From the raw honesty of personal stories to the cold, hard scientific facts, this episode promises to transform the way you see menopause!
Tune in to hear my personal weight loss journey and how I managed the challenges of menopause. This isn't just about shedding pounds; it's about thriving during a significant life transition and embracing the opportunity for growth and renewal.
We dissect the myths and misconceptions about nutrition during menopause, from combating hormonal changes with food to avoiding the temptation of elimination diets.
Hear firsthand how portion control and a balanced diet contributed to my weight loss success and discover practical tips for navigating your own nutritional needs during menopause.
But it's not just what's on your plate that matters. Exercise, sleep, and mindset play crucial roles in weight management during menopause. Let's explore the importance of strength training, mindful cardio, and improved sleep routines which led to my losing a whopping 70 pounds in two years.
Wrapping up the episode, we delve into the often-overlooked elements of weight loss, such as stress management and self-care.
This is a journey of resilience, empowerment, and, most importantly, self-love. Tune in to be part of it!
***
Just in case you missed it:
Join my10:21 Day Weight Loss Boot Camp, to be apart of our vibrant community and kickstart your journey!
See you there!
From the raw honesty of personal stories to the cold, hard scientific facts, this episode promises to transform the way you see menopause!
Tune in to hear my personal weight loss journey and how I managed the challenges of menopause. This isn't just about shedding pounds; it's about thriving during a significant life transition and embracing the opportunity for growth and renewal.
We dissect the myths and misconceptions about nutrition during menopause, from combating hormonal changes with food to avoiding the temptation of elimination diets.
Hear firsthand how portion control and a balanced diet contributed to my weight loss success and discover practical tips for navigating your own nutritional needs during menopause.
But it's not just what's on your plate that matters. Exercise, sleep, and mindset play crucial roles in weight management during menopause. Let's explore the importance of strength training, mindful cardio, and improved sleep routines which led to my losing a whopping 70 pounds in two years.
Wrapping up the episode, we delve into the often-overlooked elements of weight loss, such as stress management and self-care.
This is a journey of resilience, empowerment, and, most importantly, self-love. Tune in to be part of it!
***
Just in case you missed it:
Join my10:21 Day Weight Loss Boot Camp, to be apart of our vibrant community and kickstart your journey!
See you there!
Welcome to the Thriving Through Menopause podcast. Dr Inaka Yembe, your host, is dedicated to helping you navigate the transformative journey of menopause and perimenopause, particularly focused on achieving menopausal weight loss and reducing belly fat. As a post-menopausal physician herself who has helped thousands of women experiencing the significant life stage, she understands the unique challenges you face. Listen in as we explore a wide range of topics aimed at supporting you in your health and wellness journey. Hopefully, the practical tips and strategies offered potentially help you adopt an empowering approach towards menopausal weight loss and belly fat reduction. And now here's your host, dr Inaka Yembe.
Speaker 2:Hello there, my name is Dr Inaka Yembe and I am your host for this podcast. I'm very passionate about weight loss because of my personal journey of obesity and I'm currently in menopause. I do train women online in a private Facebook group. I coach online on weight loss what to do when it comes to nutrition, your workout, accountability and everything. Menopause are weight loss and I also run a clinic here in Louisiana, an outpatient clinic for obesity All right. So, first and foremost, one of the things that I did to lose weight during menopause my personal journey I hit the world at about 10 pounds. My weight blossomed from there. I was an obese child, obese adult, and I hit I think my heaviest weight was slightly over 300 pounds. I say maybe because when I got 298 pounds, I stopped weighing myself because I did not want to see any numbers above 300. In 2010, that's when I seriously started my weight loss journey. I say seriously because before that I had tried and failed, but I was not serious. Fast forward to today. I am 155 to 157 pounds. My weight fluctuates and it has taken me almost 14 years to lose weight and keep it off, so I know what it takes. I'm almost 56 years old as well.
Speaker 2:I have been in menopause for nine years. So the very first thing we'll talk about is the most famous question that I get from women. This is the most popular question how do you know you are in menopause? So menopause is a natural biological process. It starts occurring for most women around the ages of 45 to 55, but average age of menopause is about 50-52. And it signifies the time when the women's menstrual cycle ends. This is the end of your fertility. That's natural menopause. Surgical menopause can happen, or medical menopause can also happen If you're overly stopped working, or because they are removed, or because you get medicines, say in chemotherapy or other treatments.
