The Ageless and Awesome Podcast

Winning the Perimenopausal Weight Battle

• Susie Garden • Episode 299

Share episode

Have you noticed your body changing despite doing all the things?? That stubborn weight gain during perimenopause isn't your fault—and it's not about willpower or discipline.

Your body is responding to profound hormonal shifts that make traditional weight loss approaches ineffective. When oestrogen fluctuates and progesterone declines, your metabolism fundamentally changes. What few women realise is that fat tissue isn't just stored energy—it's an active endocrine organ producing hormones that further complicate the picture.

The science explains why the old "calories in, calories out" model falls short during this life stage. Stress, sleep disruption, and changing insulin sensitivity create the perfect storm for weight gain, particularly around your belly. Traditional diets often worsen the problem by increasing stress hormones and disrupting the delicate hormonal balance your body is trying to achieve.

The good news? There are evidence-based strategies that work with your changing physiology rather than against it. I share five game-changing approaches that have helped hundreds of my clients: eating to balance blood sugar (turning you into a fat-burning machine without counting calories), supporting your liver function, prioritising sleep quality, incorporating appropriate movement, and following personalised nutrition tailored to your unique biochemistry.

These strategies aren't quick fixes—they're sustainable solutions that address the root causes of perimenopausal weight gain. They'll help you feel at home in your body again, wearing the clothes you want without restriction or frustration.

Send me a text!

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.

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Susie Garden 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. I'm your host, susie Garden. I'm a perimenopause naturopath and weight loss nutritionist and also your host. If you're a woman in your late 30s to early 50s who feels like her body is suddenly working against her, this episode is for you Today.

Speaker 1:

I haven't done an episode on weight gain for a while, so I thought today let's tackle one of the most frustrating symptoms of perimenopause. It's probably the most frequent reason that women reach out to me booking for their peri-weight loss assessments and sign up to the GLOW protocol. Often women have symptoms as well of perimenopause, but it's generally the weight gain that is going to drive the motivation, I guess, to actually make change. So here's the truth bomb I want to drop right out of the gate. Weight gain in peri is not your fault, You're not lazy, you're not undisciplined and, no, you haven't just let yourself go. In fact, the changes that you see in your body in that time of life are happening for very real biological reasons and it's time that we talk about them and stop the blame game. So let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about the myth of willpower and calories in, calories out. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know I have a real bee in my bonnet about the old calories in, calories out myth. For decades we have been taught that weight loss is as simple as eating less and moving more. And look, that can work to a degree, particularly if you're in your 20s. But if you're in perimenopause, you've probably already discovered that the old rules don't work anymore. And this is the most common thing that women say to me is that I'm doing all of the things that I normally do to control my weight and it's just not shifting and in fact, I'm putting more weight on. You may be eating the same as you've always done. You may even have improved your diet and be eating more healthily. You might be walking, doing Pilates, going to the gym, riding a bike, doing some HIIT, and yet the belly fat is creeping on. The scale may not be budging, except in the wrong direction for you and your clothes might feel tight, your muscles might be absolutely disappearing, but essentially what you think is no reason. But you know what? This isn't a matter of willpower, this is a matter of physiology.

Speaker 1:

So let's look at what's actually happening and changing inside your body during this time of life. So there are hormonal shifts that sabotage weight loss and actually promote weight gain, and in peri, your hormone levels begin to fluctuate, and not in subtle ways, if you're in it, you know what I mean. So estrogen becomes a bit unpredictable. You get these surges and then these lows and these surges, et cetera. Progesterone tends to just bottom out fairly quickly and testosterone also starts to decline bottom out fairly quickly and testosterone also starts to decline. And cortisol, your primary stress hormone, is often ramping up, because it's just generally a fairly stressful time of life and just generally life in general these days seems to be just a little bit more stressful than it was sort of five, six years ago, and that will keep your cortisol up a little if you're feeling like you're in that stress kind of response. And so how does that affect your weight?

Speaker 1:

So, firstly, let's talk about estrogen and estrogen variability. So when estrogen dips, you tend to be more likely to store fat, and especially around the belly. And remember that not that long ago we thought that fat tissue was simply stored excess energy when our energy intake from food was more than our energy expenditure. Right, I'm sure you probably were told that in biology at school. I remember being taught that. I remember being taught that for decades in different kind of my different healthcare career iterations, it was always that fat tissue is stored energy and it is.

