The Rules of Weight Loss Have Changed

If you’ve ever thought… “Why is nothing working anymore?” This episode is your answer.

It’s not your discipline.
It’s not your effort.
And it’s definitely not because you’ve suddenly become “lazy.”

Your body has changed. And no one updated the rule book.

In this powerful, no-fluff conversation, I sit down with certified health and wellness coach Lisa G from the Lifestyle Reset Podcast to unpack what’s really happening to women’s bodies after 40 and how to start working with your body instead of fighting it.

You'll learn:

• Why your body can feel like it “changed overnight” after 40

• The 4 stages of menopause and what’s actually happening behind the scenes

• Why applying your old weight loss strategies is keeping you stuck

• The emotional and identity shift women experience in midlife

• The health and fitness advice you need to let go of immediately

• Why over-exercising and under-eating are doing more harm than good

• The truth about fasting for women over 40 and how to do it properly

If you liked this episode, check out this one next: Toxic Habits Still Showing Up? You’re Outgrowing Your Old Identity

Get Kylie's exact weight loss Blueprint
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BOMBSHELL BLUEPRINT WEIGHT LOSS FOR EMOTIONAL EATERS

Transcript

What is up, you gorgeous, fabulous creatures, and welcome to another brand new episode of the Losing It podcast. You're here with Kylie Pax, Australia's emotional eating coach. And as always, I am very excited to be with you.

But today I'm even extra excited because I have a very special guest entering the chat with us today. This is not going to be a fluffy podcast. I'm going to consider this more of a recalibration for us all.

It is, if you're here in the magical land of Oz, it has now turned autumn. If you're on the other side of the world, then you're one of the lucky Beatrice for whom spring has arrived and you are stealing my summer. So I'm not overly excited about that, but I'll let you have it this one time.

We have the gorgeous Miss Lisa from the Lifestyle Reset podcast, who I am so excited to be chatting with today. Lisa is someone who really understands the midlife challenges that we go through as women. After we hit our 40s, we start perimenopausal, we start hitting the hormone changes.

Lisa's actually a certified health and wellness coach. She's an educator. She's got her own fabulous podcast and she is based in New York, girls.

She's based in New York. This is like my home of Sex and the City. So I just think she's automatically fabulous.

She's a graduate of IIN and she is a certified Fast Like a Girl coach, which was very exciting to me. Lisa is super passionate about helping women reclaim their health in a sustainable and empowering way. And the minute I found out that, I was sold because we are just like soul sisters straight away.

After facing her own health challenges in 2013, Lisa really took on the ownership of transforming her own lifestyle. She lowered her blood sugar levels. She made sure that she maintained a really healthy weight and gained renewed energy and clarity and a more positive outlook on her life.

And that personal journey became the foundation for her mission. So today, the fabulous Miss Lisa hosts her own, as I said, Lifestyle Reset podcast. It's absolutely fabulous.

If you haven't dropped on and had a listen, you really, really should because this is where she supports women just like us in understanding their bodies on a deeper level, especially during midlife and teaching us how to use fasting and other really simple habit shifts as a holistic practice to create the lasting change that we want to see in our lives. Lisa has a really deep belief, as do I, that as women, we need to have more control over our health. And we have just been led down the garden path and led to believe that we need all these different people.

We basically have been told that we need every single form of help that is outside of us and that we have no idea what we're doing ourselves. We have like, don't worry, little girl, you're just over there and we'll feed you the information that you need. But Lisa really believes that true healing is possible when we align our bodies with what we need instead of trying to fight against them constantly.

So Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here.

Oh, thank you so much for taking the time to have me on your show. I'm so delighted and honored. Thank you.

Fabulous, fabulous. Honey, tell me a little bit about your story. I know we mentioned that you had said to me you changed your ACL1 or something.

What was it that you changed? So the A1C is your blood sugar. When you go for your blood work, they'll test you on your blood sugar. And 6.5 and beyond, that's the diabetic, that's the danger zone.

But being in a pre-diabetic zone is scary too. And being that my mom was diabetic, I always had to watch my own. So besides the whole midlife changes going on, I gain weight.

