Thriving through Menopause Podcast
Welcome to the Thriving through Menopause Podcast. We are dedicated to helping you navigate the transformative journey of menopause and perimenopause with grace, confidence, and empowerment.
Together, we'll explore a wide range of topics aimed at supporting your physical and emotional well-being during this significant life stage.
Each episode, we'll provide practical tips and strategies that you can adopt and implement.
Listen in and join me on this empowering journey.
Thriving through Menopause Podcast
39. Six Effective Strategies for Reducing Belly Fat During Menopause
Ever wondered why belly fat seems stubbornly resistant to your ab workouts, especially during menopause?
Join us today to unravel the mystery of menopause weight loss and belly fat reduction. Discover six actionable steps designed specifically for women navigating menopause or perimenopause, and understand the crucial difference between subcutaneous and visceral fat.
We also highlight why nutrition and mindset are vital components in targeting belly fat, and how setting clear, realistic goals can pave the way to long-term success.
Nutrition is more than just a diet; it's a lifestyle. This episode breaks down the fundamentals of balanced nutrition for effective weight loss.
Learn how to create a sustainable caloric deficit by calculating your daily energy needs and stresses the importance of consuming proteins, carbohydrates, fats, fruits, vegetables, and dairy.
Learn how meal prep can become manageable and less overwhelming by planning in three-day cycles. For women over 35, protein intake becomes pivotal for maintaining muscle mass, and we provide practical tips to ensure you're getting enough.
Balance is key, and that applies to both your diet and exercise routine. Setting realistic goals and allowing for occasional indulgences to avoid the guilt that can derail progress are important.
Combining cardiovascular and resistance exercises is essential for maintaining muscle mass and metabolism, particularly as we age. Even non-exercise activities, like walking, can help combat sedentary lifestyles.
Tune in to learn how menopause can be a time of growth and self-care and stay connected with us for more empowering advice and resources.
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Hello, my friends, welcome to my channel. Today we will be talking about how to start your belly fat loss, or how to continue, in six simple steps. This is the method that I use with my coaching clients and with my patients in the hospital. So if you're struggling with belly fat loss, this is the one for you. If you're struggling to lose overall body fat, especially if you are a female in menopause or perimenopause so that's age 35 and above this one is going to be for you.
Speaker 2: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. Thank you 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 1:Now, if you're like me, it's just so much easier for me to gain the belly fat compared to losing it. It's difficult. When we talk about belly fat, there are two different kinds I want you to be aware of. Some of it is just directly underneath your skin. That's the subcutaneous fat. Yes, we may not like to see it, but it's not dangerous to our health per se, unless you're really really overweight, have too much body fat. That's when that subcutaneous fat can affect you medically, maybe affect your joints and things like that.
Speaker 1:However, it is the fat that we cannot pinch, the one on the inside around our vital organs. That one is the visceral fat. That's the one that we worry about. Everybody really needs to try to get their visceral fat under control. Visceral fat is metabolically active. It's the one that lies around your heart, your liver, your kidney. That's the one that really puts out inflammatory substances that can put you at risk of developing diabetes, having heart attacks, hypertension and things like that, so that one definitely impacts our health. All right, If you've been on this journey, you've been trying to get healthy, you've been doing the crunches, sit-ups, all the ab and core exercises and the belly fat is still here. It's not going away, it's just because we want to understand simple principles. We cannot tell our body to lose weight in a specific area.
Speaker 1:So if you're doing all, the crunches it's not going to help you lose the belly fat. It's going to help you tone the abdominal wall muscles. Those are two different things. We cannot exercise in order to lose weight in a specific body part. The key to losing visceral fat is working on your nutrition. It's working on what you're eating and what you're drinking. So let's talk about how to lose belly fat in six simple steps, Believe it or not.
Speaker 1:Step number one has nothing to do with nutrition. It has everything to do with what's up here. What's up here, our mindset, the way we think, the way we think about ourselves, the way we think about the food, the way we think about the whole journey. So what's the very first thing that comes to mind? How do you get into what I call the weight loss mindset? Number one is setting a goal. Goal setting is key. I have an online program and some ladies just joined. They said I want to join this program and see if it can help program. And some ladies just joined. They said I want to join this program and see if it can help me lose some weight Right there.
