The Ageless and Awesome Podcast

Why Diets Stop Working After 40 (And What to Do Instead)

• Susie Garden • Episode 301

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Ever wondered why the diet and exercise plan that worked in your 30s & 40s suddenly feels like pushing a boulder uphill? You're not alone, and you're definitely not imagining things.

When you hit your 40s, your body undergoes a profound shift that most diet plans completely ignore. The clean eating, calorie counting, carb-cutting, and intense workouts that may have helped you maintain your weight in your 20s and 30s can suddenly become frustratingly ineffective. This isn't a failure on your part – it's biology.

In this deeply informative episode, I break down exactly why your old approaches stop working during perimenopause. We explore the five major biological shifts happening behind the scenes: fluctuating reproductive hormones, gradually slowing metabolism, natural muscle loss, increased stress response, and growing insulin resistance. These changes aren't visible on the surface but dramatically alter how your body processes food, stores fat, and responds to exercise.

Traditional diet culture relies on outdated assumptions that simply don't apply to women in their 40s and beyond. Restrictive diets can actually worsen hormone imbalances and trigger stress responses that make weight loss nearly impossible. Instead, I share six powerful, science-backed strategies that work with your perimenopausal body instead of against it. You'll learn why balancing blood sugar, prioritising protein, reducing inflammation, strength training, managing stress, and personalising your nutrition are the keys to feeling energetic and maintaining a healthy weight during this transition.

If you've been feeling frustrated, stuck, or betrayed by your changing body, this episode offers both validation and practical solutions. Your body hasn't given up on you – it's simply asking for a different approach. Listen now to discover how to work with your hormones, not against them, and reclaim your vitality, confidence, and wellbeing. Ready for real solutions? Book a free Peri Weight Loss Assessment with me to start your personalised journey to feeling amazing again.

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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, the show that helps you thrive through perimenopause and beyond with practical, science-based wellness strategies. I'm Susie Garden and I'm so glad you're here with me this week.

Speaker 1:

Today, we are talking about something that so many women over 40 struggle with, and that is why the way they eat that used to work suddenly stops working after 40. And, most importantly, what to do instead. So if you've been eating clean, counting calories, cutting carbs, fasting, ramping up your workouts and still not seeing results, you're not crazy. Your body has changed, and today we're going to unpack why and what your body actually needs right now. So grab a cup of your favorite beverage, or pop those earbuds in if you're on your walk, and let's dive in. So firstly, I want to talk about why what you used to do back in the day in your 20s and 30s, why that used to work and why it may not be working now. So if we rewind a little back to your 20s and 30s, you could probably drop a few kilos just by skipping dessert for a week, right? Or maybe hitting the gym more often. That's because back then your metabolism was running pretty efficiently, even if you did treat your body like rubbish, your metabolism was running pretty efficiently and your hormones were relatively stable and your body was less sensitive to stress and inflammation. And if you want to learn more about inflammation, last week's podcast covered all about that, so go and give that a listen. So you know, back in the day, even restrictive diets could give you fast, if not always sustainable, results.

Speaker 1:

But once you hit your forties, perimenopause starts changing the game behind the scenes and often without warning. So many women come and talk to me and don't even realize they're in peri, because they may not be having all of those classic kind of symptoms like hot flushes, night sweats, et cetera. Sometimes it's just literally the resistant weight. Sometimes it's just literally the resistant weight. That's the problem. So let's break this down. What is actually happening.

Speaker 1:

So, firstly, there are the hormonal shifts. All right, we all know this is the estrogen, the progesterone, the testosterone, a number of others all begin to fluctuate and this impacts where your body stores fat, how much lean muscle you carry and how sensitive your cells are to insulin, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Number two your metabolism can slow down. So from about age 35 or your mid-30s onwards, our resting metabolic rate gradually declines. Again, this is all gradual. That's why often we don't notice, and that means your body burns fewer calories at rest, even if you're doing all the same things that you always have. Number three we start losing muscle, and I really noticed this. That's something I actually did really notice is the loss of muscle mass. So without resistance, training and adequate protein, we will naturally lose muscle mass every decade, particularly after 40. When I was in my 40s, that's when I really noticed it, and it didn't matter. I was just training and training and in the gym several times a week. I have an awesome home gym and still found, even though I was doing all of the same things I was even changing it up my muscle mass was just doing nothing. And since muscle burns more energy or calories and fat. This contributes to a slower metabolism. Fat this contributes to a slower metabolism.

