E9: Is There Any Hope for My Metabolism? (The Midlife Metabolism Myth—and How to Fire Yours Back Up)

🚨 PSA for every midlife woman who’s ever sighed, “My metabolism is dead.”

Spoiler alert: it’s not dead — it’s just tired of your old tricks.

In this episode, we’re busting the biggest midlife metabolism myths (no, it’s not your age’s fault) and diving into 3 simple, science-backed ways to reignite your body’s natural burn.

You’ll learn:
🔥 Why your metabolism slows and how to flip it back on
🧠 The hormone connection no one ever explained
💪 3 realistic daily shifts to fire up your energy, confidence, and calorie burn — without starving or suffering

Your metabolism isn’t broken. It’s just waiting for you to speak its midlife language.

🎧 Tune in, take notes, and let’s remind your body who’s boss.

I also mention Dr Chris Winter's podcast and Instagram, you can find him here.

And we talked about the pre-holiday de-stressing workshop called The Jingle Free Zone Challenge. You can join that for free here!

The free Sleep is Self-Care Guide can be downloaded directly here.

Follow me on Instagram or visit my website.
Watch full episodes on YouTube.

To sign up for the free 7-day Midlife Reset, click HERE,

Transcript

Hello, my beautiful friend. I am so glad you're here today. We are going to talk
about metabolism and what happens to your metabolism in midlife. Welcome to the Unmute Your Midlife podcast where we take you from foggy and forgotten to focus and lit up. I'm Joyce, your nurse turned midlife resurrection strategist and the cheerleader in your back pocket. And I'm here to remind you, your next season in life is your power era. 

If you have been told that your metabolism just dies after age
40. That is a lie. It doesn't die. It adapts. The trick is learning how to speak
its new language. By the end of this episode, you're going to understand what's
really happening with your metabolism in midlife and three proven ways to wake it
back up naturally, without its dreams, without giving it. So for me personally, I
remember being so frustrated as I watched the number on the scale, go up, up, up. And the number in my pants go up, up, up. And my endurance in my favorite
activities go down, down, down. I started to get a little fearful that I was just
going to be doomed to become one of those fluffy old ladies who only did sedentary things. I probably had this vision in my head because my great -grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis and she loved being outdoors. She mowed her own lawn until she was probably 70, 80, and she would go boating on the weekend, every weekend, on the Mississippi River. She was just a very active lady. At a certain point, her arthritis got so bad that all she could really do is hang out indoors. And she knitted and crocheted and sewed basically to help keep the stiffness out of her hands. I just did not want that kind of activity limitation, at least not in my 40s. But what I didn't realize was that my body wasn't the problem.
My strategies were just outdated. 

So really quick, let's break down three myths about midlife metabolism for women. Myth number one, "my metabolism is slow because I'm getting older." The truth is: your hormones, such as your estrogen, your progesterone, your cortisol, your thyroid hormones, they shift, which changes how efficiently your body uses energy, not if it can. Your metabolism is still there. We just have to figure out how to work in the new parameters that it has to operate. 

Myth number two, "exercise just doesn't work for my anymore." I remember in my 20s, I was one of those people who ran to eat. I liked to eat a banana split once in a while, or a candy bar in the afternoon, so I would exercise to work off those calories. When you get to a certain age, that doesn't work anymore. Plus, over-doing cardio, or skipping out on resistance training can actually stall out your metabolism because muscles become your metabolic engines. Midlife is the time to build those muscles, not to starve them. 

