Never Diet Again with Max Lowery

#85 Menopause Weight Loss: How to Lose the Belly, Brain Fog & Low Energy

• Max Lowery

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If you’ve ever felt like your body is working against you…
You’re eating “healthy,” doing all the right things, but the scale won’t budge.
This episode is for you.

Most women hit their 40s and suddenly find that everything that used to work, cutting carbs, tracking calories, HIIT workouts, just stops.
Weight creeps up, especially around the belly. Energy crashes. Sleep goes to hell. And no one talks about what’s really going on...

Until now.

In this game-changing episode, Max Lowery breaks down exactly why perimenopause and menopause make fat loss harder and what you can do about it. No fluff. No diet culture BS. Just real, practical tools that are working right now for women over 40 inside our program.


You’ll discover:

  •  Why your metabolism slows down (and how to reset it)
  •  Why eating less actually backfires and makes weight loss harder
  •  How emotional eating and stress are silently sabotaging your fat loss
  •  Why strength training is the real magic pill for women after 40
  • The 3 pillars of sustainable weight loss no diet ever teaches you: Physical, Emotional & Mental

“It’s not your fault. Your body has changed, your strategy needs to change too.”

Forget everything you’ve been told about dieting. You don’t need to starve yourself. You don’t need to train harder.
You need to work with your body, not against it.

Whether you're in perimenopause or deep into menopause, this episode will show you exactly how to lose weight, feel like yourself again, and finally ditch the all-or-nothing cycle for good.


Watch my The Cravings & Fat-Burning Masterclass:  https://www.neverdietagainmethod.uk/register-podcast

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/max.lowery/

Book a Food Freedom Breakthrough Call: https://www.neverdietagainmethod.uk/call-ig





Max:

