The Ageless and Awesome Podcast
The Ageless and Awesome Podcast is dedicated to helping women over 40 through Perimenopause and Menopause with best health, a positive mindset and outrageous confidence. Hosted by Susie Garden, Perimenopause Naturopath and Weight Loss Nutritionist, Founder of The Glow Protocol® - the hormone balancing and weight loss program for women.
This podcast is for you if you’re noticing those pesky early symptoms of perimenopause like night sweats, weight gain, insomnia and fatigue. Or perhaps you’re experiencing hot flushes and forgetting words and people’s names (ugh!)? Or dealing with unwanted weight gain, a sex drive that’s fallen off a cliff and vaginal issues? In this podcast, we will cover all of those perimenopause and menopause issues you chat with your friends about (plus the taboo ones - you know what I mean ladies!) We cover health (especially gut health), beauty hacks, confidence and everything you need to feel young, vibrant and rediscover your GLOW!
I’m here, calling on my 30+ years of healthcare experience in both conventional AND natural medicine plus I’ll be chatting with industry experts from around the globe on body image, beauty, fashion and styling, mindset hacks and the latest in longevity medicine.
So if you’re sick of feeling like a crazy person has taken over your body and mind, and want science-based, actionable tips to optimise your health and wellbeing as you move into menopause and beyond stick around. To learn more about what I do with my incredible Glow Protocol®, sustainable weight loss and nutrition hacks, check out https://susiegarden.com/the-glow-protocol
The Ageless and Awesome Podcast
5 Top Weight Loss Blockers in Perimenopause
Struggling with weight loss during perimenopause can be like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube in the dark—frustrating and often futile. But light is at hand! In this episode, I shatter the age-old myth that age is a barrier to shedding weight, and instead, I focus on the reasons why weight can increase over 40 and what you can do about it. As I dissect the hormonal rollercoaster that can throw a wrench into your metabolism, including its effects on thyroid function and insulin levels, you’ll learn why these changes are more than just a bump on the road—they are the map to understanding your body's new weight loss landscape.
Are you a woman feeling stressed, flat and experiencing the challenges of perimenopause or menopause?
It’s time to reclaim your youthful energy, radiance and self-assurance (and your ideal weight).
I’m here to help with my proven method.
Here's how I can support you -
1. Hit your health and wellbeing goals this year, balance your hormones and lose weight with your own personalised protocol, based on your body's biochemistry. Sounds awesome right!! Book a free 30 minute Peri Weight Loss Assessment with me so we can discuss your health and wellbeing goals and also see how I might be able to support you. Book your call here.
2. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook - @the.perimenopause.path
3. Join the waitlist for my innovative NEW 8 week group program, In Your Skin™️, for women in perimenopause and post-menopause who want effective solutions to manage skin changes at this time of life.
Hi, I'm Suzy Gardin and this is the Ageless and Awesome podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and aging so that you can be ageless and awesome in your 40s, 50s and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset and outrageous confidence. Hit, subscribe or follow now and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome to this week's episode of the Ageless and Awesome podcast.
Speaker 1:This week I'm focusing a little bit more on weight loss because obviously I speak to people men and women every week, because I also work with men. I know I don't talk a lot about that, because I love working with women in perimenopause. I love working in weight loss and often I'm either working with couples or men independently that clearly aren't in perimenopause but in midlife and wanting to lose weight Even actually, I've got a couple of guys in their 20s at the moment as well. I want to talk a little bit more about weight loss and specifically the five things that stop weight loss in perimenopause. I'm going to get straight into it. Let's talk about number one, and these are not in any particular order, but I always like to put this one in number one whenever I talk about this, which is actually mindset, because it's something that can impact any of us at any time, and myself included. If I'm not in the right mindset for anything, then it's just not going to happen. There's this great old I think Henry Ford gets attributed to this. I don't know if it's actually him or not, but it's whether you think you can or you think you can't. You think you can't, you're right.
