we're telling them, eat less, move more, but I know firsthand that's not working, it's making the problem worse, and every single one of them, I wanted to reach through Zoom and scoop them up in a hug, because I'm like, on behalf of all women, thank you. Right, we're doing our part to get this taught at an earlier age, because if we were teaching women what's coming up in their 30s as we're approaching the stage of life, we could avoid a lot of this hardship. So I say all that to say a thing we hear time and time again is not just yes, I feel gaslit by my doctor because they're telling me just eat less, move more, and they're not believing me when I'm saying I already am, but I don't know what to say, right, and we work with strong, powerful, independent women who are they can hold their own, it's just we're so caught off guard because we're not anticipating, like you're the expert, I'm paying you for a lot of these women, they've been going to this doctor their whole life and they like them and they trust them, but suddenly they're face to face having a conversation and they're being told, well, if you were doing that it would be working, or yeah, I don't know, I mean they'll tell them about the program they're in, and they're like, oh yeah, we'll see if it works, right? There's a lot of skepticism because they don't know any better, which is not their fault either. We're not being taught this. So that was a very long-winded way of saying that, kind of as a follow-up to that. If you're feeling gaslit conversation, a popular request was, Can you give us some talk tracks of how to explain this to our doctor, knowing they weren't taught about this stuff in med school. So that's what we're going to dive into today. Check it out. Welcome to the Becoming Mind Strong Podcast, the official podcast of Mindstrong Fitness. My name is Rachel, and I'm the CEO of Mindstrong. 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.

Speaker 1  3:53  
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. So I'm going to break this conversation down into a few categories. My brain tends to work in in sections, because I like data so much. It's like, let's tackle one, then go on to the next, then go on to the next. So, the, the quote unquote talk tracks are going to be less, say these words and regurgitate them back to your doctor. It's going to be more conceptual, like if your doctor says x, ask them about y, right. Essentially, what we're going to be doing, not from a place of ego, not from a place of competitiveness, but we need to be educating our doctors. If you heard in the intro, I talked about the fact that we have some medical doctors going through our program now, because they know they're not being taught this. So, I believe our job as women until this becomes mainstream. Am I am cautiously optimistic that in the next 10 years we're going to start seeing this more in the mainstream. Now, with that said, getting things into the education system takes time, right? Menopause, as the time I'm recording this, was on Oprah recently, that's a great step, we're paying attention, but to get this into the curriculum of med school, and then we need to go through cycles of doctors, we got to buckle our patient's belt. It's going to be some time, so for me, as an educator, I believe part of our job as women, as we're learning this stuff, it's to educate others, including our doctors, and that can feel weird, because they're supposed to be the expert. Again, a lot of us go to doctors that we've always had good experiences with. I have an older episode as an interview with one of our coach, now member turned coach, Shay, who her naturopath, her own naturopath, told her, I don't know how else for a menopausal woman to lose weight besides a GLP one, and Shay talks about openly in that interview. If you haven't checked it out, I highly suggest it. She's like, it was tough, Rachel, because I got to her for like 20 years, 10 or 20 years. I trust this lady, I love this lady, she's done really great work for me, and she doesn't know menopause. So I'm going down a rabbit hole a bit before we dive in, because I think it's important to know this is not a butting heads with your doctor, this is not a trash talking your doctor, right? It's, hey, we don't know, we don't know you weren't taught this in med school. So, as I'm learning about it right now, you're giving me advice that's not actually accurate. Let's have a conversation about what's actually working or not. So, I want to break this into a couple categories, one is kind of bigger picture about metabolisms, and then the others are more menopause specific. By the way, this is true whether you have a male or female doctor. A lot of times, and even on this podcast, I'll make jokes of, like, your male doctor, ask him how menopause was, but female doctors are going through the same med school program, right? The only difference is some of them have the lived experience, which is why we have female doctors in our program, because as they've lived it, they're like, oh, this doesn't actually work. But I say all that to say these conversations may need to happen regardless of your doctor's gender identity. Okay, first we need to talk about metabolisms. For the vast majority of menopausal women that we work with, they are already eating low calorie and losing weight. The textbook definition of low calorie is under 1600 in our world. If you're eating under 1800 calories and not losing weight, we need what we call a healing stage. I have a plethora of episodes where we deep dive into the healing stage. The one I recommend the most, I know it off the top of my head, because I referred people to it 20 times a day. Episode 99 is the start of a five part series. It's one of my favorite series we've ever done on the podcast.