Speaker 1:

Number four is increased stress and cortisol. You've probably heard me talk about cortisol before, but many women in their forties are juggling careers. Certainly, for me, that was when I was the most busy and the most stressed in my career. It's often when women are in more senior roles if they're on the corporate kind of track. Often, you know, family-wise, you may have teenagers that are causing a bit of stress. You may have aging parents and other responsibilities going on, all while you're navigating. The hormonal chaos of perimenopause. And chronic stress elevates your cortisol, your stress hormone cortisol, and that can increase fat storage. It messes with your blood glucose metabolism and especially promotes fat storage around the belly Awesome, right, the menobelly. And it also cortisol also messes with your hunger hormones like ghrelin and leptin. So you can see that the hormonal kind of influence is massive, not just your reproductive hormones but these other hormones.

Speaker 1:

Number five I wanted to mention, which I mentioned briefly just before, is insulin resistance. So as we are getting into our forties and fift and beyond, we are naturally, as part of I hate saying this the aging process, we are naturally going to become more insulin resistant and that means that your cells don't respond to insulin as well as they used to. And insulin has many roles. One of them is that it is a fat storage hormone. So if you're especially if your diet is high in refined carbs or sugars or you're skipping meals, you can have more fat storage happening because your insulin isn't working very well. So, yes, diets stop working and the way you were eating before, like before now, can sometimes not still continue to work for you, not because you're doing anything wrong, but because your biology has shifted. Yeah, it kind of sucks, and you know.

Speaker 1:

The problem with diet culture for women over 40 is most diets are built on three outdated assumptions. One is that weight loss is simply about calories in versus calories out. Two is that all bodies will respond in the same way and we definitely know that's not true. And three, that restriction equals results. But for women in perimenopause, these rules can backfire, and here's why so restrictive diets really can put the body in stress. Your body is already dealing with hormonal fluctuations, and adding calorie restrictions or intense fasting can be perceived as a threat, because our nervous systems are still pretty basic when it comes to the stress response and this spikes cortisol and can shut down fat loss in a big way. So we definitely don't want blockers to fat loss if we're in a situation where we're wanting to lose fat tissue.

Speaker 1:

Also, low calorie diets often under fuel your metabolism and when you don't eat enough, your thyroid and metabolism downshift to conserve energy because it's thinking are we going into a famine here? It doesn't know that you're choosing not to eat to your body's kind of need. So you might lose a few kilos quickly but then hit a plateau, feel exhausted and gain it all back, plus more that dreaded yo-yo effect. And the thing is, when I work with women in weight loss, if they're hungry, if they're not feeling like they're not getting enough food, I increase their food immediately. The last thing I want is someone to be feeling hungry, because it means that they're not getting enough food and they're not getting enough calories. And we definitely need to make sure that that is happening because things will just slow down in the metabolism dramatically. Body goes into survival mode when it thinks it's going into famine. So that's really important and I will always bang on about that. Women need to be fed, especially in perimenopause.

Speaker 1:

Another reason is that ignoring nutrient density is a big problem when it is a real calorie focused eating plan where people will set aside some calories, because I've done this myself when I was doing at the gym many years ago now, before I knew what I know now. I did a 1200 calorie a day program for only well, only a week. It was required because it was part of a challenge, but it meant that, yeah, I'm setting aside, okay, I want to have a couple of wines, so that's 150 calories per glass, that's 300 of my 1200. I needed to conserve for that, and so you're not actually nourishing the body if you're focusing on that and I've seen that happen a lot with other big name programs as well where it is all about points or it is about calories, is that the focus is not necessarily on the quality of the food going in. It's on the calories and what you put in your body really, really matters.