Speaker 1:I find this to be especially true. I speak to a lot of people in the pre-screening calls about their challenges I guess any medical conditions, but specifically challenges and their weight loss journey, because many people who I'm speaking to have been on and off different kinds of weight loss plans all of their lives. And when I'm asking people what their weight loss goal is, I reckon about 70% of the time they will either undercook it or they will say to me I think it's I don't know. Let's say 15 kilos and they say but I'd really like to lose 25, but I've got to be realistic. I'm over 40, I'm in perimenopause. It's probably not possible for me to lose that weight.
Speaker 1:And again, henry Ford, whether you think you can or you think you can't. You're right and thinking that weight firstly, that weight gain is inevitable and that there's nothing you can do about it when you get in your 40s or your 50s, is absolutely not true. So if you have that thought, then you're going to make choices and decisions with that thought influencing you. So having a mindset that is going to support you to make more positive choices is imperative, particularly when you're embarking on a weight loss journey or any kind of health journey. And it really doesn't matter what happened with your mother or your sister or your friends that have gone through this period of time. You don't have to have their story. Even if you have the same body sort of shape as your female relatives, that doesn't mean that you are going to have that, and if you do have it currently, it doesn't mean that that's the way it has to be. If that's not what you want, and that's why, when I'm working with people, the very first thing I do is request that they complete the very first module that I provide in the Glow Protocol VIP space.
Speaker 1:I also provide it for people that are just doing metabolic balance on its own, and it's all about creating an inspiring mindset so that you are coming on this journey feeling inspired and not feeling like, oh, I'll give this a go, but I don't know if it's going to work. And you know, my friend told me that I'm wasting my time doing this, etc. Etc. Etc, etc. So having a really positive mindset around your, any choices that you're making, will make a huge difference in how successful you are with any kind of changes that you're making to your lifestyle. So mindset is absolutely number one when I'm looking at what are the top five things that stop weight loss in perimenopause. So have a think about that for yourself, what that might mean to you, how you've approached things in the past when it comes to making changes to your lifestyle with a view to reaching some health goals. So number two of the probably the second thing I think is really important when it comes to stopping weight loss in perimenopause is the hormonal changes that happen.
Speaker 1:Now you know most of us will really think when you think about hormonal changes in perimenopause, you're thinking of the estrogen and progesterone changes, but there are so many more as well, and two specifically are thyroid hormones and also insulin, which is another hormone, and when the estrogen starts surging as it does in peri, it will impact your thyroid hormones and the kind of physiology behind that. The reason why is we have something in our blood called T4. T4 is the thyroid hormone, t4 binding globulin, or TBG, and estrogen, when it's elevated, is known to increase TBG. So this T4 binding globulin concentration and when that happens, that can lead to what we call subclinical hypothyroidism and that is the kind of thyroid condition that leads to weight gain and feeling sluggish and feeling cold and that you know we get these hormonal surge sorry, these estrogen surges in perimenopause that can cause this. So therefore, you know you can get this blocking of weight loss and a lack of motivation, a whole bunch of other things that happen in hypothyroidism because of the hormonal changes of estrogen.
Speaker 1:The other thing is insulin. Insulin is important. You probably know about it from perhaps knowing people with diabetes. They inject themselves with insulin which allows the glucose to go into the cells and do the job that it does and when we hit our 40s and 50s now perimenopausal is that we can become insulin resistant, that insulin doesn't work as well as we need it to and that can also lead to a sluggishness when it comes to weight loss. So we want to make sure our insulin and glucose are beautifully balanced so that that glucose metabolism is working well.
Speaker 1:That gives you energy. It also helps stop that weight accumulation around the torso or around the waist, which is what can really be problematic, particularly in perimenopause. So our hormonal changes really matter and that's why doing some of the things that you used to do. This is another common thing that women say to me is I'm doing all of the things I used to do to keep my weight stable and it's just not working anymore. And that's why I get really angry with these PTs that are recommending 1200 calorie a day diets and flogging yourself at the gym to lose weight. For women in perimenopause, it's not necessarily going to be the best option for them to support their hormones and to actually give weight loss. It's going to be sustainable and it's going to make you feel good and energized and motivated rather than absolutely depleted.