Most women hit their forties and suddenly feel like their body has turned against them. The things that used to work, cutting out carbs, tracking calories, hitting the gym, suddenly stop working. They start gaining weight around their belly, sleep gets worse, energy drops, and no matter how healthy they try to be, the scale does not move. Does this sound familiar? Because if so, you're not broken, you're not lazy, you're experiencing the hormonal roller coaster of the perimenopause and menopause. Something that affects every single woman. Yet almost no one is taught how to correctly manage it. And I know exactly what you're thinking. How can a 35-year-old man have the audacity to be advising on something he will never experience? Well, in my 12-year career, 90% of my clients have been women over 40. It's just my experience. I've literally helped thousands of women in that time period to lose weight and keep off successfully during the perimenopause and menopause. My clients lose an average of 25 pounds in 90 days, not through restriction, but by understanding how their bodies actually work and working with it instead of against it. So today I'm going to break down exactly what is happening in your body, why it makes fat loss harder, and what to do about it. I'll share the three key pillars that you need to focus on in order to get long-term weight loss success. And most people are only focusing on one of those pillars. So grab a pen and paper, take notes. This is going to be packed with information. How do you create a life that allows you to lose weight, eat the foods that you love, and sustain the results? Over the last 10 years, I've helped thousands of people do exactly that. I'm Max Lowery. I'm an author, personal trainer, and weight loss coach. In this podcast, I'm going to share my top tips and tricks from within my one-on-one coaching program. It's my goal to give you the tools and understanding so that you never diet again. But first, we need to discuss what actually happens during the perimenopause and menopause. Let's start by breaking down what's really going on inside your body. Perimenopause is the time before menopause. It can start as early as your 30s or early 40s, and it can last anywhere from a few years to over a decade. Menopause itself is when your period stops completely for 12 months in a row. After that, you're officially in menopause, and everything that happens after that is called postmenopause. There are three key hormones which are impacted. Firstly, is estrogen. Think of this like your body's stabilizer. It helps you control your mood, where your body stores fat, and even how sensitive your cells are to insulin, which is the blood sugar hormone. And we're going to come back to this a bit later. As estrogen drops, your body tends to store more fat around the belly, your mood can swing, and your sleep often gets worse. Second is progesterone. This is your calming hormone. It helps you relax, sleep, and stay emotionally balanced. When progesterone drops, you may feel anxious, have lighter sleep, or struggle with night swears. And thirdly, testosterone. Yes? Testosterone. This is your strength and motivation hormone. It supports your muscle mass, bone density, energy, and sex drive. When it declines, you can feel tired, weaker, less energized. It can lead to osteoporosis, and you can be less interested in intimacy with your partner. When these three hormones start dropping and not always at the same time, you can start to feel a wide array of symptoms. Many women notice symptoms like weight gain, especially around the belly, brain fog or trouble concentrating, trouble sleeping or waking up in the night, stiff joints or aches that never used to be there, more anxiety, irritability, or low mood, low sex drive or dryness, fatigue that doesn't improve with rest, gut issues like bloating or constipation, and even things like frozen shoulder or random pains have been shown to be directly impacted by the decrease in hormones. And these symptoms are not in your head. And they have been mostly downplayed by the medical profession, who are mostly men. Women have been suffering in silence for years. These are real physical changes caused by your hormones shifting. So why does weight loss feel harder during the perimenopause and menopause? Before I explain why, I want to make sure that we are on the same page. To lose weight, you need a calorie deficit. And a calorie deficit just means your body is burning more energy than you're consuming. And when you're in a calorie deficit, you're not eating enough food to supply your body with energy, it is forced to tap into body fat, which is a form of stored energy. That's how fat loss happens. Sounds really simple, and it is a simple concept, but in practice, it can be very, very difficult, especially when you throw in the hormonal changes of the perimenopause and menopause. Let's look at exactly why. So firstly, you burn fewer calories at rest. As oestrogen and testosterone levels drop, women naturally start to lose muscle. And unfortunately, muscle is your body's fat burning machine. The more you have, the more calories you burn at rest. This is known as your basal metabolic rate or your BMR. You want your BMR to be as high as possible because it means you can get away with eating more food and not putting on weight. So let's say before the age of 40, your basal metabolic rate was 1500 calories. After a few years, and with the hormonal changes, it could drop to something more like 1300. That doesn't