Metabolism After 40

Menopause as we know it, perimenopause, pre menopause does not have to be a doomsday situation for our metabolism, body composition, and figure. It is false to believe that your metabolism completely tanks during that time and you have no influence over this.  Dive into the podcast to learn to thrive after 40, rev your metabolism, and enjoy your body after 40.

Transcript

Welcome. This is Julia, and I'm going to just start this podcast off with something that is, I'm going to say controversial in that so many times, women over 40, self included, I'm in that group point to menopause, pre menopause perimenopause as the reason for weight gain or the reason that they cannot lose weight or the reason for weight gain in their midsection. And I'm going to say that menopause as we know it, perimenopause, pre menopause does not have to be a doomsday situation. And it does not have to be that your metabolism completely tanks during that time. And the reason that I'm addressing this is I really think that sometimes when we say, oh, it's menopause, my metabolism isn't good, it's menopause. My metabolism is slow, that we really disempower ourselves. We make ourselves the victim of something outside of ourselves. And the horrible thing about that, and I've been in that situation so many times when I've said, oh, I just can't lose weight, or, oh, it's just not going to work for me. 

Or, oh, I look at my relatives, and this is how it is, is that it steals your hope and it steals your agency. And if there's one thing that I very strongly believe, it's that anything that causes you to give up your power, give up your agency, give up your self-determination, if you will, is not true, is to be questioned, is to be challenged. Does that have to be true for me? Is the question that I frequently ask myself, does that have to be true for me? And I really recommend that question to you as a way of helping you to feel empowered as a way of helping you to feel your own agency as a way of helping you to feel that you have an impact on your health. That your health is not a black box, that you can't affect, that you can't unlock the riddle. 

I was talking to a girlfriend recently and she said that at the beginning of the year, she was so incredibly frustrated because she kept trying to lose weight and it kept going in circles and now she is losing weight and she's elated because she's like unlocked the riddle that unlocking came because she was unwilling to be defeated. She was unwilling to say, oh, it's that I'm 42 and this is menopause. Instead it's like, wait, let's figure this out. This does not have to be true for me. So first step is letting not be your mantra. This does not have to be true for me, and this mantra will help you as you go through menopause. It'll help you as you go through transformation. It will literally help you in every space of your life where people tell you you can't do something or something has to be this way or you're doomed to this or this is going to happen. 

This does not have to be true for you. Does this have to be true for me? And I'm going to tell you, it doesn't have to be true for you. And there are three main reasons why it does not have to be true for you. Because after we're 40, the things that there are three factors that massively influence our metabolism. That is stress, that is muscle, and that's food choice. So after your forties, life is about balancing stress and non-stress. So I'm a big believer that your life cannot be stress-free. It's just not happening. That is just the world we live in. So to be in a state of, oh, I wish I wasn't through stressed, I wish I wasn't through stressed is not going to move the needle. Instead, we do two things. We look for ways to mitigate or to erase stress, and we look for ways to balance stress. 

And so let's talk about mitigating or erasing stress because our bodies are made to experience a certain amount of stress. So how do we erase stress? How do we dissolve the negative impact of stress? We do that by instituting in our lives ways that I'm going to say mother nature dissolves the stress force. So what does that look like? That might be taking a bath that might be sitting outside like I am right now. You probably hear the birds and the insects and all that because it's deaf. You allow mother nature just to bring you down to see how big the world is and that you can recalibrate and you can let go of some of the weight of the world. Literally, you can let go because you see how massive everything is. Another way to dissolve stress is through meditation. And meditation does not have to look like sitting with your legs in lotus and being quiet. 

Meditation might look like just pausing for a moment before you get out of your car. Meditation might look like just sitting still for a moment on a park bench or like I do every morning, I just sit for a moment before I get dressed. I just sit and collect myself. That is my meditation. Meditation might look like having a cup of tea. It might look like taking a deep breath. So that is one way that you can help your body to dissolve stress. Another way to help your body dissolve stress is to move. And that movement is just moving energy out of your body. And that could be sweeping the floor, that could be going for a run, that could be going for a walk, that can be jumping on the trampoline. It is moving. Moving helps to dissolve stress. Water helps to dissolve stress. 

Even looking at water, let's say you're not even near water. Looking at a picture of water, imagining yourself in water, beside water, that helps to mitigate, to dissolve stress. And if you can be in water either in a pool or the ocean or a bathtub or a shower for need, that's even better. So those are ways that we can dissolve stress and there are many, many more. But you look and you see what helps you and you also incorporate lots of different tools in your toolbox. As I say, the other aspect of this is balance. So sometimes, and I am most guilty of this, we are in go, go, go, go, go, go, go. We wake up, we're moving. We are rushing our kids to school, we are doing our work. We are going to our really hard workout. We are burning the camp at both ends. 