Speaker 1:

But we also know that in fact, fat tissue is an active endocrine organ. So it's endocrine organs tend to secrete hormones. So, like your thyroid gland is an endocrine organ, your pancreas is an endocrine organ. So we have multiple organs in our body that are under that classification of being an endocrine organ. So these organs secrete hormones that influence the function of other tissues and other systems, and that is what fat tissue does it becomes an active endocrine organ. It's actually really complex. I'm not going to get really deep into what that is all about, but just specific to the conversation we're having today is that fat cells can actually, when they're in this form of being in excess, particularly in acting as an active endocrine organ, fat cells can produce estrogen, and it is in small amounts, but still it is there. And there's a theory that this is your body's way of trying to preserve estrogen. That is a theory there's. Also, we store some estrogen in our fat tissue as well. Also, you know, we store some estrogen in our fat tissue as well. So, yeah, that is potentially something that's happening when our estrogen is dipping.

Speaker 1:

Also, progesterone that lower progesterone and progesterone, remember, is your calming hormone, amongst other things, and as it declines, sleep can be disrupted, and that's a huge, huge symptom in many, many women. And also anxiety can rise and there's a link between lack of sleep and obesity, which is, they think, linked to blood sugar regulation. So we used to think that the lack of sleep drove obesity because you're eating more calories over more hours of the day. So there was an assumption that if you were awake at night and you were carrying excess weight, that it was probably because you were raiding the fridge at three o'clock in the morning. But we know now that there's actually way more to it than that. There is this link between lack of sleep and obesity and it's actually linked more to blood sugar that there is this link between lack of sleep and obesity and it's actually linked more to blood sugar regulation. It's not involved with eating at all, but when we're asleep we have a very tight kind of blood sugar regulation going on, because obviously when we're sleeping we're not expending a lot of energy, so we want to keep the blood sugar a little bit lower, so that really helps with improving our blood sugar balance, if you like.

Speaker 1:

Again, I don't want to go too much into the detail of that. I don't think anyone really wants to get into that boring biochemistry. And plus, you know, when you're in an anxious state, for many people there's a comfort eating kind of situation that goes on. So you might be having more carbs, more refined sugars, because, let's face it, if you're comfort eating, you're generally not eating a bowl of kale. And also, if you're in like an anxious kind of state, your cortisol can increase and that will impact your blood sugar and drive some of these cravings. So and you're having more of those sorts of foods that can impact your blood sugar and drive some of these cravings, so and you're having more of those sorts of foods that can increase your blood sugar, that will raise your insulin and that will promote fat storage.

Speaker 1:

Elevated cholesterol is another one. So obviously, as I mentioned before, being in kind of late thirties, forties, fifties can be quite a stressful time, even just from, you know, having a stressful job. Also, maybe, if you're you've got kids that are teenagers, if you've got, um, aging parents and, let's face it, life generally is quite stressful and you know this, both from a physical sense of physical stress and emotional stress. If you're constantly in this fight or flight mode, your cortisol is going to remain sort of higher level and signaling your body to hold onto fat. So, yeah, that's a problem.

Speaker 1:

And a fourth way that your hormones are influencing your weight and particularly promoting weight gain, is a the reduction of sensitivity to insulin. So insulin is a hormone you've probably heard about it more in the context of diabetes, but it has a number of different roles and including fat storage and these hormonal shifts and we know this from research is that you, your body, becomes less responsive to insulin and that means that your body will produce more insulin to try and get it to work. And again, insulin is a fat storage hormone. So if there's more insulin in the blood, you're going to store more fat, you're also going to get blood sugar swings. If the insulin is working well, it will push the blood sugar from the blood into the cells where the body actually uses it. So that's one of the roles of insulin is to do that.

