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
48. Is Your Body Sabotaging Your Weight Loss? Discover the Solution!
Ever wonder why your weight loss efforts seem to hit a wall during menopause? Join me, on the Thriving Through Menopause podcast as we unpack the unexpected hurdles of menopausal weight management.
Discover how hormonal shifts can sabotage your best intentions by resetting your body's weight baseline and learn why losing weight feels like swimming upstream. Through my personal journey and professional insights, we'll explore the intricate dance of hormones like ghrelin that leave you hungry despite eating less. Together, we’ll illuminate the biological, genetic, and environmental factors making weight loss such a formidable challenge.
With a focus on empowerment, we'll navigate the maze of metabolic adaptation and the critical need to recalibrate energy requirements.
This episode promises practical strategies to overcome automatic patterns, emphasizing the importance of mindset in transforming eating and exercise habits.
By examining the mesolimbic system's role in forming comfort-driven habits, we'll offer actionable guidance on creating a supportive environment for sustainable health improvements.
From reorganizing your home to making healthier social choices, this episode provides the tools to redefine your path to wellness during menopause.
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Hello everyone, in today's talk I'll be telling you just what I know so far about how your body tries to work against your weight loss efforts and what you can do about it.
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:My name is Dr Inaka Yembe. For those of you who don't know me, I'm currently working in family medicine outpatient clinic, as well as the emergency room here in Louisiana. I have touched the lives of thousands of patients. I'm very, very passionate about weight loss, mainly because of my journey my personal journey, which I will share with you a little bit later on. Journey my personal journey, which I will share with you a little bit later on.
Speaker 1:But today I want to take a closer look about why is it that we can lose some weight. I mean, most people have success in losing five pounds, 10 pounds, 20 pounds. You have success in doing that, but it's just difficult to keep it off. We struggle with keeping it off and sometimes we even gain it back when we are doing all the right things. That has happened to me personally and the American Board of Obesity Medicine and as I studied through the guidelines and several things and information that they have out there for us, it's taught me so many different things and it especially has taught me this specific fact how our bodies and how our hormones down-regulate or up-regulate when we lose weight and of course, it makes so much sense that you lose weight and then it's easy to pack it on but so hard to lose it. I, personally, I'm able to gain five pounds in a weekend. Have you been there? I'm able to gain five pounds, but when I come home five pounds heavier after my weekend, it's going to take me a month or even longer to lose those same five pounds I gained in about four or five days.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I've learned, in addition to learning how to not only leverage the tools that we have when it comes to treatment options, but I've learned one specific thing that obesity is a chronic medical illness. When I say chronic medical illness, I'm not just talking about the medical problems that you can have as a result of. So of course, we know that obesity can put you at risk of having diabetes and hypertension and other things like that, but actually obesity on its own is a medical illness. I never thought about it until recently. Of course, when you think about a medical illness, especially a chronic medical illness, then you start to think about what are the causes. So within the last few years, I have now come to understand that the causes of obesity are multifactorial.
Speaker 1:Of course, you can guess that right off the bat, but there are three main ones that you must know, and these three factors interplay amongst themselves and, just put you, make it more difficult for you to lose the weight and keep it off. Number one is genetic. You have no control over that. Genetics are here. You didn't choose mom and dad, so you're here and that's it. The second two you have control over, and I'm going to share with you some tips and tools and strategies on what you can do to control those other two factors. So the second factor is environmental and the third is behavioral, and so when you are obese, these are some of the causes.