Speaker 2:Anyway, the hallmark of this menopause phase, of menopause as a whole, is hormonal changes that cause several signs and symptoms. So let's quickly go through these changes and the symptoms that you may experience. Number one irregular cycles. Cycles become irregular. They may be less frequent, they may last fewer days or longer days, but you have just a change in your regular menstrual cycles. The next one is a big one hot flashes. These are the hallmark symptoms of menopause. Certain, intense feelings of warmth or heat that comes with sweating, temperature instability. My best friend is unlike me. I get the heat, the internal fire. I mean I get so hot, break out in the sweat, sweat running down my back, under my arms, everywhere. My best friend, leonie, she gets warm flashes. She said she just feels warm and then it goes away. So everybody's experience is different.
Speaker 2:The third symptom that you may have is changing your mood. Some women actually get mood swings, anxiety. They get irritable depression. So these are emotional changes that are related to fluctuation in our hormones. You may experience some physical changes. Some women have vaginal dryness, decreased libido, increase in belly fat, overall weight gain, sleep disturbances, changes in the skin and the hair. But one of the biggest things to remember is that many women and everybody's menopausal experience is different. This is the reason why there's no one size fits all.
Speaker 2:I want you to listen very carefully to this podcast and take the things that resonate with you and apply them to yourself. In addition to this physical and emotional change, some women also start to reflect on their identity, on their purpose in life. I mean by this time you're in the late 40s, early 50s. You've gone through all your life. You had children or grandchildren, you've done worked through your profession. I mean we're in the mid and the peak of our lives, the first thing we know. We start to experience all the symptoms that we're having and we're thinking, oh my goodness, what's going on? What are my priorities, what's my well-being? I wanted to also think about menopause as a new base in life, as a transitional period.
Speaker 2:There's one big thing, though, that I do not want us to forget. When you experience all the symptoms, yes, it's easily to just chuck it off to menopause, but don't forget that the older we get as women and men, by the way but the older we get, we are more prone to certain medical problems like heart disease, liver problems. Some of us develop thyroid problems. Those are more common in women as well. So if you're experiencing several symptoms fatigue, joint pain and things like that I want you to consider keeping up with your regular physical exam with your medical provider. And if you feel any symptoms like bloating, swelling in the legs, increase in your abdominal get, fatigue, just lethargy, brain fog at any point, even in between your medical checkups, this is a good time to go to your doctor just to make sure everything is okay, because sometimes we can have major medical complications like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, some cancers that can mimic symptoms of menopause. So we don't always want to blow it off to menopause.
Speaker 2:Anyway, let's move on from the symptoms and talk about exactly what did I do to lose the weight Number one. Number one, first and foremost, was adjust my mindset. Everything starts in the way that you think. The way you think will govern your actions, it will govern your habits, it will govern how you feel, it will govern what you do. See, all the time and all my life when I was overweight and even when I tried initially to lose weight, I always went to seek something that could come to me and help me. So it seems like I put the responsibility and the burden of weight loss on somebody else, maybe a coach or something else, as in a program. Don't do that. Come back to yourself and remember you're the one who's responsible for doing whatever it takes to lose the weight.
Speaker 2:One of the things that helped me right off the bat was having a vision. Back then, the idea of the vision board really resonated with me, so I intentionally sat down, took a board and wrote down all the things that I wanted to manifest in myself when it comes to my weight and my physical look and my emotional feelings. I spent quite a bit of time reading, researching, thinking, but putting it down on the vision board. And I actually had that vision board on the foot of my bed because I wanted to wake up every single morning and look at the vision. See, everything in life, every invention started with a vision. In fact, the Bible says where there is no vision, the people perish. So think about the vision of your future health itself. That's how I looked at it.
Speaker 2:The second thing that I changed when it came to my mindset was this notion of rapid weight loss. See, I was over 300 pounds and I felt I mean, surely I can get into any program or do anything and lose the weight quickly. Well, I did several things when I was younger, like starvation, skipping meals, exercising too much, and it did not work once I hit menopause. So when we get to menopause, we want to slow things down and, in fact, even if you're not in menopause, think about long-term, sustainable weight loss. That decreases the chances of you doing things that are too strict or too stringent, that are not sustainable long-term. All right, the next thing that I did when it comes to mindset adjusting my mindset for weight loss was just thinking positive, the way you think. What you think is what you're going to attract.
