The One Nutrition Shift That Matters More Than Calories After 40

Why everything you've been told about losing weight after 40 is wrong — and what actually works

If you've ever eaten less, counted every calorie, and still watched the weight creep on — this episode is for you.

Dr. Orlena cuts through the noise to reveal why calorie restriction is the wrong tool for women over 40, and what the science of your gut microbiome tells us about weight, energy, and long-term health instead. Inside, you'll discover the one nutritional shift that has more impact than anything else you're likely doing right now — and how to make it almost effortlessly.

In this episode:

• Why your gut bacteria are driving your cravings, your weight, and even your behaviour — and how to flip them to work for you
• The surprisingly simple goal of 30 different plants a week, and the brilliant kitchen tricks that make it completely achievable
• How cooling your rice, freezing your bread, and mixing your seeds can transform ordinary foods into powerful fuel for your biome

Whether you're starting from scratch or you've tried everything and feel like giving up, Dr. Orlena gives you a clear, science-backed framework that makes healthy eating feel manageable — not miserable.

Your biome looks after you. First, you need to look after it.

Watch Stop Dieting Start Thriving: https://go.drorlena.com/video 

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Transcript

Calorie counting does not help you after 40, and here's what works better. I am going to explain to you one nutritional shift that matters more than counting calories after 40. In fact, let's just forget about counting calories. I'm going to explain to you what's going on and how to take easy action.

Hello. Hello. I am Dr. Orlena. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous at 40 and Beyond. Imagine this. I speak to so many people who tell me this story. I was fit and healthy, and in my forties, suddenly this abdominal belly just appeared out of nowhere. I was doing all the same things as I used to do. Exercising, eating, sleeping, all of those things just the same, and suddenly, bam.

Abdominal belly, or it might be that you weren't as healthy as you wanted to be. Prior to that, you had a little bit more weight and you had [00:01:00] been trying to lose that, but not successfully or perhaps trying to lose it, putting it back on, trying to lose it, putting it back on. You know what I'm talking about?

And what happens is people listen to all of those people on the internet who go, it's all about calories. What you need to do is count your calories. So people dutifully go off and they count their calories. And that may work for a little bit and then it stops working and it's difficult. It's difficult to be there.

A counting calories. Who likes counting calories? I hate counting calories. I don't like to wait, and I think I just want to eat normally. But it's not so much the problem with counting calories, it's that it does not work. And people get into this stage where they're like, yeah, I'm restricting my calories and I'm lacking energy.

And it's not working. The weight is either not coming off or it is going on, and I just don't know what to do. I don't know where to turn, and I [00:02:00] start listening to people on the internet. Someone says this, someone says that, I've tried intermittent fasting. None of it seems to work. And you take somebody who is motivated to do stuff and they start doing it, and after a period of time they start to despair and think.

It's not working. I don't know what to do now. And you get to a stage where you're like what's the point in trying anything? 'cause I've tried all of these things and nothing works. Say good body to calorie counting. Now, there are so many reasons why calories are not the main factor, but what I want to talk today about is our biome, and I'm sure that you know what your biome is.

It is all those trillions, yes, trillions of bugs that live in our gut, and it's only in the last. 20 or 30 years that we have really begun to understand more about the biome, and I'm sure that we will in future years [00:03:00] understand so much more about it. Now, I trained at medical school, ah, nearly 25 years ago in October.

I'm going to a 25 year reunion. I'm that old. Yes. Now, back when I was at medical school, we were told precisely zilch about the bio and what we were told is that we have commensals, we have good bacteria and bad bacteria, and that was pretty much all anybody knew at that stage. There were some people who were learning more.

The research was beginning to come out, but it takes time for that research to trickle down and for people to really understand what is going on. Now, what we know about our bio is that it is. Basically amazing. And we can have a biome that works for us or against us. Now, when we have a biome that works against us, we are more likely to be unwell.

We are more likely to put on weight. We are more likely to do the [00:04:00] things that make that happen because our bio also drives our behavior. So for example, if you crave sugar. Part of that is your biome. Your biome is used to having sugar, and your biome is going feed me sugar.

And you find yourself with sugar cravings. Now, if you change all of that, you can create a biome that helps you. It helps you avoid illnesses, it helps you stay healthy and strong. And yes, it is gonna help you regulate your weight so that it's easier for you to be a healthy weight. And this is just.

Absolutely magic. Now, when I talk about nutrition in a nutshell, I like to keep things easy. So I talk about 30 grams of protein per meal, so you're looking about a hundred grams per person that obviously you can work that out by weight, but I use that as just an easy number to to remember why do I talk about protein [00:05:00] because.

Protein is our building blocks. It's what we are made of. And protein combined with going to the gym is going to help you maintain your muscles and we start to lose muscle mass as we get older. So we want to maintain our muscle mass. That's one thing that is a, going to help us be independent later on in life in our eighties and nineties.

