Menopause Myths BUSTED: What Your Doctor Got Wrong

Myth number one, weight gain during perimenopause. Everybody assumes that weight gain during perimenopause is inevitable, and there's nothing you can do about it. And you. Have you been told that? Or have you been told that you just need to exercise more and eat less? Or maybe you're told that you're packing on the pounds in the middle and that's just something normal that you should have when you age. What if I told you this belief is not only wrong, but it's also keeping you stuck in a cycle of frustration? So here's the reality. Weight gain isn't inevitable, and it's a symptom of hormonal and metabolic shifts that occur in perimenopause and menopause. But they can be addressed during perimenopause. The declining estrogen level that changes how you actually store fat. And it often ships fat from your thighs and hips, what I like to call junk in the trunk, and. And moves it to your abdominal area. On top of that, insulin resistance creeps in and makes it harder to burn fat. And often our stress level, cortisol, plays along with that. So we get more fat storage and it's easier to store fat. Studies like those published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism show that women in perimenopause can experience a 5 to 10% decrease in metabolism and metabolic rate. But let me explain this. This doesn't mean that you're doomed. And it does mean that your body needs a different approach than what you did in your 20s and 30s and maybe even your early 40s. And I've had patients that thought they'd never lose the Menno belly. And they did it by addressing these very simple root causes. And they dropped 15 to 20 pounds and kept it off. So let me give you three practical tactics to tackle this myth head on. First, prioritize protein and fiber at every meal. I know you've probably heard the protein argument again and again and again and again, but we gotta aim for at least 30 to 35 grams of protein, and I would argue up to 50 grams at your first meal. And here's why. In 2023, there were several landmark studies that were published, and one of the biggest ones was looking at how well we actually go through a process called muscle protein synthesis as an older person in midlife compared to a younger person. And they controlled for age, sex, all these other things. And what they showed was older individuals, people like myself in our 50s or late 40s, are less efficient at making protein into muscle. And so we need more protein in order to make muscle and not lose muscle. And it's better to get more protein at that morning meal and the meal that ends your fast or ends your eating at the end of the day. So the breaking of the fast, larger amount of protein, the last meal of the day, larger amount of protein. And we were more efficient, we were able to build more muscle. How do we do that? It's things like chicken, fish, lean cuts of beef, salmon, eggs. Plant based proteins like lentils and beans are okay, but they don't contain the right combination of amino acids to get the biggest bang for your buck. So animal proteins get a higher mark for quality amino acids. Now, you can also use protein powders and other things to supplement what you're doing. And even some forms of dairy, like cottage cheese, absolutely is a great form if you handle dairy. Now, we have to also think that protein stabilizes blood sugar and boost your metabolism, so it actually raises thermogenesis, which is your body's heat and metabolic rate. So when I eat protein, it's actually working harder to digest that and utilize it than it would a carbohydrate. Now, second, every pound of muscle we put on will burn more calories at rest. So if this, if we can actually build muscle and make sure we feed muscle, we actually increase or at least preserve our metabolic rate. We don't want to lose muscle because we lose a little bit of muscle every year if we aren't working really hard at it. So we don't want to do that. We want to counteract that metabolic slowdown. Third, managing stress with 10 minutes of deep breathing or meditation daily. High cortisol can come down box breathing before meals. And that's doing an inhale for four, a hold for four, and an exhale for four and repeating several times has been shown to calm the stress response and get you out of sympathetic drive to parasympathetic parasitic drive. It's even taught to Navy seals. And if you do that a little bit before eating every day, you're actually going to reduce your cortisol and improve your activities of digestion, because you get into a parasympathetic drive, which is what is necessary for digestion, and it helps you bring down stress. And when stress comes down, we get less insulin resistance. And high cortisol, again from stress, increases insulin and it makes us store more fat. These aren't just theories. These are strategies I've seen transform the lives of our patients. And hormone balance is the foundation here. Without it no diet or exercise plan will stick. So what we just addressed there is understanding, tackling the myth of what you need to eat head on.