Perimenopause Weight Loss When You Are Doing Everything Right

The most frustrating part of perimenopause weight loss is doing all the “right” things and getting nothing back from the scales. If you’ve cleaned up your eating, started moving more, cut back on alcohol and sugar, and worked on sleep and stress, yet your weight won’t shift, I want you to hear this clearly: it doesn’t automatically mean it’s not working.

I walk through the hidden time lag that can happen in perimenopause and menopause, when your body focuses on internal rebalancing before it lets go of fat. Think hormone stabilisation, inflammation reduction, improved insulin sensitivity, and restoring a sense of metabolic safety. We also talk about water retention and why you can feel puffy or “bloated all over” when inflammation, stress, poor sleep, menstrual cycle changes, oestrogen fluctuations, progesterone shifts and higher cortisol are all influencing fluid balance.

Then we get practical about what to track instead of obsessing over a single number. I share smarter progress markers like how your clothes fit, tape measurements (including where to measure your waist), energy out of 10, sleep quality, cravings and that classic 3 pm slump, plus strength changes. This mindset shift takes the emotional sting out of weigh-ins and helps you stay consistent long enough for results to show up.

If this resonates, hit follow or subscribe so you don’t miss a weekly episode, share it with a friend who’s battling midlife weight gain, and leave a five-star review if it helped. What’s the one progress metric you’re going to track this week?

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. Reserve your early bird place 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.