Speaker 2:So I look at my body back then and most of us are guilty of this. I'm very guilty. I had so many negative thoughts about my body. I didn't like my thighs, I did not like my belly, I did not like my boobs, I did not like my face and I felt if I could just lose the weight, I would start to like myself more. No, no, no, it doesn't work like that.
Speaker 2:Self-love is very important. Why One? Because you're not going to love yourself anymore. If you don't love yourself now, when you lose the weight, you're not going to love yourself anymore. Number two lack of self-love or negative thinking just makes us more anxious and if you're like me, it drove me to snacking, made me have more cravings and exposed me to binge eating.
Speaker 2:So how did I overcome this negative self-talk that I had all the time? I learned about positive affirmations, just talking or saying positive things to yourself. In fact, I built into my morning routine five positive affirmations. Every single morning I wake up and tell myself things like I love my body, I love my belly. Even if I didn't initially, I said it so many times, my brain said to believe it. I also said positive things about the things that I struggled with. I can do sit-ups, I can drink more water, I love eating vegetables just anything that you're struggling with. And, in addition to that, the negative things that you tell yourself. Turn those around, tell them to yourself in positive affirmations, write them down and read them to yourself. And in fact, I tell you what, when I started doing these positive affirmations, I got to a point I did not know what else I could tell myself. So this is when I went online and researched and copied other very good, positive affirmations that were out there. See, there's so much online. You want to extract things that can resonate with you. All right.
Speaker 2:Next couple of things that are really important when it comes to your mindset is preparing for the difficulty. Of course, when you change things, it's not going to be easy. In fact, I feel when you start to lose weight and you start to do the right things, it's going to be difficult. If it's easy and if it's just comfortable, then you may not be doing everything correctly. I don't want you to sit in a square box that's really tight, that's so hard and so stringent, but at the same time, whenever you change your lifestyle for weight loss, then it's going to be somewhat uncomfortable. I want you to embrace that difficulty because that's what it's going to take for you to lose weight.
Speaker 2:I look at this analogy that I use with my coaching plans all the time. When a baby starts to walk or when it starts to crawl, it gets to about five months or sometimes earlier for some babies it sits up and then, after a couple of months also, it starts to crawl and next thing you know, baby is nine, 10, 11 months. It starts to stand up. Take a couple of steps. Falls, take a couple of steps, falls, on and on and on. Next thing you know, the baby is walking. I haven't really seen a normal baby give up on trying to walk. That's the same thing that we want to think about ourselves Keep trying, keep trying, keep trying because you want to expect to fail, you want to expect at some point to do the wrong things, but don't give up because you made a mistake.
Speaker 2:That was a huge mindset shift for me. I had this thing about well, if I make a mistake, I'm going to restart on Monday. Well, if it's say the middle of the month, the 18th, the 19th, the 25th Well, if I made too many mistakes. I'm just going to start the first of next month. What that did to my body in real life is my weight went up, came down, went up, came down. Most of the time it was trending up.
Speaker 2:Don't do that. Those babies who tried to walk. They never give up Because if not, we would have had all these adults crawling over the planet. Please don't give up on yourself when you make a mistake. In fact, you want to relax. I look at the 80-20 rule as real. I do the right things 80% of the time and recognize that I'm human and I can fail, or I can make a mistake 20% of the time. That's going to keep you on your journey.
Speaker 2:Still, the last thing when it comes to mindset is to remember that when you are in menopause, we want to throw out our old ways of doing things when it comes to maintaining our body weight. See, the same kinds of exercises and the same kinds of ways that you used to eat no longer work when we get older. We'll talk about that a little bit later on. So that was number one. Number two, the second thing that helped me when it comes to my weight. Second thing that I did was focus on nutrition. Nutrition is a big one, as our bodies undergo changes during menopause and metabolism changes.
Speaker 2:The essential thing to be mindful about is you have to eat in a way that combats the hormonal changes on your body. See, initially I had focused on the mindset or the habit of elimination. When I tried to lose weight when I was younger, I always thought about eliminating something, of cutting out carbohydrates or cutting out fats. Well, that ended up hurting my body in the long run. When I cut out fats at a certain point I noticed, thinking back, I was eating more carbohydrates. When I cut out carbohydrates, I was eating just proteins and vegetables. That made me lethargic. It changed my metabolism and I'm so convinced that at the end of the day, it hurt my body because when you cut out food groups, you can end up really changing not only your metabolism but going into some nutritional deficiencies, and it is not sustainable long term.
