The Hidden Ways Stress Is Sabotaging Your Weight Loss After 40

Feeling like you're doing everything right, but the weight keeps creeping up?

If you're a woman over 40 juggling endless responsibilities and wondering why that glass of wine and "healthy" eating aren't delivering results, this episode reveals what's really going on beneath the surface.

Dr. Orlena exposes the hidden culprit behind stubborn weight gain after 40: chronic stress. But this isn't about meditation apps or bubble baths. You'll discover how stress literally rewires your hormones and metabolism—especially during menopause—making your body four times more sensitive to storing belly fat.

In this eye-opening episode, you'll learn:

• Why menopause amplifies stress's impact on your body, creating a cortisol-driven cycle that makes belly fat almost impossible to lose using conventional methods
• How your go-to stress relievers are backfiring: that nightly wine disrupts deep sleep and prevents fat burning for up to 36 hours, while afternoon coffee spikes keep your stress hormones elevated
• The counterintuitive secret to finally losing weight: stop stressing about weight loss itself and instead build simple systems around the four pillars (nutrition, movement, sleep, and emotional wellness) that prevent stress from building in the first place

If you're tired of fighting your body and ready to understand what's really keeping you stuck, this episode offers the clarity and practical strategies you've been searching for. Say goodbye to exhaustion and hello to feeling energized, healthy, and truly fabulous.

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

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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, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena Today we are talking about stress, the hidden ways that stress is sabotaging your weight loss after 40. So if you have ever finished a long day juggling work and family, the endless to-do list and thought, I just need to unwind so you grab yourself a glass of wine or a little treat, you are definitely not alone here.

I think really for women over 40 stress has become so normal that we don't really realize that it is impacting us and sabotaging our health. Now let me tell you a little story about Mary, who is one of my clients, and she runs a business from home stressful. By the time she shuts her laptop, she's exhausted.

And that glass of wine, a few pieces of treat cheese, perhaps some pretzels become her me time. And she told me, [00:01:00] I'm eating healthily, but my weight keeps creeping up and I feel tired and exhausted and not like myself. Now, here's the truth. The truth is that stress doesn't just live in your mind.

It changes your hormones, your metabolism, your cravings, and it can quietly undo all of your best intentions. The bottom line is that stress is a really big piece of the puzzle, particularly when we go through menopause. Hello, menopause. Hello. Hormonal changes. So let's just have a little think about what is going on.

What does stress do inside your body? It raises cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone, and the result of that is that your body. Likes to store fat, particularly around your belly. Now here's the kicker. As we go through menopause, we become more sensitive [00:02:00] to insulin and abdominal fat has four times as many cortisol receptors as subcutaneous fat, the fat underneath our skin.

So that means we are more sensitive to stress. We put on a little bit of abdominal weight. We are more sensitive to stress. We put on some more abdominal weight and it's like we are caught in this loop that we can't get out of, but there is more. Cortisol disrupts insulin causes blood sugars to spike and crashes, which can really contribute to cravings.

It can affect your sleep hormone, making you hungrier and less satisfied and. Basically all of this happens because we become more sensitive to cortisol. So if you are somebody who thinks, you know what? I was just going along and doing everything that I did before and suddenly I put on weight. Hello hormones.

This is a big player. [00:03:00] Now, I wanted to talk about alcohol as well, because quite often we turn to if it's three o'clock in the afternoon, I see people turning to caffeine to give them a little bit of a boost. Or if it's a little bit later, it can be alcohol. Now, alcohol can. Radio your cortisol and it disrupts your sleep.

Now, I know people say to me, I sleep really well when I've had a glass of wine. You may feel like you've slept really well, but if you look at your, if you are tracking your sleep, you will realize that you don't get as numb as much deep sleep. It affects the quality of your sleep, whether you are asleep or not, and caffeine as well.

Now. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you have to give up coffee. I love coffee. I think coffee in the right place, used in the right time is healthy for you. But when you are relying on it as a pick me up, it can take, it pushes up your [00:04:00] adrenaline. And obviously it can impact your sleep, but it can really have effect on this stress cycle as well.

So it gets quite complicated, but basically the bottom line is stress helps you to put on abdominal fat, which is not what we want. And alcohol also as well as interrupting all of the, this the hormonal things. Alcohol is going to prevent you from losing weight, from burning fat, basically because alcohol, when our body has to metabolize the alcohol.

