Can’t Lose Belly Fat After Menopause? Your Sleep May Be Why

You can eat well. You can exercise consistently. You can swear you're not the woman standing in front of the refrigerator at 10:00 PM looking for snacks and truly not be that woman. And still poor sleep may actually be changing your body composition or interrupting your ability and effort to change it. It may be changing your insulin sensitivity or inflammation or disrupting your muscle protein synthesis, and therefore your ability to lose fat. Here's the part that should get your attention. In research that compares shorter and longer sleepers, the scale didn't necessarily tell the whole story. What women lost, the composition of the weight loss, told the story. Today, we're talking about sleep as a metabolic strategy, not simply something that helps you feel more rested and feel more potentially like exercising, but why it may become even more important in midlife and in menopause. Stay tuned. You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down. You're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12, right here on this podcast. And, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. Hey, I'm Debra Atkinson. Welcome or welcome back, depending on whether you're joining us for the first time or it's been a while or you're a regular. I so appreciate you being here. And I'm going to ask a favor before we even dive in. If you find value from listening to this podcast, and particularly if this episode is one, please share either the podcast or this particular episode with a good friend. One of the things I know simply from being in this space is I review all lifestyle habits that impact our ability to gain muscle, lose fat. Perform better depending on what my client's goals and wishes and biggest objectives are. And a lot of times I'm working with clients, and it's been both men and women of all ages who sometimes ignore the fact that they have insomnia and they, they're just dealing with it but don't realize what an impact it has on your ability to get the things that you really want. Now, if you're a woman in midlife, this probably has come to your attention more, more acutely because many more women struggle during hormonal changes than they ever did before. So if you already had a challenge, sleep wasn't perfect, maybe for your whole life, it's probably worse. And if you never had a problem before and you suddenly do, of course you're feeling that too. So here's the questions we're answering in this episode. Can poor sleep actually interfere with fat loss after 50? Does sleeping less make you eat more or make you want different foods? What if you're disciplined and you don't snack when you're tired? Like willpower in spades. What about you? Can inadequate sleep change whether you lose fat or lean muscle when you're on a weight loss program? What happens to insulin sensitivity and inflammation when you're not losing enough? And why, or when you're not sleeping enough— slurred my words— why may sleep become an even bigger metabolic issue during menopause? And how much sleep appears to support healthier body composition and weight loss? Could improving sleep be as important as changing diet or exercise when fat loss has stalled? Let's unpack it all quickly, efficiently, and effectively. And some of these studies will be familiar to you if you've listened for a while, you've read the blogs, looked at the podcasts on the show, maybe tuned in years ago to Flipping 50 TV episodes. Any number of those, you have probably gotten maybe Sleep Yourself Strong. And once upon a time, that was called Sleep Yourself Skinny when I thought that was a good idea. We no longer like to promote that image or that goal. We're much more interested in you being strong and realize that you can get a two-for-one and be at your optimal body composition if you focus on the strength in the muscle. But let's just look at this from a different lens. So often we're talking about recovery and we're talking about restore before more, and sleep is a big part Part of that, but sleep is not just about recovery. So the prolongation of healthspan, meaning if you want to be you know living until you're 100, you're going for triple digits with me. We both want our healthspan to be you know 99 and 364 days at the very least, right? We don't want. Our health to expire before our age does, before our life does. We want that extension of lifespan, yes, and only if, in my case at least, I feel good, think good, do good, get up in the morning looking forward to the day. That's really how I want to be living the whole thing, and I'm sure you feel the same. And so there is one thing that It may all hinge on that we tend to treat as optional, and that's sleep. For women in midlife, we need to stop thinking about sleep as you know only an am I tired and or do I need more recovery from exercise? And the better question is what is inadequate sleep doing to my metabolism and to my body composition? Even when I think I'm functioning just fine. So great questions to ask. And subliminally, on a day you went to bed, say an hour later, why might you do that? It's pretty easy, isn't it? You get wrapped up in a great Netflix series and you're like, oh, that was a cliffhanger, I just want to watch one more episode. Is that not Am I alone in that? Or you're with the family, the movie you all planned to watch didn't get started until just a little bit later. You're babysitting the grandkids and somebody