It's hard to come off the older you get. And your A1C fluctuates too. You become more insulin resistant.

And through lifestyle changes, I was able to lower the A1C. I'm not perfect yet. I'll be transparent here.

But I still maintain and I'm fine. So my blood works pretty good. So let me ask you this question.

If our listeners today take on all the advice that you give us, or at least implement some of it, what changes could they expect to see within their body and their life within the next few months? Well, if they're in their mid 40s, I would say perimenopause starts even as early as your late 30s. You don't feel it. You don't see it.

Things are happening on the inside. Your brain's also changing too, by the way. We can get into that later if you'd like.

But the changes aren't really apparent right away, but you can start to notice things like your midsection getting a little wider, thicker. One day you'll start, you'll wake up and you'll put your favorite jeans on. You'll be like, wait a minute.

These don't fit right. Something's not right here. It's like, it's not very sudden, but it is.

It's like gradual changes that lead to that. One day you wake up and you're like, oh my God, what is happening? You don't know. So there are four stages of menopause, by the way.

There's a perimenopause stage one, which is where the progesterone starts to decrease. So what happens there is that your periods become heavier, longer. They start to fluctuate that way.

The chances of estrogen dominance is greater at that time. Stage one is when we start to, our periods can become a little heavier. The estrogen starts to drop.

Is our waist expanding in stage one? This is what we all care about. Okay. So the progesterone is what's first starting to decrease.

Progesterone, right. Okay. You have to think of them as a seesaw and they're balanced, but now progesterone is getting less.

Yes. Estrogen starts to become a little more dominant, which causes the next part. Symptoms like hot flashes may increase, insomnia.

This is where the midsection starts to come in stage two. Your periods become shorter and spread out more and ovulation begins to decrease as well. Oh, yes.

We're excited when the periods start being spaced further and further apart, but we don't like the midsection expansion. Okay. So that's the first two stages.

What's the third stage? Well, then it's menopause, which is where once your period stops for 12 months, then the next few days is your menopause. It only lasts a few days and then you're post. Then you become post-menopause.

Now this takes years. This doesn't happen overnight. So you could be in perimenopause for 15 years, 20.

I mean, think about it. When women, we start out at puberty, right? That's when we're starting to regulate, right? All these hormones are coming in. It takes about 10 years to regulate.

Then we're regulated for another 10, 15 years. And now we're on the decrease. You see how it goes? So now it's going away.

So in the beginning, it's coming, it regulates, and now it's going away. But there's good news at the end. I'm telling you, I'm already post 11 years.

Okay. I'm going to ask how old you are. I'm going to be that girl and ask, how old are you now? Well, let me tell you, you look 35, but how old are you? I'm 62.

Oh my God. This girl's skin is glowing like the sun. Okay.

Well, we need to talk more about your health protocol as we go forward. But this was one of the things that I was going to talk to you about today is that many of us as females, we feel like our body suddenly changed overnight once we hit our forties. But what you're explaining is that what was actually happening physiologically during that stage was that there were four stages of menopause.

And that was starting as early as in our mid thirties. And it's happening earlier and earlier because of environmental reasons. But normally you would say like women from 45, all the way to 55, 60 is the peri to post-menopause stage.

Post-menopause is an interesting place that's where I'm at now. And I can tell you brain changes and you don't care about a lot of things you used to care about. Oh, well, I'm very happy for that to occur.

My care factor for most things in life is down so low now. And I'm finding that life is a lot happier. I'm a lot happier.

You have a lot of hormone shifts that are going on during that time. Metabolism shifts. Is that what you're saying? Yes.

Yes. So Lisa, tell me what would be some of the danger of maybe trying to apply the old rules of maybe weight loss or trying to look after ourselves in a certain way to this new body? Yeah. The problem with that is, and I've seen this with my friends and even myself, you're working out, you're a gym rat, nothing's happening.

You have to kind of stop, pause and say, okay, something's changing. And there's a lot more information out there now about menopause than there was when I was going through it. It was like, okay, what's happening? How do I do this? Nothing's working.

