Friday Chat: Harder to Lose Weight after 40?

Why is it suddenly harder to lose weight after 40?  Why is what you did in the past not working?  Find out how to lose weight after 40 and what holds you back.

Transcript

(00:00):

Welcome back to the Friday chat. This is the Jolie podcast where we talk about all things regarding metabolic health, weight loss, and longevity as it relates to metabolism. I am Julia. I am your host. I'm the founder of Jolie. I am passionate, passionate, passionate about metabolic health. It is the thing that has changed my life the most, and what I want to talk about today is why does it get harder to lose weight in midlife? And this became really clear to me after I had my seventh child, I had gone through many gaining, losing, gaining, losing, and literally it never was hard for me. I would have the baby, I would go walk, I would cut back on some of the things I was eating, and I nursed and boom, the weight would come up after with each subsequent child. It got harder and harder.
(01:08)
By the time I had my last child, I was in my early forties, and it was definitely, definitely harder, 100% harder. This body that could lose anywhere from three to four pounds in a week, suddenly it became a lot harder to get her to lose that weight. So first off, why does that happen? And then secondly, we'll address what can you do about it? Why does that happen? Has a lot to do with our lifestyle, and it has a lot to do with our hormones. I will say that before 40, you basically get a free pass and everything your body is functioning well. It has a lot of resistance or what I call reserves as it relates to how it works and metabolism and how flexible it is and all of those things. As we get older, our body loses that flexibility and it becomes a lot more sensitive.
(02:16)
And I think that honestly, this is building over time. It is the sort of abuses of our twenties and thirties that puts us in a place where our reserves, where they start to become depleted. And when they become depleted, our body struggles to operate in tip top condition. And this is where we find ourselves as we move into our forties or fifties and our sixties. In addition, we find our hormones, if you're woman in particular, we find our hormones changing. And as our hormones change, that begins to affect our body's propensity to store excess as fat, our body becomes really reactive to excess glucose in the bloodstream and in that it begins to shunt energy into our fat cells. In addition, as our estrogen levels and testosterone levels begin to shift, we notice that our gut begins to change. Oftentimes we'll have more sensitivity, we'll have more indigestion, we'll have more constipation, we'll have more Phil flatulence as they like to call it.
(03:32)
We'll have more gas. All of those things are telltale signs that our hormones are shifting, but also our microbiome needs attention because my sincere belief is that if we treat our bodies super well, we do not have to suffer these hormonal shifts that we were given programming to help us remain healthy and to help us navigate the ups and downs. And if we need support through medicine, through intervention, yes, but our foundation should be keeping all operating systems in tip top shape. So as we get to our forties, we need to do this because that is going to dramatically affect our metabolism. And so what ends up happening is our gut microbiome is off. We know from research that our gut microbiome, it really controls the initial partitioning of calories. It controls how many calories actually make it to the bloodstream, and how many calories actually get pooped out into the toilet. And our gut controls how quickly those calories that glucose gets released into our bloodstream.
(04:58)
In our optimal health, we want our calories to be released slowly. We want a portion of them to go straight into the toilet, and we want what our body needs to go into the bloodstream. So when we are in midlife, it is super important that we pay attention to our digestion. And how can we do that? We can do that by keeping up with our fiber is number one. How do we get fiber? We get fiber from vegetables and fruit, and I will say, if you're new to this game, it doesn't matter what vegetable or what fruit you eat, it doesn't matter if it's cooked, if it's raw, it doesn't matter. It just is important that you get it into your system and your aim is six to eight cups a day, six to eight cups raw. And if you are cooking some of them, I'm going to say it's four to six cups a day.
(06:11)
This is your goal, because fiber is going to do all the things we want it to do. It's going to feed your gut microbiome to create more healthy bacteria. It is going to make sure that some of the excess calories that you're eating are going into the toilet and it is going to slow the absorption of energy into your bloodstream, which will reduce fat storage and reduce your appetite by keeping you full longer. So the one takeaway if you take only one thing from this Friday chat is to make sure you are getting your six to eight cups of fruits and vegetables. And it doesn't matter. Sometimes we get stuck in parsing like, oh, is it okay? How about carrots? They have too much sugar in it, or How about beets? It has too much sugar. Excuse me. But usually our alternative is a piece of whole wheat bread or brown rice or something like that, and it has way more sugar than your carrot.
(07:12)
So don't be concerned about if this vegetable is better than this. All vegetables are good as long as they don't have a reaction to them. Eat them, eat them, eat them. I'll also briefly touch on fruit because I get that a lot too, but oh, it has too much sugar or I'm not used to eating that much sugar. Fruit has so much sugar compared to what? Compared to the granola bar, compared to the protein shake that you picked up at the grocery store compared to the tomato sauce in a can with added sugar, I think not compared to your frappuccino, no, I would under all cases prefer for you to eat a piece of fruit than anything else. If you're craving something sweet, eat a piece of fruit, it is not going to harm you. You're going to have to eat a lot of fruit and probably more than your stomach will allow you to for that to be a harmful thing.
(08:07)
And if you are far along in your health journey, then I'll say, okay, yeah, you have a little bit of space of parsing things. So you can go for more of your green leafy vegetables and you can go for more of your berries as opposed to your bananas and those type things. But the bottom line is your six eight cups of fruits and vegetables are going to do wonders for not only your gut but your metabolism in midlife. So that is takeaway number one. What else happens to us in midlife where we find it harder to lose weight? The second thing is our life amazingly is less in our control In midlife. In midlife, we usually have a lot on our plate. We have ourselves, we have our kids, we have our friends, we have our families of origin. We might have aging parents, we might have spouses.
(09:16)
