Ep. 20 - I Thought Belly Fat Was the Problem. I Was Wrong.

Most conversations about belly fat focus on food and exercise.

This one doesn't.

After coaching hundreds of women through menopause, I've become convinced that belly fat is usually the symptom—not the real problem.

In this episode, I explore the hidden patterns underneath the struggle so many women experience after 50: shame, perfectionism, self-criticism, and the belief that if we just learn one more thing, we'll finally get it right.

If you've ever wondered why you know exactly what to do—but still can't seem to stay consistent—this conversation is for you.

Free Live Coaching Workshop — Thursday, July 9 | 3 pm PT / 6 pm ET. Register here: https://sophieuliano.com/julyworkshopregistration/

In this episode:

• Why belly fat is rarely the real issue
• The hidden emotional pattern keeping women stuck
• Why information alone doesn't create transformation
• How self-compassion changes everything
• The surprising reason lasting weight loss begins from the inside out

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How Smart Women Finally Beat Belly Fat, Low Energy & Inflammation

Register here

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Thanks for listening to Tea With Sophie. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast and leave a review—it really helps more women discover these conversations.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hi, and welcome to this episode of Tea with Sophie. I want to have a very different conversation today. I want to pivot. I know that you clicked on this video, you saw belly fat, and you hoped that I was going to give you tips on nutrition and exercise and things that you should do or could do to finally get rid of that belly fat. But I could do that, and I've got plenty of videos on this channel that I've been doing for years now with tips on what I eat in a day to stay lean and strong and how to diminish your belly fat or get rid of belly fat and all of that good stuff. Plenty there on my channel and honestly other people's channels. But after coaching hundreds of women through menopause and beyond, I've realized something very, very important. And this isn't the conversation that most people have around belly fat, but I really believe it's the conversation that we need to start having and that I want to start having. You see, belly fat is never the real problem. It just isn't. It is the problem underneath the problem that we really need to address. Now, I recently asked my community, my YouTube community. So if you're in my community, thank you for being in my community and for um leaving those comments and getting into the discussion. But I did two polls. So about a couple of months ago, I did a poll on what is your biggest pain point, what is bothering you most, because I I want to create content that's going to be really meaningful for you. And by and large, the biggest percentage of you who actually voted were indeed struggling with belly fat. So I'm like, okay. And then I left a poll the other day, and I was curious about GLP1s, because obviously a lot of women are taking them, are thinking of taking them. And I just wanted to sort of take your pulse and find out, at least with my YouTube community, are you taking them? Are you thinking of taking them? Are you not? What's going on with that? And the answer really surprised me a lot, actually. I was shocked. I left it there for about three or four days, and I'm like, I'm gonna go look at the results now. And 89%, it might even be more, I haven't checked today, but 89% of you said that you weren't interested. So then I thought, hmm, that's very interesting. Because in these polls, there is a majority of you that are struggling with something that you are not happy about in your body. And there's an even greater majority of you who want to find a solution, and you don't want that solution to be a GLP one. That's just not something that is is um aligns with you for whatever. I've heard a myriad of different reasons why. All valid. So here's what I want to pose in this brief conversation in this episode of Tea with Sophie. So the question isn't just how do I lose the belly fat? The deeper question is what does my belly fat mean to me? Let that sit for a minute. What does my belly fat mean to me? Because that's where everything really begins to change. Now, for many women, it quietly means a lot of things that are wrapped around shame, actually, but it could mean I'm getting old. I'm no longer attractive. There is something wrong with me. I'm becoming invisible, I look old, I don't fit in anymore, I'm embarrassed about the way that I look. I've failed. I'm failing. And that deeper, deeper sense of there's just something wrong. I mean, I speak to women who literally will grab, grab on Zoom, they'll go, look, Sophie, I've got to show you. And they'll just grab this fat, although it's this just disgusting part of their body that they're just kind of disgusted with. And so I'm very interested in getting to this deeper conversation because here's what I've learned is where there's shame, there's always some kind of stuck. There's always some kind of stagnation. Shame is