sound like much, but that means that essentially every single day you need to consume at least 200 calories less in order not to put on weight. So this issue is also known as sarcopenic obesity, when muscle levels drop and body fat increase. Secondly, because of the hormonal changes, you can feel more tired and less motivated. Metopause can leave you feeling exhausted, foggy, and unmotivated. When you're tired, your body usually creates quick energy from sugar and carbs. And when you're constantly fighting fatigue, exercise is the first thing to go. That means fewer steps, less activity, and fewer calories burned each day. And mostly without you really realizing it. Thirdly, your sleep gets worse. Hot flashes, night sweats, and anxiety can wreck your sleep. When you don't sleep enough, your hunger hormones go up, your fullness hormones go down, and your body clings on to fat as protection from stress. That again makes sticking to a calorie deficit much, much harder. Fourthly, you become more metabolically inflexible. This means that your body struggles to switch between its three main fuel sources. You've got sugar from the food that you eat. And when I say sugar, even whole foods get broken down into sugar in the body. So sugar from food, then we have stored carbohydrate, which is known as glycogen, and that is stored in the muscles and the liver. And then we have stored body fat. When you are metabolically flexible, you're able to switch between those fuel sources effortlessly. But when you're metabolically inflexible, you become dependent on a constant stream of food to function. The side effect of being metabolically inflexible is insulin resistance. Long term, this can lead to all sorts of issues like type 2 diabetes. When you're metabolically inflexible or what we call it stuck in sugar burning mode, you're gonna feel hungry all the time, you're gonna have low energy, you're gonna obsess about food, thinking about it all the time, and you're gonna eat when you're not hungry. So remember what I said earlier, when estrogen drops, it has a direct impact on this. So most people are metabolically inflexible anyway, but then it becomes even worse with the perimenopause and the menopause. So it's not that your metabolism is broken, it's that your hormones have changed how efficiently your body can burn fat. Number five, life can get busier and more stressful. Menopause often happens during one of the busiest stages of life. You might be working long hours, caring for your children or elderly parents, managing a household, dealing with endless stress. You eat on the go, skip workouts, drink more wine to unwind, and get less sleep. So it's not all doom and gloom. It's not that you can't lose weight. It's that your body now has different rules. Your hormones, metabolism, and environment have changed. So your strategy needs to change too. But the issue is most women keep doing the same thing over and over again. They go back to what used to work, what they know, what is familiar. They cut calories, they stop eating carbs, they sign up for ridiculous gym sessions. They tell themselves, I just need to be more disciplined. It's not hard, it's not complicated. I'm intelligent. Why can't I do this? And maybe in the past that worked for a while. You would lose some weight, you'd feel great, and then slowly it would all come back. Now, during the perimenopause and menopause, those same methods don't work. And in fact, they often backfire. That's because when you eat too little for too long, your body thinks it's in danger. It doesn't think you're trying to lose weight, it thinks food is scarce. So it slows everything down to protect you. Your metabolism drops, your energy crashes, your cravings skyrocket, and you end up overeating again. That's why those 800 or 1200 calories diets never last. And not only do they not last, you can actually do serious damage during the perimenopause and menopause. And that's because during that period, your body is more sensitive to physical stress. And you are putting a ton of physical stress on your body when you are starving yourself. I want to make something very clear here. You have been lied to by diet culture. Decades, women have been told that the only way to lose weight is to restrict themselves, deprive themselves, just try harder. This is a recipe for failure, and it's gonna keep you trapped in the diet cycle for the rest of your life. All these changes that are happening, all this brainwashing that has happened is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to do something different about it. You can't keep doing the same thing over and over again but expect different results. So that's exactly what I'm gonna cover next. I'm gonna share the three key pillars which will help you lose weight and keep it off, even during the perimenopause and menopause. And those are physical, mental, and emotional. So let's start with the physical pillar. These tips I'm about to share have been tweaked, tested, and evolved over my 12-year career. They're allowing our clients to lose five to ten pounds per month predictably and consistently without restriction, deprivation, or smashing ridiculous exercise. Really quick one for me, guys. I don't run ads on this podcast, and I do aim to give you as many high-value tips and tricks as I can for free. All I ask in return is that you help me spread the word. That way I can help as many people as I can to never diet again. The way to do that is to rate, review, and share this podcast. A review will