We have work, we have planning for our own future. There is a lot on our plate and midlife, and it's getting more and more that way where you're reaching back to your own children and friends and you're taking care of them and you're reaching forward to your parents and you're taking care of them. There is a lot on your plate and a lot out of your control when you are in midlife. So it's not like when you're your twenties, you can say to yourself, oh, I'm going to do a five day juice cleanse, or I'm going to do a three day juice cleanse and get this vacation weight off. And literally you can do that. You can do it, period. When you're in your forties, it's a little bit harder because you're having your juice cleanse and you're still making dinner for someone. You're having your juice cleanse and you're running here to there taking care of your parents going to this appointment.
(10:13)
Oh, I have this. You're flying. You have a business dinner. You have so much going on. So it makes it a bit harder for us to lose weight. So what do we do in our midlife? We streamline and we make it easier for ourselves. So this is where it is so important that we learn to put our oxygen mask on. As I said, and lucky for me, my seven children taught me that I, after my fourth child, had such horrible postpartum depression, partially brought on by wanting to be everything to everyone and thinking that everything was equally important, that I had to do it, that I needed to be there, and that I was superwoman or something, and who came last? Me, who came last eating me, who got the leftovers, me who got the least amount of sleep, me who got no time to herself, me who got no time to exercise me.
(11:26)
It led to a horrible, horrible emotional space. I learned from that experience that it is absolutely vital that we prioritize ourselves first. And this is so true, even though it's hard during our midlife, we need to dial in our food. For me, that means I order my food from Jo Life. I make it super simple for myself. So there's never a question, what do I have to eat that is going to serve my body? There's always something in the fridge for me to eat. I keep a list of snacks that are good for me. I keep berries. I keep olives. I keep these wonderful flax crackers that I make. I keep some fruit. I keep cucumbers. I keep raw baby tomatoes. Those are things that I always have on hand. I keep some jo granola that I know I eat and is good for me, will give me all day energy will boost me, but not throw me into a sugar cycle.
(12:39)
That is absolutely important. Your taking care of yourself is a non-negotiable. So you have to prepare, streamline. Don't make it like, oh, what am I eating today? Or, oh, what should I choose? No, have it pre-chosen. Take out that thought decision. And literally for many of my clients at Jolie, that is the thing that they find so liberating about meal delivery. It's that there's no decision making. It's already been predecided. I find that for myself, my kids want this, that and the other. I can take a deep breath. I can give them what they need and I can pull out my dinner and know that I am nourished. So you streamline that. The second thing in midlife is you have to exercise. It is a non-negotiable. You have to exercise if you want to have metabolic health in your midlife and beyond. That is a non-negotiable.
(13:42)
Here too is where it gets harder because your time isn't your own. So what I suggest, what I recommend is you decide on a time that is yours and it's sacred. My suggestion is that you choose a time where there are fewer demands that are likely to be made on you. So for me, it's early morning, it's a 6:00 AM workout, whatever, it's that is my time. That is my scheduled time. That is my non-negotiable time. It's early enough where no one's going to plan something. It's early enough where there won't be an emergency. It's early enough where I can keep it most of the time, yes, there are some times that I don't, are times when I wake up and I'm like, oh no, you wake up and suddenly you're sick. Or occasionally something will come up that gets in the way of that. But that's very rare.
(14:47)
Either that or you integrated into your lifestyle. So maybe at one point when the kids were much, much younger, I had a dog, and the reason I had a dog is I wanted it to be a requirement that I go for a walk every day. And so the dog made it. So his name was lucky. He was a golden retriever. Made it so that every day, multiple times a day, I had to take a walk. It wasn't a choice, it was a responsibility, but it was kind of like a false responsibility because I chose it. I chose it in order to take care of myself. So that's another way that you can, during midlife, make your fitness, your movement a priority. And this will help your metabolism to stay on deck, to stay optimized. It will also help your body composition to be in a more optimal space.
(15:44)
When body composition is good, guess what? Metabolism is better. So those are two very key factors of why it is harder to maintain weight, to lose weight during our midlife. A is because our gut gets messed up. It gets messed up by hormones. It gets messed up by stress. It gets messed up by years. I'm going to say of low fiber eating. Two is the demands that are placed on us and midlife are almost superhuman, and we really have to make it a priority to feed ourselves and to exercise. And the most expedient road to that is simplified. Even if that means you're eating the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it's okay. As long as it's good, it's okay because you need to simplify it. You need to make it doable. This midlife is not a time for pie In the sky programs where you're in the kitchen for multiple hours, you don't have that kind of time, and in the end, that isn't sustainable.
(17:08)
The same with our workouts. We don't want workouts that we dread. I remember I crossfitted for a while, which I did like it, and it did do a lot of good things for me, but after a while, I just stopped because the anxiety that I felt getting ready for that workout, not knowing what it was going to be, just got to be too much. It was just sending my cortisol through the roof. That's not sustainable exercise for midlife. So instead, I switched. I take classes, I work with the trainer, but it's in a way that does not cause me anxiety before I even get there. So those are our takeaways today. When you're working out, it has to be sustainable. Your food plan sustainable. You top priority, put your oxygen mask on first and fourth. You have to feed your gut. You absolutely have to feed your gut.
(18:15)
So you do those things and that's the what can you do to improve your metabolic health in your midlife? You do those things and you will find you feel better. Your brain is clearer. You start losing the excess weight, inflammation starts. Reducing your belly is healthier. All good things. That's it. I will see you next Friday, and we'll talk about another topic as it relates to metabolism. Definitely check out the Jolie podcast that's earlier in the week about health and wellness. Overall, please join our newsletter, which you can find the space to join that on our website, the jolie life.com. Love your comments. I would love to know what's happening and look out because there's some fun things that are happening at Jolie coming up. If you are wanting to lose weight, get your metabolism on track. Stay tuned.