The Inflammation-Weight Connection Every Menopausal Woman Needs to Know

Feeling stuck despite doing "all the right things"? You're not imagining it.

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Orlena reveals why midlife weight loss feels impossible—and it's not about willpower. The culprit? Chronic inflammation that creates self-perpetuating cycles in your body during perimenopause.

Discover:

• Why small steps work better than dramatic overhauls - Learn how Dr. Orlena went from exhausted, overwhelmed mom to thriving wellness enthusiast by starting with just one hour of yoga per week, then layering sustainable changes over time.
• The "fat begets fat" cycle explained - Understand how dropping estrogen triggers inflammation, which increases abdominal fat, disrupts insulin sensitivity, sabotages sleep, and raises stress levels—each factor amplifying the others in a frustrating feedback loop.
• Your practical four-pillar solution - Get actionable strategies for nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress management that address the root cause of inflammation. No perfection required—just consistent 8/10 effort that actually works.

If you're tired of feeling like your body is working against you, this episode offers both the "why" behind your struggles and the "how" to finally break free. Plus, Dr. Orlena shares details about her Micro Magic Healthy Habits workshop for anyone ready to stop feeling overwhelmed and start taking effective action.

Your transformation doesn't require perfection—just the right approach.

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Transcript

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena I hope that you are feeling fabulous today. I want to talk a little bit about inflammation, but before we start a story, I am doing a program at the moment on communication skills, and one of the things that they are talking about is stories.

So I am challenging myself to tell at least one story. Every single podcast and you can email me and let me know how I'm getting on with my stories and if you think they're great or if you think they're a disaster. Okay, so this story is really a story of me and if I go back, say 10, 11 years ago when my kids were all little, so I have four children, they were under four and a half when I had my twins who were the youngest.

Now they're all grown up and giant. Now if I go back 11 years or so when they were all little and I was busy [00:01:00] being a mom in the midst of all of that, there is no time for me. Twins meant that I was often up at night as well. You know what it's like when you have kids, you have no sleep, you have no time for yourself.

Self-care. What is that like? Seriously, what is self-care? If you are anything like. Me and so many other women, your own personal needs go right at the bottom of the list, and that is exactly where I was. Now, the problem with all of this was I was tired, I was grumpy, and I was unhappy. I had moved from the UK to Spain to live my ideal life, but I could just see that it wasn't working out in the way that I wanted to.

Luckily, I have a very supportive husband and he said, you need to go and do something, or rather, he said, you need to go and do something because he's got a much lower voice [00:02:00] than me. He said, go to that yoga class that you want to go to. I'm like, oh my goodness, I can't possibly go to yoga. He's your kids will be fine.

For one hour a week. They were at nursery or I can't remember. It was so long ago. So he pushed me out to the door. Off. I went to yoga, and this yoga was what I call a relaxing yoga. It was very slow. It was very about relaxation, which was probably just what I needed at the time. At the time, I think my stress levels were really high, lack of sleep and stress levels high, and what I really needed to learn to do was the opposite, to relax and take care of myself.

So I went to this yoga class and I enjoyed the yoga class loads until COVID hit, and then basically I stopped going to the yoga class. But that's not the point of the story. What is the point of the story at that time? It was too overwhelming for me to make billions [00:03:00] of changes for me to go. For example, swimming.

Swimming didn't start till a little bit after that. I didn't have the capacity to do all of these things, so I did one small thing a week. Now, in itself, that yoga probably. Didn't have heaps of benefit, like it did have some benefit. It did definitely help me feel more relaxed, and that might have had a knock on effect of being able to sleep better.

I don't know. But really the big impact that it had was taking action and doing stuff. I knew at that time that I wasn't looking after myself properly and I needed to make steps to change things, but I couldn't overhaul my life all at once, so I did. What I could. And then when my kids were a bit older and they were all at school, I started going to swimming.

And gradually, as they've got older and more independent, I'm now at the stage where I am now. I swim lots, I [00:04:00] exercise. I have more freedom now because my kids are more grown up and it, but it was only a few years ago that. For example, I wanted to go swimming. They changed the time of the swimming. They used to do swimming at three o'clock, and then they changed it to eight o'clock in the morning and I couldn't go at eight o'clock in the morning.

'cause my kids needed me to help me help them get outta the door in the morning. So I've only been doing that for the last two to three years, swimming at eight o'clock in the morning at the swimming pool. So why am I telling you this story? The reason I am telling you is because if you are feeling overwhelmed about health.

Wanting to get too healthy and strong and lose weight, and you feel overwhelmed and you feel stuck. One of the big reasons is because you think there are so many things to do. You have to re overhaul your entire life and you can make lots of changes at the same time. If you're going to do that, you definitely need support.

