Everything you’ve been told about menopausal metabolism, and metabolism in general, is wrong.
Or maybe put more accurately, I should say … is misleading.
Your metabolism is what determines whether you burn or store body fat. So it’s important to send the proper signals to your metabolism if you want to burn more and store less fat.
However, there are a lot of things that disrupt those signals. And this is where the misleading information can cause shit to go haywire.
Most of the time, women in particular, are told to eat less to send the signal of more fat burning.
Most of the time, women in particular, are told to do more cardio to burn more calories to send the signal of more fat burning.
And most of the time, women in particular, end up struggling to lose stubborn fat, especially during perimenopause and menopause because that information is incredibly misleading.
It ignores the basic function of your metabolism, which is survival.
Recovery and maintenance are the keys to sustainable results.
Mel and I were taking a walk yesterday through the neighborhood, sweating our asses off because it’s humid as hell on the east coast right now, and we were discussing some final wedding details (less than 2 weeks away!!).
She was talking about her dress and needing to get it altered so it’s a bit more form fitting.
Then, she was sharing how easy it’s been to get leaner for the wedding, even though she hasn’t been super dialed in.
So we started speculating what’s different this time?
The two major differences have been … recovery and maintenance.
She actually spent a concentrated time getting to maintenance and giving her body time to acclimate to more calories.
And she’s actually been focusing on more recovery through the process of dieting.
Funny … seems to be the exact opposite of what most women do.
Now, Mel is not going through perimenopause or menopause but the principles remain the same.
What happens with menopausal metabolism?
If you’re overloading your metabolism with stress via restrictive dieting and excessive training … your metabolic signal gets weak. Your body fights for survival and you make fat loss increasingly more difficult.
This is especially true as we age.
My fat loss journey has been pretty similar. I’ve been far from what I would consider dialed in. And yet, I’ve been making progress because I’m more focused on walking, 3-4 days per week of strength training, eating enough protein, and I spent a good amount of time in maintenance before embarking on this fat loss phase.
There’s often this very real fear of eating more and seeing the scale go up.
But let’s consider the options …
Option 1: Keep eating like a bird, try to stay consistent with 1200-1400 calories and feel like you’re always spinning your wheels.
Option 2: Actually fuel your body appropriately and stop over exercising so you can properly recover and see your body change in ways you never imagined possible.
Real change requires real change.
Will the scale go up? Maybe. But it’ll be very short lived. Unfortunately, most people freak the fuck out when they see it go up a couple pounds and then respond by cutting calories again.
Hence why a lot of individuals are stuck in fat loss purgatory.
They spend years and decades mentally dieting while not actually making physical progress.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
You have options. You have a real solution that works every single time.
The only thing that will stop you is you. And I mean that from the perspective of convincing yourself that it’s not working or freaking out if the scale goes up and then reverting back to your old ways.
Real change requires real change. You can’t kinda sorta change your way to the best version of yourself.
You have to lean in and do things differently.