Transcript

Welcome And Who I Help

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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 ageing 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 Susie Garden, your host, Perimenopause naturopath and weight loss nutritionist, and proud Perimenopause survivor. Yes, I've made it through to the other side, and I'm here to help you do that too, with a minimum of stress, anxiety, weight gain, etc., so that your transition is a lot smoother than mine was. So this week I want to talk about specifically weight loss and the question that often comes up it's like, I'm doing the work. Why aren't I seeing results yet? You know, I hear this a lot from women is that, you know, I'm trying so hard. I'm trying I've tried absolutely everything. So why isn't anything changing? So maybe you've improved your food, maybe you've started moving more, you've cut back on alcohol, you've cut back on sugar, you've been more mindful, you've been doing your breath work, you've had got your sleep routine going on, all of the things, and yet the scales aren't moving or not in the way that you were hoping for and expecting, considering the amount of effort you're putting in, right? So if that's you, I want to say this to you. It doesn't mean that it's not working. So let's talk about what's really going on. Sometimes there can be a time lag, a time lag that no one talks about. And especially if you're following a generic kind of a program that has not been designed for you and has not been designed for a woman in perimenopause or postmenopause. So sometimes fat loss isn't immediate. Sometimes before the body lets go of fat tissue, it is reduced, it's getting rid of fluid. Now you will see that on the scales. But there's sometimes some rebalancing that needs to go on internally, such as hormone stabilization, inflammation reduction, improvement in insulin sensitivity, the restoration, I guess, of metabolic safety, so your body feels safe to lose weight. This sometimes can take a little time. Um, I notice in the personalized nutrition programs I do for women in the GLOW protocol, it happens very quickly because we're we're just very, very targeted. But if before I started doing the blow the GLO protocol, when I was just doing weight loss using more kind of generic methods, it did take time. It took a lot more time. Um, and so you might be doing everything right, but the visible result hasn't caught up yet. Um and I want to talk a little bit about blockers to weight loss. So inflammation is a big one, and generally for most of us that live in the modern kind of world, we will have inflammation in our bodies, even if you don't have pain, like joint pain, that kind of thing, you probably have a degree of systemic inflammation. And if you have that, you'll have water retention. Inflammation can definitely block fat loss. Your body might feel puffy. I've had women say to me, I feel bloated all over. And the first time I heard that, I thought, oh, that's kind of weird. And then the first week of doing the glow protocol, she went, all of that bloating is gone. And most women, when they're referring to bloating, they're referring to their belly. But she felt like she was bloated all over and it's because she was holding so much fluid, and even after a week, her face looked quite different. Um, so yeah, you there may be some fluid retention there because you have inflammation. Um and if you also have poor sleep, stress, obviously, menstrual cycle changes that will uh you know impact water retention, exercise adaptation. The scale may not necessarily be telling the full story of what's going on. Um, that you can buy scales that have all of the, you know, the fat uh weight, the muscle weight, the bone weight, all of that. Now, if you don't have sensors going into your hands, if you're not gripping sensors as well as having the feet on the scale, then it's not really giving you a full body picture. Just know that. Because I know I've I certainly have them at home that I bought before I knew this, uh, that have all of these fantastic numbers, but it's not actually reading the whole body. It's only really reading from your pelvis down if you don't have hand sensors. So there's a hot tip. Um, so you know, in perimenopause, particularly because of the oestrogen fluctuations, that really can affect fluid balance. And cortisol increases water retention and progesterone changes also um can contribute to water retention, and you might get that sense that you've got bloating in your abdomen. Often for many women, that's actually just water retention, and the so weight can actually move up and down, even when fat loss is actually happening. And I do sometimes have this habit when women have lost weight over a period of weeks and then suddenly they have a week of no weight loss, and it's like, I mean, that can be sometimes the body will want to catch up a little, and sometimes it is that there's just been menstrual cycle kind of changes, and so there's some fluid retention going on, which makes your scales look like you've put on weight, and if you kind of shift your metrics around what you're looking for that you're measuring success by, that can really help. And I want to talk about that next because often when we are wanting to lose weight, we are really very much focusing on a number on the scales. Now, occasionally I get women come to me that are like more they want to fit into a certain outfit, so it's not so much about how much weight they're losing, they just want to lose enough to fit into the outfit or to you know fit into their clothes in their wardrobe that perhaps um they're not quite fitting into now. So that's actually can be a really good indicator is yeah, how your clothes fit. And also some other metrics you can look at are body measurements. So if you have a measuring tape at home, um measuring your waist at the navel. So that's a really good kind of point because your navel doesn't move. For some women, sometimes their navel actually has moved down more towards between their hip bones, in which case you you go to your natural waist. And if you prefer to go to your natural waist for this measurement, you can do that. If you don't really know where your waist is, then just use your navel. That's that's a really good uh point to measure. So you can measure your your waist, your hips, your thigh. That can give you a different kind of number to look at. Most women don't have associations or baggage with body measurements in the same way that we can over a number on the scales. Other metrics you can look at is your energy, for example. And I strongly recommend if you're going to do this on your own, that when you're getting started, that you rate yourself. You rate your energy out of 10. 10 out of 10 being the most energy you can imagine. One out of 10, no energy at all. And if you track that, you may be shocked at how much your energy can change very quickly. And you could use that as a success measure. Like if your energy is sitting at two to three out of 10 on most days, and suddenly it's a six, that's a massive improvement. Massive improvement. And if you can get it up to eight, how good would that be? Other metrics could be the amount of sleep you're getting, whether you're waking up feeling refreshed or sluggish, how long it's taking you to get to sleep, are you able to stay asleep? Another metric could be cravings. Are you getting a three o'clock craving every day, or are you getting an afternoon slump every day? Or has that disappeared? Again, just making a lot of observations about yourself before you start on your weight loss process, if you're doing it on your own, can be really great to give you more to look at than just the number on the scales. Also, um, strength, maybe. Strength, maybe. Maybe you're feeling stronger, and that could be a good metric for you. So I wanted with today's episode, and we're just about winding up, it's a nice little short one today. Um, I wanted to just kind of look at my this is really about mindset. This is really about changing what does success look like on your weight loss journey. And when you do have something other than a number on the scale, it can be really positive thing because of that lack of baggage that's associated with it. So I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, do please reach out. You can message me on uh at the Perimenopause Path on Instagram. You can book in for a peri weight loss assessment if you like at the link in the show notes. You can email me hello at susegarden.com. I'd love to hear from you. 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 the Perimetaports Park. I would love to connect with you.