It is busy doing that and not burning fat, and depending on how much you drink, that effect can last up to 36 hours after you have been drinking. So if you are somebody who is thinking, okay, you know what, I really want to lose weight. I'm doing everything right, I'm having a little bit of alcohol here and there, it's worth knocking the alcohol on the head and seeing if that is actually going to shift you and move things in the right direction.

Another story for you, Sarah, who is a university lecturer, [00:05:00] and she basically realized that she was living on coffee to get her through those long teaching days, and then coming home exhausted and turning to food and a glass of wine, and really not being able to unpack all of this and realize that although it feels like you're doing things well, eating healthily, like your habits aren't that bad. Actually. A few little tweaks of what you make can really have a big shift and help you get to that stage of, yes, I'm losing weight and it's actually working and I know what to do. So I think really if we look at stress and think. What is going on? What is the impact that stress has?

So it can lead to you eating more using wine. So that's not great. It can lead to you skipping meals or running on adrenaline. Again, not great for you. [00:06:00] It can lead to poor sleep. It can also lead to perfectionism and guilt, and I see a lot, this is the mindset piece that I love talking about, and I see a lot of people really thinking about their lives and they set a goal to lose weight and think, okay, I need to lose weight.

I have to lose weight. There's so many other things going on. I don't know. My parents are unwell and all this stuff is going on at work and. Other stuff in my life, and yet my priority is to lose weight and make it happen. And I dunno how it's gonna happen, but I'm gonna do stuff and I'm gonna push myself.

And when I don't lose weight, I feel even more stress and. Guilt and like it's all a disaster and I am hopeless. And actually strangely, the solution to this is to let go of the weight loss piece. And I know you might be thinking what, that sounds really backwards, but actually stressing about weight loss is [00:07:00] like stressing about relaxing.

It just doesn't work. You can't. Stress about relaxing. It's one of those things that you have to let go of. Now, I'm not saying you need to let go of it and go, okay, I'm just gonna totally ignore it and not. Do the things that I need to do. We'll talk about what the things are in a minute, but not do the things that I need to do to lose weight.

But what I'm saying is when you are stressed about it and you are in this negative loop of, oh my goodness, it's not working, it's not working, it's not working, that is not helping. And where you want to get to is I know what to do and I'm just gonna do it. And I am able to. Be objective and see when I'm not doing it and get back on track or when things have changed, my body has changed a little bit and I need to do something else, and I can sort that out.

So here I think is the big question. How do we break the cycle of stress Now there are so many things that you [00:08:00] can do to help you. Change stress. And the way I look at it is you want a systematic, you can have systematic things that are gonna prevent you almost those fire stoppers, in hot countries.

I don't know if they still do this. I don't see this. I live in Spain, but I remember when I was younger, you would go to hot countries and they would burn some of the fields in order to stop the fire from spreading. And it's almost like you need these stop breaks in your routine so that the stress does not build up and build up.

That is much better. Than having emergency tools and relying on your emergency tools because your emergency tools are great in an emergency, but they don't work a hundred percent. And also, if you're using your emergency tools, what you're basically saying is, I'm feeling stressed. I've got to this peak of Stressless and now I'm coming back down.

As opposed to, Hey, why don't we avoid the stress in the first place? That is much, much better place to be. So [00:09:00] how do we avoid the stress in the first place? If you have been listening to me for a while, then you are not gonna be surprised by the answer. The answer is all four of the pillars. And I think it's really interesting how all four of the pillars are related.

So the pillars are nutrition. You want to be able to fuel your body. You want a system to fuel your body so that you know what to eat. It's easy for you to create healthy foods that you enjoy eating that is going to. Nourish your body, it's going to stabilize your blood sugars because you don't want high peaks and low peaks.

So you don't want to be skipping meals because that really is just putting another stress on your body. And obviously you want to get your alcohol and caffeine levels into into a range that helps your body. So even cutting back. From say, nightly wine to two to three nights can make a big impact. And if [00:10:00] you are only drinking at the weekend, perhaps you could cut back to one or reduce the amount of alcohol that you take at the weekend.

Exercise pillar number two is exercise movement. That lights you up. In my opinion, movement is one of the best ways that you can reduce stress. I personally love exercising. I used to be exercise phobic when I was younger, and over the years I've really learned that my body thrives on movement. I feel so much better, and it is definitely a very good for lowering my stress.