only take 30 seconds, but it would mean the world to me. But more importantly, it could help change the life of someone else. Firstly, let's address the physical pillar. And when most women try to lose weight, this is the only part they focus on, the physical side. What to eat, how to exercise, how many calories, what macros, how many steps. And yes, the physical side does matter. It creates a calorie deficit. The mistake women make is that this is the only thing they focus on. And most of the time they do it in a way which is completely unsustainable and unenjoyable. They eat less, move more, and end up hungry, tired, and frustrated. That's because the goal isn't to starve your body or restrict yourself. It's to retrain it. You need to restore metabolic flexibility. You need to reset your body to burn fat so it can easily switch between the different fuel sources. And right now, most women are stuck in sugar burning mode, constantly snacking, constantly hungry and obsessing about food. This is the first thing I do with my one-on-one coaching clients. It's the most important step. So let's talk about some of the key habits that can make this happen. Firstly, you need to eat larger meals less frequently. Most women eat too often and too little at each sitting. They graze throughout the day, never truly satisfied, always thinking about food. But when you eat proper balanced meals, bigger portions that actually fill you up, you stay full for longer, your energy level stays stable, and your blood sugar stops swinging up and down. This single change calms cravings, improves focus, and naturally reduces your total calorie intake. It also trains your body to go longer in between meals, which is what pushes you into fat burning mode. Secondly, stop fucking snacking. Snacking is a huge problem for weight loss. It's now become socially acceptable to eat every few hours. A biscuit with tea, a handful of nuts, a protein bar, a cereal bar, a few crisps. But your body was never designed to be constantly digesting food. Every time you eat, your blood sugar spikes, insulin rises, and fat burning stops. Your body is always going to prioritize the fuel that is coming in from food. And when you snack all day, you never give your body a chance to switch over to fat burning. Eating larger meals less frequently and cutting out the snacks could easily reduce your calorie intake by four or five hundred calories. This has been backed up by hard science and research. So if you do nothing else, just stop snacking. You'll be amazed at how quickly your hunger normalizes and your energy improves. Thirdly, prioritize protein. Protein is the most important macronutrient for fat loss. It keeps you full, supports your muscles, and helps you recover from exercise. During menopause, you naturally lose muscle. Opping your protein during this period can help you maintain that muscle, which means you'll burn more calories at rest, which means weight loss is easier. Protein is nature's GLP1. GLP1 makes you feel less hungry. If you double your protein intake, eat a decent amount of protein at every meal, you will feel less hungry. Number four, aim for a 12-hour overnight fast. Let me be clear, this is not intermittent fasting. You don't need to start skipping meals or doing extreme fasting windows. Just finish your dinner by 7 or 8 p.m. and then wait until 7, 0 a.m. the next day. This simple 12-hour window gives your body time to digest, stabilize blood sugar, and start tapping into fat reserves. It's an easy, sustainable way to improve metabolic flexibility. No fancy rules or apps required. Number five, move more. Aim for 7,000 to 15,000 steps per day. Walking is your secret weapon for weight loss. It's free, low stress, and helps your body burn fat without increasing hunger levels like hard exercise does. My clients that get more steps lose more weight. It's as simple as that. Not only that, it's going to drastically improve your mental health, your mood, your focus, your energy. There's so many benefits. And finally, there's a bonus habit for resetting your body to burn fat, and that is strength training. Because really, every woman over the age of 40 should be lifting heavy weights. It reduces osteoporosis, increases muscle mass, which will then potentially lead to less sarcopenic obesity. Strength training literally is the magic pill for overall health and long-term weight loss. You don't need to live in the gym. Just two or three 20 to 30 minute sessions per week can make a huge difference. So now that we've covered the physical side of fat loss, what to eat, when to eat, and how to move, let's talk about something that most women never touch when it comes to losing weight. And that is emotional regulation. This is the piece that no diet ever addresses. But it's the number one reason women lose weight and then put it back on. Because unless you change how you deal with emotions, stress, and discomfort, you will always fall back into the same patterns. So let's get clear on what emotional eating really is. Because most women I speak to don't identify as emotional eaters. And that's because most of them imagine that emotional eating is just like it is in Bridget Jones' diary, sitting on a sofa crying into a tub of ice cream after a breakup. And yes, for some women, that's exactly what it's like. But for most of the women I work with, it is much more nuanced and subtle. It's eating when you're bored. It's picking at snacks while you're procrastinating. It's reaching for food or a glass of wine after