Speaker 2:We want to backtrack and think about consuming whole foods. Quality of food is very important. Think about this. One analogy that I give my coaching clients is if somebody gives you a gift of a Mercedes Benz or a Ferrari or one of these new, expensive vehicles and tells you listen, you can only put the best, supreme gasoline in this vehicle. What are you going to do? Most of us will actually invest the money in fueling that vehicle with pricey, high quality gasoline. I want to think about your bodies in the same way. Your bodies are so precious. So when you go to the grocery store, think about fueling your body with high quality foods. It's very important during menopause.
Speaker 2:Why do I say that processed foods are processed? The core process because the manufacturer spends time removing certain things like fiber, especially minerals, nutrients. They extract that and they also load these processed foods with things that taste really good and make us want to eat it even more, and mostly those things are salt and sugar. One of those things. Due to our bodies, the makers gain weight, the makers retain fluid. They make our joints hurt. All those preservatives do a number on the body when you are in menopause. Now, your body is less forgiving. I mean, your joints already hurt because you're in menopause. You're already holding onto fluid and building up belly fat. Because you're in menopause, last thing you did is to consume processed foods.
Speaker 2:Go back and think about consuming high quality foods. Now, the one to think about is consuming proteins high quality, unprocessed proteins. Things like beef, chicken, eggs, fish, shrimp. If you're vegetarian, things like soy products, edamame beans. There are so many high quality vegetarian and non-vegetarian unprocessed proteins out there. Also think about increasing your fiber in your nutrition.
Speaker 2:Proteins and fiber are very important for us. Proteins take longer to digest. Your body burns more energy trying to digest proteins. Proteins keep you full longer. They decrease your cravings. They actually help maintain your muscle when you're in menopause. They can help stabilize your blood sugar and minimize fat storage. Very, very important Fiber. Why do we need fiber? Vegetables and things like that also. Fiber keeps you full longer. They help with the digestion. They help maintain a healthy gut. There also soluble fat in studies. Research has shown that soluble fat will help reduce fat storage. So consuming protein and fiber together during menopause it really gives you the best of both worlds. How does that work in real life?
Speaker 2:In real life, think about, like I said, consuming things like meat, fish, chicken, eggs, egg whites. Those are the stable nutrition in my diet. I also consume things like the green leafy vegetables tons of unprocessed vegetables out there. Eat those at every single meal. I try to consume 30 to 35 grams of protein at least four or five times a day.
Speaker 2:The many menopause learn to consume proteins for breakfast. Make it a high protein meal, especially when I was trying to lose weight initially. Big mistake is to wake up in the morning, eat a bowl of fruit and one piece of toasted wheat bread cup of coffee. Head out the door. No, no, no, no, don't do that. Fruit is healthy. It's not a demonizing fruit but where's your protein? Instead, think about consuming a couple of boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, egg white Well, you don't like egg, I get it. Think about consuming a turkey patty for breakfast Well, you don't like that, I get that. How about just making yourself a smoothie with vegetables? Good, plant based or animal based protein powder? Think about protein in the morning. Very important, that's going to change things for you, especially if you're in menopause and you're struggling with menopausal weight.
Speaker 2:The next thing that I learned that I focused on when it came to my nutrition in menopause was portion control. See, later on in life, especially when I became intentional about my weight loss in 2010, I was very conscious and made every effort to eat the so-called quote unquote healthy foods, but I didn't know what a correct portion was. I was just serving myself one chicken breast. I wasn't mindful like oh, I didn't know that actually a serving of chicken breast for me should be four to five ounces, not pounds ounces, and not the whole chicken breast, which is about eight, nine, 10 ounces in some cases. Portion control is very important. In fact, I started learning to weigh my food and I know what you think. I know what you think. Remember, when we talked about mindset, you want to change the way you think. I was also very resistant to weighing my food. However, when I started weighing my food big eye opener for me, big one I found out that four, five ounces of chicken is not that much. And if you eat your chicken first, or if you actually eat your veggies first and then your protein and then eat your carbs last, you're going to notice that it's difficult to getting more food after you've consumed fiber and protein and carbohydrates last, the very satiety. So please weigh your food so you know what a portion looks like. Studies show that consistently, we overestimate a portion sizes when we just eyeball them. So very, very important for you to know what a portion looks like, what a correct portion looks like.