Speaker 1:You know, when I was overweight, I struggled and I struggled and I gave up so easily. I didn't understand anything. All I knew was that I needed to work out and I needed to eat less, and that was that. But that's not true. There's several other factors. So think about your environment and think about your behavior. Put that in the back of your mind while I tell you the next thing.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, obesity is a chronic medical illness and get this one of the things that happens when you are obese is that you have persistent hormonal and physiologic changes that continuously fight against your weight loss efforts. That concept just blew me away and it has been studied and demonstrated in the medical literature. So when you gain weight, your brain, specifically the hypothalamus don't really don't worry about the facts there, but just about the structure, but just say your brain resets itself and tries to keep you at your heaviest weight. That's what happens in our bodies. This study came out in 2011 and it has been proven. Patients who are studied for even six years after still still have this brain and hormonal reset. So now the studies, the scientists, are thinking that this hormonal reset is here with you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:So what do you do? You've got to work and work hard, but you've got to work in a smart way and I'm going to give you some tools towards the end. So one of the reasons why I do what I do is just because of my personal story. So, for those of you who don't know me, I was born at almost 10 pounds, so it's just like I hit the life. I came into life right here on the obese side. I grew up into an obese child, an obese teenager, on and on into almost my thirties. I had the two children, both of them by C-section. Both babies were five pounds each, five, 12, five, 11, real tiny babies. I gained 80 pounds with baby number one, another 60 pounds with baby number two, of course, and lost a little bit of weight after the first one, and then I gained 60 pounds with the second one. So I mean, it was just a major struggle. You name it. I've done it. Anything that I could get my hand on over the counter pills, just anything. I've done it on and on and on, until I got really serious in 2017 and I figured out that, of course, what I was putting into my mouth and later on I decided what I was also feeding my brain when it comes to my mindset was really playing against me, and so I changed that.
Speaker 1:But let's talk a little bit of science here. When you understand how the science comes into fact here, I hope, my hope for you is that, at the end of this talk, you would come up with one thing that you may change when it comes to just adopting that healthy lifestyle change and maintaining it for the rest of your life. So, when you eat a meal, several hormone levels go up, and then they go to your brain and they tell you hey, look, this person has consumed enough, they try to get you to stop eating. In fact, there's a big nerve that goes from your stomach or from your bowel all the way to your brain. It's called the vagus nerve. It also tries to stop you from eating too much. So, again, you've got two things that are telling you you've eaten a meal, you've had enough, so this is where you stop hormones and that vagus nerve.
Speaker 1:So if this is true, I start to think so why is it so hard for me to lose weight then? So now I know that there's hormones and I know that there's nerve. So now what? So there was a study that came out in 2011 and it showed that people who lost weight actually the satiety hormone levels dropped. I'm thinking, wow, how can that be? How can I lose weight? And then it seems like I can eat the same thing and not get satisfied. Does it make sense? I, personally, I'm walking around, I'm thinking I'm eating less because I've been doing this for so long. It almost seems to me like I'm not eating as much. I'm telling myself I trained myself, but that's not true.
Speaker 1:And also one of the things that your body does is it down regulates your satiety hormone, and then the only hormone that we know that it causes us to eat is a hormone called ghrelin, and actually your body up regulates that hormone. So when you lose weight, there is a change in your reset. Everything resets itself and those hormone levels are changed backward. So what that means is that where you were at, say, for me, almost 300 pounds. So now where I am today maybe a hundred and something pounds less my hormone levels are thrown off. Grelin is off, and it seems like it should always make me to be hungry. And then the other hormones are there and it seems like they're always they're telling me that I'm not full. I should eat more Now. So that's one thing I want you to keep in the back of your mind.
Speaker 1:The next thing that happens obviously we know that there is something called a metabolic reset. We know that. So of course, you lose weight. You lose weight. You lose weight. Then you don't need as much energy, and then your basic metabolic rate drops. But let's look at that a little closely. It's called metabolic adaptation. So studies now show that for every 2.2 pounds that you lose, your resting energy requirement drops about 30 calories per kilo. Ain't that something? So now the hormones are now messed up and then my basic metabolic rate drops and I don't require as much energy. That's the reason why I can travel and gain, so of course, it makes more sense now. So this is one of the reasons why you see me here on Facebook. I'm constantly exercising, so it's not for anything, and I am not changing in size or weight. I'm still just about the same even though I'm exercising. So if you lose, for example, 20 pounds, your metabolic rate will be about 300 calories lower, and that's a fact. And I encourage you for every 10 pounds that you lose.
Speaker 1:If you're real techie or if you're really there counting your calories which I don't recommend but I mean you should have some idea of how many calories you actually need to eat to lose weight. Right, we have to be a little bit somewhat technical. I'm not saying look at it with every single thing. There are some tools that are there at our disposal, like MyFitnessPal. If you're my patient, you'll probably linked to me personally through the MyFitnessPal. I see what you're putting on your diary. I can send you a little message there that says hey, listen that right, there was a mistake or something. But use these tools that we have on hand. They are out there. I'm not saying everybody should be techie, but they are there. But one of the things that will happen is if you lose one kilo, which is 2.2 pounds, then your requirement, your basic metabolic rate, drops by 30 calories. So I say that because when you lose weight, you need to recalculate your energy requirement, because the only thing that will cause you to lose weight overall, at the end of the day, is that you are in a caloric deficit. So you should know this metabolic adaptation is a major problem. Some patients have been studied for up to six years later and they still have this metabolic adaptation. So we've talked about the hormone reset that happens backward, and then we've talked about the metabolic adaptation. So now you're asking me what do I do? What do I do? What does it translate to me in my daily life? Hey, look, I'm glad you asked that question.