Speaker 1:And then we don't have clarity. Clarity is the DNA of success. We've got to be specific. How much weight do you want to lose? When you give your mind a clear signal, clear instructions, Then you have more clarity, you are more specific.
Speaker 1:Now give you another example. Let's say I want to travel. I go to the airport and walk up to the desk and say I'm ready to travel Right there. And then it's so confusing for everyone when are you going, what airlines, what time? What's your destination? Where are you going? What airlines, what time? What's your destination?
Speaker 1:Give your mind the same crystal clear, specific instructions when it comes to your goal. So let's say, for example, I started off with my weight 14 years ago. I was at 300 plus pounds. My goal was to get under 200 pounds. That's okay. Set a goal, any goal, one goal. And I'm going to tell you if you have a big goal, like I did, I had to lose 150 pounds.
Speaker 1:Sometimes that goal just seems so big we can get discouraged because it's so big. So chop it up into small bites that you can hit and achieve in order to get to a big goal. At the end, it took me about two years to lose 70 pounds. That's okay, but you've just got to set a goal. So if your goal is too big, chop it up. If your goal is greater than 100 pounds, I would say take 10% of it, or even 5%. Tell yourself I need to lose 10 pounds first. If you lose 10 pounds, 10 pounds, 10 pounds, you are going to get to 100. Next thing set a timeline. So it's got a specific goal. How much time are you giving yourself? This is one of the biggest reasons why some of us abandon our journey when we really have full capability of getting there. So the timeline is so important. Make your timeline realistic. The American Academy of Obesity Medicine recommends that you lose 0.5 to 1 pound a week.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's one of the biggest reasons why I failed.
Speaker 1:When I was 300 pounds, I told myself I am so big I should be able to lose 30 pounds in a month. I just felt I have so much to lose so I can get rid of it so quickly. And that is where I went. I did things that were too strict, were not sustainable long term and when I didn't get to my goal, or if I got to my goal and I got tired of doing the things that are not sustainable, I gave up.
Speaker 1:Don't be in a hurry to lose all the weight right now. Focus on the next steps I'm going to tell you. Focus on the journey. Focus on being healthy. Focus on making your healthy foods delicious. Your body's going to fall in place. Don't focus on the number on the scale. All right. So the timeline here, realistically, is 0.5 to 1 pound a week. You will notice, if you just started your journey and you were eating all the burgers and drinking all the Cokes, of course, when you start off well, I mean 7 pounds may come off the first week. Ten pounds may come off the first week. Yes, you're losing water weight, you're losing bowel content, you're losing some fat, some muscle, all kinds of things. It's okay, but when things settle down, sometimes you don't even lose any weight.
Speaker 1:I could be on my journey eating healthy, doing all the things I'm supposed to do and nothing happens. Stick with it. We didn't get to this point overnight, so we're not going to lose it all overnight. And weight loss is not a linear drop. It's going to be down, sometimes you plateau, sometimes you even go up and sometimes you continue to go down. It's okay. I want you to focus on the journey, how you feel, the things that you're doing correctly for your body, but set a timeline. So back to the 10 pounds. If I want to lose 10 pounds realistically and I'm talking about losing 10 pounds I'm keeping it off. Okay, I'm not talking about just losing it. So I'm going to say, realistically, I want to take about two months, maybe two and a half months, to get those 10 pounds off and keep them off.
Speaker 1:All right back to the mindset. What is the one thing that makes us just fall off the journey for no good reason? It's because we're so busy we forget. I wake up in the morning, I'm running around doing my things. I've got my meal prep, I've got my job, I've got the kids, grandkids, I've got just so much, and sometimes I just even forget my goal. You have to remember your goal, and the easiest thing that I do to remember that goal is set a silent seminar for myself. This is what helps me to be successful in just so many things that I'm trying to achieve, to accomplish, and a silent seminar means that you just write down your goal, put it on your phone screen saver, put it on your refrigerator, put it on your computer, put it in so many places that you can remember. Your eye hits it, but you're not really thinking of it. It's going to write something in your mind that's going to remind you of your goal. However, we want to be intentional also. So when you wake up in the morning, when you wake up, think about your goal. Just take five minutes, think about it. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to drink my water, I'm going to make sure I take the healthy food with me. So actually I'm reaching for my healthy food and not other things. However, you want to bring that goal to mind. You want to remind yourself every single day.
