Midlife Metabolism: Understanding Hormones, Weight, and Energy

So many women hit midlife and suddenly feel like their body has changed overnight—extra weight, less energy, what used to work doesn’t anymore. In this episode, I dive into:

• Why menopause changes your hormones, metabolism, and muscle mass.
• How to break free from the “fat gets fatter” cycle.
• The 4 pillars of lasting health: nutrition, exercise, sleep, and emotional wellness.

This isn’t about quick fixes—it’s about building a system and habits that help you feel vibrant, strong, and confident at every stage of life.

To access the rest of the workshops: http://drorlena.com/healthy-strong 

Register for the FREE Healthy and Strong 4 day workshop: https://www.drorlena.com/healthy-strong 

Sign up for the Stop Dieting and Start Thriving Video:

https://www.drorlena.com/stop-dieting

Looking for support? Book a free call with Dr Orlena: http://drorlena.com/book-a-call-dr-o

Transcript

] Hello. Good morning. This is not the live version of workshop number one because sadly I forgot to press record. So normally I record on Zoom and it just automatically does it. What we're doing on the workshop is a slightly different thing, and I forgot to press record. So I am recording this separately for the replay for people who missed out.

Okay. Let's get started. I'm just sharing my screen with you. Okay.

Okay, day one, healthy and strong. Why your body changed overnight and what you can do about it. Before we start, I want to tell you a little story. So I'm from the UK and I live in Spain, and I have my dream house, which took me years and years to manifest to, build whatever you want to say. And I have a beautiful little office, which is in my garden.

It used to be the sort of potting shed when we arrived, it was covered in. Barrels of olives, which [00:01:00] were decades old and it was a bit like a sleeping beauty place. You couldn't get there 'cause there was so much overgrowth. Now let's see if I can show you round my beautiful little office. As I say, it's in our garden now, another fact that is pertinent to this story is that there are lots of cats in Spain.

There are so many colonies of feral cats that go round and meow quite often. So as I'm working in my office, quite often I hear cats meowing and I don't think very much about it. Now, there's one particular time. I could hear a cat crying or what I thought was a cat, except my husband was outside and he was like looking into the neighbor's garden.

So they've got a garden that we can like overlook. We can't get into it, but we can just about see it. And he realized that the lady next door who was in her nineties had fallen over and was crying out and it wasn't the cat, it was our next door neighbor who was crying out because she had fallen over.

So obviously at this point we are like, [00:02:00] okay, panic stations, what do we do? How do we get to this lady because there's a wall in between us. We can't really jump over that. So we obviously went and knocked on the door and there was no reply and we realized that we didn't have her grandson's phone number and nobody's replying.

I'm just going to give you the end of the story. She was fine, so I don't want you worrying about her. She was absolutely fine. So I called the fire brigade. We knocked on our neighbor's door, who actually just went and opened the door and went, oh look, the door is open now. To cut a long story short, the fire brigade turned up in three minutes, which was very impressive.

She was absolutely fine. She had just fallen off her chair. She, her daughter was actually asleep in the front room. It's gets hot here in Spain and it's normal to have a nap in the afternoon. And she was just having a nap and, the lady in her nineties had gone outside when she wasn't supposed to go outside.

Her daughter and her grandson say, you shouldn't go outside by yourself. And she had, and she'd fallen off her chair. She couldn't get up. Now she is doing [00:03:00] amazingly well. She's in her nineties, and this is fabulous. But a few things to highlight about this story. She couldn't cry out loudly. Why?

Because the muscle tone of her voice is weak. And she couldn't get up. Why? Because her muscles were weak and she couldn't, she didn't have the strength to get herself up. Now, I know a lot of you want to lose weight, and I understand that, but what I want to tell you is how to lead a long and healthy life.

We don't want to be that person who falls over and can't get up, and that work starts now. When I teach people how to lose work, lose weight, what I really want to do is teach you how to lead this long and healthy life, particularly for females. Females tend to live a long life, but quite often those later years are not healthy years.

We aren't vibrant and healthy now we can be. Now, I'm not saying we can delete all. Problems, but [00:04:00] we can certainly make sure we are doing all the stuff which will have a giant impact. And that starts now. And in this case, it is really about muscles and prioritizing muscles, and I want you to understand that our muscles are such a valuable.

Resource. So that is the story that I'm telling and I'm telling it now because I want you to have that in your mind. Even if you've joined this week's videos, because you're thinking, I want to get rid of that weight, and I understand that, but I say this is a better prize. This is far more important than wanting to lose that weight.

Now it obviously depends on how much weight you have to lose. Sometimes you have so much weight to lose that actually that really is. A signal that you are heading for problems like diabetes and heart disease and all of those things. It does depend on the amount of weight that you have to lose, but healthy and strong is where we want to get to.