And perhaps even if we're gonna reach a hundred number two, muscle is gonna help us lose. Weight lose. The fat muscle is more metabolically active, so the more muscle you have, the more fat you are burning at rest. So muscle is a good thing, although it doesn't happen quickly. And the two keys to muscle are protein and resistance training.

So doing weights, in the words of Dr. Stacey Sims, lift heavy shit. And I did an amazing video with Dr. Sims if you want to listen to that. So 30 grams of protein. 30 grams of fiber. Why is fiber [00:06:00] 30 grams of fiber per day? Why is fiber important? Because it feeds our biome. Our biome likes fiber. Now, there are different types of fiber.

There is soluble fiber and insoluble fiber, and as the name suggests, soluble fiber dissolves in water and insoluble fiber. It doesn't dissolve in water. Now, insoluble fiber is more like a bulking agent. And bulking agent is good because we do want our stool to move through us. We don't want us to stay inside us for a long period of time.

Now, insoluble fiber is the kind of fiber that our gut really feeds off, and we'll get back to that in a little bit. Now, the third thing that I recommend is 30 different plants per week. 30 different plant sources per week. Now when I'm talking to my clients about, so when I'm thinking about this. Myself.

Yes. I personally find it very easy to get 30 different plant [00:07:00] sources, and we'll talk about that in a little bit too. But in my brain, and I can see in my client's brain, they're thinking Protein, fiber, protein, fiber. Now, which of those three things is actually the most important? Now, I'm all of them are important.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do one. Or the other, we should definitely make sure we're doing all three of those things. But actually it is the 30 plant varieties that is gonna have the most impact in terms of looking after our biome. So if I had to pick one of those three things, it's the 30 different plant things that I would really focus on.

So why is the biome so amazingly helpful? Essentially when you have, excuse me, a bio that is optimized is working in your favor. You are supplying it with prebiotics, which is your fiber. Think of it as fertilizer. You've got your probiotics, which [00:08:00] are the different bacteria, the different organisms that we have, and then they create what we can call post.

Biotics. So they create stuff. They create these things called short chain fatty acids. So things like butyrate. Now, those short chain fatty acids are like little helpers that go round and fix our gut and mean that our gut is working really productively, but not just our gut. It has impact on all of our body.

And when we get this right, when we've got this place where actually. We are creating all these short chain fatty acids. Suddenly our biome is working for us and helping us avoid illness and losing weight. So when we come back to calories, and one of the big reasons why calories. Is less important, particularly after menopause.

So at menopause, what happens is so many changes, which I've [00:09:00] talked about lots before, but one of them is an impact to our biome. And what happens when we have an impact to our biome is our biome starts taking energy outta food more than if you've got an optimized biome. So you can have two people.

Eating the same, exactly the same amount of calories, the same food. If you wanted to do it on one day, the person who has the not optimized biome, they're extracting a lot more energy so that's gonna be stored as weight. They're gonna put that on the other person. Is not extracting so much. So you can see that it's not really the calories that is the big differentiator in here.

It is whether your bio is optimized or not, and there are lots of other reasons why calories in calories out doesn't really work. It's more complicated than that. The big fat reason is when you have a biome [00:10:00] that works for you, it is extracting the energy that you need and not extra energy. Which means that you can eat more and you're not going to put on weight.

Now you might be thinking, okay, how on earth do I eat 30 different plants in a day? That sounds like so many. Just a side note as well, when we talk about eating plants, you don't have to exclude meat. You don't want to be eating too much meat. Has a negative impact on your bio and your health in general.

For example, meat is often paired with saturated fat, which is. Going to increase your risk of heart disease and meat will increase your risk of various cancers as well. Like you can eat a little bit of meat and it's probably not gonna have a big impact. I personally eat very little meat. The only reason I eat meat is because I have kids who [00:11:00] like meat and I often don't eat the meat.

So for example. My husband will make azo soup. It's got loads of beans and vegetables and great fabulous things in it, and a little bit of Zo, and I pick out the Zo. Obviously I'm eating some of it 'cause it's all been cooked together. So we want to be getting, we want to be eating lots of plants and we want to be getting our protein mostly from plants, perhaps with a little bit of meat and some dairy.

And I refer you to the video that I did with Dr. Matthew NRA as well, which was really informative and talked about plants and why plant-based food is so much more healthy now, going back to the 30 different plants. You don't have to eat heaps of them. It doesn't have to be like a giant portion. So for example, a teaspoon of linse counts as one plant.

So for example, when I eat breakfast, I eat oats, what you might call oatmeal, what I call porridge. Oatmeal, nuts, seeds. [00:12:00] I've got about four or five different nuts and seeds there. I've got pumpkin seeds, I've got sunflower seeds, I've got almonds, I've got walnuts, I've got some fruit. So you can see that I'm getting fiber from lots of different sources.