Speaker 1:Number three, when I'm looking at the things that stop weight loss in perimenopause is the lack of sleep, and this happens because our progesterone drops away and that can cause sleep disruption. And the thing is with sleep disruption if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you may have heard me talk about this before when we have disrupted sleep. It really interferes with our blood glucose levels and, again, our insulin levels, because when we go into deep sleep, our blood sugar is maintained at a fairly low sort of level, and this is. It's quite a complex biological thing that goes on, which is amazing. It means that we're not waking up because we're hungry. It's keeping us asleep and it's regulating our glucose level, and when we have a lot of sleep disruption, this hasn't happened overnight and this wreaks havoc with our blood glucose metabolism. I think it used to be thought that people put on weight, or more likely to be overweight, when they had insomnia, and I think it used to be thought that it's because people were at the fridge eating during the night and then going straight back to bed. But we know that now that that's not actually the case. It's way more complex than that.
Speaker 1:Number four is stress Again that this is a progesterone issue, also an estrogen issue, but that decrease in progesterone can cause what we call HPA axis destabilization. Our HPA axis is responsible for many things, including our stress response and our relaxation response, and so it means that perhaps sometimes for many women, coping with stress can be a little more challenging than in their 20s and 30s. And so when we're in that stress response, our cortisol levels which is one of our stress hormones, as cortisol can be increased and that interferes with our blood glucose metabolism and it also promotes weight gain, again around the waist Awesome. And that can be a real problem when it comes to blocking weight loss as well and promoting weight gain. So stress is another big one.
Speaker 1:The final one I'm going to talk about today is inflammation, and the thing is our estrogen is such an important hormone to us women and it has an anti-inflammatory effect. So when we start getting that decrease in insulin, we can get an increase in inflammation and that can manifest as so many things. It can manifest as brain fog, it can manifest as joint pain, muscle pain oh gosh, so many things. And that increase in inflammation also is a blocker to weight loss. And guess what, the more weight, more extra weight you are carrying, the more chances there are that you are inflamed. In fact, when I was at uni, we learned that an obese body is an inflamed body. So when you have that increased inflammation, it's a real blocker to weight loss. And that's something when I'm working with people in their programs in the Glow Protocol and Metabolic Balance.
Speaker 1:The big thing we're working on is reducing inflammation, balancing hormones, making sure the insulin and glucose is also beautifully balanced, working on mindset and sleep, and all of this together is what gives us our fantastic results. It's not just about the food, although the food is a pretty important component of it. It's the holistic approach that really gets those fantastic results. So I'm just going to recap and my top five things that stop weight loss in perimenopause. So mindset is a big one. Hormonal changes really influence our weight and where our fat is distributed. Lack of sleep, which happens with our reduced progesterone and estrogen, stress are not managing our stress and having increased inflammation in the body, generally related to decreased estrogen, but also if you are already carrying some extra weight, then that will also contribute to it. So I hope this has been helpful and that if any of these apply to you, that you may think well, what can I do about it?
Speaker 1:I've got lots and lots of podcast episodes which look at a number of these different things, so just go back through the catalogue and check them out. Otherwise, if you're wanting to book in for a pre-screening call with me to discuss you know what personalized sort of approaches we can take more than happy to have a chat. You can just click on the link in the show notes and book in your free chat with me. I hope you've been having a great day. If you celebrate Easter, happy Easter for this weekend.
Speaker 1:I'm recording this in the week of Easter 2024 and I will be back on Thursday for Q&A. Have a good week. Thanks so much for joining me today on the Ageless and Lawson podcast. If you like today's episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple Podcasts, or the follow button if you're on Spotify, so that you can get each new episode delivered to you every single week. If you like free stuff and who doesn't? Then head over to suzigardencom and grab my 8 Essential Age Defying Secrets Every Woman Over 40 Should Know right now. Or if you'd like to continue the discussion, head over to Instagram and DM me at suzigardencom. I'd love to connect with you.