Speaker 2:Okay, moving on, the third thing that I changed, or the third thing that I did to lose weight was the way that I exercise. See, in 2010, when I decided to turn things around seriously for myself, I had already tried all kinds of fat diets and those failed me, so I turned to exercise. I mean, I was aggressive. I found a coach who tried to help me. That didn't work. I tried several coaches. Those didn't work.
Speaker 2:So I went to the next best thing that I thought and I started doing cardio. I mean, I became a cardio junkie, and if you are a cardio junkie, like I was, cardio will do something to you. I mean, it releases those happy hormones. So I was running on adrenaline. I became the person who started off with three K's and then started doing five K's and when I hit the point where I was doing half marathons, I was hooked. I was hooked.
Speaker 2:I would wake up in the morning very early, go to the track, do five, six miles, go to work, come back and do another four, five miles every day, about four, five days a week, and on Saturdays those became my big days. I would do four hours of walking, jogging, and I was not the fast runner, but I could go slow and steady for hours and hours. My weight went nowhere. I stayed between 240 and 260 pounds. Even though I was doing all that cardio and as I approached perimenopause and actually as I got closer to menopause I started to gain weight.
Speaker 2:Why is that? I've learned that too much exercise, especially for those of us in menopause, puts your body in stress and it releases a stress hormone called cortisol. And if you exercise too much and that stress hormone stays high, cortisol is a fat storage hormone. Specifically, it stores fat in your body. When you do too much cardio, it can be a lot of stress. It can make you lose muscle even faster and make your weight loss even more difficult. In addition to that, when you do too much cardio it can also make you crave more.
Speaker 2:It did that for me. I mean, when I did my four to five hours of walking or jogging on Saturday, I brought with me actually glucose packs, I brought sweetened peanuts, I brought plantain chips. I mean I brought all kinds of carbs, because what happened was when I went to view, let's say, one hour, one and a half hours, I started to get hungry, I started to get lethargic and so I eat something. When I started eating something, then I eat everything that I brought with me, of course, despite my insulin. I made my body store fat and it also kept my cortisol levels high made my body store fat. We have to change the way we exercise when we get to menopause. So it really took a lot out of me to back off that runner's high because I was addicted to running for years and years and years and you do get high on it.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I did was trying to focus on strength training, and I also had to have a mindset shift on that one, because all this time I had been telling myself well, I'm not going to be lifting weights, I don't want to become manly. Listen, you're not going to become manly if you just lift enough weights to maintain your muscle. Muscle maintenance is very, very important for those of us who are in menopause. So learning strength training, maintaining muscle, building some muscle, was a huge game changer for me. If you look at my before and after pictures, huge change. The muscles help with weight loss.
Speaker 2:Muscles are a good place for the carbohydrates that you eat to land on a call muscle, my natural spanks, because they just hold everything in. They give you a nice muscle body tone. So muscle is very important. Don't throw away your cardio, though. If you love cardio, but just cut it back, scale back some. So if you have an hour to work out in a day, that particular day, instead of doing a whole hour of cardio like I used to just scale back on the cardio, maybe start doing 30 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of strength training Eventually, like what I do now is actually 15 minutes of cardio after 45 minutes of strength training. So I will get into the gym or when I start my workout, I'll do five minutes of a warm-up, go into 40, 45 minutes of strength training and then the rest of the time 10, 15 minutes I'll do cardio at that time. I want you to try that. It's going to help you.
Speaker 2:In addition to that, build in some exercises that help, also an exercise routine that really helps your joints. Stretching is very important. Yoga is also very important. Like listen bottom line. I tell everyone, when it comes to exercise, the exercise that's most effective for you is going to be the one that you love the most. So it's very important that you do the one that you love the most, whether it's walking, jogging, dancing, swimming. But add in some strength training with free weights, dumbbells, barbells or use your body weight like in push-ups, sit-ups, squats and things like that. So one to number four.
Speaker 2:Next thing that I did to lose the weight was improve on my sleep. That's another big one. When I was younger, I used to pride myself on being able to function on two to three hours of sleep. I spent very little time sleeping. What does that do Not sleeping enough, believe it or not, will make you gain weight.
Speaker 2:Why? Number one? Your hunger and satiety hormones are balanced during sleep. So if you don't sleep enough, studies show that you have higher levels of ghrelin. Grelin is your hunger hormone. People who don't sleep enough have more cravings.