We're going to bed late, we're waking up early. We are doing all the things. We are doing stress upon stress upon stress. And I will say that even healthy things can be stressed. So let's say you have a really stressful week at work and your workout of choice is a bootcamp. You're putting stress on stress once you pass 40. We need to balance it. So where there are areas of high stress in our life, there needs to be areas of low stress. So when you are reaching that deadline, let's say you're an accountant and you're reaching quarter in, then your movement, your recreation needs to be on the calmer side. It needs to be the yin to that yang. So that's one way that we balance stress. Stress. High levels of stress causes our body to hold on to weight and even to create more fat because our body thinks there's a crisis. 

That's why after 40, we really need to balance stress because the body kicks into high gear as it relates to, oh my gosh, she's stressed. Let me put all this stuff down for storage. So stress is a big factor in your metabolism. One of the things that I find helpful is just writing what my week looks like, what my day looks like, and rating them one, two, and three. Stress, no stress, high stress and seeing, okay, is most of my days high stress? Is most of my day medium or is there a balance? I also notice my body, the body keeps score a wonderful book that you should definitely pick up and read your body store stress in it. So I notice, okay, if I have a conversation and my belly's tight afterwards, guess what? That was a stressful conversation. And so I take a look, what about that conversation was stressful? 

Was it the person? Was it the subject matter? Was it that I did not say what I needed to say? Was it that I felt compromised in some way? But addressing and noticing those things in your body, even when you don't address it with the other person, helps your physical mechanism to dissolve the stress because you are allowing your spirit yourself to be seen, heard and acknowledged. Eating our feelings, stuffing them down, holding that tight knot in our stomach. That's a no-no that causes us to store fat, that causes us to feel the menopause has hit us like a Mack truck. The other big factor that influences your metabolism is the amount of muscle you have. Why is that? It's because muscle is energy. Hungry muscle not only needs to use energy in all the things that muscle does, but muscle always likes to have energy stored for it. 

So muscles, you always like to have a little bit of money in your pocket to use as you go through the day and you like to have that extra emergency money that's stored in your car in case you forget your wallet or something, or you put it in a different area of your pocketbook. That is an old fashioned term reminds me of my grandmother. So muscle is like that. It needs energy to burn and it needs energy that it just has sitting literally in the muscle in case it needs it. So the more muscle you have, the more energy you burn, just sitting still, just sleeping, literally. So muscle is super important. And as we get to 40 and beyond, it becomes harder to make and it can break down. If we're not creating muscle and actively maintaining muscle, most often we are losing muscle. 

And so in whatever workout you decide to do, building muscle has to be a very central goal to that to keep your metabolism running strong, keeping your metabolism running strong is not just about weight, it is about cell efficiency and cellular health. So the more energy our cells can produce, the healthier our cells are. And so that's why you have all the research that's coming out and books that are coming out regarding mitochondria and how one way to optimize longevity is to have more mitochondria and to keep building the demand for there to be more and more mitochondria. How do you do that? You do that by building muscle. So muscle is your longevity ticket, but it is also your metabolic health ticket. So build muscle. One of my favorite, favorite new tools is the body composition tools that are out there because it actually allows you to see, okay, how much muscle do I actually have and is what I'm doing building muscle or is what I'm doing just maintaining muscle? 

And you can look at that over three months, six months, nine month span and see, okay, what's happening here? The third and final aspect of metabolism that we are empowered, we have control over is the food that we eat. The food that we eat is information. It is programming for our body, particularly during menopause, before, after pre that whole shebang. Our food tells our body to slow down. It tells our body to speed up. It tells our body to store food. It tells our body to heal. It tells our body to mount immune response, which is please inflame yourself. It tells our body, oh, no, no, no, we're going to cool inflammation right now. Our food is powerful. It is the most powerful thing that you do in your day besides sleep. Maybe that is more powerful than your food, but you're kingpins of your health or your sleep, your food, your movement. 

So how do we eat in a way that tells our body to keep our metabolism burning strong even though we're going through menopause? One way that we do that is by limiting sugars. Sugar tells our metabolism to slow the heck down. Sugar tells our metabolism, store the energy away and please make me hungry an hour after I ate that meal, sugar tells our body, eat it and still be hungry, eat it and still have stronger cravings, eat it and still want more. That is what sugar tells our body. It turns off our fullness indicator, it turns off our satiety indicator. That's what sugar does. So sugar is the enemy of feeling vibrant and healthy pre post and during menopause. So we need to cut the sugar, we need to cut it in our sugary drinks first. So those are your energy drinks. Even your artificial sweetener drinks because they cause the same hormonal cascade, even though they have zero calories, as does real sugar, your body is not easily fooled, I would say. 

So first, cut out the sugary drinks. Second, cut out the desserts on an empty stomach. Third, remember that your grains, your pastas, your breads, all that breaks down to sugar, which is not to say that you should not have that in your diet. Yes you should. But if you are experiencing a slowdown of your metabolism due to menopause or if you're experiencing a widening of your waist due to menopause, that is your body telling you, Hey, it's too much for me. There's too much sugar here. And that's where you cut it down. And I highly recommend that you cut it first at dinner. And if that doesn't work, then you cut it at breakfast. And if that doesn't work, then you cut it at lunch, but you will find that you will feel better, your energy will be more constant. Your waist will start to shrink back down and your metabolism will burn hotter. 