Speaker 1:

And if the sugar is still hanging around in the blood or if you start overproducing insulin because it's not working that well, I know for me personally, like I'm very sensitive to sugar and if I have a sugary meal, I will feel pretty good at the time and then probably half an hour to an hour later, I feel like rubbish and that is the insulin sugar crash. So that means then you kind of get driven to want to eat something again to feel better. So yeah, these blood sugar swings, increased fat storage and more cravings becomes this vicious cycle. So no, these blood sugar swings, increased fat storage and more cravings becomes this vicious cycle. So no, you're not broken. Your hormones are shifting gears and your metabolism is adjusting in response to this, and all of this is promoting your weight gain. If you're having that, your weight gain, if you're having that. So why do traditional kind of diets in inverted commas stop working? Because you know you've done this before. You've managed your weight quite well, potentially. Or you've may have been a yo-yo dieter and you've put on weight, but then you've been able to release it using whatever it is that you normally do, but then that just stops working. And so let's look at some of the different kind of or the typical, I should say weight loss advice that women are given.

Speaker 1:

So obviously, the calories in calories out model. We know that calorie restrictive diets increase stress, which spikes cortisol. We've just talked about what that does. It's counterproductive to fat loss, but it can also slow your metabolism. If you're restricting calories too much, as the body might think that, you know we're going into a famine because, remember, our nervous system is wired for survival and it's still pretty primitive and it doesn't know that we can go to the supermarket whenever we want, we can get food whenever we want. So if you're restricting calories particularly, I know for myself when I was in my 40s, a PT recommended I did 1200 calories a day, which is just nuts. I was starving and yeah, it can trick your body into thinking we're going into a famine and that can slow your metabolism down. So that's potentially one of the reasons that that's happening.

Speaker 1:

It also because often when people are doing calorie counting, that is not. It depends who you're working with to do that, but many women do that on their own and so it's not necessarily coaching you around the kinds of foods that are going to be best for you. And because you know if you want to have 1200 calories and I remember doing this myself if I wanted to have a glass of wine okay, glass of wine, 150 calories I need to take account of that into my day. And so sometimes the quality of the food gets reduced because you're wanting to fit in still your fun foods. So that's why I don't love calorie counting. I mean, there's a number of reasons, but one of the main ones is it doesn't promote good food choices.

Speaker 1:

Another really popular one is intermittent fasting. And look, it can backfire, particularly if your adrenals are already overworked. So if you're already in a pretty stressful kind of place, you need to be fed in the morning, you need to have complex carbs in the morning, and if you're doing fasting that doesn't, you know you're not actually eating anything until midday or 11, then you're kind of missing out on an opportunity to nourish yourself. And again, the quality of the food. That quality really matters.

Speaker 1:

And often people doing intermittent fasting aren't necessarily focusing on food quality, very similar to counting calories, and some people do both. They do calorie counting and intermittent fasting and, again, not necessarily focusing on food quality. It's more just about eating. And some people and I know I don't know if that's still how intermittent fasting is positioned, but I know when it first got really popular which is probably I remember having these discussions with people definitely in 2019. So maybe even 2018, maybe before that um, a lot of people they just could eat. Basically, the mindset was I can eat whatever I like, as long as I'm only eating in an eight-hour meal window. And I'm not sure if that's how that's still positioned because, honestly, I just have nothing to do with it. But, yeah, your food quality really does matter.

Speaker 1:

The other thing with if you're doing a diet, such a low-fat diet which again, that's been really popular since about the 80s when the low fat movement started and again I could really maybe I should do a whole podcast episode on that but if you're constantly on a low fat diet, we actually need fat to function. I'm have at the moment, I'm having a skin cancer taken off my head, my scalp, on Wednesday, and so I've had to stop all my fish oil and my flaxseed oil, and I can feel it in my body. I went for a bike ride yesterday. My hands are so sore, which they normally are not, so I can tell already that that those healthy fats and depriving myself of that, because the reason I'm doing that is be it's just, you know, a PSA, if you are on those products, that if you are having any kind of surgical kind of procedure, then, uh, you need to stop taking those seven to 10 days prior to that procedure, because they do promote, um, bleeding. As part of how they work in a positive way in the body is they are blood thinners. So you do need to be mindful of that and stopping that at least seven to 10 days before your procedure. So that's the place I'm in at the moment.