um the lock that keeps you firmly in place. It's actually the lock that keeps keeps bad habits in place. Because I believe that where there's shame, you're never, ever really going to be able to change. And certainly if you're approaching anything that you don't like in your life, whether it's belly fat or anything else, and you're approaching it from a place of shame, a place of scarcity. There's something wrong, there's not enough. I'm not attractive enough, good enough, pretty enough, young enough. That's scarcity and shame being there's something wrong, we're intrinsically deeply wrong with me. Many of us have grown up with that shame, and it's just takes many different forms. And in midlife and beyond, it can grab onto anything it wants to. And so many women, it grabs onto their physical appearance. Oh, it's the belly fat, you know. And so what I found with the women that I've coached or coach, I'm coaching right now, is that what we find is that the goal that a lot of women walk into the door with when they're working with me within my program is I've got X amount of weight that I want to lose. Not everybody, but a lot of a lot of ladies at 30 pounds, 40 pounds, 80 pounds, whatever it is, and belly fat and whatnot. But the goal almost never ends up being that. It radically changes. And the goal always turns into I want to love myself more. That's it. I want to love myself more. And the vehicle to getting to that self-love and that beautiful self-acceptance and that freedom, but that really what we're talking about is the self-love. The vehicle is different for everybody. And sometimes the vehicle to get there, you think the vehicle is going to be, well, it's going to be the weight loss or the belly fat loss or the successful job or whatever it is. And then sometimes that can be part of the vehicle to get there. But really, the real thing is how how do I really want to feel? How do I want to be in this short, precious life that we have? And it is short, it's relatively short, and it's not a dress rehearsal. And I think we come to that realization: do I want to spend another day, another month, another year with this shame of just constantly, constantly trying to find ways to change myself and change my body. And so then we just keep on searching. And the truth is that even if you were to lose that belly fat and get a six-pack in your 50s and 60s, and I it can happen. You've seen on other people's channels, I've seen before and after pictures. I am a little bit, I'm going to use the word suspicious of whether that's something that actually really sticks. Because I think whenever we do something on the outside, it doesn't mean we're dealing with the inner issue. It doesn't fix the inner issue. So let's go back to shame for a moment. Shame is always looking for somewhere to land. So you could lose the belly fat. Okay, so there's plenty no shortage of maybe ways that you might be able to certainly not necessarily the belly fat, but the weight, go on an extreme diet. Yeah, take a GLP1, whatnot. So you could maybe do that. Um but once it's the weight gone, then it's like, okay, what about the sagging skin now? What about the crepey skin? What about the wrinkles? Now it's the neck, now it's the arms. I've definitely been to those two places. Then it's the hair, then it's the aches and pains. The target changes, but the shame doesn't. So don't misunderstand me because I absolutely believe that visceral fat matters. And I believe that trying to, I hate the word get rid of, I'm going to use release is the word that I like to use. If you, ladies or clients of mine, you know I like the word release because lose means that you're going to find it again. Release means that you are releasing it forever. So I believe releasing visceral fat, the the the the rather more dangerous fat, I would say, not the benign subcutaneous fat that makes us actually look pretty. But the the visceral fat, I do believe that it's extremely important. And I really do believe that nutrition matters and obviously exercise matters and sleep matters and all those things that you'll see in many of my other videos. They matter. And in the same breath, I've seen women that I've worked with get extraordinary results in terms of releasing the weight and the belly fat and whatnot. And on a more important level, releasing the visceral fat will improve your health outcome over time, could even add another eight to 14 healthy years to your life. So that's nothing that I'm gonna sniff at. But none of these things on their own actually teach you to stop believing that you're not enough. They just don't. I'm 62. I do not have a six-pack. I have loose skin on my belly. Actually, I have a big hernia right in the middle of my belly. It's like a little duck's egg. I've had it for years and years, actually, ever since I uh after I gave birth. And my and I've always been very self-conscious about it in terms of wearing a two-piece bikini. And I I've chosen not to have it operated on yet because the doctors said, look, unless it gets really bad, you probably don't need to, unless it starts interrupting your digestion or whatever. Right, that we're not there yet. It would be purely a vanity thing