Speaker 1:Remember, when I started talking, I talked about the three factors that cause this chronic illness. Again, obesity is a chronic illness, not only because it's a risk factor for major medical illness, but obesity on its own is a chronic illness. It has its causes. So, looking at the three causes of obesity genetic, environmental and behavioral. So number one throw that away. Mom and dad are here. Thanks mom, thanks dad. We can't change that. We already have that. So the other two factors are under your control. There are some controllable risk factors for every single chronic illness, and obesity is one of those. So since we can't change mom and dad, let's look at the other two.
Speaker 1:Environmental Number one your environment is key. You can't go on and sign up for a program or purchase some healthy food and come back to the same things that put you in this position in the first place. So I encourage you to clean your house. For example, if you're expecting a new baby, you prepare the home for the baby. If you're expecting guests for the evening, you prepare the home to receive guests. If you want to lose weight, you've got to prepare your home for success. Clean out that pantry. Clean out the refrigerator.
Speaker 1:Yes, I know you have children. We can all come up with the excuses. For me personally, I have well, not a little little child, but I've got a child. I make sure I buy her one serving of whatever she wants, because I don't want to be tempted and that's it. But I don't like to keep them around the house. If they are going to tempt me, you've got to put things in your environment that do not tempt you. That goes also for your social activities, right, you've got to mingle with people who keep you on track most of the time. I'm not saying throw away all your friends now because they're not on the same lifestyle as you, but I'm saying if you go out with the friends that go to the fast food, I don't know where the restaurant every single evening and eat pizza, drink beer, of course your lifestyle, it's not going to matter what program you're registered into. So structure your environment, for success is all I'm trying to say. Clean the refrigerator, clean the pantry, and that starts with shopping. When you go out shopping, you've got to be a smart shopper.
Speaker 1:I think the manufacturers have what is it? 76 ways of calling sugar. When it comes to the label, sugar is called in so many ways. Listen, when it gets to your body, your body says one thing. It says energy and if it's too much, it's going to store it as fat. It doesn't matter what you buy and it doesn't matter what the manufacturers call it. There are 70. It was just mind-boggling. But you want to be a detective when it comes to purchasing the foods that you're going to put in your body. Right, this is the only body you're going to have for the rest of your life. Take care of it. I mean, will you just go and purchase I don't know diesel and put it in your vehicle and expect it to run down the street smoothly?
Speaker 1:Why do we put all these things in our bodies? Hey, hey, be a smart shopper Very important, so it starts with shopping. I also said surround yourself with the right people that keep you on track on a daily basis. Join a group. It's called group power. The power of a group can help motivate you and keep you accountable.
Speaker 1:Next thing you want to do is know your numbers. You've got to know your numbers. I know people who never weigh themselves and they think that's a good thing. No, it's not a good thing. You should know your weight. You should know your weight. You should know your numbers. You should know your cholesterol. So the first thing that you must do, if you haven't done that already, go get a physical. The doctors would look at the nice thing called BMI. Bmi is not the beginning and the end. So if you're sitting there at home with your app and calculating that BMI and saying, okay, I'm in the correct way, that's not all of it. When it comes to your health, bmi is just one thing that the doctors look at. They also look at other things, like your cholesterol levels, your blood pressure, your blood sugar, but you must know your numbers.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we can do to be accountable to ourselves is to track our progress. I recommend daily weights. That's a good thing for you to know your weight so you can see and know what's happening when it comes to your own weight. There are several tools that you can use. I mean, there are some scales now that are just digital. They have Bluetooth. You weigh yourself. It uploads your weight into your MyFitnessPal, keeps track of everything. So you just look at it and you know oh, I'm on track or I am not. But you want to keep track on your progress. We can't go walking around as if we're blind. Our bodies are here. Next thing, you know you have a medical emergency, so it's up to you to keep track of your numbers. So you've got to be accountable to yourself. Weigh yourself daily, go to the doctor, find out what your numbers are and what your risk factor is. So that's environmental for you in a nutshell. You can add the meal plan to that. The next thing so we've talked about genetic risk factors of obesity that we cannot change. That came from mom and dad. The next thing was the environmental all these things in our environment that may be working against us we have control over. And how does that play when it comes to metabolic reset and it comes to the hormonal change that happens when you lose weight. I'm going to tell you now Behavioral changes, behavioral risk factors for obesity. You have full control over that. You do have full control.
