Why Doing More Is Backfiring in Perimenopause

Overwhelmed by peri health advice that tells you to do all.the.things and all at once? Today I'm cutting through the noise with a simpler path that actually works - stabilise blood sugar, protect your sleep, and calm your nervous system. These three foundations form a precise, sustainable strategy for women in perimenopause and menopause who want better energy, clearer thinking, and easier weight loss without the burnout cycle.

I start by reframing effort. More effort isn’t better if it spikes cortisol and scrambles hunger cues. I explain why three balanced meals a day, reduced reactive snacking, and a personalised protein target beat rigid fasting and generic macro rules. You’ll learn practical ways to escape the 3 pm snack trap, why boredom often disguises itself as hunger, and how small tweaks can deliver quick wins in a week or two.

Next, we dig into sleep as a metabolic driver after 40. From evening light and a calm wind-down routine to smarter alcohol choices and dinner timing, I share realistic steps to reduce night waking and reset appetite hormones. Then we connect the dots with nervous system care - gentle movement over punishing workouts, daily nature time, and simple breathwork such as belly breathing or box breathing - to shift from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest so your body finally feels safe to change.

If you’re ready to move from overwhelm to focus, choose one foundation for the next week and build momentum with small, consistent actions. Want a faster, personalised roadmap? Book a Peri Weight Loss Assessment so we can pinpoint your priorities and create a plan that suits your life. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a gentler approach, and leave a quick review to help others find us.

Are you a woman feeling stressed, flat and experiencing the challenges of perimenopause or menopause?

It’s time to reclaim your youthful energy, radiance and self-assurance (and your ideal weight).

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Here's how I can support you -

1. Hit your health and wellbeing goals this year, balance your hormones and lose weight with your own personalised protocol, based on your body's biochemistry. Sounds awesome right!! Book a free 30 minute Peri Weight Loss Assessment with me so we can discuss your health and wellbeing goals and also see how I might be able to support you. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book your call here. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Series Context
• 1:51 The Trap Of Doing Everything
• 2:51 Foundation One: Balance Blood Sugar
• 6:20 Break The Afternoon Snack Habit
• 8:59 Quick Wins From Stable Glucose
• 10:59 Foundation Two: Prioritise Sleep
• 14:56 Simple Night Routine Shifts
• 18:32 Alcohol And Night Waking

