Thriving through Menopause Podcast

46. Sleep and Weight Loss - Is there a relationship?

• Host Dr. Enaka Yembe • Season 1 • Episode 46

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Today, we unlock the secrets to managing weight during menopause with the power of sleep!

Join us, on the Thriving Through Menopause podcast as we explore how the unseen saboteur, inadequate sleep, can hinder your weight loss efforts. Together, we'll challenge the conventional understanding of sleep's role in hormone regulation, focusing on leptin and ghrelin, and uncover why disrupted sleep can lead to cravings, increased insulin resistance, and elevated cortisol levels.

As estrogen and progesterone levels wane, menopause challenges like hot flashes, mood swings, and restless legs add complexity to weight management. This episode promises insights into how these factors affect your body composition.

Tune in to discover practical strategies that will transform your nights and your health. From establishing a consistent sleep routine to managing your environment, we provide actionable tips to enhance your sleep quality.

Learn the art of winding down with a relaxing pre-sleep environment and the importance of consulting healthcare providers regarding any medication changes.

We’ll also discuss the impact of stress and the balance of hormones like insulin on achieving a restful night.

With the right approach, sleep can become your secret weapon in maintaining a healthy weight through menopause.

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Speaker 1:

Inadequate sleep is one of the reasons why you may not be losing weight. So if you're doing everything like you're supposed to eating healthy foods, staying in that caloric deficit exercising, drinking your water, working on your stress and the weight is just not shifting, I want you to examine your sleep. There's a very good reason why we talk about on and on. There's a very good reason why we talk about on and on. You need to be sleeping seven to eight hours on average per day. So here's some reasons why sleep is so important.

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. 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 1:

Number one hormone regulations two hormones, leptin and ghrelin. Those are your hunger and your satiety hormones. Those are balanced when you are sleeping. Another thing that happens is, if you don't sleep enough, studies have shown that you become more insulin resistant, so your insulin levels overall are a little bit higher and your body tends to store more fat because of that. Lack of sleep or poor quality sleep can make you actually have more cravings. Why is that? Your stress hormone, that cortisol level, is going to be a little bit higher, and so you just have a few more cravings. Another thing that happens is if you don't sleep enough and I learned this recently your muscles do not recover normally like they should, so lack of sleep will affect your muscle recovery, especially when you exercise. Another thing that happens is lack of sleep because it promotes cortisol. It increases that cortisol level. You tend to have more fat storage anyway. Poor sleep or lack of sleep If you don't sleep enough, of course you're going to be awake for longer period, and that just gives you more time to tend to want to eat. Another thing that happens, though lack of sleep because it affects your judgment, kind of affects your cognitive function here, and so you just don't make good judgment when it comes to food choices, especially when you are weak. So very, very important.

Speaker 1:

Sleep is so important for long-term weight maintenance after you've lost the weight, and it's also important to help you while you are trying to lose weight. Now for those of us women in menopause and perimenopause so the age of 35 and over women in menopause and perimenopause to the age of 35 and over why is it that we have so much sleep disruption anyway? Number one our estrogen levels are dropping. That decline in estrogen level is going to disrupt your sleeping patterns. Number two declining estrogen levels. Of course, they cause all the symptoms and one of the biggest ones is hot flashes. I get a hot flash, I wake up, change clothes, change covers, so the sleep is just disrupted because of that Declining estrogen levels.

Speaker 1:

We know about that, but also the hormone progesterone. Its levels are declined in menopause and perimenopause and that causes insomnia. Another thing that happens while we are sleeping is while we don't sleep well as women in perimenopause is that we have all these mood changes and anxiety and things like that. That also causes hormone fluctuation. Now if you've ever had restless legs, you would know what I'm talking about. You go to lay down. It looks like your feet are itching, sometimes they hurt. We have to move them on and on. That can happen or actually occur, starting in menopause and perimenopause. If you have restless legs, please get checked. Sometimes it's actually because of vitamin or mineral deficiency, like iron deficiency. That can happen when you get older. That can disrupt your sleep as well. Other things, because our body composition can change.