Speaker 1:

But also low-fat diets can deprive you of the cholesterol, because your body uses cholesterol to make hormones right. So if you're not having enough fat in your diet, then that can impact your hormone production and the lack of fat in your diet also reduces your satiety. So when you have good, healthy fats, you will feel fuller for longer. So please do not buy into the low fat food phenomenon and it's still a huge part of the packaged food industry is promoting products as being low fat. Have the full fat people. It will make you feel full for longer. It's a less processed product and you're not getting any of those artificial sweeteners into your body which are not necessarily fantastic for us. So, yeah, eat the full fat, enjoy it. So the thing is, instead of another round of a different type of diet again in inverted commas what your body actually needs, especially in perimenopause and postmenopause, is nourishment, nourishment. Postmenopause is nourishment, nourishment, regulation. So blood glucose regulation, hormonal regulation and also support.

Speaker 1:

And this is where personalized nutrition can come in. This is not about being on a diet. It is a personalized nutrition strategy, lifestyle based on your unique blood biochemistry, your metabolic needs, your body shape, your medical conditions. You know an actual plan for life. It's what I use in the GLOW protocol, so you know exactly what to eat, you know what the right portion size is for you, you get the right macro balance, so you don't need to work all of that out, and there's no hunger, because if you do feel hungry, I just increase your portion sizes to make sure that you are nourished and that your blood sugar is regulated. So personalized nutrition is, I find, a game changer, for women particularly. Actually, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much weight you want to lose, whether it's the last few kilos or whether you have 40, 50 kilos or more to lose. This is where personalized nutrition can be an absolute game changer. So here are some of the strategies I use with my clients in the GLOW protocol to help them lose weight during perimenopause and postmenopause without deprivation or burnout.

Speaker 1:

So you're eating to balance blood sugar. Okay. So that means you're starting the day with protein and carbs and healthy fats, all beautifully balanced for your particular biochemistry, Also spacing your meals out and just really ditching that rollercoaster of highs and crashes. So eating to balance blood sugar turns you into a fat burning machine and it's got nothing to do with calories, nothing at all. So that, I think, is key when you're thinking about what can I do? Eat to balance blood sugar and once you have your blood sugar beautifully balanced, you're not going to crave sugary treats. And if you have a sugary treat, you are really going to feel it and it's not going to feel good.

Speaker 1:

Number two liver support. Your liver metabolizes hormones and toxins and if it's overwhelmed, your hormones won't be functioning properly, and so you need to make sure you've got key nutrients in your diet, and it's not about supplements. This is about having key nutrients in your diet, like leafy greens, cruciferous veggies adequate hydration that's super important. Most people are not drinking enough water, like it's that simple. Most people are not drinking enough water, and if you have worked with me or you've listened to this podcast for a while, you will know that what I use for in a weight loss context is 35 mils of water per kilo of body weight per day. That is your individualized water goal, all right, and if you're working on weight loss, then that is water intake. If you're just more for general health, it's often taken back down to like 32 mils of water per kilo of body weight, and that can include water that's in or fluid that's in like a smoothie or in a soup or that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:

Number three that I really work on with my clients is sleep. Sleep is sacred. One night of poor sleep increases your hunger hormones. We haven't even dived into hunger hormones like leptin and ghrelin. One night of poor sleep also decreases insulin sensitivity, really messes with your blood sugar, and remember, blood sugar control equals fat burning machine. So things like creating a sleep routine really helpful. That doesn't need to be anything complicated at all. Managing screen time makes a huge difference Making sure that you know, once you've had dinner, all of the overhead lights go off and you only have lovely soft lamp light so that it helps with your melatonin production.

Speaker 1:

Making sure you're not eating sugar later at night when I say later at night, I mean after, about you know, seven o'clock. And of course, if you're going out and you're having dessert, that's a different scenario. I'm talking about just in your regular life. In your regular life, of course you can still have treats, but in your regular life and I've been guilty of this of having a little after dinner kind of chocolate habit about you know, 45 minutes after having dinner having a little bit of chocolate. If you're trying to lose weight, that is not a good idea. If you're having sleep issues, that is not a good idea because it really does that blood sugar again rise and crash will impact your sleep Also. Alcohol is another one that if you're having even just a couple of one or two glasses of wine, that can impact your sleep.