Coconut as well sometimes. And also I have quack, which is a bit like Greek yogurt. You could have Greek yogurt or quo. I prefer. So I am getting fiber. I'm getting variety. I'm often having eight to 10 different sources of plants in my breakfast, and I'm also getting my protein, so I'm getting my protein from oats.

I'm getting my protein from nuts and seeds, and I'm getting my protein from quark. Easy. So easy. I do that every single day. I vary the different nuts and seeds, not heaps, one week I might buy one thing. One week I might buy something else. I eat fruit that is in season, so depending on what is around, I might have one or different, one or two different types.

If I've got loads, then you know, I might have two or three, but I'm not [00:13:00] increasing the quantity, I'm increasing the difference inside the same quantity. So super easy. Berries are your friend as well, but here's a really easy trick if you think about the quantity. So for example, just say you want to eat a portion of potatoes, but instead of eating a portion of potatoes, if you eat the same portion and you've got sweet potatoes and carrots and potatoes, you've.

Multiplied that number of plants by three. So think about ways that you can just incorporate small amounts. So for example, you can create a grain jar. We'll talk about grains in a minute, but whole grains, yes, we want them on our menu as well, but if you've got grains or lentils that all cook in the same amount of time, you can throw five or six of them into a jar.

And then when you're making a soup or making. You want [00:14:00] some grains, you can just cook that and you can do the same with vegetables. You can do the same with fruit. If you freeze fruit or cook fruit, you can chop it all up together, throw it together, and then when you are having a portion, you've got three to five different varieties rather than just one.

So small amounts rather than loads and loads. Now whole grains. I see a lot of people getting a bit like, yeah, but I shouldn't eat grains. And I have to confess, I have neglected grains a little bit. So whole grains are a good source of fiber. They're different kind of fiber. The thing about fiber is we want different types of fiber.

So yes, 30 grams of fiber, but different types of fiber. So whole grains have got different fiber from, say your carrots and other vegetables. What are whole grains? Whole grains are grains, which have got all of the fiber intact as well. So we are thinking about oats. There's loads of [00:15:00] different seeds such as bulgar, wheat and buckwheat and quinoa.

All of those count as grains, but also you can use whole meal products as well. So thinking about whole meal bread and whole meal pasta. They are obviously a little bit more refined, but they've still got that fiber in them and they can be really useful, particularly when you have children who can be a little bit picky and go, oh yeah, I just want to eat pasta.

So today I have got some whole meal pasta. We'll see how it goes. I'm hoping my kids will be, this is better than no pasta 'cause they love pasta, but don't neglect the whole grains and it's a really good shift to move away from. Refined flour. So plain bread, white bread, white pasta, all of those things to whole grains.

On a side note, if you freeze your bread or cool your potatoes or freeze your rice, all of those white starches, you can actually turn them into [00:16:00] what is called resistant starch. And resistant starch acts in a different way. So normally when you eat that fresh bread, you eat it. Your blood sugar level goes up pretty much instantly when you freeze it and then defrost it.

Actually, it acts more like fiber, it goes further down your bowel, and it acts more like a fiber, which is good 'cause we want to get things further down into our sort of big colon. Most things don't get down that far. So if you feel like you're somebody who loves bread and rice and potatoes, make sure you cool them.

Freeze them. I wouldn't freeze potatoes personally. You could do, but I personally wouldn't. And that is gonna turn it into resistant starch. For example, if you like potato salad, instead of eating, cooking and boiling your potatoes and eating them immediately, cook them the day ahead, chuck them in the fridge and have them as potato salad instead.

So to sum up, it is far more [00:17:00] important to eat lots of variety in your plants so that you can make sure your bio is really working with you, which is gonna give you so many benefits. It's gonna help you live longer. It is going to help you. Feed being strong and healthy and it is gonna help you lose weight.

As a side note, we forgot to talk about ble, no, excuse me. Beans and lentils. Really good source of plant fiber. I recommend that everybody eat a portion of beans and lentils at least once a day. Why? Because there was a meta-analysis, one of those big studies that said if you eat a portion of beans and or lentils a day, you live longer.

And I'm like. That's a really easy way to live longer. Love your beans. They're so versatile. You can just throw them into a soup. You can turn them into a salad. You can turn them into hummus. Who doesn't love hummus? And yes, so many people say, yeah, but it [00:18:00] gives me bloating and I feel uncomfortable. Why?

Because your biome is not used to digesting them. So if that is, you start slow, have a half a portion. Build up and after a period of time, your biome will become equipped to metabolize them. It's basically your biome that metabolizes them rather than us. So look after your biome, and your biome will look after you.

Goodbye.