So sugar, the foods that you eat. The second thing I want to address in terms of the foods that you eat are your antioxidants. So I cannot stress enough how important variety in what we eat is because variety is the main thing that's going to ensure that we have deep nourishment of our micronutrient, of our polyphenols, our antioxidants, our vitamins, our minerals, all of those things that literally make our body run. So we think of let's say our carbs, our fat, our protein as the gas that goes in our car. The antioxidants are the oil that makes the engine run smoothly and literally the parts of the engine. So think of it as like the connectors, the filters, all of those things that are completely necessary for your car to run properly. Those are your micronutrients. And we only get them by eating a variety of foods. 

And so when I create Jo Meals, guess what? I try and put as many ingredients in there as possible. Why? Because that's how you get it. And getting it from your food is so much better than getting it from supplements. So as a start, so when I was beginning my whole let's reinvent ourselves here from a health perspective and many other perspectives, one of the things that I did was every week I tried a new food. Every week I tried a new vegetable, I bought a whole cookbook on vegetables and went through it. I would go to the Asian market and I would try fruits that I'd never tried before. Why? Because I was trying to give myself variety because I knew variety would give me deeper nourishment. So if you're in a rut and you're eating the same things all the time, switch it up, throw something new in there, and if that's too hard for you, then try adding in a green juice that doesn't have apple pair or pineapple in it. 

That's another good way of doing it. Or designate. I went through a phase where every day was a color. I ate red foods, I ate orange foods, I ate purple foods, I ate blue foods, I ate green foods, I ate white foods. And white foods would be like white eggplant or a pear or something like that. I'm not talking about eating bread all day long, but that was one way that I habitualized or made it intentional that I had a lot of different nutrients by varying the color. So I give that to you. That comes from the Ayurvedic tradition of eating different colors or in different days. So variety of food is super important for your metabolism. Postmenopausal super important to keep your body running smoothly, to keep your joints feeling really, really good of pooling inflammation. And the third thing I would say about food is be mindful of the crap that sneaks in. 

So whole foods are always the best whole as close to how you would see them at a farmer's market or in a garden is best. But there is a creep. And even with me who I am so incredibly intentional, there are creeps. There were these crazy delicious pretzels my son had that I would snag a few, but before I knew it, I was snagging a few every day, multiple times a day. That's what I'm talking about in terms of the creep. So get rid of the junk, be intentional. I don't eat junk, so I intentionally for a onset, I'm not eating any processed food. Zero processed food is crossing these lips of mine and it worked. It took the creep away. Another way you can do that is doing a cleanse or doing a reset juice. Cleanses are a great way of doing that. It helps you to reset your palate, to reset your habits, to get out of areas where there is creep. 

And usually the creep is with junk food, the crap as I call it. And also with portion sizes. They tend to creep too over time. So as a roundup, you are always in empowered. I am here to help you feel empowered. I am here to show, show you basically to hold a mirror up to you, to let you see your own agency, that nothing is inevitable, nothing has to be true for you. You always have choice. As I say, there are always shades of gray. And when it comes to menopause and when it comes to struggling with your weight, struggling with where your weight is distributed, for instance, that's another big problem. You are in control. You are in power. And one of the ways that you exercise that power, that agency as I call it, is by monitoring your stress and actively choosing to do things that dissolve stress by building your muscle, letting that be a cornerstone of your fitness routine, building muscle. 

And by making smart food choices that reduce sugar, increase variety and come from whole food sources, you will find if you do that, then a huge number of your menopausal postmenopausal midlife symptoms will disappear. And this is true for men and women. The same men, we don't call it menopause, but they kind of go through the same thing as testosterone drops. And when that doesn't bring you to the finish line, then you add in other things, then you talk to your doctor and you add in other things. But mastering your stress, your muscle and your food choices will dramatically change your trajectory. And when I say mastering, I mean getting anywhere from 70 to 85% on target. I'm not talking about perfection here, I'm talking about making it more your normal than you're not normal. So stress erasing your stress, building your muscle, and really smart food choices are the path to really controlling what your body looks and feels like. 

And I will say that at 52, I feel better than I have ever felt in my entire life, and I feel healthier and I have more energy. And every year keeps getting better and better and better because I'm constantly hacking my health. I am constantly saying, okay, this is what they say is going to happen. I don't want that to be true for me. What can I do to make that not true for me? And if anything, let me be an example. I definitely have had all the things, all the kids all the time challenges, all the weight loss challenges, all that, and still am able to make choices that help me to feel better. And literally when you feel better, everyone benefits. And I always repeat that because I want you to know that sometimes we feel like we're being selfish or we're taking time our resources away. 

But no, no, no. Investing in yourself is investing in every other aspect of your life. So that's it for today and be well, and I will talk to you soon. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Jo Life Podcast. And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped by this podcast, I would love to hear your comments. And you can contact me at julia@thejolife.com and please follow us on Instagram, the Jo Life. Our website is the jo life.com. And it would be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone. Let the ripple effect happen. Let the joly life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving my beauty mark of love up.