Speaker 2:Next thing you want to consider if you're not sleeping enough and if you're somebody like me I am somebody who loves to snack, so you have more hours not sleeping. I had more hours snacking. I had to intentionally set an alarm to go to bed at 10 pm every single day. So I had a sleep alarm and I had a wake-up alarm. Most of us have a wake-up alarm. So if you're struggling with sleep, set that sleep alarm. My body got so used to sleeping at 10 o'clock that it actually moved itself slowly forward to sleeping at 9 o'clock. 8 pm generally 8 to 8 30 pm I am in my bed.
Speaker 2:There's several different things that can help you to go to sleep. If you're struggling with sleep, spend some time winding down. Take a bath in the evening. Spend some time winding down. Put your phone away, relax, get into bed Away from your phone, keep the TV off. And for us women in menopause. I am cold-natured, but I've learned with time. Last thing that I need for quality sleep is to keep the room hot, because when I kept the room hot because I'm, by nature, cold, cold-natured what happened was I was having more hot flashes. Wake up drenched in sweat. Throw the covers off, throw the nightdress off yes put down the towel. Sleep again. Wake up with the next hot flash. However, if you're struggling with sleep and you're having as many hot flashes like I did, consider cooling your room down. I promise you it would help you with better quality sleep. Anyway, sleeping 7 to 9 hours every single night, or as often as you can, is going to help you with weight loss.
Speaker 2:Moving on to number 5., the next thing that helped me with weight loss was being accountable. Number 1, you're going to need to be accountable to yourself. Remember how I talked about in the beginning. I went to different people to help me. I went to coach and I said coach, show me everything that I need to do and help me lose the weight. At that time I was thinking just signing up with a coach, that person is going to take me and make me lose my weight, and when that didn't happen, I was disappointed, and I walked on to the next coach, signed up, and I said you're going to help me lose weight, but in my mind, I was turning everything, the whole responsibility, over to that person, so I asked about five coaches.
Speaker 2:I figured out that those five coaches didn't work for me, and so I started signing up for these programs. There were programs that came up I'm not going to name any but they had all these manufactured foods that you could purchase and eat just those manufactured foods and lose weight. And yes, yes, yes, one of them truly worked for me, significantly, because I stuck with it. I mean, I went in there and I sat with the ladies, and every single Wednesday and she weighed me, I purchased food every single week for hundreds of dollars came home and I told myself if I'm going to spend my money, I'm going to stick with this thing, and four months later, I had lost about 45 pounds. I was so happy. I hit my goal. So I told her. I said, lady, bye, bye, look at that. I've invested so much. I hit my goal. She did tell me, though, that there's a transition period where you have to slowly transition back to your natural foods. My brain was not listening to that, my brain said I am done, I have hit my goal. So, yes, I'm free to go back and do whatever I was doing and slowly, in the next six months, I gained 50 pounds All of the weight that I had lost and more.
Speaker 2:See, I was not being accountable to myself. One of the biggest things that helped me be accountable to myself was just telling myself I am responsible. Now I'm going to do this, I'm going to take charge, I'm going to take time and learn. I'm going to do all the things that are necessary for me to lose weight. My weight loss really became consistent when I took responsibility and I was accountable to myself. The next thing that I did when it came to accountability was to be accountable to someone else. See, the studies do show that when you're accountable to somebody else, then your chances of succeeding with your weight loss is higher, even if you're accountable to one person. The best thing that you can do also is to sign up with a group. Join a group of like-minded people who are trying to do exactly the same thing like you are is going to help you with accountability.
Speaker 2:The last thing when it comes to accountability was just tracking, and that's a mistake that I made. Initially, when I started my weight loss journey and I learned about accountability and tracking foods, I felt that I had to write down every single thing that I was eating forever. No, don't do that. Take three days, five days a week. Write down every single thing that you're doing. It's going to help you reveal what you're consuming. It's going to help reveal your habits, but we don't need to track forever. But we do need to track some so we can keep up with what we are doing. So accountability is very important. All right.