That's where a coaching program comes in, and if you're interested in my [00:05:00] coaching program, then definitely book a call with me and I'm happy to explain how it works. But you don't have to do it that way. As I explained in the podcast two weeks ago, there are two different ways of making changes, and one of them is layering.

So making a change, making another change, making a change, making another change, and keep doing that. The other is disruption, where you change lots of things at once. Now, this week I am hosting a workshop. It is 55 Euros. It is called Mike Rowe. What is it called? Micro magic Healthy habits. And in this workshop we're gonna have an overview of all the changes that you could possibly make.

And then you are gonna hone in on one change that is a small change that is gonna have a big impact. And then you get to keep the recording so you can. Go back and rinse and repeat. So this is an amazing tool for you to have to stop feeling overwhelmed to start taking action, but action in a way that isn't overwhelming and changing everything over one all at once.[00:06:00] 

I will leave the details in the show notes. That story also ties into what we are talking about today, which is inflammation. So here's another story for you, a much shorter story. This morning I got up, actually, I didn't sleep very well last night. I dunno why I got up. My twins turned 13 a few weeks ago.

I officially have four teenagers in the house. EI woke up, I said good morning to my son. I can't remember what I said. Something like, good morning. How are you? Do you need some help? Or, I don't know what he was upset about, his response. Wha, I can't even demonstrate it for you. It was so agro, so high energy.

So stress. Now the problem with that, okay, so that's teenagers. I get it. That is normal. The [00:07:00] problem with it is that is stress. That is inflammation, not only in his body, but also in my body because we have mirror neurons. So when we are close to somebody who is feeling stress, we mirror that. And even though I'm standing there knowing all of this and trying to protect myself.

It still has an impact. Now, luckily, it only has a small impact because I am able to stop, breathe, and move on and practiced. He's the youngest they're twins, so the youngest of three should we say. But this is the reality of inflammation. Stress is a big part of inflammation. So today I want to unravel inflammation and talk about inflammation and think about what is inflammation and why is it so important and why does it affect menopausal women so much, and how does this all tie into [00:08:00] being healthy and strong and wanting to lose weight and inflammation is part of the key.

So the first question to think about is like, what is inflammation? Inflammation is our body's way of fixing ourselves. So we talk about acute inflammation, which is, when you cut yourself, for example, or when you get stung by a mosquito or a bee or something like that, your body mounts an immune response and goes we are gonna get rid of this.

We're gonna fix this. We're fixing the cut, we're getting rid of the mosquito venom, or toxin, or whatever you want to call it, and that inflammation, what we see. On the skin level if you can see it, if it's a mosquito bite is it's red and inflamed. That's what we think of as inflammation. And what's happening in there is our body has so many like different bits, things like cytokines and stuff like that, like the immune response is what they call a cascade.

There are entire books [00:09:00] written about immune response. It's a big topic. It's not one that we can cover. In a podcast, it's also not super interesting. I personally think unless you are really studying it and really in the depths of it, and then I'm sure it's absolutely fascinating. Inflammation that we can see acute inflammation good because it's helping us fix our body. It's getting rid of the mosquito bite. It's helping us fix that cut. That is good. The problem arises when we have what is called chronic inflammation. Now, if you have a chronic illness like arthritis, you have chronic information that is your body constantly trying to fix the problem.

But there are other things. That cause inflammation and we cannot see that inflammation in the same way that we can see the inflammation when it's around a joint or a cut, then you can see it and go, yeah, I can see the inflammation, but so you can look at somebody's body and not know if there is an inflammatory [00:10:00] process.

Happening now to somebody who is medically trained. There will be giveaway signs that make you think, oh yes, there is an inflammatory process going on. But it doesn't mean it isn't work that you can go, you definitely don't have an inflammatory process. And one of the things I would say is, when did I graduate?

2001 so many years ago? At that time when I was at medical school. We were not taught that inflammation is a big piece of the puzzle to so many illnesses. For example, we are now seeing that if we look at heart disease, inflammation is a really big piece of the puzzle. That is not what I was taught at medical school.

At medical school. It was like, oh, I can't even remember. 'cause to be honest, I went and quickly did pediatrics things like, oh, it's the cholesterol and stuff like that. And so over the last couple of decades, we are really beginning to understand [00:11:00] how disease processes work and that inflammation, chronic inflammation plays a big part in diseases and things like weight gain as well.

So hello abdominal fat. We're gonna be talking about you in a minute. Chronic inflammation affects your metabolism, your hormones, your immunity, your weight regulation, your energy. It is linked to things like heart disease, diabetes, dementia, joint pain, gut issues, just generally feeling a bit blah. So what happens during perimenopause?