Speaker 1  7:49  
So, all that say, I'm not going to go deep in the weeds about a healing stage, but episode 99 is a good one to start. There, one of the biggest areas where women start to feel gasoline is they go to their doctor, they say, "Hey, I'm doing everything right, I'm eating less, I'm moving more, I'm eating healthy. The scale is moving in the opposite direction, and their doctor says, "Well, the laws of biology say that if you want to lose weight, you have to eat less, move more, so if you're not losing weight, it just means we need to cut calories more, and it's dangerous because when we're already eating low calorie and not losing weight, continuing to cut is making the problem worse, right? And maybe you've had this lived experience where at 1200 calories you were gaining weight, so you cut to 1000 and then you gain more weight, and then you cut to 900 and you gain more weight. Every time we dig the hole deeper, the scale is going to go in the opposite direction, it is making the problem worse, and we're doing it because our doctor is telling us to do it 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 Mindstrong 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. So, the first thing we need to explain to our doctor is what we in the world of Mindstrong call a healing stage. Your doctor might know the term reverse diet in the, in the dieting world, in the fitness world. What we call a healing stage, people call a reverse diet. My favorite example of this, I think it's the clearest visual, is bodybuilders. So, when bodybuilders get on stage, they go through a very, very intense cut stage, caloric deficit, right? They want to get to as low body fat as, as possible to get on stage. On the other side of their competition, you, they're not going to stay that low calorie forever, because their metabolism would be shot, just like a lot of the women in our. Program, so they need to get out of that deficit, minimizing how much weight they're putting on. Right, the goal is not to put on any pounds, but at least minimize it. So they're going to call that a reverse diet. For me, I hate the word diet. I don't, I hate diet culture, I hate diet mindset. What we're doing is we are healing your metabolism, we are getting it better at burning calories. Right, a bodybuilder does not have a metabolism that's bad at burning calories, they've just consciously cut their calories super low and they need to reverse out of it. In our world, I use a different phrase because I think it's a very different conversation. A lot of our women have been eating low calorie for a very long time, so their metabolism is not good at burning calories. We need to heal it. We need to slowly introduce more calories to get it better at burning calories. Same concept of little to no weight gain there. So, if your doctors, you know that you're eating low calorie, let's just call 1200 for ease of conversation, and your doctor says, hey, you need to keep cutting calories. Ask them, they won't know that they might not know their term healing phase, because that's just our internal that we use at Mindstrong. But you could ask them, are you familiar with a reverse diet? Because right now, what's happening is I've been eating low calorie, 1200 calorie frees of conversation for so long that my body, here's the talk track, you can use my body thinks that that's maintenance. My body thinks 1200 calories a day is maintenance, so anytime I go above it, even if it's still low calorie, even if it's 1300 I'm gaining weight.