But I think the best thing to do is to do a test first, see where your hormones are at. That's a good thing. That's a good place to start.

There's something called Dutch test out there. It's a little pricey, but I didn't have it done because I'm way past that. But if you're just starting and then the old way was just to put up with all these things, which you don't have to, even through fasting lifestyle, you could regulate.

Let's talk about that because we want to kind of break the quote unquote supposed to track. What are we supposed to do? I want to dismantle that invisible pressure that we feel. So how do you think is the best way for women to escape the pressure of what they feel like they're supposed to be doing, quote unquote, what we're supposed to be doing? And we can then start listening to our body.

Are we talking diet culture conditioning? Are we talking people pleasing with our own body? How do we rebuild that self-trust again? You have to do it gradually. Nothing is going to happen overnight. You have to take one small habit at a time.

Start doing lemon water. I always recommend hydrate your body in the morning. Pay more attention to yourself.

Love yourself. I think that women have to pause and say, okay, things are changing. I'm aware.

I think awareness of what's happening is key. Once you become aware of what's happening in your body, then you can start eating differently. You don't have to exercise like you used to.

You have to change that. You have to go with what your body needs now. You have to listen more closely.

One of the things that I was going to say is that's so interesting. I find I cannot do the cardio that I used to do. And I mean, the 80s and 90s where we were all little cardio bunnies, but now it's more about, I would be leaning towards Pilates or softer forms of exercise that are still resistance forms of exercise, but I'm not jumping around like a maniac with my leg warmers on.

Is that what you mean by listening to your body and adapting? You're changing your lifestyle so that you can still achieve the results you want to achieve. You're just doing it in a way that suits the age and stage of life that you're in now. Yes, exactly.

So I'm actually looking into Tai Chi, yoga. In my stage of life, I have to worry about falls. I have to worry about stability and flexibility.

So that's where I'm heading. And I think even women in their 50s should start to see things that way because as you get older, then you're already building up your strength. Strength training is still very important.

That part is important because you do lose muscle mass, but you can still maintain your strength. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's what I was going to say to you.

At what age is too early to be thinking about our strength and bone strength and muscle mass? Is it ever inappropriate? No, I think that's always, I always worked out with weights from when I was 17. I think weight training should start as early as possible. It was kind of early, but even in your 20s, you start weight training, then you're helping your bones.

The earlier the better is what we're saying. Yes. You're not scrambling to catch up when you do reach your 40s, 50s and beyond.

Right. So this could be for any woman right now because it's never too early to start taking better care of your body, especially with weight training and watching what you eat. Just make sure you're drinking your lemon water, your I do celery juice, whatever you can do to detox.

That's another area. That's a whole other podcast episode. That's very interesting.

Why do you choose celery juice? Because I think that's one of the most viral concoctions that I've ever tasted. And yet I hear it's very popular. Everybody's running around, what are you drinking? I got my celery juice.

Why do you choose celery juice? What are the advantages? There's a lot of healing that happens with celery juice. So you drink it, you have to make it fresh in the morning. It has to be done very fresh.

Unfortunately, I make it the night before. It's still okay in the morning. It's just not as potent.

And it gives you energy. It makes you feel good. It hydrates your body.

And it contains all these different salts in them, which are hydrating for your body. So good, big glass, 16 ounces in the morning, you suck it down. It's more like medicinal.

It's not supposed to be enjoyed. Don't expect it to taste like a milkshake is what we're saying. You will be epically disappointed.

So this is what I do. I squeeze a lemon in a big glass of water like this size. And then I'll wait like 30 minutes and then I'll have my celery juice.

And then I wait about 30 minutes before I have breakfast. Okay. And why are we waiting between each of those? Is there a specific reason why we're waiting? What is that for? Yeah.

So the lemon water kind of flushes your liver and you got to let it do its thing first. And then you have the celery juice and that goes through your system. And then you let that run through before you eat.

So you don't want to eat with it. You just have to kind of do and plain celery juice. Don't add anything to it.

Breath work is important. I think self-talk is very important. You want to talk to yourself gently.