So give me a heck yes or a heck no. About these things. [00:05:00] You've hit a certain age and suddenly you've put on weight without changing anything in your life. So you're just doing everything the same and wham. Suddenly weight has come on. We're gonna talk about that today. What worked for you before? Doesn't work any more.

So it might be in your twenties, you would skip lunch and lose a bit of weight, and that no longer has an effect, so you're feeling fed up. It might be that you are spending hours at the gym and not getting any results. It might be that you're struggling with energy and self-image and you don't really feel yourself anymore, and you want to get back to this vibrant person that I used to be.

Now another thing that I fear see is a lot of people thinking I'm doing the right things, but I'm not getting results. And this, I understand this frustration with how to lose weight. It is really important that you understand what the right things are. So that's what you are going to learn this week. So by the end of [00:06:00] the week, you will understand all of the things that are involved and what you need to do, and that it doesn't have to be complicated.

And then at the end of the week. You can either go and apply all of these things yourself. You'll have all the tools, all the stuff that you need to go and apply it yourself. And obviously if you need some help, I will tell you all about my amazing program and you can say, I want some support, the easy route, but I'll tell you about that later on.

Okay, so here's what you want. You don't just want to lose weight. You want to reclaim your energy control and balance so that you can be confident that you are leading your most vibrant and healthy life. So right now you are feeling frustrated. I don't really know what's going on. I just. Can't figure it all out.

Whereas what you want, where you want to be is like, I just know what to do. It's easy and I'm just gonna get on and do it. And I know that the stuff that I'm doing is leading to health, what I call healthy, amazing me. [00:07:00] You don't just want to age gracefully. You want to feel strong and confident so that you can embrace every stage of life with excitement and vitality.

Yes, menopause can knock us sideways, but menopause is a fact. And menopause does not mean, oh my goodness, I have to stop doing all the stuff that I want to do. It's a change. Yes, and we'll talk a little bit about that change, but that does not mean. I can't embrace life. I have a client who is in her seventies and surfs, and I find that really inspiring and I want to be like that.

Okay, I don't surf and I live on the Mediterranean where there's no way. So surfing perhaps is not the thing that's gonna happen for me, but I want to be that person who is active and doing stuff that I love. Okay, here's another one. You don't just want to start over again and again and again.

You want to build momentum and consistency and just keep going so that you can create [00:08:00] lasting change that sticks. So this week, this is what we're gonna talk about today. We are gonna have a look at some of those changes, what's happened to your body and what you can do about it. I'll give you an overview.

Tomorrow we are gonna dive into nutrition and exercise and sleep. On Wednesday, we are really gonna look at mindset. Which side note is such an important piece of the puzzle? It's stress and emotions and mindset, but one of the biggest things I think. I teach people is mindset. Even though people don't really, it's like some people realize, some people don't so much, but when you can go from, oh my goodness, this is not working, nothing's working.

It's frustrating to, oh my, like this is easy. I've got a system and I can figure out any problem. I can work out what my next best step is. And sometimes your next best step is just to keep going and to keep going and keep going, but you have the ability to be able to be objective and go. This is what I need to do and I can do it.

You can [00:09:00] see that you can just keep going. You're like a little train that can wind itself up, a toy train. Okay, on Thursday we're gonna be thinking about, okay, how do you apply this system? And then on Friday we will have an open q and a just to chat and people can turn up and we can chat and ask me questions.

Today we are going to be looking at what I call the fat begets fat cycle, so understanding those hormonal changes and how they impact our body, and then thinking about what we can do instead. Just an overview today. Do you eat quite healthily, but turn to food for comfort, start something new and then life happens.

Lose motivation because you aren't getting results. This is a really big one. I see. This is such a prevalent mindset. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I'm doing all the right things, but I'm not losing the weight that I want to. Now, it depends on that situation. We can talk about that during the week, but it is such a big thing that I see.

We'll talk a little bit about it later on. Cravings, hands up. Who has [00:10:00] cravings? Do cravings make it really difficult for you to stick to healthy eating? Now, here are some of the really big problems that I see that derail people. I'm so busy, I don't have time for this. Motivation. I'm not motivated to make changes.

I don't want to do this, I don't want to do that. I don't want to eat healthily because I'm scared of giving up sugar or I don't want to deprive myself staying on track. So that is, when life happens, life is busy life. There's always something going on. And when that happens, I get derailed, and then it's six months later and then I think, oh my goodness.

I, I am not doing that stuff that I said I was gonna do. Hormones. Hormones are another big problem. That's what we're gonna be focusing on today. And here's the other thing, knowing what to do and actually doing it. So here's my question for you that I would like you to ponder and you can come and write in the q and a.