Speaker 1:Last thing, last thing here, when it comes to mindset, is having a positive mindset. If you're a female like me, I do such a good job about discouraging my own self. Listen, I wake up in the morning, look at myself oh my, why is my belly this way? Why are my hips this way? Why are my arms this way? If you ask your brain or yourself a negative question, it's going to look for an equally negative answer and hand it to you. And here you are, so discouraged and not even feeling like doing the things that you need to do to be healthy. So it's so important that you stay positive. Don't discourage yourself. Tell yourself you can. Anything that you're struggling with, tell yourself you can. I struggle with water. That's my biggest one.
Speaker 1:My second biggest thing I struggle with is the vegetables. You will not imagine. So I wake up in the morning telling myself I'm going to drink the water. Actually, I go to bed with the water right there by my night on my nightstand. When I wake up in the morning, I just start drinking it.
Speaker 1:I don't wait to feel. Last thing mindset. Don't wait to be motivated. Motivation is not there all the time. Sometimes you feel like and sometimes you don't feel like. However, you want to be committed. Commitment means I'm going to do the correct things that I need to do regardless of how I feel. So just be committed. Don't wait for something to make you feel like working out, to make you feel like meal prepping, to make you feel like eating the healthy foods. Don't wait for that magical thing to come. That motivation is not always going to be there.
Speaker 1:All right, let's move on to step number two. Step number two is your nutrition. In order to lose the belly fat, the visceral fat, we need to pay attention to our nutrition. What is it about the nutrition? You know, for a long time I was eating healthy, but I was still at 300 pounds. Why is that? I was eating, and don't judge me I was eating a half chicken. I was eating maybe three, four chicken breasts. I was eating the salads, but, however, the salads had too much dressing I get it and the salads had too many toppings that were not healthy. So what is it in nutrition that's key? You've heard this staying in a caloric deficit, consuming less energy than your body needs every day.
Speaker 1:So, there are two ways to go about this. If you're really really technical and you want to do all the math, you can go online and figure out how much energy your body needs per day and make your calorie deficit just 500, not more than 500, meaning you're going to drop your calories just slightly in order to lose one pound a week. If you're struggling or just starting off and you just don't even know, do what I did. It's so simple and this is what I teach my coaching clients Go online, google, go to a BMI chart. I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 1:Of course, the BMI charts are not accurate, but I'm not looking for accuracy. I'm not looking for perfection. I'm looking for a starting point. So go to a BMI chart, look at your height, look at a normal weight range for you, pick one, take that number in pounds and multiply by 12,. You're going to get a number and that's how many calories I want you to consume per day. It's very easy. So we need to be in a caloric deficit in order to lose the weight.
Speaker 1:So, now that we're talking about the things that we are eating, what is it that we need to be eating? That moves us into step number three. There's several different foods that we need to eat. So, back in my days, I had done all the restrictive diets. I had done the watermelon diet, the egg diet I know you haven't heard about it the cabbage soup diet, the military diet all these diets and diets and diets, and what they did was they eliminated one food group and it made it so hard for me. It was not sustainable.
Speaker 1:However, I'm not here to change the what you're eating, but I'm going to introduce to you the fact that there are no bad foods. It's very important that you look at it that way. There are no bad foods. Of course, the ones that I'm talking about are natural foods. All natural foods are good for you. And then there's a small space where we, you know we need to have four of the things that are maybe not as healthy, but we consume them anyway, and we need to be able to consume those with no guilt.
Speaker 2:Very important All right, so let's talk about the food groups.
Speaker 1:We have proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and then I'm going to tell you about fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and then we've got room for the condiments and those small space for those little things. If you think about those food groups, just pick either two or three foods from each of these groups. It's going to make your meal prep so easy, it's going to make it easy for you to plan and it's going to make it easy for you to figure out and track the fact that you're getting at that caloric goal. So the very first food group that we'll talk about right here very important off the bat is proteins.
Speaker 1:Proteins are important. Proteins are the ones that your body takes, uses more energy to just digest. They have a thermic effect. Proteins keep you full. Last thing I need is to be trying to eat healthy and be hungry all the time. The hunger is discouraging. The hunger just puts me in a place where I am not happy. I like to be happy and I like my food to fill me up. So start with proteins.
Speaker 1:Proteins will also help you preserve your muscle, because the fact is, when we think about losing visceral fat or we think about weight loss, some of us don't know that we're losing some muscle in the process as well. And if you lose enough weight and lose enough muscle in the process, here you are. It's going to be very difficult for you to eventually continue to lose the weight, even if you're not at your goal, because you've lost enough muscle mass now. So the way to preserve that muscle is to consume enough protein More so listen to this if you're a female above the age of 35, that metabolically active hormone that we have called estrogen is going to decline, is going to make us naturally lose our muscle mass, even if we don't do anything else in our nutrition. I want you to increase the protein just to counteract the muscle mass loss that you have with weight loss or that you have with just the aging process.
Speaker 1:How much protein do we need to consume? There's so many stories about this, but let's just make it so simple. Remember you went to a BMI chart your height. Of course you need to know your height. I didn't even know how tall I was when I started my journey. Okay, it's only when I started bodybuilding that I was actually measured, that I got to know my height. So you need to know your height in order to figure out your ideal body weight. Remember how I said ideal body weight may not be the weight that you really want to get to eventually, but it's the weight that you use for calculations your ideal body weight multiplied by one, and that's how many proteins grams of proteins you need to consume per day of protein per day. Taking that example a little deeper, I already know that ground turkey 99% lean ground turkey if I consume four ounces of that, it has 28 grams of protein. Okay, so I'm going to consume four ounces now I write down 28 grams of protein. My next meal I'm going to add the proteins in that meal so that, at the end of the day, I get to 150 grams of protein per day.
Speaker 1:If you're starting off, focus on this one macronutrient proteins, proteins and work on getting an adequate amount of protein every day, every day, every day, until you actually get it. The way I simplify things even further for myself, so that it is sustainable, is to not try to eat too many different things at a time. I have this three-day cycle. Three-day cycle If I'm going to prep something, I'm going to prep exactly the same thing for three days, because it makes it easier for me to prep, it makes it easier for me to shop for, it makes it easier for me to track it and it just makes it so much easier. That's how my journey is sustainable and I have the habit of taking one macronutrient, my protein season, season it, make it tasty, make it delicious. I'll season it, prep it and package it for three days. That way I calculate and write things down one time stick with it for three days.
Speaker 1:After three days, come back and do the same thing. I'm going to prep something different, or the same ground turkey with different seasonings. That's how I say that you consume your protein. Next food group is carbohydrates. There's two different kinds. Of course, the healthy ones, there's some of those that are a little bit more starchy and some of those that are less starchy.
Speaker 1:So think about your vegetables. Vegetables the way I look at it just so easily, so I'm not really trying to calculate too much is I just take one cup of cooked vegetable per meal or two cups of raw vegetables per meal. You need the vegetables because that's where your fiber, your macronutrients, vitamins and things like that, minerals they all come from vegetables. So you want to consume those also. So very important you consume your vegetables.
Speaker 1:The next food group is the fats. Very easy for me, so I'm not calculating do I need 50 grams of fats? Do I need 40 grams of fats, of healthy fats? Simply, if I'm cooking my food, my very, very simple basic formula is two tablespoons of olive oil in the food that I'm prepping for the whole day. I avoid nuts and nut butters because, of course, that's my weakness. May not be yours, but you know it's my weakness, so I'm not trying to consume some nuts every day because they're just so high in calories and they get away from me. However, those are healthy, so you can measure them in order to stay in the portion, all right.
Speaker 1:Next food groups is fruits, so there's different kinds of fruits. Some of them are awfully sweet and some of them are not as sweet. All fruits are healthy for you. However, if you're going to consume the really sweet ones mangoes, pineapples you know the ones that are really sweet, that are so delicious I want you to make every effort to stick with the portion size. The portion size. Don't wake up and just eat I don't know a fourth of a watermelon because it's fruit and we know it's healthy. Just don't do that, because you may consume more calories than you intend. Dairy products are the very next one.
Speaker 1:I try to limit my dairy products to the ones that give me the biggest bang for my buck, and I just limit it to the yogurt and the cottage cheese Just because small servings of those, one serving has lower calories and a higher protein content. That's just me. Condiments that's the next thing we need to think about Condiments. You gotta be careful with those. Some of them have added sugars. It's the added sugars that damage our journey, that make things even more difficult, that make our insulin level high and we are here storing more belly fat. Go for the condiments that have also one thing Garlic powder, pepper powdered onion, or just go for the herbs. But you know, make your food delicious, season it with the herbs and the condiments. The other condiments that you really need to be careful with.
Speaker 1:My two biggest ones are the barbecue sauce and the ketchup, and I tell my patients there is no tomato in the ketchup, it's just more of sugar. However, there are some now some manufactured products out there. I get it. I use some myself that say zero sugar. However, you want to be careful with those that say zero sugar, because the manufacturer has a 20% margin of error. So don't just go take half a bottle of sugar-free ketchup and say it has no calories, the calories will add up. All right, the very last one I'm going to tell you about is the juicing. Juicing. So fruit juice is great if you consume it maybe once or twice a month. Why is that? Don't go consuming juicing every single day? Fruit juice.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I hear people say I make my juice at home so I feel it's healthy. Yes, it is healthier. Of course it is. But consider this you took all the fiber out, you took all the nutrients out. That's what you're throwing away and you're consuming a concentrated amount of fructose. Keep in mind only your liver can metabolize the fructose, so a concentrated amount of sugar in that juice is not good for you, especially if you're struggling with belly fat. What I recommend is that you eat whole fruit.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about this small window that we have out here that we need to have for the things I tell my clients and my patients don't try to be Jesus Christ. You cannot be 100% perfect. Perfection doesn't exist. If you shoot for perfection, that's where we start to have problems and where we fail. So, small percent, 20% of the times, this is where, once a week, you can consume whatever you want in a small amount, whatever you want. So if it's the fruit juice that you truly, truly love, have it once a week or once every other week. Let's say you have this taste, for I don't know. I don't know what it is a burger or pizza? Yes, you can have it once a week or once every other week. It's okay, let's say it's a birthday birthday party. You're not going to go for a birthday party? Lock yourself up in the closet because you don't want to face the birthday cake and the wine. Go ahead and have it. It's one time you got to have a date night, right?
Speaker 1:You can't hide over here and say I'm not going to go for a date night with my partner. Don't do those kinds of things. They're not healthy. Go out, have fun one time, once a week, once every other week, you'll be just fine. Consume whatever you want, in a small amount, and just don't overstuff yourself, and it's not going to damage your journey.
Speaker 1:The problem we have is that we go out and eat whatever we want ice cream or pancakes, or whatever we want donuts and come back home and say, oh my gosh, if you were like me, I made one mistake. I said, oh wow, I made a big mistake. You know what? I'm going to restart at the beginning of next month, at the beginning of next week. Now, consume whatever you want in a small amount, once every here or there. Okay, last thing about nutrition. Let's try to avoid consumption of processed foods on a daily basis. That right there is going to damage or slow down your belly fat loss. Why is that? Because the manufacturer took the food from its natural form. They removed all the good things that are there for you things like the fiber and all those things and they added too much sugar to make it more palatable and convenient, and that is what can get into your body and slow down your belly fat loss.
Speaker 1:All right, let's move on to step number four how to lose belly fat in four steps. Exercise the workouts. If you know me, I love to work out the two different kinds of exercises. Number one is cardiovascular exercise. Number two is resistance exercises. We need both.
Speaker 1:We make a mistake when we talk about cardiovascular exercises. So let me tell you just very simply as a female in menopause age 35 and above, perimenopause and menopause or anyone trying to lose weight, you need both Cardiovascular exercise just to help you increase the amount of calories burned, just to help you with blood flow, to help your cardiovascular health. You also need resistance exercises. And the way I look at it, if I go to the gym for one hour, what I'm going to do is get in there, do a warmup, stretch, dynamic warmup. I'm going to spend the first 45 minutes doing my resistance exercises first, and then the last 10-15 minutes I will be on a step climber or walking on a treadmill or jogging and get my cardiovascular exercise in that way.
Speaker 1:Very important for you to do just a little bit more, especially if you're older like myself. Do just a little bit more of resistance exercises. Why is that? Because we're losing weight. We're losing some muscle. We're older now, so we're losing some muscle because of that, and when we lose weight, our metabolism will drop. So then we need the muscle in order to maintain our metabolism up, so that we don't get stuck at a point where we're not really eating much but we're not losing the weight anyway. Resistance exercises are things like your squats, your pushups, lifting weights using dumbbells, barbells, resistance bands, ankle weights, whatever you want, just to stimulate that muscle growth or to preserve them. So we need the resistance exercises. Many of you have seen me doing the 10,000 steps per day. I don't go out on the street and jog 10,000 steps. No, this is my NEAT non-exercise activity thermogenesis the amount of steps that I get in between my exercise it just helps me to not be sedentary all day long.
Speaker 1:So don't look at the 10,000 steps as something that I need to accomplish in one big fell swoop. No, no, no, no. That's too stressful for the body. In fact, if you're in menopause and struggling with weight loss and you go out there and try to jog five miles every day, 10 miles every day listen, that puts your body in stress and it's just going to make it so much harder for you to lose the weight anyway. What I'm talking about is I intentionally, if I'm going to get my nails done, like today, I'm going to park over there, so that's going to give me another two 300 steps going into the salon and coming out. If I'm going to grocery store which I will be today because I'm going to meal prep what I'm going to do is do one circle around and then come back again and pick my things, so I just intentionally increase my steps throughout the day. That helps me with just being active. Sedentary is another disease.
Speaker 1:Now If I'm sitting here watching TV or just doing some work on my laptop. What I intentionally do is get into my 10-minute workout. I've done my own 10-minute workout.
Speaker 1:I think more than everybody else goes to the YouTube channel, hit play and I'll just walk for 10 minutes. That gets me about a thousand steps, just because I know that I have maybe about four or five hours of work to do on my computer. So that's where that 10,000 steps comes in. So bottom line cardiovascular exercise, resistance exercise and being active throughout the day is very important. All right. Step number five Number five this is another important one has nothing to do with what you're eating or drinking. Step number five If you've heard about sleep, you need to sleep adequately in order to lose weight.
Speaker 1:It's true. Why is that? Because your hormones are going to be balanced while you're sleeping. Number one hormone is leptin. This is the hormone that tells you that you're full. So if you don't sleep enough and I'm saying if you sleep less than six hours every single night then that's going to decrease your leptin. Leptin is the hormone that tells your body or your brain that you're full, that you've eaten enough. So if you're not sleeping enough, leptin levels are low and you just tend to eat a little bit more. If you're not sleeping enough, your ghrelin levels that's the one that tells you you're full, ghrelin levels will be a little bit higher. It's going to increase that snacking habit that we have and you just consume a few more calories throughout the day.
Speaker 1:Very important for you to sleep enough. In addition to that, if you're not sleeping enough, like myself, I tend to have this, don't judge me. Okay, I tend to have this food-seeking behavior at nighttime. Everybody else is sleeping. Just because I'm awake, my head is in the refrigerator, thinking what's here? What's here? And believe you me, even if it's healthy, you don't need to consume it. At 10 pm or 11 pm it's too late to eat. It's too late to eat. You're more insulin resistant at that time. No need for calories at 11 pm, unless, I don't know, unless you're working all night long, which I do sometimes.
Speaker 1:All right, next thing if you're not sleeping enough, your serotonin levels, your happy hormone level that's the hormone that keeps us happy, the hormone that keeps us pleased and in a good state of mind your serotonin is going to be lower. And so now you're seeking food just to comfort yourself. Studies, comfort yourself. Studies do show that people who don't sleep enough tend to be more overweight. That's why some of us nighttime workers I'm a shift worker myself some of us just tend to eat more. We just seek the food for comfort, because our serotonin levels can be low.
Speaker 1:Lastly, lastly, everybody, male or female, has testosterone. So if you're not sleeping enough especially males if you're not sleeping enough, your testosterone level is going to be lower. How does that impact your weight loss? Just because testosterone women have just a little bit, men have more. When it's lower, you have a harder time of preserving muscle. All right. So very important for you to sleep enough. Next one water water. Drink the water Water. Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, yes, sir, it's important for you to drink the water. A body's really a composed body composition is mainly water. So if you're not drinking enough water, then you're a little bit more dehydrated and dehydration will slow down your weight loss. All right, there's a myth about how much water we need to drink. Is it one gallon, two gallons, three gallons, three and I'm not pushing for the one gallon.
Speaker 1:It's so hard to drink a gallon of water every day. If you can do it, go ahead All right. This one I'm going to stay right off the bat. If you have a medical reason to not consume more water example, those of you on kidney dialysis, those of you who have congestive heart failure and other illnesses like that this is not for you. This is not for you. In fact, speak to your doctor and follow your doctor's orders.
Speaker 1:The rest of you who can drink enough water, now the goal here, really is going to be two and a half liters for women and 3.13 liters for men. So I would say five to six bottles. That's if you're staying home. If you're outside, working outside, I recommend one half a liter per hour. If you're outside, and if it is a hundred degrees, like here in Louisiana sometimes, where I live, I need you to drink a whole liter of water per hour when you are out there. Dehydration is not good. It's going to slow down your weight loss. Okay, step number six weight loss. Okay, step number six. Step number six is to repeat these five steps consistently and be patient.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest reasons why we just don't lose the belly fat we seem to be going around, around, around in circles is that we give up. We're not patient. We want things to happen right now. The world is quick, so we expect our bodies to snap quick into place and then, when we don't see results, we are discouraged. Some of you are looking only at the scale. Don't look only at the scale.
Speaker 1:Back in my days I used to travel for work. I used to be a traveling physician and the biggest problem that I had was the straps in the airplane. Problem that I had was the straps in the airplane. Some of them could not go over my thighs and my biggest goal was to be able to sit in the airplane without really just bumping into somebody next to me and to be able to snap that seatbelt over my thighs without asking for an extension all the time. And when I lost the weight and I realized, wow, I could listen, take that as a plus.
Speaker 1:Your success is just not only the number on the scale. Your success is everything, mostly how you feel. When you start to eat healthy foods you do feel better, how you look. Sometimes the weight is not changing, but you look better. You like the way you look. Sometimes the weight is not changing, but you look better. You like the way you look. Go for it. Sometimes your weight is not changing, but you notice that your pants fit a lot better now. So go for all these things and give yourself time.
Speaker 1:I was born on the heavier side. I never lost the weight. I never lost my baby weight. It just seems like a blossom from there. I do not expect myself to lose weight in a year From where I started. When I became realistic about my weight loss goal, I told myself it's going to take me two years to lose 70 pounds. When I say two years to lose 70 pounds, it means two years to lose 70 pounds overall and keep it off. It took me about three years three years, three and a half years to lose 120 something pounds. It takes some time because weight loss is not linear. So give yourself time. Give yourself enough time to do all the things. Give yourself time to work on the mindset, to understand the things that you need to eat, and it takes a long time. After 14 years, I'm still working on my nutrition. I'm still working on learning new things. I'm still working on the foods that help me keep my protein consumption where it needs to be. Give yourself time to understand the food groups and how they affect you.
Speaker 2:For a long time I just thought peanut butter was the healthiest thing.
Speaker 1:Don't judge me. I used to eat a bottle of peanut butter before I understood. Hey, I was consuming I don't know three 4,000 calories in that peanut butter before I struggled to give it up. It took me some time to understand that it's no need going to shop the sales, because all that shopping was taking my money and taking away my health, because the abundance of food in my environment was just playing tricks on my mind and making me know that I have so much food. It took me so much time to even accept the fact that I needed to be lifting weights. I thought lifting weights was for men, not for women, until I understood how or I saw how my body just changed.
Speaker 1:It took me some time to even understand the importance of being patient. Give yourself some time, a lot of time, actually a lifetime. Everything that you're doing now it needs to be what you can do for the rest of your life, so it needs to be sustainable, but it needs to be reasonable. Also, don't get stuck in your ways and say this is the way I do things, so I cannot change. In order to see a change in my body, I have got to change the things that I am doing. All right, my friends, that's it. Thank you for listening and thank you so much for watching. I'm going to come back and bring you more information, just on these steps. All right, my friends, thank you. Thank you and have a fantastic week ahead. Thank you, bye.
Speaker 2: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,