Speaker 1:

Particularly in peri and post-menopause, weight loss is not just about how much you eat, but what you eat. If your diet is low in anti-inflammatory foods, for example you know I talked about inflammation last week on the podcast and how that can impact weight. So if your diet is low in anti-inflammatory foods and missing key nutrients like omega-3s, magnesium, protein. Your hormones will suffer, your gut health will suffer, weight loss becomes very challenging, will suffer. Weight loss becomes very challenging.

Speaker 1:

And then there's, of course, the emotional side of all of this, because we all have different kinds of relationships with food. Don't we Food as comfort? Food as punishment, food as reward? When we're restricting food, that can lead to feelings of guilt, that can set up obsessive behaviors that certainly is what happened with me and an all or nothing mindset. And at this stage in life, the last thing that we need is more pressure or shame around our bodies. So what to do? Instead, what you want to look for is a metabolic and hormonal approach. So let's talk about a realistic and sustainable approach that works with your body and not against it.

Speaker 1:

And I wanted to share like six powerful shifts I teach inside my Glow Protocol program, one of the number one. I don't know. Number one could be this, or it could be lowering inflammation, but let's start with this one. Number one balancing blood sugar like a queen. So stable blood sugar equals balanced hormones, and it means that you don't get cravings, you don't have that energy dive in the afternoon. You want stable blood sugar above all else. So eating every like five to six hours, including a reasonable amount of protein at every meal, and the GLOW protocol that I have got. I let you know exactly what that is for you, specifically the amount. You don't skip meals, especially breakfast it's so important. We're also adding fiber-rich carbs and healthy fats to help reduce insulin resistance. So a massive focus on balancing blood sugar.

Speaker 1:

Number two prioritizing protein. Women over 40 need more protein to maintain muscle and support metabolism, and that gets that. You know, burning fat like a, like a. What did one of our clients said to me once? She said I feel like a fat burning machine. And that is what happens when you balance blood sugar and you prioritize protein. There are a number of multiples when I say multiple like, if you want to work out how much protein you need if you're over 40, I've read anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight per day and depends on your activity level and also, I guess, your goals. But honestly, having a personalized amount of protein prescribed for you rather than just using one of the multiples, is going to give you way faster and more targeted results and when you're having enough good quality protein, it helps reduce cravings, it increases satiety so you're not feeling hungry, and it supports muscle and lean body mass.

Speaker 1:

Super important number three one of these powerful shifts is the inflammation. Focusing on anti-inflammatory foods, because chronic low-grade inflammation and this is inflammation that could potentially not have any symptoms it's a hidden block to fat loss and when I'm working with women in this program, probably in the first one to two weeks, we see massive shifts in inflammation and that correlates with a good start to weight loss. So some of the anti-inflammatory foods that you want to be really making sure you have a good intake of are things like leafy greens, colorful veggies, colorful veggies, berries this can be fresh or frozen fatty fish, extra virgin olive oil, flaxseed oil, hemp seed oil, herbs and spices like turmeric and ginger. This not only will support fat loss, it'll also improve your skin. It'll help reduce pain in your joints, help make you more flexible in your joints actually as well. I get that a lot Helps your gut health and your mood. So many benefits from focusing on anti-inflammatory foods and they don't need to be so-called superfoods. These are just all fruits, veggies, et cetera, herbs and spices that you get from the supermarket. Herbs and spices that you get from the supermarket.

Speaker 1:

Number four that I recommend is lifting heavy. Cardio is not enough anymore for healthy weight management and weight loss. You need resistance training, probably two to three times a week. Again, it all depends on the individual to build muscle and protect your metabolism and you want to be doing some pretty heavy weightlifting. Again, I would always recommend working with a professional that can help you with that so that you avoid injury and just taking your time with it. Working slow, getting educated, doesn't have to be, you know, really flogging yourself, but going two to three times a week to build muscle is really, really important. And, to be honest, I mean I'm doing refocusing myself on resistance training at the moment for my bone health and I am loving it. I've got a PT at the moment and absolutely loving doing training with a PT. That's giving me a good challenge, a good workout and it makes me feel safe that I'm not gonna injure myself. So I highly recommend.