Myth number three, "I need to eat less to lose weight." This is such a false idea. The whole calories in, calories out is not 100 % true for us.
Under eating can stress your body and elevate your all levels. And that causes your body to store fat and it slows down your digestion. So fueling properly is the key. Calories do matter, but it's the type of calories and it's when you eat them. So a quick analogy, your metabolism isn't a fire that burns out. It's like a campfire
that needs the right balance of oxygen, fuel, and calm to burn clean. But the good
news is I've got three surefire steps to fire your them back up. So step one,
we're going to rebuild from the inside out. This means we're going to focus on gut
health, hydration, and anti -inflammatory foods. Now, if you've listened to me very
long by now, you know that those all fall within my four pillars of the menopause
toolkit. When your gut gets sluggish, your metabolism gets sluggish too. So think of your gut as the engine filter. And once you clean out that filter, everything is
going to run smoother. So to clean out that filter to rebuild from the inside out,
you probably need some probiotics or you need to eat certain foods that are rich in the probiotics. If you have heard of leaky gut syndrome, if you know that that's
something you struggle with, probiotics and fiber will do amazing things to help
resolve that leaky gut syndrome. I mentioned hydration. You've got to get enough
fluid. And I don't mean coffee all day or tea all day because those are diuretic.
So they actually need extra water to help flush out the diuretic. An easy way to
know how much fluid you need. If I weigh 150 pounds slash that in half, that's 75.
So I want to focus on getting 75 ounces of water a day. Now that's my base needs.
If I go do a really strenuous activity, like I'm helping my friend move on a hot
100 degree day and I am sweating out all my electrolytes, I'm going to need extra.
I'm going to need more than 75. But on a typical normal day, 75 should be enough
to meet my needs. If you weigh 200 pounds, then slash that and half, 100, you need 100 ounces a day. Then the anti -inflammatory foods. I think I've done an episode on this already. If not, I know I've got some blog posts about it. And this is
something I teach about in my private coaching. Anti -inflammatory foods are things that don't stress the body. Many of the things that we eat today cause inflammation. And When our estrogen levels bottom out, we're no longer protected by the estrogen from inflammation. And so we have to do some lifestyle adjustments to make up for that lack of protection that the estrogen was giving us. Even if you're on estrogen replacement, it's not going to be the same amount of protection from inflammation that you were getting before when you were young. So you're going to have to adjust things. Like, for example, pepperoni pizza, highly inflammatory meal. Whereas a salad, a nice big green leafy salad with some chopped up pepperonis in there, and whatever other vegetables you like in there, and a nice Italian dressing. That would be similar flavors, but less inflammatory. I'm not suggesting that you completely throw out all fun foods, but you've got to balance it. 80 % of the time, try to eat the anti -inflammatory way. 20 % at a time, you can splurge and have whatever you want. And that reduces that stress on your body. It reduces your overall inflammation and it helps to get your metabolism kicked back into gear.

Again, I have done lots of posting on my blog about this. So if you go over there
to the blog and check it out, you can get a lot of information. And if this is
something that you need someone to hold your hand with to help you get on an anti
-inflammatory lifestyle, then you need to look at my coaching program. The second
thing is rethink movement. You don't have to live in the gym. You just need to
shift your mindset now from calorie burn to muscle build. I don't try to do a
whole 60 minute workout in one setting anymore. It's hard to get away to go to the
Y for 60 minutes and lift. So I focus on these movement minutes or movement resets.
So when I get up in the morning, first thing in the morning, I do 10 minutes on
my vibration plate. And I have some lymphatic drainage things and some just basic
stretching, moving. I think it's called flossing where you move a certain way to
floss the nerves. It's something I learned in physical therapy. And that's how I
start my day. And then if I can at lunch, I'll go do a brisk walk for 10 minutes
after I eat. That helps get my metabolism going. It helps with my digestion. And
then in the evening, we walk the dogs. And that is usually a very brisk activity
and i try to slip in take the stairs i park farther away than i need to i i was
going to say i take extra trips in from the car but who are we kidding we know
women don't do that we get it all inside in one trip right but there's other
movements you can do you don't have to live in the gym you can do walking you can do some things at home like watching tv with resistance bands you can do yoga and pilates. I even have a one of those treadmills so that I can do the stand -up desk and walk on the treadmill while they work. The only problem is I can't talk while I'm doing that because everybody can tell I'm on the treadmill. And I'm not very coordinated to use my mouse when I'm on my treadmill. 

I just want to encourage you to choose strength over sweat. Okay, we are not sweating to the oldies, Richard Simmons, Jane Fonda, all that 20 -minute workout. Those are history. Okay, we are focusing on building some muscle because Once you hit the age of 40, this is true for men and women. You start losing 10 % of your muscle mass every three years or five years. I can't remember the statistic now. I should have looked that up. Andthere's a very real thing called skeletal muscular syndrome of menopause (and I'm going to do an episode on just that pretty soon) that talks about the effects of the hormone changes on us in midlife. What it does to our bone structure and our muscle structure. And so When you put in the effort to do resistance training, weightlifting, then you're building your muscle and you're building your bone. You're stimulating that bone growth, that cell turnover in your bones, and you're increasing your muscle mass, which also fires up your metabolism. 