for me to have that done. That might change. Yes, so I've got the loose skin, I've got the stretch marks, um, definitely got the crepey skin on my arms. I have all the normal signs of aging, honestly. But the difference is that it's not that I've escaped aging, it's that the aging no longer determines how I speak to myself. That's what changes, and that's what changes in the beautiful women that I work with. And that beautiful change is so incredibly powerful when they shift from this isn't a conversation anymore about belly fat. This is a conversation of, as I said before, of how I want to love myself, how I want to honor myself, how I want to respect myself, how I want to move from through the world, how I want to show up for myself and others. It leads to also that deeper, deeper peace because I really believe that there's something more. There's something more, there's something so much more. Call it the bigger, juicier offering. There's a bigger, juicier offering that goes so far beyond and deeper than any of the physical things that we are trying to shape and change. And that is the conversation that I'm interested in. Because the women that I work with, they always say that the strategy is there. You give us a strategy, Sophie, which I do is the evidence-based, really what I determine to be based on the current evidence-based research. This is the gold standard for you to age-proof your body, lower your risk of chronic disease, and in the process diminish greatly, release that that um visceral fat. But what they all end up saying is but how I'm showing up, how I'm waking up in the morning feels so different now. Waking up with a little bit of a spark of joy. How I've learned to talk to myself is different. The perspective that I have on myself and my body and my life is different. And I'm just gonna finish with this. I really believe that midlife is the opportunity for us to, it's a very important time, and it's an important opportunity that we get to go to go deeper. And I think it's the opportunity to find a deeper strength, a deeper wisdom, a deep deeper peace, and actually to have a lot more joy and aliveness in the process. And I often think about one of the five uh regrets of the dying in the in the book that was written by somebody who worked in hospice. And one of them was, I wish I'd lived a life where I was more true to myself rather than the life that others expected of me. And I would go a little bit deeper than that. I would go, as I contemplate my myself on my last few days on this planet, I think for me, it would be, I wish I'd lived a life where I was more true to myself rather than the life that I was expecting of me. Because it's my stories, my narratives, my harsh expectations, and ultimately the shame. And I do not want shame, and I don't know about you, I don't want shame. The feeling of shame that there's something broken or wrong with me or bad or that I'm not enough. I don't want to get to my last days and go, hmm, that's what you lived with for the last 20, 30, 40, 50 years of your life, Sophie. And you didn't need to. You didn't need to. Because underneath all of that, you, and I'm talking to you, viewers who are watching and you who are listening to the podcast, you are a beautiful, divine being. You were born that way, you are pure love, and so anything that you pile on top of that, and it gets very easy, I understand, as we age, and as our identity drops away, and we lose all the things that we, you know, held on to that gave us, in some ways, that gave us meaning or gave us our identity, being a mother, being in the workforce in a certain capacity, and then our youth, and we're watching our bodies change. I get it. I get it. It can be really hard, but hard doesn't mean that we can't change it, the way that we talk to ourselves. So I'm gonna finish this little episode by inviting you to come and attend a workshop that I am doing. Actually, the time that this workshop um uh this podcast drops is tomorrow. So it's gonna be Thursday, the 9th of July, 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern. Come and join this conversation because you're gonna join with myself and the two coaches who coach in my program. And I think that if you show up and come along, you might even have the opportunity to get coached. I'm gonna coach as many of you as you can, but I think you're gonna leave feeling heard, validated, inspired, and with a sense of relief, that you're not the only one who feels this way. And you're going to understand that, and I'll tell you this just in case you don't come to the workshop, that ironically, when ladies, and certainly the ladies I work with, and I've been working with women in this specific capacity for seven years now, is when women let go of the shame and the pushing and the punishing and the trying and the self-critical voice on loop in their heads all the time. That is when the belly fat releases. So, on that note, I'm going to take a sip of my beautiful iced hibiscus tea. I hope to see you in the workshop tomorrow. The link to register is in the description or on the podcast page. And if I don't see you there, I will see you or be with you for the next episode of Tea with Sophie.