Speaker 1:The way you behave, the way you behave and the way you think, the way you think about food, the way you think about exercise and the way you think about anything will reflect on your body. Your actions and what you eat will show up on your body. There's no way around it. So you eat wrong, you behave wrong, you think and you're stressed all the time. It's going to show up on your body. For example, if I you know those of you who are Africans, you're going to relate to this. I say I'm going to have the cauliflower fufu. Some people say, stop, don't do that. I'm going to say I'll have my eru, which is an African vegetable with no oil, and some people say, well, that's not for me, why not? This is something that you learned with time. So the behaviors that we have, we have the ability. If we have the correct mindset and if we have a growth mindset, which is one that's willing to learn and change with information, then we know that most of the things that we've learned through time we can change.
Speaker 1:Your mindset is key. I'm telling you hands down number one thing that you must change when it comes to your behavior and when it comes to how your lifestyle can change. The first thing that you must really really adjust and change and be ready to adapt is your mindset the way you look at exercise, the way you look at food, your relationship with food. Most of us want to celebrate. We go buy a cake and eat the whole cake. Most of us are stressed. We go buy some chocolate and drink that. Most of us come home tired. We buy, get something. So you have to have a mindset change. Number two your activity has to change. It must change. You must start exercising.
Speaker 1:I didn't say get up and run a marathon. I'm saying get a little bit active. And I'm going to tell you why. And this is why I keep exercising because I've come such a long way and I now know that if I lose four or five pounds, I'm losing four or five pounds and four pounds or five pounds will be fat and one pound may be a loss of lean muscle. What does that do? It causes downregulation of my basic metabolic rate, I lose lean muscle. It just makes it harder for me to keep losing weight and then it makes it easier for me to gain weight. I don't want to lose my lean muscle mass.
Speaker 1:Even my elderly patients, I encourage them to exercise. I never tell an elderly person go walk 10 miles or go walk one mile. What I tell them to do is listen. When you wake up and you do all the things that you want to do, you've got time. Now it's about 10 o'clock. Get one bottle or half a bottle, hold your water bottles in your hand and just walk up and down your hallway for about 20 minutes. That's it. Do that two or three times a week for me. That's it. Listen the older you are, the more important it is that you exercise. Again, don't get up and push yourself. You want to do things that are sustainable for you long-term. Find something that you like, that you like and you can do consistently for a long time. Okay, Now the next thing that plays a huge factor in that hormonal reset there is your habits, and I'm going to focus here for just a couple of minutes on habits.
Speaker 1:Now, our bodies constantly this is the way we were formed by God our bodies constantly try to keep us safe and they try to keep us happy, and so there's a nice little system in the brain called the mesolimbic system. This is our defense system. It keeps us happy and it learns habits very quickly. So, for example, if I come home from work and I'm tired and I sit down, I have my dinner and I'm now resting and I sit on my couch and then, because I'm on the couch and I'm watching TV, I say listen, well, you know what? I can just go in there and have a little bowl of ice cream it's not bad, and I'll have that with, say, maybe just a little bit of fruit juice. And if I do that two, three times, my brain now learns to say oh wow, wait a minute, this is something that she used when she was tired. So each time I come home and I sit on that couch, my brain is just going to automatically remember this input and this habit that I've developed. And now it's automatic and I'm not thinking about it.
Speaker 1:This is one of the reasons why it's difficult for us to break habits that put us in this condition of being overweight or obese. It's because now we have made the habits that bring us pleasure and that mesolimbic system that is there to keep us comfortable, to keep us happy, has now learned the habit, and then it becomes difficult for us to change it. So what I tell my patients is this if this is a habit that you have, and I tell them, and I talk to them and I say listen, what happens? What situation? What's happening? Because anytime that we start eating discomfort foods of course this is one of the biggest things that makes us gain weight, and then our hormones and our behavior and everything is set to keep us comfortable. So now we are doing this without thinking. I'm watching TV. Next thing I know there's an empty bowl of ice cream in front of me and an empty cup of juice and I'm thinking, why did I drink? And beating myself down.