Another thing I want to encourage you about rethinking movement is don't think of exercise as a punishment. Think of it as a privilege. You still have an able body that can get out there and do some walking or running or jumping jacks, maybe with a poise pad on, but still, you have options that you can choose to move your body. And so when you do a workout at the end of it, I want you to take a moment and be thankful and grateful that you got to participate in moving your body, in taking care of future you and contributing to your longevity, keeping your mobility, keeping your independence, because those things are going to mean so much to you, 20, 30, 40 years from now. So exercise is not a punishment, it's a privilege, and it's a gift that we give ourselves, both now and in the future. 

Okay, the third thing, regulate your stress and your sleep. Sleep deprivation and high stress are the biggest metabolism stealers. I know with menopause, perimenopause, it's very difficult to get a good night's sleep between the restless legs and the insomnia, the night sweats, the achy joints, the stiff muscles. It all adds up. I get that. I'm not discounting that. But there's things you can do to get better sleep. I have a downloadable guide on my website is amazing. I spend a lot of time researching and putting into practice these things to help you have the best tips to get your sleep back in order. So go get that. It's free. You don't have to sign up for it. You just click a button and download the PDF and there it is. There's a great sleep doctor. His name is Dr. Chris Winters. He's on Instagram and he does a podcast and he talks about sleep and different things that you can do to improve your sleep. He's got a few books out. He's also one of the contracted doctors for the Oklahoma City Thunder. But a couple of things you can do, I'll just tell you right off the top of my head for improving your sleep, make sure you're getting enough magnesium. If you get enough magnesium, that helps with the restless legs. It helps with the muscle tension. It helps to relax you. Try and keep your room cool and dark. 68 degrees or lower is what your temperature needs to be for a comfortable night's sleep, according to research. Try to go to bed at the same time every night, even on your days off, and wake up at the same time every morning, even on your days off. You'll set yourself a stronger circadian rhythm. I love to wind. thing is I keep a notebook by the bed. It's called my brain dump notebook because when you go to lay down and sleep and suddenly you're thinking of all these things you didn't do or all these things you need to do stuff you don't want to forget. You can just grab your notebook and jot it down and then you're free to forget about it and go to sleep. Regulating your stress, again, is really important because you want to keep your cortisol levels down and you want to keep your blood pressure down. 

And if the holidays are something that you find stressful, I have some great news for you. I'm doing the Jingle Free Zone Challenge. It's going to be so fun.
It's five days. You'll get a short 10 minute video each day. And then you'll get a
little activity or worksheet to reinforce it. And then by the end of the five days,
you are going to be able to trade that holiday overwhelm for peace, energy, and
joy. And you're not going to have any guilt over the holiday grind this year. So
if you want to jump in that challenge with me and my friends and the online
community, it is jingle .orgivell living .com. Jingle is j -I -N -G -L -G -L -E -L -J -O
-Y, like yellow, C -E -L -I -V -I -N -G .com. I'll put a link in the show notes as
well. I would love to have you do the challenge with me. I think it's going to be
a great one. And if you sign up, do the link, you get entered in the prize
drawings. But it starts November 17th, so you're running out of time. If you want
to do it, better go sign up today. 

So there you go. We've talked about three myths and then three short, easy actions you can take starting today to help jumpstart your metabolism. Because remember, your metabolism is not dead. It's just speaking a new language now. But we are going to crack the code and start speaking the language that it understands. Your body is not broken. It is wise. It's asking for a new rhythm. Midlife is not metabolic decline. It's a metabolic recalibration. 

I hope it helps. I would love to get some feedback. If you could leave a rating
for the show, if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, that would help me a lot.
And if you have questions about anything I've talked about, feel free to drop me a
message. I promise to respond. In the meantime, remember that you are not foggy, forgotten, or finished. You are just getting lit up for your next season. And if
today's episode hit home, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with another sister
who needs some help unmuting her own midwife. Until next time, keep unmuting, keep rising, and remember your midlife resurrection starts right now.