Estrogen drops and. Estrogen is one of these funny things because we think of it as pro-inflammatory, excuse me, pro-inflammatory, and you'd think, okay, so when estrogen's gone, we've got less inflammation. But it doesn't quite work like that. I think estrogen, if you think about it more as it is.

Keeping the [00:12:00] balance in place. Like before we are menopausal, we have this balance between estrogen and progesterone, and then after menopause, it's plop. None of it is there. And that means that our inflammation is, it is less stable essentially. So with lower estrogen, your immune system becomes more IRA reactive.

You produce more inflammatory cytokines. The recovery and repair slip process slows down visceral fat so that abdominal fat produces inflammation. And this is one of the really big things because inflammation is. Helping you to put on weight and the abdominal fat is contributing to inflammation.

So it creates this feedback loop of what I call the fat begets fat cycle. And I think it's one of the reasons why people feel so stuck, because the things that you [00:13:00] used to do before no longer work and what you expect is to make some changes and. In two weeks, you are going to start seeing results, and that does happen to some people.

I think it depends on your situation. It depends on what lifestyle changes you are making, like what your starting point was and where you are moving to. It definitely can happen that some people do see changes quickly, but other people don't, and that doesn't mean that they aren't making good changes that are going to have.

Effect in the long term. But because this, these processes need to be reversed, it can mean that right at the beginning you make these good changes and you cannot see any knock on effect. And that's when people start going, it's not working. I need to give up. Okay. So going back to inflammation, we said, you've got increased visceral fat, you get blood sugar changes. You get [00:14:00] more swings because it also affects our insulin. So we become less sensitive to insulin, which means our blood sugar goes up and down more quickly, and high blood sugar is going to be inflammatory. So one of the biggest things that we see in modern day is high levels of.

Sugar in our blood is inflammatory. Now, this is, I don't want to spend ages talking about sugar, but if we think about sugar as our fuel, we do need sugar in our lives. Unless you're doing the ketogenic diet, which is not something that there is a place for the ketogenic diet. It's not something that I teach or, and it's not something that I personally use.

If you think about sugar as your diesel or your petrol, you want it in your petrol tank. That's a great place to have it. It's in your petrol tank. It's in your engine. It's being burnt. What you don't want. Is that diesel in the seat of your car if it was in your [00:15:00] car or all around your town. That is not great.

And it's the same with sugar. When it's in the right place, it's fabulous. When we've got too much of it, it is damaging the rest of our body and it basically damages so much of our body, what we call end organ damage. And it's only a small, little, tiny bit, a small, little, tiny bit. Unless of course you have diabetes then and you have uncontrolled sugar levels, then you're gonna see that more quickly.

Okay, what else? Higher stress reactivity. So we are more sensitive to stress, so we increase our, we are, oh, excuse me, more sensitive to cortisol, which is going to increase our fat storage adds to inflammation. And on top of that, the abdominal fat has four times as many cortisol receptors as subcutaneous fat.

Also shifts in our microbiome. So that is also going to impact [00:16:00] inflammation. So many different things affecting why we have more inflammation. And then in turn, inflammation can impact weight and weight loss. And a few things just to tease out here. Inflammation affects leptin. So leptin is a hormone that basically says to your body, I am full.

And if you. Become resistant to leptin. You feel hungrier and you get more cravings. Already talked about insulin, so we become less sensitive to insulin and that makes it easier for us to store fat and harder to burn it. More abdominal fat is inflammatory, slower metabolism. So the inflammation can impair your mitochondria, which are basically your cells.

Energy factories. We can have cravings and energy crashes. Sleep disruption sleep. So inflammation makes sleep lighter and then poor [00:17:00] sleep increases inflammation. Another of those vicious cycles, another fat begets fat cycle, and then obviously it can lead onto stress and comfort eating. So if your inflammation is affecting your brain signaling.

Then it can be that emotional eating becomes more common, and you can see how this is a stressful time in our lives. We have less capacity to be able to look after ourselves, to go and do that yoga, to go swimming and all of those things. And a coping mechanism can be turning to food for comfort. The problem with that is that is adding into the situation is making the whole situation worse.

And I talked about. Stress from other people as well. So you can see there's this giant hodgepodge of things happening and a lot of them are creating, negative feedback loops. So I'm just gonna rattle through lifestyle factors that [00:18:00] increase inflammation. So chronic stress, poor sleep, highly processed foods, low fo fiber diet, sedentary lifestyle alcohol.

I know a lot of people use alcohol as a relaxation tool, but the problem with alcohol is it increases inflammation. Chronic dieting as well. And undereating can raise your cortisol level and over training without recovery. And I think it's the without recovery thing here that is really important. So exercise is a really good tool for reducing your stress, but if you are pushing yourself and pushing yourself, and you are not sleeping, and you are not eating properly, that's when you're gonna find yourself.