a stressful day. It's eating because you're lonely or tired. It's having a glass of wine or a treat as a reward because you've had a hard day. And in short, it's eating when you're not physically hungry, eating past the point of fullness, or snacking and grazing in between meals with no reason why. When a craving appears out of nowhere, when you've just eaten, that's your brain saying, I need something. And mostly it's probably because it's trying to process an emotion. Many of the women that I work with, they're consuming thousands of calories extra on top of their meals every single week because of emotions and eating when they're not hungry. And they don't even realize that it's happening. And yeah, you can use willpower motivation to override emotional eating for a while. You can distract yourself, you can stay busy and you can push through. But when life gets stressful, when you're tired, overwhelmed, or run down, your brain will always go back to what it knows. It will always start to crave the food. And that's because at some point in your life you felt a negative emotion, whether it's stress, boredom, or loneliness, you've turned to food and you've immediately felt better. If you do this repeatedly over a long period of time, you end up with a habit loop where it just becomes an ingrained habit. And sometimes you don't even feel the emotion or the feeling, you just start to crave the food. And it can even happen that the stress or negative emotions are no longer there, but you're still craving food for no reason. The problem is food only helps for a few seconds, maybe a few minutes. And after that, you're left feeling worse. Physically, emotionally, guilt, shame, etc. And that's why emotional regulation is the real solution to emotional eating. So how do you do that? I want to be clear here, this is a difficult process. Even our clients who have one-on-one support and a load of expertise struggle with this. You're having to rewire your brain. But these are the same steps I go through with my one-on-one coaching clients. Step one is awareness. You can't change what you don't understand. The first step is to start paying attention to the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, the people, the triggers that lead you to food. Ask yourself, when do I usually eat when I'm not hungry? What situations, emotions, or people make me want to reach for food? What thoughts appear right before I eat? Start to notice patterns. Maybe it's every afternoon when you're tired from work. Maybe it's after dinner when you finally sit down. Maybe it's when you feel lonely or disconnected. This isn't about judgment. This is just about awareness. And awareness is that first step to change. Step two, create space before you react. Once you notice a craving, your goal isn't to resist it, it's just to pause. You want to create a gap between the emotion you feel and the action you normally take. The wider that gap, the more control you're going to have. And you can create space in a few simple ways. You could take a few deep breaths. You could stretch or go for a short walk. You could journal for a few minutes. You can go outside and get some fresh air. Do these things first. Then if you still want to eat, go ahead. But make it a conscious choice, not an automatic reaction. Over time, this pause retrains your brain to respond differently to emotions. And step three, reflect on how it actually makes you feel. If you do eat, pay attention to how it feels, both during and after. Ask yourself, did the food actually make me feel better? How does my body feel right now? Bloated, tired, calm, satisfied? Do I feel guilty, relieved, or numb? And the goal here isn't to shame yourself, it's to connect cause and effect. When you understand how the food truly makes you feel, your brain starts linking emotional eating with discomfort instead of relief. That's how change starts to stick. Like I said, this is hard. This is the main focus of what we help our clients with. If you want to learn more about how we help our clients and how to reduce emotional eating, click the link below to join the cravings and fat loss masterclass. But when you start to master your emotional regulation, everything else becomes easier. Your cravings calm down, you stop feeling controlled by food, you stop eating when you're not hungry. And guess what? You reduce your calorie intake by thousands every single week, which means weight loss is much, much easier without cutting out your favorite foods, without being on a restrictive diet. The mental pillar. It's to do with your mindset and identity. It's the third and final piece of lasting weight loss. Because the physical and emotional pillars help you to lose the weight. They create the calorie deficit. But it's your mindset and identity that will keep the weight off for the rest of your life. Because the goal isn't just to hit a number on the scale, the goal is to become the kind of person who eats well, moves daily, and takes care of themselves. And this requires an identity shift. If you spent your entire life thinking of yourself as the chubby one or someone who can't lose weight, you are always going to fall back into those old patterns. You will always revert back to your existing identity. And that's because your brain is wired to prove your identity true. If you believe deep down that you're someone that struggles, you'll keep finding ways to confirm it. Skipping workouts, emotional eating, giving up after a bad week. Lasting change happens when you