So in the community area, what's the main thing that's [00:11:00] stopping you from getting results? Okay. Just a little quick introduction for me because I know that lots of you, perhaps don't know me very well. You found me through Instagram or my podcast or something and you hear me talking and talking, but perhaps you don't really know my story.

So I am from the UK and I live in Spain. I trained actually as a pediatric doctor in the uk. I have four kids. Who you can see in the background there. They are now 1715 and I have twins who are 12 coming up for 13. So all very close in age and they all have teenage brain. Everything is an emergency and oh my goodness.

Okay. I have written a book. My book is fabulous. It's about building simple habits. It's not about menopause but it's really about this. How do we create habits. It's basically a workbook helping you to create your habits. I have a podcast which comes out every other Tuesday. And here's what I'm really about.

Easy and fun, and I would much rather you do something. So instead of aiming for 10 [00:12:00] outta 10 and getting three outta 10 and occasionally 10 outta 10, but mostly three outta 10, I would rather you aim for eight out of 10 easy and fun and fitting it into your life so that you can keep doing it. And I think this is really the key to success.

Now, another thing that I'm very. Good on and focusing on is routines and habits and systems so that we automate stuff so that we just do this. We'll talk a little bit about habits later on, but so that you are not, your brain isn't constantly trying to figure stuff out. It's just, yeah, I just do this.

This is what I do. Okay, so that's my podcast and my book. And I have a program called Positively Healthy You, which is an amazing program, which I'll tell you about later on in the week. This is, and this is me swimming. Oh, I love swimming. I love swimming in the sea. I have wet hair right now. I didn't swim with my friend Monica today.

I went by myself. But this was taken a few years ago, but it could have been taken today. That's exactly where I swam. Less people, my husband, my kids. So just a normal family and with a normal mum with a normal [00:13:00] family. So hands up if you want to be healthy and strong and it to be easy. So here's the good news.

You can change even if you have tried a zillion times before. Now, if you have tried a zillion times before, this makes it more difficult 'cause your brain is busy saying, I've tried, this isn't gonna work, this isn't you. It's just another thing that is going to fail. If that is you, please make sure you turn up on Wednesday because that is mindset.

That is your brain. That's how your brain works. And in order to get over that, you need to understand how your brain works. So this is how I see the problem in big terms. And it doesn't matter who you are and exactly what your problems are. Everybody has slightly different painting, different like aspects of what is going on for them.

But this is where you are. You are on one side of a ravine. This is your now. So right now it might be, as I say, different things for different people. It might be that you turn to food for comfort [00:14:00] and you know it doesn't help, but you don't know how to break outta that cycle. It might be that you make you want to, Mel, excuse me, you want to make healthy choices and exercise, but right now it just feels like a chore.

You don't understand how to do it. It just feels too big of a problem. It might be that you want a healthy lifestyle to be normal, but you just feel too busy to figure it out. And so essentially whatever the things that are going on now, you are stuck in struggle, overwhelm, frustration. And here is the other side of the ravine, and this is where you want to get to.

And so there is, you have a good relationship with food. You enjoy healthy eating. You're watching your weight go down. You know how to deal with your emotions without turning to food for comfort, healthy choices and exercise. Just feel like something natural, like what you do. I don't think about healthy eating every day.

I just eat food. I don't think about. Oh, [00:15:00] exercising for my health. I just go swimming 'cause I love it. You also, you enjoy your healthy lifestyle and you watch your energy levels go up. You are confident, and I think this is a really big piece of the puzzle. You are confident knowing that you are doing everything that you can to lead a long and healthy, vibrant life.

And you can let go of looking for the secret thing, the thing that is gonna change all of this. You know that you have got this and you can ignore. Everybody else is going, this is what I do, this is what I do, this is what you should do, this is what you should do. You're just like, no, this is what I'm doing.

This is what works for me. And all I need to do is keep doing it, and I'm not saying that things aren't gonna change. Of course they are. As you get fitter, you do exercise in a different way. As you go along that journey of enjoying healthy foods, you adapt a little bit and you think, oh, I wanna try this new recipe.

I want to add in this. That's fine. Things can change, but it's not like you've set the system and you keep going and you keep going. [00:16:00] And this is where it's easy and automatic and fun, happy, content, confident. So here's the problem. How do you get from A to B? You can see there's a giant ravine in the way.

How do you get across? And the answer is what I call the rickety bridge. Why do I call it the rickety bridge? Because look at that bridge. That bridge is super scary, right? Who wants to go across that bridge? That bridge just looks like it's bridge. I would've loved when I was 18, and now that I'm 50, I'm like, that bridge does not look great.