Speaker 1  11:36  
So, what I need to put my body through is a reverse diet, we just call it a healing stage, so that I can raise my maintenance to a higher number. Here's the whole point, so that the old rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. Now, let me pause here, and I'm going to say that again in a more flowy way. If this happens to be the first podcast episode you've ever listened to of mine. I'm going to suggest you listen to that episode 99 first, because today we're getting, we're getting a bit more in the weeds, because I'm giving you some talk tracks for your doctor. If this concept of a healing stage is new to you, you might be listening to this podcast with a little bit deer in headlights, right? Because we're getting pretty technical, I'm teaching you how to teach this stuff, and to teach something, we need to know it ourselves, right? So, if hearing me say that statement, you're like, "What? The what? Pause this episode, go back to episode 99 learn this for yourself first, then come back and learn how to teach it to your doctor. So, let me summarize the reverse diet conversation first, and then we'll dig a little deeper. You go to your doctor, you're eating 1200 calories a day, maybe you don't know the exact number, but you know it's super low. They say, well, if you were actually eating less, moving more, it would be working. And you say, hey, doc, have you ever heard of something called a reverse diet? Right, we're not being sarcastic, we're educating them. So, what's happening right now? This is what I'm learning about myself, right? Be vulnerable, open, honest conversation, just like everything we talk about here. What I'm learning about myself is I have been low calorie for so long that my body thinks that that's maintenance, it thinks that's that's homeostasis, I'm not losing, I'm not gaining, that's just my normal. So anytime I go above that, even if it's just 1300 I'm gaining weight because I've gone above maintenance. Those are the rules of biology, right? So, what I'm doing right now in my program is we call it a healing stage, but you might know it as a reverse diet. We are slowly increasing my calories to train my body for a new, higher maintenance, so that, and that's so that is always the most important part of that sentence, the old rules of eat less, move more, go back to working. That one talk track is what 98% of our women need, because most of the conversations with their doctors are about the fact, well, if you're not losing weight, you're not eating low calorie. They don't understand a metabolism healing stage or a reverse diet. So that's the talk track for how to teach your doctor about that. The other couple points I want to hit on are more menopause specific. If your doctor is encouraging you to ramp up cardio or to cut out carbs, I'm putting both of those in the same category, and you'll see why. You hear me talk a lot about on this podcast, if you've listened before, that menopause is a time of life where, as our estrogen naturally drops, which it does, it's a theme of menopause. One of estrogen's main jobs in the body is cortisol control. So, as our estrogen drops, our cortisol naturally rises. So, carbs are our body's natural energy source. No doctor would argue with that, maybe they would, but don't go to that doctor. Carbs are our body's natural energy source. Not giving our body its natural energy source of carbs is driving those cortisol levels higher and higher. If you are already eating low calorie, you are not fueling your body correctly, ramping up high intensity workouts like boot. Amps and HIIT workouts, you are driving those cortisol levels higher and higher. I'll plug intermittent fasting in. If your doctor is telling you to intermittent fast, going long periods of time without food, it's causing blood sugar to be a roller coaster, and it's driving cortisol levels higher and higher. So, if your doctor tells you any of those three, try cutting carbs, ramp up cardio, try intermittent fasting. Here's the talk track.

Speaker 1  15:23  
Hey, Doc, what I'm learning is that at this menopausal stage of life, as my estrogen is dropping, one of estrogen's main roles is cortisol control. So, as my estrogen is dropping, my cortisol is naturally rising. One of the things that we're focusing heavily on is how do I control my cortisol, and from what I'm learning, carbs are our body's natural energy source. So, cutting carbs is spiking cortisol higher, doing high intensity cardio when I'm already under eating. Right, this goes back to our metabolism healing conversation, is driving those cortisol, cortisol levels higher, and going long periods of time without food, intermittent fasting is causing my blood sugar to spike and drop, and driving those cortisol levels higher and higher. And from what I'm learning, and it makes sense, because biology, right, biology is always going to biology, it is nearly impossible to lose weight in a body with spiked cortisol. So what I'm working on is fueling my body with the correct number of calories in the right balance of carbs, fat, and protein, so that number one, going back to our first conversation, my metabolism is healed, and number two, I can get my cortisol levels in check. Now we could also go down our whole rabbit hole again. If you've listened to the podcast, we talk about the big three: cortisol, inflammation, gut health. I don't see inflammation and gut health as, as much of a gaslighty topic, if that's a word, gaslighty. The big ones I see