In problems. So what is the solution to this? Dumb. Can you guess? Can you guess? Yes, you are right. It is the four pillars. So all of the four pillars are going to help with this, and I genuinely think that. [00:19:00] You have to pay attention to all four pillars because they are all wrapped up. So I'm just gonna rattle through them.

Pillar one is nutrition eating plants, which is going to give you some fiber, which is going to help your biome. Aiming for 30 grams of fiber a day. Again, great for your biome and different plants. Great for your biome. We'll talk about Omega-3 in a minute. Actually, let's talk about Omega-3 now. So Omega-3 is one of those things that really.

Helps not have inflammation. So it stops the inflammation from happening. My clients were asking about this the other day, and I, they said, should we have Omega-3 supplements? And I was like no. You shouldn't have Omega-3 supplements. And then I thought about it and thought, actually, do you know what?

I buy Omega-3 supplements for my son? So I think there is a place to supplement with Omega-3. So Omega-3 is. Good for stopping the inflammation. The best place to get your [00:20:00] Omega-3 is from food, so we're talking about oily fish, so thinking about things like sardines and anchovies, having a couple of portions of oily fish a week.

Now, if you are having tinned fish, it's actually very easy to do that. You can, of course, freeze fish as well, so you don't need heaps and heaps. A hundred, 150 grams. Sardines tin sardines a couple of times a week is going to give you your Omega-3. Now, if you are not eating fish, so my 17-year-old son refuses to eat fish, then there is a place to say yes, go for the Omega-3 supplements.

And I think if you think about. Where you are in life. Personally, I don't take the supplements. I do try and eat fish. I don't eat as much fish as I recommend, partly because it means I need, I'd rather have the fresh fish, and that means [00:21:00] getting to the fish market and that kind of never happens. So I would like to start eating more fish.

I just need to go and stock up on my tins. I eat fish about once a week, I would say. Now, if you are somebody who has lots of inflammation. Going on than then having the Omega-3 is gonna have a bigger impact than if you are somebody who doesn't have inflammation going on. But the reality is that we all have inflammation going on.

Just being alive means there is inflammation going on. So Omega-3 or fish ideally fish. Okay. So back to nutrition. You want stable meals, we want protein as well, and this is going to prevent our sugar spikes and also minimizing ultra processed food. So if you want to know more about nutrition, then watch my video, stop dieting and start thriving where I go through this in a little bit more detail.

Pillar number two, exercise. That lights you up. So this [00:22:00] is gonna help you lower inflammation. It's gonna help with insulin sensitivity, so it's great for stress as well. Yes, exercise does increase your cortisol when you are doing it, but overall it decreases it. And personally I think that exercise is one of, if you find an exercise that you enjoy doing and you actually do it, it is one of the best ways of reducing your stress.

I personally swim a lot and it keeps me sane. My husband always says when I'm tired and grumpy, he's have you been swimming recently? If not, go swimming. Now. The truth is I've probably been swimming every single day, you can still get tired and grumpy as well. Okay, pillar number three is sleep.

And sleep is one of the most important things that you can do and one of the things that is least prioritized, but sleep is really a good. It's gonna help you reduce inflammation. It's gonna help you reduce stress, and it is [00:23:00] also going to help you with your insulin resistance. And just one bad night can increase your inflammation and your insulin resistance.

So I didn't sleep very well last night. As I say, I have no idea why my insulin resistance and inflammation are probably higher today than they normally are. Now, pillar number four is emotional wellness and stress are just tied together. Essentially, stress is how we think about things.

Stress is worrying about stuff that may or may not happen in the future. Again, if you want to know more about this, watch my video. So what are the biggest things that you can do? So number one, reduce stress and improve sleep. Number two, balanced meals, plants, protein, fiber. Three. Exercise. For [00:24:00] emotional resilience.

Now you don't need to be perfect. I always say to people, I don't expect you to do the four pillars perfectly. I'm looking for an eight outta 10, and consistency is far better than aiming for perfect, not getting there and plummeting down to zero outta 10. You're better going for a little bit less and keeping doing it, and keeping doing it, and keeping doing it.

Now, as I said at the beginning of the podcast. Small changes over time are going to help you really change this. Just think, for example, if you ate lots of processed food and then you decide to reduce your processed food over a period of five years, what impact is that gonna have? It's going to have an amazing impact.

So small things really can have a big impact. Small but powerful changes. So I hope that. Helps you understand a little bit more about inflammation, why it [00:25:00] is so important, why it is especially important at our stage in life, and that you definitely can do things to improve it and to change it and to reduce it.

Have a fabulous day, and I hope you can make it on Thursday.