Speaker 1:

Now that you're in perimenopause and menopause, your body will want to store fat in the abdominal area. We also have overall increased fat storage and decreased muscle mass, especially if we're not doing things to counteract that, and then we can develop sleep apnea because of that. We try to sleep, we start snoring, we stop snoring because we have stopped breathing at that point. That causes us to wake up, disrupts our sleep. So if you are a female in menopause and you start snoring, please get checked because you may have sleep apnea. Now Not only is your sleep disrupted and you are gaining weight, but sleep apnea on its own is another illness that needs another kind of treatment. So very important Now. Of course we're trying to get healthy. We are, of course we're trying to get healthy. We are women in menopause trying to get healthy. We're drinking more water. However, if you drink more water, especially at the end of the day, at night you know, you know what I'm talking about so many more bathroom trips at night when you're trying to sleep that will disrupt your sleep also.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes, if you're like me, I'm a coffee lover when I was younger, I used to be able to drink coffee at all times during the day and I may still be telling myself that. However, sometimes you become a little bit more sensitive to caffeine and caffeine has a long half-life. So if you're used to drinking coffee in the afternoon and you're not sleeping well, I want you to consider stopping your caffeine intake, I would say way before noon, because caffeine has a long half-life and that can disrupt your sleep. Those of us who have chronic fatigue, you know you're just tired all the time. We do think that when we are tired we sleep better, but that may not be the case. Sometimes we're just tired. We sleep better, but that may not be the case. Sometimes we're just tired and we cannot sleep enough.

Speaker 1:

Check your environment also. You know, sometimes I am very cold natured. I also have hot flashes. So automatically I used to bundle up, cover my head, wear my socks and everything, get in the bed and here comes one big, big hot flash and I take that off, take everything off, because I'm so hot. That disrupts my sleep as well. So if you're somebody who wakes up too many times at night with the hot flashes, I want you to consider what is your environment temperature. Cool the room down to about 70 degrees 68. Wear some clothes that are breathable, not constricted, and don't bundle up so much. Also, in your environment, you want to think about light. Sometimes there's light that's coming in through the curtains. We have the TV on in the bedroom, even though we claim we're not watching it. However, that blue light is giving signals to the brain and causing the brain to stay awake. So very, very important.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes we may be taking medications or we may have chronic conditions that make us not sleep well. If your medication is keeping you awake at night or you feel it is never, ever stop your medication on your own. This is when you go, sit with your medical care provider and tell them I think my medication may be keeping me awake. Is there an alternative? Don't ever stop your medicine on your own. That's just a bad, bad deal, all right.

Speaker 1:

So what can we do? What can we do to fix our sleep? Some practical tips here. You know how you wake up to an alarm. Most of us do, or most of us set three, four alarms to wake up, and some days we actually wake up even without the alarm, because our brains have learned to wake up at that time. I also want you to learn to create a sleep alarm. Figure out what time you want to go to bed. Is it 9 pm, is it 8 pm? Is it 10 pm? Whatever time, set that alarm and, when it goes off, go to sleep. Every single day. When the alarm goes off, go to sleep. If you do that over and over and over, after some time you would notice that your body tends to want to go to sleep at that time, even when you don't have an alarm.

Speaker 1:

That's the very first thing to do, create a sleep alarm and, around that, also set yourself a sleep routine. What are the things that help relax you? What are the things that tell your brain okay, this is time to go to sleep. For some people, it's maybe drinking some hot tea.

Speaker 2:

Maybe not a good idea at night for some.

Speaker 1:

For other people it's taking a warm bath, maybe reading a book, maybe just some relaxation exercises like yoga, maybe listening to some soothing music. Just create a routine around when you have to go to bed. That routine is going to tell your mind okay, this is bedtime, we're going to bed, so that's it. You also want to create, like I talked about, that sleep-friendly environment. Turn your TV off. In fact, the blue lights from your computer, from your phone, from your iPad and things like that from the TV. You want to get rid of those at least an hour to two hours before you actually go to sleep, because that blue line, even when we're not watching or looking at our phone, it still keeps your brain active. All right, another thing that you can do if you're not losing weight and you're thinking, hmm, what's the problem? What's the problem? You want to actually track your sleep. Write it down. Write down how many hours you're sleeping, because some of us may not be sleeping enough, which is seven to eight hours nightly, and we don't even know it. I think I'm just sleeping enough. However, I may be going to bed at midnight, waking up at five o'clock am every single day and not even realizing it. So tracking your sleep, keeping a sleep diary, is another practical way to fix your sleep. Another thing that you can do is or that's really important for people like me. I have severe acid reflux, so if I eat food and just go to sleep in 30 minutes or an hour, then my food seems to want to come to haunt me. All that reflux. I wake up coughing and things like that. So very important for you to not eat a heavy meal at nighttime and also don't eat at least two to three hours before you go to sleep. That's also very, very important. Another thing that can help you is actually exercise, walking. You is actually exercise Walking. Now don't go running three miles or five miles or 10 miles or picking up some heavy weights and then try and go to sleep maybe an hour after that. That actually may keep you awake, puts your body in some stress and may keep most people awake. What you want to do is just a slow, gentle walk. Moving your muscles is a good landing pad for the food that you eat anyway, and that gentle walk can actually bring out those pleasurable hormones that say, ah, now I'm relaxed, and then it can help you go to sleep.

Speaker 1:

For those of you who take naps during the daytime. Sometimes we're taking way too many naps and our body feels like it's slept enough, so you actually want to cut down the nap time. You know how we train the baby not to sleep too much. Now, this is an older baby. We don't want it to sleep too much during the day because we want it to learn to sleep at night. It's about the same thing. Do the same thing for yourself. Don't sleep too much or too many naps during the day, because you may be awake at night. Remember that your hunger and your satiety hormones including hormones like insulin those are balanced while you are sleeping. So there's a rhythm that your body knows the circadian rhythm daytime, nighttime and the hormones are also balanced in this same way. That actually helps your body maintain a healthy weight.

Speaker 1:

Now, the very last thing I'll talk about is stress, anxiety and things like that. So if you're stressed out, most of us during the day, there's a lot of noise, we're busy, we may not be thinking too much. However, you go to bed at night. Everything is quiet now and here's your brain, wide awake, thinking, becoming more anxious, thinking about different things. So stress and depression for some people. It can make them stay awake. Sometimes you can work on it by yourself. You can put in some techniques that help you de-stress. Sometimes for some people it is prayer and meditation reading your Bible and things like that, or speaking to a senior person at church or speaking to a friend or family member.

Speaker 1:

However, if you have worked on your stress and it's not working, you're still stressed out. This is a time when you want to seek the help of a professional. They have different things like cognitive, behavioral therapy, counseling, that can help you. I personally I have gone through counseling and I'm not ashamed to say that because actually the counselor helped me so much with my stress levels at the time, gave me lots of techniques, gave me lots of tips and things to think about and this was several years ago. However, today I still use those techniques that I learned.

Speaker 1:

So don't be afraid or embarrassed about seeking help for your stress levels, because just that stress can make you unhealthy. It interferes with your sleep, throws off your hormones, can actually increase your blood pressure and your heart rate, expose you to things like heart attacks and strokes. If your heart rate and your blood pressure stay high for too too long, all right. So I hope these tips help you with improving your sleep, getting you healthier and helping you to maintain a healthy weight or to get to a healthy weight. We actually talked about this during my bootcamp live meal prep and live coaching session on zoom. So my next cycle is going to start.

Speaker 1:

I forget what day it is. I think it is October, the 20th. Go and sign up, because if you haven't signed up, you're missing out. It's just $1 per day, $21 for three weeks. That can give you a good starting point. We have nutrition coaching. We have the workouts like this morning I did 4.2 miles right here walking with my group on Zoom and then, of course, once a week, we have a live meal prep and a live coaching session. So, very important, if you're struggling alone, come on. Come to my community and we can work together and getting the weight off. I have succeeded in getting off over 150 pounds now. This is 15 years of me working hard, almost 15 years of me working hard. So, all right, I hope these tips help you, thank you. Thank you, and I hope you have a fantastic day. Bye. Thank you for tuning in to this. I hope you have a fantastic day. 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,