It's scary, it's difficult. It relies on willpower and it's easy to fall off. It's easy to get pinged back, and we'll talk about this a wee bit more when we talk about habits, but this rickety bridge is the problem. So the rickety bridge, you start. You do some changes, life happens. You forget about the changes.

You are back where you started and you just can't ever quite make it across to that other [00:17:00] place. Once you are in the other place, things just happen and you just get on with life. So that's the sort of journey. And here is some messages from some people who are in my group who are on the other side, who have made it across.

I just cannot get over how good I feel. I feel a lot more energetic. I feel like I'm healing my relationship with food, that diet culture noise is leaving my head and I'm learning to enjoy foods again. I used to stress eat once a day, and now I realize I haven't done that for a month and a half. I'm three pounds down in 10 days, but more importantly, I'm back to regular exercise.

So that's just like the overview of what we are doing this week, that journey. Now, because we are menopausal women, so if you're 40 and above, hormones play a big heart in this. So let me just explain a little bit about hormones. [00:18:00] So we are looking at menopause and throughout history and even in society now, menopause has a bad rap.

And in our western society women have been, talked about being hysterical because we have uterus and things like this. And like the science has been very unknown, like witches were considered, like that's part of female hormones basically. And I have no idea what that gentleman on the left is doing something that looks hugely inappropriate to me.

But we ha we still have this. Cultural thing about menopause not being fabulous. It's a time of distress. It's difficult. Women are difficult. It's difficult for women. I was even talking to one of my clients yesterday and she was perimenopausal and saying, I just like. Feel depressed and depression is, can be a [00:19:00] symptom of, or like this, feeling angry and anxiety and not really feeling yourself.

That can be a symptom of menopause and yet so many doctors go take antidepressants and it's we need to at least have this conversation about HRT and whether that's an appropriate thing to take as opposed to just saying, this is depression, it isn't menopause. It's like a lot of people are still not recognizing that.

And I think in other cultures actually, people who go through menopause are considered to be wise and part of society. And actually, if we look at it from an evolutional point of view, I think animals are the only, sorry. Humans are the only animals where females stop reproducing and have a period of their life without being able to reproduce.

And you think there must be some evolutionary benefit, otherwise it wouldn't happen. And apart from all of that, it just is a fact. It is this thing. So if we accept it and work with it, we are gonna be much happier than if we are fighting reality. [00:20:00] So let's just dive into menopause. So perimenopause is the five to 10 years before menopause where your hormones are going like this.

I'll show you pictures of your hormones in a minute. Menopause it, it marks a date a year after you have had your last period. And the average age of that is 51. Now after menopause. Whether you have had a chemi medically induced menopause because you've had your ovaries taken out for a medical reason or because you've gone through natural menopause, you are now in a biological state for the rest of your life.

Your estrogen has basically dropped right down, and this is how it is going to stay. So there, there are lots of female hormones that are involved in this cycle, and I'm not gonna go into detail of all of them, but the ones that we want to think about, estrogens and progesterones, and then we've got follicle stimulating hor hormone.

And luteinizing hormone. [00:21:00] And we also have testo testosterone. But testosterone for women does not have the same role as for men. So for men, I have a 16, 17-year-old son who used to be a stick insect. Whoosh. He's grown up and suddenly he's turning into a man's body. Yes, he goes to the gym. But really what is driving this change?

Is testosterone. Testosterone is signaling to his body to put on muscle. That is what estrogen does for us. Now, testosterone doesn't do the same thing for us. It doesn't signal to our body to put on muscle. It's the estrogen for us that does this. And this is important because. Muscle is one of the things that we really value and want to maintain.

And we actually start losing our muscle mass from the age of 30. Yes. 30. Can you believe it? So every single year from the age of 30, we are losing our muscle mass. So this is. Pre menopause, [00:22:00] and you can see that all of these hormones, they're beautifully rhythmical and they're doing this like waves and essentially testosterone, sorry.

Progesterone and estrogen are doing this pattern like a seesaw pattern, where they're going up and down a little bit like this. And this is cyclical. And many women have regular cycles. Obviously not everybody does, but this is why we have S cycles basically. Now this is a picture of perimenopause and menopause.

So the first half of this graph is perimenopause, and you can see during perimenopause that your press proje, excuse me, progesterone and estrogen are like much more chaotic. So they're going up and down and they've lost this beautiful pattern, and this is why during. Perimenopause that our periods are less likely to be regular, we lose this regularity.

So it might be that you have a long period of time without a period, and then suddenly you have a much heavier period, and that is to do with the [00:23:00] progesterone and the estrogen. And this is why we will start to feel symptoms in that period because we've got these highs and lows of these hormones until du splat post menopause, we have lost.