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and Autumn Podcast. I'm an age-defying naturopath and clinical nutritionist and I'm here to bust myths around women's health and ageing so that you can be ageless and autumn in your 40s, 50s, and beyond. The Ageless and Awesome Podcast is dedicated to helping women through perimenopause and menopause with great health, a positive mindset, and outrageous confidence. Hit subscribe or follow now, and let's get started. Hello, gorgeous one, and welcome to this week's episode of the Ageless and Awesome Podcast. I'm Susie Garden, your host, perimenopause naturopath, and weight loss nutritionist, and fellow perimenopause survivor. Yes, I made it through to the other side. And hopefully you listened to last week's episode. If not, it's kind of like part one of a four-episode series that I'm doing. So you may get some value out of it. But this is a standalone episode. Please keep listening. So, you know, if you listened to last week's episode and thought, okay, I'm ready to focus on me, but where do I even start? It is just so overwhelming when I think of all of the things that I'm supposed to be doing. You know, you're hearing in your feed about eating enough protein, getting a sleep routine, getting, you know, all of the right nutrients, making sure that your stress is managed, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's a lot. And yes, all of those things are great, but you know, this is when you can get that temptation to do everything and try and do everything right. And that's usually where things unravel if you don't have the right support. So let's talk about this some more. So, first I want to talk about why doing more is the fastest way to burn out. And I've been in burnout myself before when I was in my corporate career, and I know what it's like, and it's awful. And so I have a lot of empathy for women that are going through this right now. Because perimenopausal bodies and menopausal bodies and minds don't respond well to overwhelm. If you're trying to do all of the things I just mentioned, like overhauling your diet, exercising every day, meditating, cutting out all sorts of different foods, being perfect, all of these things activates stress physiology, and stress blocks weight loss, if that's one of your goals. So instead of doing more, I like you to focus on doing less but better, but with precision and ideally with a personalized plan just for you. But let's talk about foundation number one. And I would say for most people it's blood sugar regulation, which that might surprise you if you haven't been in my world for very long. But the thing is, stable blood sugar reduces cravings, it improves your energy and very quickly, it lowers cortisol and it supports fat loss. And this starts with regular meals. So there are many women that I'm speaking to that are not having breakfast. So doing intermittent fasting, not eating until 11. And if that's working for you, that's great. Keep doing it. But for many women, it's not ideal. So three meals a day with sort of five to six hour fasting windows in between works way better if you're looking for a weight loss and energy goal. So three meals a day, no snacks, is ideal. Adequate protein, and this will vary from person to person and what your individual needs are, what your individual goals are. So I'm hearing a lot of very high amounts of protein that women are aiming for. And for some women, that is absolutely appropriate. But I would just say be very careful with some of those that generic advice. You really are better off getting the exact needs for your particular body rather than following generic advice. Uh, another thing I've spoken about not skipping breakfast, but also just reducing reactive snacking. So three meals, no snacks is the ideal, but it can be a little hard to get out of the habit, particularly of the afternoon snack. Am I right? Particularly that afternoon snack. And I know when I first started doing this a number of years ago now, that was a big thing for me. Is you know, going to the fridge at about three o'clock, having a look, maybe making a coffee. I reckon 80% of time I'd make myself a coffee, and about an hour later, I'd look at look at my desk and I go, that's like a three-quarter left of a of the cup left because I didn't actually really want it. It was just boredom. I realized it was just boredom. I wasn't actually hungry. And if this is something that's impacting you where you're finding yourself really craving a snack at around sort of three o'clock or mid-afternoon, really ask yourself, am I hungry? Or is it something else? Am I just bored? Am I just trying to get the afternoon to go faster? Um, is it because I'm preparing snacks for the kids and I'm just kind of snacking away as I'm making theirs? I know that's a story I hear a lot. Uh, and maybe if it is a boredom thing and you don't have to like supervise kids in the afternoons, maybe just even doing a 10-minute walk rather than a 10-minute coffee break might actually energize you more and be more sustainable for you than dipping into the bicycle barrel or uh, which is what I used to do, uh, or having a coffee or whatever. Okay. And just making these small shifts alone in managing your blood sugar can really improve how your body feels, literally within a week or two. It does not take long at all, once we get your blood sugar balanced, for you to feel good, to have good energy, better uh clarity of thought, so less brain fog, and also some weight loss sometimes. So it doesn't take much to do it. It might sound like a lot. Go back and re-listen to that section of the pod if you feel like it sounds like a lot, and just take a few notes. It's really not that much. So let's look at the foundation number two, which is sleep. Uh, sleep is one of the biggest drivers of weight loss after 40. I'm gonna say that again. Sleep is one of the biggest drivers of weight loss after 40. When you have poor sleep, you have raised cortisol. This worsens uh insulin resistance, increases appetite, and reduces motivation. I'll say that again. Poor sleep raises cortisol, worsens insulin resistance, increases appetite, and reduces motivation. Uh we know from research that people that don't sleep will tend to gain weight and find it more difficult to lose weight. And we used to think that it was because people were getting up in the middle of the night and having a snack. That's what the old way of thinking was. We now know that it's way more complicated than that. And it's about what happens internally in your body on a biochemical level during sleep. There's actually a lot that goes on during sleep. And so if you're not sleeping, that is those little chemical things are not happening, and that messes with your blood sugar, messes with your cortisol. It's it's a whole scene. So having a focus on sleep is really important. And you know, I'm gonna give you three things today in the podcast. The first one was blood sugar, the second one was sleep, and I'm getting to the third. If that seems overwhelming, I'd strongly recommend choose one. Choose one to focus on for the next month. You know, there's no rush. If you want a fast result, then come and work with me. But if you just want to take it easy, then choose one of the three things I'm talking about today and just work on that. And then when you feel like, yep, I've got that well sorted, move on to the next one. It's it's yeah, you don't have to do everything all at once. And small changes really do make a difference. If you just go to bed half an hour earlier, you know, stop the scroll. Don't go that extra episode of the whatever series you're watching. I know that's a real thing for me. If it's like 10 to 9, I'm like, oh, I really want to watch the next ep, but that's gonna take me over, you know, towards 9:30. And that means I'm not gonna get better get to bed till like quarter to 10, whatever. Yeah, it's too late. So small changes, earlier nights, having a bit of an evening routine. I've spoken before about mine, like after the kitchen is cleaned, after dinner, all of our overhead lights go off. We just have lamps, we have candles so that it's low light because that helps with your melatonin activation. I tend to have a shower at night now because I find that