are doctors not understanding a healing stage, and doctors not understanding why things like more cardio and intermittent fasting and cutting carbs are making the problems worse. So, the name of the game, Heart Centered Conversation. I have a very old podcast episode about boundaries, and in it, it reminds me of this conversation, because it's not about butting heads, it's not about who's right, it's about, hey, little bit of vulnerability. Like, here's what I'm learning. Can I share it with you? What are your thoughts on this? Right, I'm separating the conversations. Let's talk about a healing stage. They may know it as a reverse diet. If you use the words raising your maintenance, the hope is that they'll understand that, because most doctors do understand calories in versus calories out. They just don't understand if you're already eating low calorie. Calories in, calories out only works with a functioning metabolism, with a healed metabolism. Conversation number two is are the other other heavy hitters, the cutting carbs, the high intensity cardio, and the intermittent fasting. Okay, now at the end of the day, this is a this is an easier said than done conversation, and we need to hear it. We, as women, know our bodies better than anyone else. This is a conversation I have a lot when we talk about perimenopause. A lot of women, as they start getting into their late 30s, early 40s, we know our body is changing, and then we go to the doctor and they run blood tests, and they say everything looks normal, you're not in perimenopause, and I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole, but menopause is not a blood work diagnosis, it is a symptom diagnosis, and we feel gaslit because we're like, wait a second, I thought my body felt different, maybe it doesn't, and I always say on the topic of perimenopause, if you think your body's changing, it is, because you know your body better than anyone else, and it's hard, it's like when you hit that stage of life and suddenly you realize, wow, my parents don't know everything, right. For some of us, that happened younger. For some of us, it happened older. For some of us, we haven't had that realization yet. But it's a similar conversation, of like, oh, wow, I've always just been putty in your hands, and now I'm realizing you're a human, and you don't know everything, and you have your flaws, and that's okay.

Speaker 1  18:57  
And it can be a tough pill to swallow about our own doctor, because they're the expert, they're the person that we're paying money to, they're the person that we've, we've put our trust in their hands sometimes for years, and we have to understand it's not that they're a bad doctor, it's that sometimes it is, sometimes, and many times it's not, though, it's that they're not being taught this in med school, so we as women, even though we're not doctors, even though we might not have a PhD, maybe you have a PhD, if you're listening to this, most of our members don't. Every once in a while, they do, and it doesn't negate the fact that we are getting an education, that we are mastering nutrition as a skill, that we are learning more about our menopausal bodies than doctors are being taught in med school. So, it's okay, it's safe. In fact, it's important that we have a heart-centered conversation with our doctor, because number one, it's not only going to help us be seen, heard, held more in our conversations. Number two, think about the trickle-down effect, right? The next woman that walks in that office, maybe right after you leave, you leave your appointment, someone else walks. In at the very least, your doctor is going to pause and breathe and say, "Wait a second, a seed was planted, maybe before I tell this woman to eat less, move more, and dig the hole deeper. Maybe I just pause here and do my own research. We, as women, have the power, I almost said, to overthrow the system. That's a bit, that's a bit extreme. We're not, we're not rioting here, but until the day comes, which it will, I believe it will, until the day comes that we're being taught this in med school. We have the power to start educating other women. We do it by referring our friends to Ignite, right? That's one of my favorites. When our members refer their friends, because they're like, "Oh my gosh, where was this 20 years ago? You have to learn this right. There's a feeling of urgency we see with our members of how are you not, how are we not shouting this from the rooftops? And my answer is that's exactly why I started this company, because I wanted to shout this from the rooftops. We do it by inviting our members into what we're doing. We do it by sharing. We always send our members when I'm doing a live workshop. Hey, share the link with your friends. It's free. It's the best place to learn what we're doing. Let's get the education out there. And one of the most powerful places we can be doing that is by having an open, honest, heart-centered conversation with our doctors, because that's where the trickle effect is going to happen. When we can plant a seed with our doctor, I would hope most doctors are going to continue the conversation by doing their own research. They're going to start educating themselves, and that's going to trickle down to other women, and that is how we're going to change the path for all of menopausal women until we get this stuff into schools. 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 Mind Strong fitness.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai