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
41. Expert Meal Plan and Prep Strategies for Menopausal Weightloss
Are you ready to conquer menopausal weight gain like never before? Join us as we break down the hormonal shifts, such as declining estrogen levels, that lead to fat redistribution, a slower metabolism, and increased insulin resistance.
Today, we bust common myths about healthy eating, making it simple and affordable, and provide a sample meal plan designed to help you regain control over your nutrition and reduce belly fat, while supporting overall health during menopause.
But that's not all—we also go through a comprehensive approach to meal prepping for consistent and effortless healthy eating.
Learn the most efficient method of prepping meals for three days at a time, with a streamlined shopping list focusing on essential proteins, greens, fruits, and vegetables.
Discover how to create a homemade seasoning blend to simplify cooking and understand the importance of adjusting your nutrition before exercise for sustainable weight loss.
Embrace menopause with confidence as we acknowledge this stage of life as an opportunity for growth, renewal, and self-care. Don't miss out—subscribe, share, and connect with us for more resources and tips!
***
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!
Sample meal plan for weight loss and for belly fat loss, especially if you are in menopause. This is what we will be talking about today. If you are a female age 35 and above and you are struggling, I want you to pick up a pen and paper, because I'm going to break down this meal plan in a way that you can implement it today. I was born heavy. I am currently 56 years old. I was born at 10 pounds. It seems like my weight just blossomed from there onward.
Speaker 1:I was an obese teenager, an obese adult. I had two children by cesarean section. Now that C-section is going to stop you from losing weight. But hey, some women say that I had two children. They're now 23 and 26. And the belly fat just seems like. When I got to 47, when I got into menopause, it seemed like it stayed here and more, and all the things that I had learned and done when I was younger that worked no longer worked. So before we get into the meal plan, let's talk about what happens when you get older as a female, when you get into the age of 35, your hormones start to fluctuate, even if you have regular cycles.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Thriving Through Menopause podcast. 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 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 1:All right when you pass the age of 50, 51, that's the average age of menopause in most women. For me personally, I went into menopause when I was 47. How do I know? Because I felt it. I got the hot flashes and everything. However, menopause will affect your weight. So if you don't change anything, studies have shown that you can gain up to 10 pounds per year, predominantly in the belly area. All right, go ahead and tell me where you're watching from. Tag your friends to this video because this is so important. Again, before we look into the meal plan what we should be eating let's talk about why we gain weight once we get to this age.
Speaker 1:Number one hormonal changes. The biggest hormone is estrogen. Its levels decline. That's going to cause body fat redistribution, meaning you no longer store fat in your thighs and in your hips like you used to. The body fat is going to predominantly be stored in the midsection, which is dangerous for your health, can cause you to have high blood pressure, put you at risk of diabetes and heart disease. Even if you are at your ideal body weight, you will notice that you store more belly fat. Now that's the reason why.
Speaker 1:Number two declining estrogen will cause you to have a slower basal metabolic rate. In addition to that, declining estrogen will cause you to lose muscle mass. This is the reason why you notice, as you get older, the body gets softer. So if you don't change things, the declining estrogen levels will change your body shape and the way your body looks and feels. But you can take control back by your nutrition Very important, so we'll talk about that here. In addition to that, declining estrogen levels cause you to become a little bit more insulin resistant. When you were younger, younger females do not have a high risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and hypertension like men. However, when you get older, this insulin resistance that we have from declining estrogen puts us at risk of heart disease. So you got to change your nutrition Very, very important. In addition to that, you know you get the heart flashes, you have mood swings, you have some water retention, you have increased cravings, yes, and when we are older, we do not move as much as we used to. All of these things. All of these things tell us that we have to change our nutrition. Otherwise, if we don't change anything, then the hormonal changes will change our bodies in a way that can impact your health and in a way that you may not like. I want you to take control now. In addition to that, declining estrogen levels can guess this can affect the way your nutrients are absorbed, can impact other hormones, the way they function, and can influence your cravings. Yes, declining estrogen levels cause you to have a few more cravings.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about misconceptions before we get into the meal plan. Number one most people feel that eating healthy is too hard, and that depends. I'm going to show you a very simple way to do it so that it's sustainable. Yes, one of the reasons why we stop doing what we're doing to be healthy and to lose weight and belly fat is because it's too hard. It's too hard, it's too difficult, it's too complicated. We're going to simplify that today. Number two one of the reasons why we stop or don't even start is we feel that eating healthy is expensive. No, it's not. It's not. It's not. Make things simple. I don't need to go out and make it so expensive and so complicated for myself. It's not sustainable, not at all. All right, let's look at the sample meal plan. I'm going to post it in the chat, whether you're watching me on Instagram or on YouTube. If you're not following me on YouTube yet you're missing out. Go there and follow me, because this video will be uploaded there as well. Sample meal plan is going to be four meals.
Speaker 1:Before I think about my meals, I want to think about how much do I need to eat per day? That's the first thing. How much, because how many calories you consume, it doesn't matter what you do and how much you eat. And what you eat, calories do matter. Why is that? Calories are energy. If you consume too much energy, your body says, hey, I've got too much energy here, I need to save the rest for next time. So if you continue to consume too much energy, you're going to have too much storage eventually, and that storage is body fat and, with many menopause, more belly fat storage now. So how much do I need to eat per day? Very simple, simplify things. I'm not looking for accuracy.
Speaker 2:Once you start looking for 100% accuracy.
Speaker 1:It just gets too complicated. Everything is an estimate. Go to a BMI chart Google BMI chart. Look at your height and an ideal body weight for your height. There's going to be a range of numbers that says from this number of pounds to this number of pounds, that's a normal weight for you. I want you to pick one number and work with that. You're going to take your ideal body weight in pounds and multiply that by 12. And that gives you the number of calories that you need to consume per day calories that you need to consume per day. So let's take the number 150 pounds. Let's say that you're this person and your ideal body weight is 150 pounds.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to tell you your ideal body weight may not match exactly what you want to be. What you want to be when it comes to your weight is individual for you. You got to make it realistic, though I can't say, because I'm 500 pounds now my ideal body weight is going to be 300 pounds. I can say I will have a goal of 300 pounds. When I get there, I'm going to work to get to another goal, big goals. Chop them up, but again back to your ideal body weight of 150. Everybody is different. I'm going to take 150 and multiply that by 12 to give me the total number of calories that I need to consume per day and check this out. This is how we simplify things.
Speaker 1:Okay, all those changes that we talked about because of declining levels of estrogen due to menopause can be counteracted by increasing your consumption of protein. That's the one thing that you want to prioritize, whether you're snacking or eating a meal number one, think about protein. So this meal plan here has four meals. The meal plan for today and I'm going to post it. All right, it's very simple For breakfast. Breakfast means my meal number one, whether it's 10 am or 12 noon or 7 am. Meal number one is going to be an omelet 100 grams of egg whites, two whole eggs, put some spinach and some tomatoes. How simple is that? Make you an omelet. Have that with one slice of Ezekiel bread toast or wheat bread any bread that's healthy, that's not loaded with sugars like sourdough bread. One slice of that. I'm using Ezekiel bread, so the omelet and the Ezekiel bread toast will give me a total of 350 calories, and I can go back and calculate the protein content of my omelet and my Ezekiel bread, and that's 40 grams of protein. That's how I figured that out. In 100 grams of egg whites, I have about 100 calories and 20 grams of protein. In two whole eggs, I have 140 calories and 12 grams of protein. In Ezekiel bread toast, I have 80 calories and 4 grams of protein. Add the protein and calories for your tomatoes and your spinach. All together comes up to 350 calories and 40 grams of protein.
Speaker 1:Meal number two I'm going to make it so simple for myself. I want to have a yogurt parfait, so I'm going to have one scoop of protein powder. Real easy. This one takes me three minutes, four minutes or less to put together. Get the yogurt Three-fourths cup is a serving. Get the yogurt. One scoop of protein powder in your yogurt, two tablespoons of almonds, slivers or whatever nuts you like, and a small apple. You can chop that up, or some berries, mix it up. Mix up your yogurt and your protein. Put your toppings of your nut and your fruit, like I just talked about, and that's going to give me 325 calories total and 36 grams of protein. See, so you want to calculate your protein.
Speaker 1:Even though it's a meal, most of you would think it's a snack. It's not. It's a meal, but call it a snack. Whatever you want to call it. However, the protein content is enough. I want my body to consume protein each time I eat anything.
Speaker 1:All right, moving on to number three meal, the third meal. That's going to be six ounces of a grilled chicken breast, and then I want to have a salad, some mixed greens here, bell peppers, cucumbers, lettuce or spinach Put a sugar-free dressing in there and consume that with 100 grams of cooked jasmine rice. So I'm going to cook my rice, measure it after it's cooked. Why I need some carbohydrates so you can have rice, you can have potatoes, you can have sweet potatoes, you can have pumpkin, whatever works for you, but in a controlled amount For me. Rice, and this is going to give me, for this meal, 450 calories and 39 grams of protein.
Speaker 1:Meal number four, this time is going to be salmon, and I'm having five ounces of salmon. I'm going to have that with half a cup of quinoa and one cup of steamed vegetables, very simple. That gives me 375 calories and 35 grams of protein. I made a small note to say that I use two tablespoons of olive oil per day to prep all these meals. Why do I say that? Because I'm going to calculate that also in my total. In the calculations, if you go ahead and add all the proteins, meal one through meal four, it gives you 150 grams of protein and 1,400 plus calories total.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's a little bit underneath my goal for the day, but I keep it that way intentionally. Why? Because here comes my liquids. Okay, I'm going to drink some coffee in the morning. I have three tablespoons of half and half and some stevia. Yes, yes, that's going to be about 80 calories through the day, depending on what I feel like drinking. Sometimes I'm drinking my EAAs, sometimes I'm drinking my electrolyte water. All of these calories count, yes, because what you drink also counts. So all together for the day, I will consume about 1,800 calories and 150 grams of protein. Here's a tip for you. Take this one. I'm going to meal prep this for three days in a row. So for the next three days I'll be eating exactly the same thing. Why?
Speaker 2:is that.
Speaker 1:I don't have time to calculate, calculate, calculate each time I'm eating a meal. I do this one time, at the time that I'm meal prepping and the time that I'm portioning out my meals. I do that one time for three days. It makes it a lot easier for me, so I don't have to think about it every single time. I don't have the time for that, and I know you don't have the time either. Let's look at one more thing that makes it a lot easier and why I will tell you it is cheaper to eat healthy and meal prep Shopping list. The list is so simple. You go buy your proteins. You've got eggs, egg whites, protein powder, greek yogurt, chicken breast and salmon. That's it for the proteins. When you go to your greens, I've got the Ezekiel bread, rice and quinoa. That's it. When I go to my fruits, I'm getting a small apple. That's it. So for three days, I get three apples. It's cheaper, I promise you. And when.
Speaker 1:I go to my vegetables. I'm getting spinach, tomatoes, some mixed greens, cucumbers, cucumbers, maybe bell peppers, and that's it. Or, to make it a lot even easier, skip all the lines and just go to the freezer and get me a bag of frozen mixed vegetables and I'm done. Lastly, just get you some almonds leave us. I've got olive oil at the house. So each time before I go shopping, I like to shop in my pantry. Make sure that I'm not going out there to buy different things. Lastly, my seasonings. I have a jar I'm going to show you one day and what I do is get single ingredient seasonings. For example, I get garlic, onion powder, black pepper, oregano, basil all the dried herbs and spices that I love. I emptied them into one jar that lasts me about one to one and a half months. Why do I do that? I prefer the simple ingredients, but I don't have time. Each time I have to cook, I am constantly opening things and adding, add, add, add. It's too hard. I want to make it simple, so I mix my own blend one time in a big jar and each time I want to cook something, I just take my own mix and sprinkle it out over everything. Makes it so simple. Lastly, you notice I'm not using cooking spray.
Speaker 1:Cooking spray is another story. Why? Because on the container it says zero calories. It is not zero calories, remember zero calories for one serving, and one serving is a third of a second, like. There's no way, I'm trying to do it. Or it says I don't know, point something grams, nope, nope, nope. My kitchen scale cannot measure that little. So cooking spray is not zero calories. When you do the spray, like I do, to coat the bottom of the pan, who knows how many calories? I can't quantify that. So make it so simple.
Speaker 1:I'm going to post this meal plan and the shopping list going to be simple and cheap, because for these three days I am spending what you're spending for eating out. I'm spending the same amount of money for three days, like you can spend for maybe one day or half a day if you have to take the same amount of money and eat out, and when you eat out you don't even know what's in that food. Ladies, the last tip I'll leave you with is when we are older and we are in menopause, our bodies are so sensitive. Don't make your food to vary too much from day to day to day, because our bodies are going to respond based on what you put in it. So if you make your meals too variable, your body's kind of trying to adapt and who knows, it may work, it may not work.
Speaker 1:What you're doing is working. Don't change it. But if you want to change things, we have got to change the things that we are doing. It's no sense trying to exercise so hard and not adjust your nutrition. Your nutrition first, because that's going to be 75 to 80% in your weight. So it's so important that you adjust what you're eating and then your body is going to start falling in place and you're going to get the results. Lastly, because you're eating healthy, don't do what I did. I made a mistake, you know, 14 years ago, when I started my journey 300 pounds plus I thought I needed to eat just chicken breast and salad. My chicken breast. I seasoned it with just black pepper and salt. Oh no, oh no. Unfortunately, I did that for months and months, and months.
Speaker 2:I was miserable, I was stuck over here.
Speaker 1:It tasted so bad, my salad. I had lemon and vinegar. I struggled and when I gave that up, trust me, for years and years and years I could not eat the salad because I had just done it in a bad way. Now your meals, even though they are healthy, I want you to season it. It needs to be delicious. Think about herbs, think about things like basil, oregano, cilantro. Make your food so tasty, but prep it one time for three days. Stick to it and it's going to be so, so simple, delicious and you will not be spending that much money, all right.
Speaker 1:Lastly, those of us in menopause, we tell ourselves I'm too old, listen, I got to have this with that. I got gotta have this with that, I gotta have this with that. No, you don't. Your body is changing as you are getting older. You can no longer say I gotta have this, this, like what I was doing back then. Why? Because your body is going to show you what you don't want and what you don't need. We have got to change things at this point in order to take back control of our bodies. All right, all right, my friends, thank you, 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,