The estrogen and we have lost the progesterone and they're basically flatline Now. There are a little bit, there is a little bit, but not very much. We have other ones that I showed in the first slide. So just to, quickly mention blood tests. People say can we do blood tests for. To look to see whether we're in menopause, and the answer is not really, because you can see if you're looking at not really, if you're looking at your estrogen and progesterone, because you can see they're up and down.

Like you can't really tell from that whether you are in perimenopause or post menopause. It's the FSH and the LH that will the FSH goes up and up. Sometimes your doctor might want to measure that. So a little bit about thinking about estrogen and progesterone. So [00:24:00] estrogen and progesterone are basically, they counterbalance each other and estrogen is very good at stimulating growth.

So muscle growth, for example. And it is it promotes inflammation, whereas progesterone is doing the opposite. And it's more anti-inflammatory. So estrogen protects your heart, protects your brain. It improves your muscle mass and your bone density, and it boosts your, I immune your mood as well.

So estrogen is helpful, but as it goes down, we lose all of these things, which is one of the reasons why our mood might go down when our estrogen levels goes down. Now when we're looking at why is it. That I'm just doing my normal life and suddenly all of this weight has come on. The reason is because as we lose the estrogen.

Estrogen isn't just about our uterus and our ovaries. We have estrogen receptors all [00:25:00] over our body. And actually as we go through menopause, we lose those estrogen receptors. So even if you are on HRT, you are not in the same state as you were before because you've lost your receptors and there's nothing that you can do about that.

You can't regain your receptors. We'll talk a little bit about HRT in a minute. 'cause there were so many questions about it when we did the live session, the fat gets fatter cycle, you lose your estrogen stimulus to build muscle. Why is this important? Number one, because we don't want to be that person who is 80, 90 and falls over and can't get up.

We want to be strong and healthy, but also muscle mass is more metabolically active and when it comes to burning fat, you want to have muscle, which is gonna help you burn fat. Now, there are other three things that are going on as well. Cortisol, your cortisol cycle. As we go through menopause, we become more sensitive to stress, cortisol, and that leads us to put on abdominal fat.[00:26:00] 

Our biome. Our biome is all of those bugs in our gut that are amazing and have so many interesting benefits. Your biome can change fat can help you put on abdominal fat. And our sensitivity to insulin also decreases so we produce more insulin and that can help us put on abdominal fat. So you can see that these metabolic changes are happening and the end result of all of them is to put on fat.

Let's just dive into a couple of them more so we become more susceptible to cortisol. Which has a knock on effect of losing muscle and bone. Now our abdominal fat has four times as many cortisol receptors as subcutaneous fat. So the fat around your arms and your legs. So what does this mean?

This basically means, okay, I'm a little bit more sensitive to cortisol. I put on [00:27:00] some abdominal fat, so now I'm more sensitive to cortisol, so I put on more abdominal fat. So now I'm even more sensitive. And you can see it's this catch 22 situation that it's really difficult to get out. And particularly if you're stressing about losing weight, stressing about losing weight is like stressing about relaxing.

It is just the opposite of what you need to do. Why? Because of this and we need to break this cycle and breaking these cycles can sometimes take a little bit of time, which is one of the problems with when you are saying it's not working, I haven't lost the weight that I want to doing the right stuff, but I'm not losing weight.

It might be that you need to. Reverse these cycles before your body is ready to change how you lose weight. So what happens in your biome? There's something called the FB ratio. So for mecu are the F, they are bad and they are going to help you take every single little [00:28:00] bit of energy from that food and store it as fat, which is not really what we want to do.

Or you have bacteria Es, which are good. These are the ones which we probably have to begin with as we go through menopause, we get more of the bad ones. So we increase our facu. So this helps us store fat and reduces lean muscle mass, excuse me, lean mass development. And this can take up to a year to change.

Now without doing tests, you can't tell. But what I can say to you is if you are somebody who has been going along doing this, and suddenly you've put on weight without making changes, the question is why? And it is one, two, or three of the systems that is going on. And there might be other things involved.

It might be that you know you are going through a stressful life. Not only are you more respe receptive to stress, but you are also stress eating. You've got these things going on and now you are like. [00:29:00] In order to go back, you need to break these cycles. You need to reverse them, which is what we're gonna be talking about.

Okay. And the other one was insulin. So those three things, cortisol, bio, and insulin. And when we have this mindset of I'm doing all the right things, this is what I need to do, but it's not working, you are basically swimming against the tide. I have to get swimming analogy in there. It's so much more difficult to swim against the tide, to swim against the current.

You need to spend a lot more energy with much less result if you are swimming with the tide, if you don't take these things into consideration. It is going to be really hard work for you, perhaps even impossible. It is much easier to swim with the current, once you learn how to swim with the current, it's so much easier and it's not difficult to swim with [00:30:00] the current.