My husband always says to me, if he can see me getting a bit grumpy, he's go swimming. Just go swimming. And. You know when you are swimming, when you are doing whatever exercise it is, you are focusing on your body. You are not focusing on whatever it is that is stressing you out. Side note, whatever it is that is stressing you out is something that you are thinking about.

So going back to Mary, she [00:11:00] started swimming again and. It just changed everything for her. It really was the catalyst that helped her maintain looking after herself. Pillar number three is sleep. And I know that so many people say yeah, I know sleep is really good for me. But I have conversations with so many people and I say to them, how many hours sleep do you get?

And they say I go to bed at midnight and I get up at five. And I'm like, okay. And as they're saying it. You can hear them thinking, yeah, this is not great. This isn't rocket science. Is it like, do I prioritize my sleep? Answer, no. What happens if you don't get enough sleep? You feel more stressed, your cortisol levels are high, you feel more hungry, you feel grumpy.

Basically, life is just 10 times more difficult when you don't get enough sleep. And in terms of weight loss, sleep is a really important part and all you have to do is go to bed. It's so easy and obviously sleep. So pillar number [00:12:00] four is emotional wellness, and this really is, includes, our emotions include stress, so understanding our emotions, understanding what stress is, and understanding how our brain works.

And stress really is a fear of something in the future. That we are worried about and that that's the worst case scenario that is going around in our brain. So example, when my son was unwell, this was a few years ago now, but that fear, that stress is really what if this turns out to be X, Y, z?

What if worst case scenario. And so when we look at stress, I know there's different types of stress, but one of them is, oh my goodness, what if. Something happens. Now, we do also have different types of stress in terms of we have mirror neurons. So if somebody else is stressed in our environment, we often pick up on that and then we start feeling [00:13:00] stressed.

So that's an emotional like contagion as it were. If you work in a situation where you are in contact with lots of people, so I used to work in a hospital, definitely in contact with lots of stressed people. That might have been the people who were there because while I was doing pediatrics, their children were unwell.

Or it might be the people who were working, who were overworked and underpaid and didn't have enough time off. They didn't have enough time to look after themselves, and so their stress builds up. And so this whole environment turns into a stressful. Environment and how do you change that? You really understand how your brain works.

And I think one thing to bring it back to is this is normal. This is how the human brain and the human body is basically wired to work. Our brain is wired to be in a state of negativity and stress. But we can change that [00:14:00] if we want to. It's not about willpower. It is about understanding how to create a system in terms of the things that you need to do to make it easy for yourself and in terms of how you think about things, learn how you can see things in a different way.

And once you learn how you can see things in a different way, stress reduces. I'm not gonna take say to you that stress. Disappears entirely because I think that's unrealistic. But you can definitely reduce stress to a much more manageable place so that you don't find yourself coming home and going, oh my goodness, give me a glass of wine.

Or, oh my goodness, what am I gonna cook for dinner? Oh my goodness, I need that 3:00 PM sugar and coffee rush to get me through the rest of the day. Strangely, actually, all of those things are about implementing. A system to look after yourself. So I hope this has given you a little bit to think about in terms of stress.

Stress is definitely something that impacts our [00:15:00] weight loss goals and our health. It is definitely something that you can change. The changes don't have to be giant changes. They can be small little changes. They're tweaks. One of the things I really think about getting to healthy Amazing You is that quite often it is just tweaks that we are making as opposed to changing everything.

But where you want to get to is, this is just what I do normally. This is how I lead my life. I eat this way because I enjoy it because it nourishes me. I exercise in the same way that I brush my teeth, because that's just what I do. And when you get there, it's just easy. Your energy levels are high, you feel amazing.

You see the weight come off. And more importantly than any of that, you know that you are enjoying life and doing everything you can to lead along and healthy life and to be. Fit and strong later into life. So if you would like more details and you haven't already watched my video, [00:16:00] stop dieting and start thriving that, and you're thinking, oh my goodness, Dr.

Udina, I want to work with you. I want to change these things. That is the starting place. It goes into more details of exactly what you need to do. Go and watch that video, and when you have watched that video and you're like, yep, I need some help doing this. I totally get it, but I want some help. Then book a call with me and I would love to chat to you.

Have a fabulous day. Goodbye.