start building the identity of someone who lives differently. You need to become someone who enjoys eating in a way that fuels their body, feels proud of moving daily, puts herself first instead of last, keeps going even when things aren't perfect. And this is and this isn't about forcing yourself to do more. It's about becoming someone who doesn't need to use willpower anymore. Because healthy habits are just part of who you are. But there are also mindset blocks you must address. And these are a few of the most common mindset issues that I see on a daily basis. Number one, all or nothing thinking. The idea that if you can't do everything perfectly, there's no point doing it at all. This is one of the biggest killers of progress. And the truth is, progress beats perfection. Consistency beats intensity. You don't need to do more, you just need to do less, but better. The second mindset issue is self-criticism, the harsh, negative inner voice. Beating yourself up every time you slip. That inner voice that says you've ruined it creates guilt and shame. And that usually leads straight back to emotional eating or drinking. Replace judgment with curiosity. Ask yourself, what can I learn from this? Thirdly, fear of failure. Many women fear starting because they're scared of failing again. But the only true failure is giving up entirely. Every setback is data. It shows you what you need to work on. Fourthly, perfectionism. The need to do everything right keeps you paralyzed. You'll never find the perfect plan, perfect time, or perfect day. You just need to start where you are and keep adjusting. Number five, people pleasing. Putting everyone else's needs before your own keeps you stuck. You can't pour from an empty cup. Taking care of yourself isn't selfish, it's self-respect. Number six, scarcity mindset. Believing there's never enough time, energy, food, or progress. This mindset keeps you anxious and reactive. The shift is into an abundance mindset, knowing that results come from showing up consistently, not perfectly. Number seven, there are cognitive distortions. There are about 20 mental filters that twist how you see things. I've ruined my week because I've had a cake. Or if I can't do it all, I might as well not bother. Learning to catch these cognitive distortions and bring awareness to them can stop you from self-sabotaging. The only really tip I can give you here is awareness. It can be very hard to work through these issues without the help of an expert. So be honest with yourself. Which of these mindset issues are you struggling with? What thoughts and stories are you telling yourself that keep you stuck? The goal isn't to fix everything overnight, it's to start noticing the patterns that are ruining your life. So I'm sure most of you listening to this feel like you know what you need to do. You've done every diet, you've read every book, you follow every influencer. But most of what you tried is only going to be addressing one of the pillars, which is the physical pillar. You know you should be eating more protein, you know you should be reducing the snacking, you know you should eat more fruits and vegetables. But this isn't the thing keeping you stuck. Most likely, you've never done the emotional or psychological work. And that's why you're still stuck in this same cycle. Because you don't need more information. You need implementation. And that only happens when your identity changes, your mindset shifts, and you change the way you process your emotions. So if you've been feeling completely stuck, like your body is working against you, gaining weight, feeling more tired than ever, even though you're trying hard. Hopefully, this podcast has explained why. Remember, none of this is your fault. Your body has changed, your hormones have changed, and your old approach simply doesn't work anymore. But it is your responsibility to do something different about it. Stop doing the same things over and over again. They are doing more harm than good. To lose weight and keep it off in a healthy and sustainable way during the periminopause and menopause, you must address these three pillars. The physical, resetting your body to burn fat, eating in a way that stabilizes blood sugar, and building healthy habits that work with your body. You need to rewire your emotions by learning how to manage stress, boredom, overwhelm, or reward yourself in a way that doesn't involve food or alcohol. And you need to realign your mindset and identity. Change the beliefs, habits, and identity that keep pulling you back into your old habits. That's the difference between short-term weight loss and a lifelong transformation. If you want more information on this, there are three key ways I can help. Firstly, you can just follow me on Instagram. I share a ton of free tips and advice every single day. Secondly, you can take a look at the cravings of fat loss masterclass, which goes into a lot of detail and shares the system which I use to help my clients lose up to 30 pounds in 90 days. And finally, the most powerful way to take action and change your life today is to book in for a food freedom breakthrough call. This is a free call where you and I will have a conversation about exactly what is keeping you stuck. What are the root causes? Which pillar is causing the most problems right now? Once I have that clarity and information about your life, if I think we can help, then I'll explain exactly what it looks like to work with us. Thanks for listening today. I'll see you on the next one.