So the question becomes how do we reverse these cycles? And I think one thing I would really like to say to you is it's not. One thing. I see so many people searching for this one thing on the internet. I need to follow this influencer and they're gonna give me one change, and that's what I'm gonna implement and that's gonna fix everything.

Now, if you haven't read the book, tiny Habits by James Clear, I recommend you read it. It's a very good book, and in it he tells a story of the British cycling team. Now, for those of you who are not British, when I was a child growing up in England. Everybody used to make jokes about how awful the British cycling team were.

They would go and do the Tour de France and other races around Europe, and it would always be these jokes about how awful the British cycling team was until they got a new trainer. And that trainer implemented some changes, but it wasn't like, okay, we're gonna have this one big change. It was a series of little tweaks.

[00:31:00] For example, he used to make sure that when they were away on tool that they. Beds would be comfortable that they would be able to sleep. So maximizing their sleep recovery is actually really important to performance. And I don't know the other changes, perhaps the petals or the saddles or I don't know, but little tiny tweaks and now the British cycling team is one of the best cycling teams in the world.

Little tweaks. It is not focusing on one thing all the time, it's about having the overall things that are important and improving them all. So a series of tweaks. In order to counterbalance the changes you need to eat healthily to support your bio and your glucose metabolism, so you are not getting, so that you can reverse that for mecu and that your insulin levels can come down.

You want to be fueling your body. Not counting calories, not depriving yourself. It is. We will talk about this in a minute. It is [00:32:00] not about starving yourself. It is about making sure your body has the right nutrients, exercising in a different way. For those of you who say, I do loads of exercise, you must listen tomorrow because it's not about doing loads and loads of exercise.

It's about understanding how to exercise in efficient way, managing stress levels. Stress is super important. That's Wednesday. We'll talk about stress on Wednesday. Now, here's a paper that I really love called Lose Weight and Keep It Off, and it could be called How to Lead A Healthy Life And Stay There.

And what they basically say is that there are two keys to success, to create a system that works for you and it has to work for you because. If I give you my system, you are gonna be like I don't live near the Mediterranean, so I can't swim firstly in the morning. I don't like eating this thing. I don't, do you know what I mean?

It's not gonna work for you. I was talking to [00:33:00] somebody yesterday and she was saying. I had a nutritionist and they told me what to eat and I lost nine kilograms and that was great, but I didn't really, like how I ate wasn't food that I particularly liked. So basically I stopped doing it and then I put the weight back on.

What's the problem there? It's not a weight of doing it that works for you. It has to work for you. If it doesn't. It's not going to work because the big piece of the puzzle is to stick to it. It's not about doing something for a few weeks and stopping. It's about creating a system that works for you that you can keep doing.

Now, obviously the system needs to be based on science. But it does need to be applied to your life, so it needs to fit into your life. You need to enjoy it. It needs to take into consideration your likes, your dislikes, the other stuff that you are doing in your life, and then you need to grow it into ingrained habits Now.

Here is an [00:34:00] overview of the system, which we're gonna dive deeper into in the next four, in the next couple of sessions. So this is my four pillars. Healthy eating, you enjoy exercise that lights you up. Delicious, healthy sleep, and emotional wellness. So that is looking at stress. Emotional eating, your emotions, your mindset.

So it includes lots of things. In terms of nutrition, our goal is to reduce insulin, which is our fat storage hormone. We do not want high insulin. It's not helpful. We want to improve our biome. We want to increase antioxidants, which are good things. We want to make sure we fuel and nourish our body, so our body has got the nutrients it needs to create muscle and to do all the stuff that it wants to do.

And we want it to be easy and tasty food that we enjoy eating Now, exercise done right is gonna make you feel fitter and stronger, and it's also gonna help you break. The fat gets fatter cycles, [00:35:00] it's gonna give you energy. It's really good at reducing stress and it's enjoyable when you do it right. Sleep.

Helps your body lose weight. Sleep is one of the most underrated things. It's gonna protect you from loads of illnesses. It gives you energy. I know you know this. Like how many people are sleep deprived and go, I'm really sleep deprived and I'm really grumpy. Yeah, we know this stuff. And yet so many people do not prioritize their sleep.

It helps you regulate your appetite, it helps you reduce your cortisol levels. Growth hormone, which we secrete during nighttime, helps us build muscle and burn fat. So sleep is really important. Emotions and mindset. Understanding how our emotions drive our behavior, understand how the computer inside our brain is working so that we can let go of our sabotaging voices and move into productive and happy.

And lots of people say to me. [00:36:00] My mindset is totally fine, but I'm still struggling and I'm like, okay. When your mindset is totally fine, you don't think in terms of struggling when you are thinking in terms of struggling and frustration. That is an indication that your mindset is not as strong as it could be.