You know, we're always criticizing ourselves and that changes the chemicals in your body as well. You don't see it happening, but it's happening. Yeah.

One of the main things I always say when we're talking to clients is you want to talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself. Talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself. Because this is very interesting.

If we were going to say zoom out a little bit from the food and fitness identity, then what emotional or physiological shifts do you commonly see happening with women in their 40s and 50s? Do you feel like there's a bit of a loss of identity after kids and careers start shifting? Is there a desire for more peace, as you said, more peaceful, like we wanted that bit of a slow lifestyle? What are the main shifts, whether it's emotional or psychological that you commonly, most commonly see for women in our age bracket? The identity thing. So all of a sudden you're like, okay, who am I? What's happening? Without the kids, without the spouse, without the kids, without the job title. Who is Lisa? Like who is Guy? It's the bigger questions that come into play at this stage.

So it's beyond the physical and the body. It goes deeper than that. It's more important now than how it used to be.

That is the old paradigm. We're shifting into something new. We're not aging like parents.

But we have options now that weren't available previously. As in, I know I need to go and make another Botox appointment. Yeah.

This is a time where with the identity shift, you have to start to reconnect with yourself. We've been pleasing everybody else. We've been taking care of everybody else for the longest time.

Now it's like, okay, it's just me. What do I want? And that's a tough question. It wasn't even an option before when you were busy raising children, making lunches, getting people out, you know, getting husbands and so on out the door and everybody on time to their designated places where work and where they needed to be.

There wasn't even an option for you. Nobody was ever asking you. And what would you like, my darling? What are your careers? What are your goals? What are your aspirations? Who's taking care of you? You are taking care of you.

The women take care of ourselves and we are strong. If we were able to procreate ourselves, I truly believe there would be no need for the men. But aside from that, let's talk a little bit of myth busting here.

Is there any sort of health and fitness advice that you specifically feel that women over 40, 40, 45 should let go of? Dieting. Let go of counting calories. You can let go of some of the old feelings and you're like, stop trying to please everybody.

Okay, let me give you some examples and you say whether this is a keep or ditch. Should we continue over exercising? No. Should we continue under fueling our bodies in the name of trying to reach some particular aesthetic? No, I don't agree with that.

Should we continue chasing quick fixes? No, absolutely not. Here's a good one. I love that.

Should we continue comparing ourselves to younger women online? Absolutely not. You know what? We were that age at one point. We enjoyed our lives.

Then now you have to look at yourself in a new way, in a new light and say, absolutely, you're in a different place. You're beautiful. You know, you have to really build yourself up at this point in life.

No, don't compare. There's no comparing. I love that.

I love that because so many women feel like they've lost themselves now, again, at our age. And I keep saying at our age, but it is pertinent and it is important because we do have different concerns at every different era that we're in. So what's the first step, do you believe, for a woman becoming who she's meant to be in this next chapter? Is there one simple starting point or identity shift tactics that we can use? Are we looking like reconnection, not restriction? What is the few tips that you would like to give us to help us become who we're meant to be, who we have the ability to be in this chapter of our lives? Well, I think the first thing is to become, is to be more honest with yourself.

Right? You have to be more honest with yourself. You have to say, okay, this is who I am now. Stay in the present moment.

What is that like staying in the present moment? Not comparing yourself to the past either. You know, you have to let go of that past person. So things are different for you now, and you have to, again, listen to your body.

So that would be the next thing. Start listening more closely to what your body needs. And then, like you said, reconnection, not restriction.

So letting go of all those old things that, oh, I can't do this, and I should do that. Oh, what will they think? You're not worried about what people think now. You have to think about yourself.

So Lisa, so many of us that have struggled with emotional eating our whole lives, dieting, struggling, being overweight, being underweight, we're constantly obsessed with our body image. And I know that I can say for myself, I have tried fasting before, but I tried it as a method of weight loss. I tried it just to get skinny.