Speaker 1:So I ask my patients about their habits, what they are doing in what situation. Because listen to this very carefully every habit that you have, when it comes to binge eating or when it comes to eating the wrong things, I want you to try to examine yourself. What are you doing around that habit? How are you feeling? Where are you? The only way and the most effective way of breaking a bad habit is not sitting here and thinking about it like, no, I'm not going to go to the fridge, no, I'm not going to go to the fridge, I'm going to hold strong. You can't do that every day. The easier thing for you to do is change the behavior. This is where the behavioral change comes, and sometimes people have to go to counseling for this.
Speaker 1:I do a lot of counseling in my clinic also when it comes to behavioral changes, and we call it intensive behavioral training for weight loss, and one of the things I tell patients to do is, if you have identified the situation so you're tired, came home from work tired. That's one situation. The second thing that's paired up with that is sitting on this specific couch or this specific recliner then what I want you to do is, when you come home, do not sit in that recliner Very important. You come home, go sit somewhere else. Now you've changed the script. Your brain is confused. It's not even thinking about taking you back to the refrigerator to get something that you were craving. So that's one of the ways to break that habit. If you have any questions, want you to reach out to me and I can help you. Give you a few more pointers on that. So change the habits. That's one of the behavioral changes that's very successful because this hormonal reset is going to be here with us for the rest of our lives. We just have to do different things, like the behavioral changes and the environmental cleanup that we have to do to be successful and keep the weight off long-term.
Speaker 1:The next thing that I tell people and this is my last again resistance training, resistance training. Listen, resistance training for women comes with a nice side effect of having some nice muscle tone. I get it. I have women who say I'm not going to pick up weights because I don't want to look like King Kong. Listen, you're never going to look like King Kong if you're not taking external hormones. So I don't recommend taking external hormones. But what I say is women, especially and especially if you're in your 50s and above, like myself and men of us is here you do want to pick up weight actively, consistently, not only cardiovascular exercise, which is very helpful, but you want to add some resistant training to that because, again, it helps you build that muscle mass and it helps give you a nice tone. Remember that for every four or five pounds that you lose, you lose some lean muscle. So you don't want to get in a pickle. If you started off like me, my intention was to lose 70 pounds less than what I was three and a half years ago. I can't imagine how much lean muscle mass I would have lost if I was not consistently picking up weight. So that's my last advice for you, especially for you women.
Speaker 1:Again, obesity is a chronic medical illness. It's got three main factors. It's got several factors, but of course the three main factors that we have identified, that we work on and that we know of, are environmental factors, genetic factors and behavioral factors. And because you cannot change your genetic factors mom and dad, mom and dad were involved and so you can never change that You've got this other tool your behavior and your environment that you must continuously work on. And the reason why I started by telling you how that hormonal reset happens and how the metabolic reset happens is that these hormonal and metabolic reset and the changes that will happen, they will be there lifelong. You can't go in and change those hormones. That will always be there. So your job now is to work on the environmental factors of what you've surrounded yourself with, your mindset, your shopping you want to think about that consistently and then also your behavior.
Speaker 1:Your body is the most precious thing that you have and, by the way, it's the only place that you have to live in period, so you cannot afford not to take care of it. Don't take your body for granted. And the last thing I'm going to leave you with and I'm going to end the last thing I'm going to leave you with is that most of the times, we have just so much negative self-talk, we discourage ourselves and tell ourselves it's too hard, we can't do it, I'm not able, I just can't. I have no ability. On and on and on.
Speaker 1:So, coming out of this talk, I want you to start giving yourself some positive, positive self-talk. Tell yourself you can. That's the. To start giving yourself some positive, positive self-talk. Tell yourself you can. That's the beginning. Give yourself some positive affirmations every single day. Yes, you can. Yes, you're powerful, you're able, you're beautiful, you're smart. And God put you on this earth for a mission. I want you to accomplish your mission in a healthy body, because God didn't create you in a sick body. He created you in a healthy body and you and I, I am sure, going to keep working and helping myself and others to stay healthy long term.
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,