Speaker 2:Moving on to number six, thing that I did to lose weight was just stress reduction. See the order we get or the order that I got. It seems like I just have more stress in my life, in my profession, with myself, with relationships, with family, children. I mean, we as women, we have so much responsibility now. In addition to that, hormone now changes, so you just become a little bit more stressed out. Most of us continue cruising life with the stress that builds up. It will impact your weight. So I want you to find some time, like I did, to intentionally build in stress reducing activities such as meditation, deep breathing, spending time in nature. I like to go to the sauna and just sit in the infrared sauna and spend some time there. I do that almost every week. I get massages almost every week or just spending time with prayer and meditation that one I try to do on a daily basis. But find some stress reducing activities that you can build into your daily or your weekly routine. That's going to help dissipate the stress that you have built up. And if you have too much stress and anxiety, listen, like I did and I have no problems telling anybody this. I've said this online as well I did have to get a counselor at one time. I did not have to take medicines Some people do, and if your doctor recommends it, please do go with your doctor's recommendation but some of us do well with counseling and with medications. But we've got to find a way to reduce our stress in order to live a healthy life and in order to lose weight and keep it off long term. All right.
Speaker 2:Number seven staying hydrated was very important. I was a huge coffee addict in my previous life. I used to drink so much coffee and I told myself, as much coffee as I drank, that coffee was keeping me hydrated. No, no, no. Coffee is a natural diuretic, and so is tea. So if you're drinking too much coffee and too much tea, do not think that that's water. In fact, I have learned that if I drink one cup of coffee, I need to drink two cups of water behind that coffee to stay hydrated.
Speaker 2:Drinking of plenty of water not only supports overall health, but it can help manage your appetite, prevent overeating, keep you hydrated, which also promotes weight loss. So water should be your number one beverage, because it's going to help you with weight loss. There are some people who should not drink more water. So if you are, say, a cardiac patient, you're struggling with heart disease, you have congestive heart failure, or you are a kidney patient on dialysis and things like that, If your doctor has recommended water restriction, please go with your doctor's recommendation. But the rest of us, though, we want to stick with about three liters of water daily, so for me, that boils down to an average of six small bottles of water daily. Try to increase your water intake. That would help you. Lastly.
Speaker 2:Lastly, I want to emphasize the importance and the significance of being patient. Weight loss during menopause or any other time in your life is not going to happen overnight, so I want you to just be patient with yourself. In fact, the American Academy of Obesity now recommends that losing a half to one pound a week is sustainable, not three pounds, four pounds, five pounds. Just a half to one pound a week is sustainable long term. So be patient with yourself.
Speaker 2:If you had as much weight to lose as I did, don't try to lose it all overnight. Be patient, tell yourself it's going to happen. When I gave myself two years to lose 70 pounds and don't ask me where that came from that's just a thought that I had one time I said I should be able to lose 35 pounds in a year, so I'm going to take the next two years and lose 70 pounds. It seems like the anxiety and the struggle to lose weight and do all the strict things and the hard things so fast to get it off go slowly when away and I started to do things that were sustainable and healthy for me long term. So very, very important for you to be compassionate and patient with yourself. Celebrate the small victories along the way. If you feel better, that's a huge victory. If your joint pain starts to go away, that's a huge victory. If your clothes start to feel better, that's a huge victory. So look at the non-scale victories as well and celebrate them. If you start to think positively, embrace that positive mindset, because that's going to be fundamental in maintaining a healthy weight.
Speaker 2:So, in conclusion, managing your weight during menopause or, for me, managing my weight has been so achievable because I'm using the correct strategies and the correct mindset, and this is what I teach in my online weight loss program, which is called the 10 21 day bootcamp program. Look for that link online if you're interested in getting my help. The link is on my Instagram program. I have that on my Facebook page. I have that on TikTok as well. You want to embrace and think about the correct mindset.
Speaker 2:We've talked about mindset. We've talked about nutrition. We've talked about physical activity or exercise. Adequate sleep is important, managing your stress, staying hydrated, seeking support these are all the things that are important for you to navigate this journey of weight loss during menopause successfully. And believe your me when I say you can do this. I believe that you can do this because I have done it successfully as well. So I want to thank you for joining me in this podcast. Together, let's stay empowered throughout menopause, and I hope that the insights that I shared during this episode inspire and empower you to embark on your own path of achieving and maintaining a healthy weight during menopause. Remember that you are capable, you are resilient and you deserve to thrive through menopause. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Thriving Through Menopause. We hope you found valuable insights and practical advice to support your journey. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, share it and review. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Remember, menopause doesn't have to be a challenge. It can be an opportunity for growth, renewal and self-care. Connect with us on social media, where we share additional resources, tips and advice to help you along your path. Once again, thanks for listening in and we hope you'll join us again on the next episode of Thriving Through Menopause. Until then,