I wasn't approaching it from a healthy mindset manner. And if you were going to leave our listeners today with some nuggets on if they wanted to integrate a deeper level of health, we talked about the celery juice, we talked about the inner healing and using a different mindset. But if we wanted to integrate some small tactics around the fasting ethos into our lifestyle, what would that look like? What would you say are the three most important things to consider when trying to heal your body, but understanding that we haven't had the healthiest relationship with food, we want to make sure that we don't turn this into some crazy and restrictive diet that we have a healthy outlook on fasting.

It's not actually a weight loss method. Weight loss may occur as your body detoxes, but it's not for that purpose. How would you describe that? So with fasting, it is more for healing than weight loss.

So you could do intermittent fasting, there's like six of them. You can do intermittent, which is 12 to 15 hours. Lots of us do that.

Right. And people do it without thinking. They're like, oh, yeah, I did that.

But then if you could do a longer fast like 17 hours, that starts the autophagy, which is the detox part. And then 24 hour fast, like each one adds on something to heal you. The 24 hour fast, stem cells are released in your stomach, in your gut.

So it helps your gut. There's also 36 hour fast. And this is where it's called the fat burner fast, where it actually starts to move the fat.

Like if you've been holding on to fat, you want to lose weight. This is the fast that you would do a little more often, not every day. Again, that would be unhealthy.

And then the next one is a 48 hour fast, which is a, it's called the dopamine reset. And it makes you feel good and light. And it's just releasing more of the stem cells, heal your body.

Then you go to the 72 hour fast. I think that's six of them, that's the three day water fast. I do that every year.

We do it like twice a year, so like in the fall. And then the New Year's, like a New Year's one, like right after New Year's, you want to do a three day cleansing. It's so healing.

There's a lot of stem cells that are released and they go to wherever you need healing. But does that mean that we can all stuff our faces like piglets over the Christmas, New Year period, because we think we're going to do a three day fast afterwards? Well, you might not want to do that because if you go, if you just, if you eat like a feast and then go into the fast, it could mess you up a bit. I would prepare for the fast and there's a certain way of preparing.

And then there's a certain way of breaking the fast. So you can't just do like longer fasts, the 24 hour and more and longer. You want to break your fast gently.

You want to start with a bone broth. Then you want to have maybe avocado, some sort of probiotic with that. After that, you have some steamed vegetables very gently.

And the last thing you have, and over a period of a few hours, and the last thing you would have is some protein, but you wouldn't go gorge yourself, after the, especially after three day fast, you want to break it very gently. So if you're listening right now and you're thinking, oh my gosh, this is me. Lisa knows exactly what she's talking about.

I understand this is taking me right back through my whole journey myself. Then there needs to be some further action taken. You're not behind.

You're just in a different chapter of your life. I think that's the biggest message. If you had to sum it up Lisa today, just in one single sentence, what would you say? A big message I want to bring into this conversation today is that midlife, like you said, we're not failing.

It's a real shift physically, emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually. And a lot of old rules stop working. And it's not because you're doing anything wrong.

It's because your body and life are asking for something different now. So this chapter is less about pressure and it's more about learning how to listen. So many of us are looking outside for the solution.

And I've always said the problem and the solution are always in the same place. The problem is on the inside. The solution is on the inside.

So my loves, thank you so much for joining us here today. As always, if you've loved what you're hearing and you want to hear more, please go ahead, remember to like, love, share, subscribe this podcast and send it to a bestie who you know needs this one today. Please make sure you follow the gorgeous Miss Lisa on her Lifestyle Reset podcast.

And as always, remember the only person who has the power to change your life is you. When you step up, start listening to your body, listen more than you start jibber jabbering and looking for solutions on Google. When you start implementing and taking action and understanding that right now you are living the lifestyle that your previous habits created, change your habits, change your insights, change your actions.

And that's when you will have what it takes. I'm sending you love. I can't wait to see you again next week.

Until then gorgeous ones, bye for now. Thank you so much for tuning in. Remember to shimmy your butt over to KyliePax.com and join me inside of the bombshell blueprint so you can stop emotional eating and start losing your way now.

You'll also find helpful notes and resources inside my past podcast that will help you lose your weight without losing your sanity. I will see you next week.