Speaker 1:

Also, when we're looking at weight loss gentle movement Also when we're looking at weight loss gentle movement. So if you want to do HIIT, you can. Again, the way I assess that with people is you know what is your general cortisol looking like and you don't necessarily have to test it unless there's a I don't test it unless there's a clinical reason. There are certain signs and symptoms that I look at which tell me whether or not your cortisol might be dysregulated, that I look at, which tell me whether or not your cortisol might be dysregulated. So if you're if and if your cortisol is dysregulated, then HIIT is not really recommended, because we want to try and keep your cortisol down, not bring it up by doing HIIT, which is high intensity interval training, um, so movements such as a brisk walk where you can only just hold a conversation, that is fat burning zone.

Speaker 1:

Yoga is nice. In terms of doing that. For weight loss I wouldn't say it's great, but it's great for stress management, which is great for weight loss. Resistance training is awesome. It really supports your metabolism because it helps you to build muscle and that muscle will burn more energy at rest. It's also super important if you're in peri, cause your muscles are going to be starting to really I don't like to use the word deteriorate, but that's how I felt when it was starting to happen to me before I was putting all of the measures in place that I've done. But yeah, it is. It is quite the battle to keep your muscle mass when you hit your 40s and certainly 50s, so really having a good concentration of effort on that pays off dramatically. Reformer Pilates, I find, is really good, particularly for bringing your waist measurement down because of all of the core work that you do. So all of these types of exercises and movement dancing is a great one.

Speaker 1:

Actually dancing I love because many people love doing it. So it's way easier to do movement when you love it than it is if you're just dragging yourself to the gym. And the thing is when you're starting to see results. It is so much more motivating. And also, again, when you have a different type of goal. When you're younger you often are working out to look good, whereas when you've got in your mind well, I need to keep my bones strong, I need to keep my muscle mass, I need to make sure that I'm actually going to be able to enjoy the activities I love when I get older and are not sort of getting frail Like if you look at your parents and see the state of their physical bodies, then that can potentially give you a good indication of what your future might look like if you have a similar lifestyle to what they have had.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and obviously the other thing I use when I'm working with weight loss in women is personalized nutrition. So, as I think I mentioned before, the GLOW protocol uses your blood data to determine, plus a few other measures to determine, the exact foods that are going to bring your metabolism back into balance. It is food as medicine, which I love, not just relying on supplements. It's food as medicine, so it's very sustainable long-term because we do have to eat and there is structure there for you and there is strategy there for you as an individual. So they are the top five things I'm just going to recap. So eat to balance blood sugar super important to get into fat burning zone, supporting your liver and you can do that with leafy greens, cruciferous veg If you're not sure what I'm talking about, just Google it and drinking enough water.

Speaker 1:

Sleep is sacred. Manage and guard your sleep, like your life depends on it, because it is so important for many reasons other than what I've even discussed today. Movement that suits your body and where you're at in your life, and personalized nutrition is the ideal. So if you feel like your body is betraying you, please know it's not. Your body is simply adapting to a new phase and it needs different tools, and the good news is those tools do exist.

Speaker 1:

I created the perimenopause path, still building it, still working out where it's going to go. I definitely am very sure of where the GLOW protocol is going, and I created these to empower women just like you with information and strategies that actually work. So if this episode resonated with you, I invite you to book a free peri-weight loss assessment with me. We'll look at what's going on with you. We'll map out a clear path forward. I'll tell you a little bit about the GLOW protocol and how you can work with me if you want to. I never ask you to sign up on that call.

Speaker 1:

I want you to make sure that I'm the right fit for you and I absolutely want to make sure that you're the right fit for the program and to work with me. You really deserve to feel at home in your body again. You really deserve to wear the clothes you want to wear. I've had so many women say to me more recently. You know my clothes aren't fitting and I don't want to buy new clothes because I don't want to go up a size. Well, there's only one solution to that, and that is actually to take action.

Speaker 1:

So thanks for listening today. I've loved having you. Don't forget to subscribe, so this podcast just goes straight into your device every week. Share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it. And, yeah, come over and join the conversation on Instagram at the perimenopause path. Thanks so much for joining me on the Ageless and Awesome podcast. If you liked this 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 get each new episode delivered to you every single week. If you feel like writing me a five-star review, you would absolutely make my day. If you found this episode resonated with you, head over to my Instagram and DM me at theperimenopausepar. I would love to connect with you.

Head Shot

Susie Garden

Host