Speaker 1:

Also, number five of the six powerful shifts is supporting stress and sleep, and in fact I have a whole module all about that in the glow protocol vip space. So you've got to remember cortisol does many things, as many of our hormones do, but it's a fat storing hormone. So you want to make sure you're keeping that cortisol well managed because Because remember, when you are in perimenopause that progesterone dives, it makes your ability to manage stress a bit more challenging, shall we say, and so cortisol can rise more easily than when you're in your 20s and 30s. So managing stress ideally by doing preventative things, so not just when you get stressed doing something to manage your stress, but proactively getting some sort of routine so that your baseline stress actually is a little lower and that will make you less likely to trigger up with some of the daily stresses of life. And whether that's something like having a bath every night with some magnesium or some lavender oil, or doing some breath work and it doesn't have to be anything fancy, even just doing deep breaths into the belly when you're driving, when you're shopping, when you're cooking, when you're at your desk, you know, not putting another thing on the to-do list actually just training your body to breathe deeply is very, very powerful. There's lots of science to back that up. If you like journaling, do that. If you have other activities that bring you joy, do them.

Speaker 1:

Or sometimes it's just simply about saying no more often when you don't feel like doing something when it comes to sleep. Prioritize that. One of the doctors in the USA that I follow on Instagram is always saying guard your sleep, guard it. And prioritizing ideally eight or more hours of restorative sleep. It's when your body resets some of your hormones, like leptin, ghrelin, growth hormone. There's a lot of repair work that goes on during sleep and it's also when your glymphatic system activates. So that's the like a lymphatic system for your brain, and we know that women in peri are often struggling with sleep and it means your lymphatic system may not activate and that's going to increase brain fog, for example, because your brain isn't detoxing well enough overnight. So sleep is really important, not just so you don't feel tired the next day, but for all of these other body processes that go on when we're in sleep.

Speaker 1:

And number six is obviously nutrition personalizing your nutrition as well, because this is where having personalized nutrition absolutely shines, because it's based on your personal body sorry, blood biochemistry. So you get a nutritional protocol that's completely tailored to your body's needs, not a generic diet. It's like a blueprint for rebalancing your metabolism naturally and effectively. You get the exact proteins, the exact fruits, veggies, salads, bread, the portion sizes, the macro balance. It's extraordinary and I cannot bang on enough about it because over the past five and a half years I've been delivering this program, the results I see are astounding and I still get amazed.

Speaker 1:

And, yes, the weight loss numbers are really important, but it's also the improvements in people's health and well-being where you know unexpected things, particularly when it comes to things like skin glow, like a reason I called it the glow protocol is. That's the feedback I was getting from clients is, oh, my colleagues are telling me my skin is glowing. And I heard it once. I thought, oh, that's really lovely. And then I heard it again and again, and again and I thought, wow, this is really amazing. And yeah, so having all of those other benefits it's as well as the weight loss is just gold.

Speaker 1:

So you know, if you've been feeling stuck, like your body isn't responding the way it used to, you're not alone. This is happening to so many women. I have these conversations several times a week when I'm talking to women having their peri-weight loss assessments. You know, perimenopause brings like a whole new hormonal landscape and with it a need for a, a new approach, and eating plans that worked in your 20s and 30s just aren't built for your 40s and beyond. But with the right strategy, one that supports your hormones, supports your metabolism and your nervous system, you can feel vibrant, you can feel lean, you can feel in control again.

Speaker 1:

And if you want support to personalize your journey, I would love to invite you to book a free peri weight loss assessment with me. The link is in the show notes or you can dm me on instagram and I'll send you the link. And just to let you know that my, my prices are going up on the 1st of August. So if you get in now for your peri weight loss assessment, you can get at the current price or not. The perimenopause weight loss assessment is actually free, but if you wanted to enroll in the program, you can get at current price until the 1st of August. So you know you deserve to feel amazing in your body and your mind and I'm here to help you get there. So thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:

If you love this episode, I would love it if you would leave a review or maybe share it with a friend so that more women can get access to this information. So until next time, take care, be well. I'll see you next week. Thanks so much for joining me on the Ageless and Awesome podcast. If you would like 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 theperimenopausepath. I would love to connect with you.

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Susie Garden

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