is a really good way for me to get rid of the day. Um, and just little things like that. Some people, you know, will put a face mask on at night, or we'll put their LED mask on at night, or or whatever it is for you. Maybe it's some reading, maybe it's some mindfulness. Just having some sort of routine trains your brain that it's time to sleep and it's important. The other thing is limiting alcohol. And I know that's not what a lot of us want to hear, but alcohol really messes with your neurotransmitters, so that's your brain chemicals. And while it can help you get to sleep, it will wake you up during the night, and that's a problem. So if you can limit your alcohol to maybe only a couple of nights a week and reduce the amount of alcohol, the beauty right now is that there are so many amazing alcohol-free alternatives that if you are going out and you feel like, oh, I want to drink, but I know that that means I'm not gonna sleep, then you know, have a look at your local bar or whatever. And there's some fantastic alternatives. And they don't just have to be a mocktail full of sugar. Um, I mean, a lot of the time if I'm not drinking, I'll just have like a soda water or something like that. But that's because I like that and I don't want to have all of the sugar that's in a mocktail. But um you'd be surprised there's some really good options at the moment that really help out if you're in a social situation and don't want to look like you're a party pooper. Um, another small change that you can make is blood sugar support before bed. So not having a snack towards bedtime, actually making sure that your dinner has enough protein in it to keep you going, or protein and fats and complex carbs to keep you going. Um, obviously, some people have special needs. So I'm just talking generically here, but ideally, you would stop eating a couple of hours before you go to bed. I know sometimes, and I used to feel like this before I knew anything about nutrition. I sometimes just before I was going to bed, I'd feel a bit hungry. So I'd make myself, I used to make myself a Milo, and which was great, it was delicious. But I actually what happens sometimes is that if you're going to stay up, your body will signal to you, oh, well, if you're gonna stay up and not go to sleep, you need some more energy, you need some more food. So it'll send you a signal, I need to eat. And so you feel like you need to have something before you go to bed, but generally you actually don't, unless your meal hasn't been sufficient, or you've had a sugary treat after dinner that will bounce your blood sugar around and alcohol will do that as well. So, again, a lot of little tricks around eating and sleep will help you to get a better night's sleep. And the last one I'm going to talk about today is foundation three is supporting your nervous system. This is one of the key things I see in clinic that almost everyone is impacted by, and that is stress. And everyone's perception of stress is different. You know, some people deal with a lot and they feel okay with that, and that can be through the fact that they're used to it, their nervous system is conditioned, maybe they have strategies to help support that. Uh, but you know, if you are feeling stressed, if you rate your stress out of 10, so if you think of a scale of 10, 10 out of 10 is the most stress you can imagine. One out of 10, no stress at all. If you're sitting at a three to four, that is ideal. If you're occasionally a five, you know, that's okay. You can work with that. If you're consistently a six or more, you've got a problem that needs to be dealt with. Because you that means your body is feeling unsafe. That means your body is feeling unsafe. That will impact your gut health. That will impact your ability to absorb nutrients. So that will impact pretty much every other area of your body. And if you do have weight loss as a goal, your body will not lose weight if it feels unsafe. So the kind of things you can do to support your nervous system are things like gentle movement. Rather than thrashing yourself at a hit class, gentle movement, yoga, Pilates, cycling, walking, swimming, that kind of thing. Spending time outdoors is essential. We are animals. And I think we forget that we are animals. We're living in concrete or wooden kind of boxes in our homes. And we a lot of us don't get a lot of time outdoors. I've really noticed since I've moved to the Gold Coast that because I have easy access to the ocean and I actually live on the edge of a national park, I have so much nature time. I went, I walked my dogs this morning down our street and I saw two koalas, you know. Like I get really good connection with nature now, and it makes such a difference to how I feel on a cellular level. And so if you're not lucky enough to live near nature, even if you can go to a local park regularly, if you've got trees, if you've got house plants, you know, just spending time with nature, if it's your pet dog, all of that really helps with your nervous system. We all know it. Like I think there's even research that says if you sit, you know, spending a certain amount of time patting your dog, or I think even any dog, it doesn't even have to be your own, that it really calms your nervous system. The other thing is is breathing, being conscious about your breath. And yes, there are some amazing breathwork techniques you can use, but just simple, I'll say a couple of things and you can, you know, Google them. So box breathing is very good for many people. Belly breathing works for pretty much everybody. Um, alternate nostril breathing is very powerful for calming the nervous system, and it does require some technique. Um, but what I love about belly breathing in particular is you can do it all the time. You don't even really need to think that much about it. So, breathing, even if you don't use a technique, even if it's just consciously breathing deeply, that tells your nervous system that the threat has gone, that we can calm the farm, we can switch from our stress response into our rest and relaxation response. The other thing is just generally reducing urgency. So I see this, I've even had it myself where you think, oh my gosh, I've got so many things to do. And you've got in your mind, you've got so many things to do. But if you actually sit down and write them down and realize, well, this is just gonna take five minutes, this is just gonna take 10, I don't need to do this till later. You can prioritize, you can reduce that sense of urgency, and that is extremely calming. It makes you feel like you're in control, it makes you feel calm and just generally like you're on top of things, really reducing the overwhelm. And this nervous system stuff is often the missing piece. Please don't overlook this. It is really, really important. That's why I have a whole uh focus on stress resilience in the GLOW protocol. So they're the three things I didn't want to overwhelm today. So three things, which were blood sugar regulation and how you can do that, sleep, and the importance of calming your nervous system. And, you know, if you're thinking, I really would prefer just to get a personalized plan and do this, you know, fairly quickly, then I invite you to book a peri weight loss assessment with me. We'll identify your priorities so that you're not guessing. And I'll talk to you about what a personalized plan might look like for you, and then you can decide whether that's something that you want or not. Um, so next week in this little series, I'm gonna talk about comparison and why weight loss seems easier for other women sometimes. So until then, take care. Choose one of those three things you're gonna focus on for the next week. And I will see you next Tuesday for some new content. Thanks so much for joining me on the Ageless and Awesome podcast. If you would like this episode, please make sure you click the little plus button if you're on Apple Podcasts, or the follow button if you're on Spotify so that you get each new episode delivered to you every single week. If you feel like writing me a five star review, you would absolutely make my day. If you found this episode resonating with you, head over to my Instagram and DM me at the Perimetapor's Park. I would love to connect with you.