So I recommend coming on Wednesday and listening to that talk. So listen, all four pillars are important. It's not about, sorry, let me just go back. It's not about, I'm just gonna focus on nutrition. I'm just gonna focus on that as I've shown you. Like some people you can do focusing on nutrition. If you don't do it taking into all of the pillars, it's just going to fall to pieces.

So just a quick word on calories in and calories out it. As you can see, it's more complicated than calories in and calories out because we have these metabolic changes that are happening. It is not as [00:37:00] simple as calories in calories out. Our bodies don't work like that, particularly female bodies. So going into a canary deficit can be beneficial for men.

The problem for women, so you can do intermittent fasting. I used to do exercise fasted until I realized this and I stopped doing it. If you restrict your calories and you don't give your body the calories that it needs, basically what it does, it sets up this bad stress in your body. Your body goes, oh my goodness, I'm in starvation mode.

And when it does that, it starts using up your muscle. That really valuable source. That really valuable stuff that we want and it starts using it as an energy source. So people might say, so I see women who do intermittent fasting, and some of them say, yep, it really works for me. And some of them say, it doesn't work for me anymore.

Now here's the thing. Your goal is to lose [00:38:00] abdominal fat or wherever you have fat, but for most people it's abdominal fat and fat. Weight are not necessarily the same thing. So when we are looking at body weight could be liquid, it could be fat, it could be muscle. So in terms of intermittent fasting, you might be losing weight, but that weight is fat and muscle.

And the problem with that is it's difficult to. Build muscle. Once we've gone through this menopausal stage, we've lost this estrogen, which is now stimulating or was stimulating our muscle, and now we have to work quite hard to maintain our muscle strength. So getting rid of your muscle is not good. In the medium term, all the long term, and in the medium term, it's not good because if you then put that weight back on, you've now put on all fat.

And so now you are actually in a worse situation. I caveat that with, obviously if you're going [00:39:00] to the gym and building up your muscle, that might not be the case, but for most people who aren't paying attention to their muscles, then they put on the weight and it's fat, and now you are in a worse situation.

One of the things that I think is really important is focusing on the right thing. So stepping away from weight loss, the problem with weight loss and focusing on weight loss, and oh my goodness, I haven't lost two pounds this week. It's all a failure is it sets up this failure success loop. So I had somebody who said to me a few weeks ago, I'm feeling really frustrated that I'm not losing weight.

I skipped supper. And I drank a couple of glasses of wine and the next day I had lost a couple of pounds. Now her implication was, then that's surely a good way of losing weight. And I don't see anybody who is saying, let's do the drink, skip supper and drink wine. Diet. Why? Because what you have lost [00:40:00] is water.

The minute you rehydrate yourself, you are gonna put that two pounds back on. And actually water is when you see quick swings of weight. I've starved myself and lost a lot of weight, or I've been away for the weekend and I've put loads of weight on. A lot of times that weight is water and it's not fat.

It doesn't happen that quickly with fat. When you focus on the short term on the weight, which is not the same as fat, what happens is it encourages less healthy behavior because you're seeking that goal, as opposed to if you look at the long picture, this is the person I want to be healthy and strong later on into life.

You are always winning, and if you do those things correctly, you are going to lose that abdominal fat. So all of the pillars are connected, and I think this is a really [00:41:00] important point that I drum into my clients. So this is what Sarah said. She said every single part of it is important. And previously I have picked up the eating part or the exercise part, and now I feel like I have this whole system and it feels like it's all fitting together.

So I just wanted to tell you a story, and the reason to tell you stories is just to help you see that there are other people in a similar situation to you who feel frustrated and overwhelmed and how they have changed things and really navigated this. This rickety bridge. So this is Sarah, who is 59 and works hard, so overworking and poor boundaries in terms of overworking.

So working at the weekends, which has an impact on being able to do things like exercise. Also means turning to food when she's feeling stressed, using too much drinking, too much coffee, not sleeping well. So you can see this sort of oh my goodness, I'm in this situation and I don't know how to get out of it.[00:42:00] 

And where she wants to get is stepping into her sixties, feeling vibrant and strong and confident, enjoying all the things that she wants to do. But right now she's feeling stuck because she's stressed. Too much work, feeling guilt and no consistency. And what she wants is balance, joyful exercise and confidence in her system and her body again.

And that's exactly what she got. So she said before the program, I was stuck in emotional eating, stress, sleepless nights, couldn't understand how to prioritize my health, and now I have done that. And she says, my program's absolutely wonderful. I'll tell you more about the program. Oh okay. Before we move on to that, I did just want to mention HRT because this came up yesterday, people asking can I lose weight when I'm not on HRT?

And the thing about HRT is a really useful tool for managing hormonal symptoms. For example, hot flushes or mind fog or [00:43:00] feeling. Like not yourself like super grumpy when you wouldn't normally feel grumpy. So it can really benefit from those symptoms. So for example, if you are not sleeping well because you're having hot flushes and you start HRT, then that can have an impact on weight, but HRT isn't going to help you lose weight.

And build muscle. Partly because we've lost those estrogen receptors. We have to do something different to lose muscle. So the question is, can you, sorry to gain, to lose fat, can you lose the fat even if you are not on HRT? And the answer is yes, you can. You don't have be on HRT. Now, having said that. As I say, HRT is a useful tool and it is worth talking to your doctor about HRT if you have symptoms and you haven't had that conversation.

So historically, in the nineties, loads of people were on HRT. Then a big study came out, which basically everyone went, oh my goodness, it increases the risk of cancer and all of this stuff, and we shouldn't. And everyone came off [00:44:00] HR team. And now people are, look, going back and looking at that study and going, this study actually wasn't very well done.

And there are lots of benefits to HRT. Yes, you have to have a conversation with your doctor about whether it is a good thing for you and your risk factors. The other thing about HRT is. It is a very cheap drug, and pharmaceutical companies do not earn very much money from it because it's been around for such a long time.

It's not one that they can charge heaps and heaps of money for. So there is not a drive to educate doctors and other people about taking HRT. So a lot of doctors depends on your doctor. Obviously some of them are very well educated, but a lot of doctors aren't that well educated, particularly if this. Of interest to them they might not know about it.

So it does depend where you go and who you talk to about it. Okay, so the secret of long-term success is. Habits. So just a quick note about habits, and this is what I call the [00:45:00] habit fairy. Where you want to get to is things are automated. You don't have to think about 'em. So take something mundane what am I gonna cook for dinner?

You don't want to be thinking that all the time. You're just like, yeah, I know what's for dinner. Obviously you have to actually cook it. So the thing about habits. Is they're basically in your subconscious brain and they are very efficient. We do them on autopilot, like brushing your teeth. Who thinks about brushing your teeth?

No, you've been doing it since you were about, I don't know, two, and you just do it without thinking about it. But they are a double-edged sword because your habit brain doesn't care whether it is a habit that is good for your health. Or not good for your health. So sitting in front of the tv, eating loads of junk food is a habit.

Walking, going for an evening walk is also a habit. You just have to be intentional in how you create habits. So where you want to get to is having what I call solid oak tree habits. That are the things that [00:46:00] you do when life happens. Those are your habits. And people always mistake what I call acorn habits for an oak tree habit.

They're like, I had this habit. Then life happens and. I stopped having that habit and it's no, that wasn't a habit. The habit is the thing that you do when life is busy life and when your habits support your health and wellness. Life is easy. You don't have to think about it. I don't think about healthy eating, not because I am Superwoman, just because I have been doing it for so long that I don't think about it.

For me, it's just eating. This is the food that I eat. So I have a quiz that I will send I sent out. I'll send it out again. And the quiz is just one of those quizzes really to think about, are you focused on the short term goal or the long term? And being able to focus on the long term is really gonna help you.

So it's just one of those things that you answer yes or no to, and then you add up your yeses [00:47:00] and then come and share that in the community area. So just to recap, how do you change habits? The rickety bridge? Building stronger habits. It isn't about discipline. It is about setting up your life to make it easy for you.

Discipline is a finite resource which will run out at some stage. You cannot rely on discipline, and really the key is understanding your mindset. So your mindset is just yeah, I'm enjoying this. Let's keep going. Oh, I had an obstacle. That's fine. I'm just gonna keep going. I'm just gonna keep going.

I'm just going to keep doing this. And the reality is that life keeps on lifeing. Your old habits slip back and then you get demoralized and give up. That's when you've got a strong mindset, it just steps in and goes, oh, it's okay. Let's keep going. So tomorrow we are going to be talking about nourishing and easy food, exercise and cravings.

Oh, and I will just leave you [00:48:00] with this. Which says, Dr. Alina has been fantastic at helping me to reevaluate my health, create my own positive system to move forwards. I feel like I can now approach weight loss and my health in a measured and relaxed way, and I'm already a happier me. So that was Chloe.

Now. One thing that I would like you to think about for yourself, so when you turn up to the live session, we do what's called an aha moment. We have talked about so much stuff today that when you turn off the video you're just gonna go and get on with your life. But I would just like you to note an aha moment, one thing that you are going to take away with you, and if you want to come and put it in the community area so that we can share it with everybody.

I think that is the end. Fabulous. So once again, sorry that I didn't get this done, didn't record it. I will remember to call record number two so that you can just watch it in the same day. Have a lovely day and I look forward to chatting with you in the community area. I.