wakes up for another glass of water, or you've got all kinds of reasons these days why this might be happening. Plane delays, everything just not necessarily going as planned, even though maybe at home in a routine. You've got a good regimented routine that you stick to. But I want you to think about those times, those days, even this week. I can probably count on my hand 4 times out of 7 so far I have probably short-sheeted myself, literally, pun intended. I want you to think about sleep and successful weight loss as well. So for many of you, You're not necessarily finding me just because you want to be strong, just because you want more muscle mass and strength, and you want to do it safely, sanely, not spend hours in the gym being exhausted, but you want to do it according to science, but also according to the let's get real. Here's my life. Here's my schedule. What can I realistically do? In the time that I have, if you were 100% content with the results you were getting, you wouldn't be here. And many of you have either a sneaky side hustle in a goal of wanting to lose a little bit of weight, and and you were always going to be happy with that. And that, by the way, is not your fault. But I do believe that we'll all struggle with that a little bit, almost always because of the conditioning we've had over decades. In a study by Thompson, they examined 245 pre- and postmenopausal women participating in a 24-month randomized clinical trial of a commercial weight loss program. So just so that you know, it was Jenny Craig. The larger message here is continual habitual unhealthy sleep may reduce the potential for successful long-term weight loss and weight management. There isn't, you know, simply, you know, one terrible night of sleep is going to wreck you. No, you know, ideally you do understand this. You have a terrible night's sleep last night. Today, your muscle protein synthesis is not as good, not as good as normal for you, whatever that is. You are down below your— this is where you usually ride. It's not there today. It also might mean your coordination isn't as good. So as much as you want to do those ladder drills, you know, and quick agility moves, we want you to do those so you don't fall, trip, or slip, and it doesn't become a fracture. We don't want you to do them necessarily on a day after you've been sleep deprived because your reaction skills are not as good. So that's a day to go for a walk, get outdoors, get some sunlight, make sure you do everything to give you the insurance you're going to get to sleep tonight, and do a little catch-up. Go to bed earlier as opposed to taking a nap. It's actually a better proven way. And then keep your morning wake-ups exactly the same. But you can find that in this study of 245 pre- and postmenopausal women, long sleepers actually did better and helped them to lose weight that was fat weight and retain or maintain the muscle mass that they have. Mineral replenishment is one of the most overlooked aspects of wellness, and Beam Minerals makes it super easy to incorporate into your daily routine. I confess, until recently, I've been overlooking the big role Small minerals play in my total health. I've spent years working on my own and clients' diets, paying attention to the macros— protein, fats, carbs— but giving far less thought to the minerals that make the macros work. I take half capful of Beam Minerals Electrolyze and their Micro Boost daily. That's it. So easy. It tastes like water. And you can drink them alone, but do like I do. I add them to that glass of water waiting for me on the counter every morning. No extra time, no extra effort. Beam Minerals has become one of those daily habits that I genuinely miss when I skip it. I feel it. It's like a subtle upgrade to physical energy and mental focus. Head to beamminerals.com. /flipping50 and use code flipping50 for 20% off your first order. That's beamminerals.com/flipping50, code flipping50. Give Beam Minerals a try and discover why mineral replenishment could be the missing piece of your wellness routine. Now, in every weight loss, there's going to be a little bit of muscle lost with it. Some of the fat is within the muscle. It is a given, but we can offset that by resistance training, by getting good night's sleep to retain the muscles that we build with resistance training. So it's continual or habitual. It's what you do most of the time. And if you have a poor night's sleep, okay, change the way you exercise that day. Get to sleep a little bit earlier. Help yourself have a good night the next night. It's not just one single night, but it's what you do most of the time that really truly does matter. Less sleep can change eating behavior. This is when we know there's a crossover study done by okay, and I'm going to slaughter this because it is probably Norwegian or Sweden, but oh, I'll give it a stab. Nettlecheva, and I apologize for that to them. But they found participants consumed more snacks, snacks higher in carbohydrates. It's comfort food to us, right? When sleep was restricted to 5.5 hours versus 8.5 hours. So particularly interesting, more of that eating occurred Between 7 PM and 7 AM. So probably not, you know, as much between 4 AM and 7 AM, but you know that evening snacking after dinner, and it's not a physiological hunger; it is more of a craving. And most of you have experienced this. And here's the domino effect, just to give you that hormonal lesson. Again, is that if you are sleep deprived— so today I wake up, my cortisol is a little bit off. So we call that wonky, very unofficial term. But if cortisol is off, blood sugar dysregulated during that day, we know muscle protein synthesis is down. But because of cortisol, 2 other hormones, ghrelin and leptin, are also dysregulated. Mm-hmm. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone. So even though physiologically you've had maybe a meal with other people and you are sleep deprived, they're not, an hour later you might be the one looking for something. And it's not that you're hungry necessarily, but you may actually feel that. It's more of a psychological urge for something. And yes, there is something called protein theory, but in this piece, this is not related. This is related to the dysregulation of cortisol, blood sugar impacting your ghrelin, telling you you're hungry when physiologically probably that doesn't make any sense. So it could happen 1 hour, could happen 2, could happen 3 hours even after a meal. And you may say, well, I get hungry 3 hours after a meal anyway, you know, and if that's true for you, I would Look closely. Even if you're feeling like I'm— this isn't about me, I'm not sleep deprived, I sleep really well. I still would suggest in this case, if you're hungry consistently, like 3 hours after a meal, that it would be normal to expect somewhere between 3 to 4, closer to the 4 side. If you've had adequate protein, adequate fiber, the combination of those 2 helps satiety, and a little bit of fat. Not suggesting, you know, you need to go have half an avocado every meal, but having a little bit of fat and protein and fiber that kills cravings, keeps you full and satisfied for longer. And you may need a little bit more of something. So you might want to take a, just a closer look at your meals. Do a food log for a few days. See where you're at. If you're constantly getting hungry, may not mean that you need to eat more, but you need maybe a bigger ratio of protein and/or fat and fiber and a little lower ratio of carbohydrate, just as a suggestion. Or if fiber is really low, maybe we should take a look at that. So get a good picture there. Less sleep potentially means more opportunity to eat, right? And altered appetite and food choices, greater energy intake. I've worked with clients who were self-proclaimed night owls. Like, it was their habit to stay up till like 11, 11:30, and they might be watching television and knitting, doing a hobby, but also putting the knitting down. You know, they were snacking late at night because they didn't go to bed till 11:30. So if they had Dinner early, that, that was the problem. Staying up so late kept them up late enough they needed or wanted another meal before going to bed. So the more hours you are awake, the, the harder it is to plan those meals so that you're sated, you're getting calories in at the right time and supporting yourself. Another study in Chinese adults in this case found sleeping less than 7 hours a night consume significantly more energy from fat than adults sleeping 7 to 9 hours. That's interesting. I think that it was a Chinese study because when you think about Chinese foods, you don't think often about fat, right? You think about MSG, but vegetables and rice and protein. So you don't think a lot about fat, but it was true for them too. So here's what I wanna talk directly to the women listening who are maybe already Nope, not me. I'm disciplined. I don't do that. That's good, and it may help, but it doesn't completely protect you from the changes—the cortisol, the ghrelin, the leptin, the sugar dysregulation—that still makes you more insulin resistant. So, if you're totally disciplined, this is me. I don't snack when I'm tired, and that would be you. Honestly, that would be me too. I'm I'm right in there with you. This is where sleep becomes more interesting than simply appetite. So positive dietary choices certainly support blood sugar compared with random snacking, but insufficient sleep is also associated with, as I mentioned earlier. Reduced insulin sensitivity. So the more insulin it takes to bring down blood sugar after, say, a meal, and the higher that blood sugar is going to go after a meal if you didn't sleep, it, it all becomes a little more complicated. You're going to have heightened inflammation as well because of those 2 things. So you can't necessarily out-discipline inadequate sleep. By not snacking and say, call it even. I'm awake more, so I'm burning calories more hours of the day. And honestly, with a couple good friends, close relatives, I used to—we used to tease that because one of them was extremely lean, you know, and just people would say, "How do you stay so lean?" And we used to joke, you know, well. Doesn't sleep well, so he's burning calories more hours of the day. And you know, at some point when hormones change, that tends not to work as well. So even for men, that can catch up to you. So here's the study that women concerned about muscle need to hear. And by the way, anybody within earshot is concerned about muscle, I'm hoping. In one small study, participants experimented with two different 14-day conditions: five hours sleep per night versus 8.5, and it was 5.5 by the way, and 8.5. Total weight loss wasn't significantly different, but what they lost was very different. With eight and a half hours of sleep, the majority of the weight loss came from Fat mass, very little muscle. With 5.5 hours of sleep, the majority came from lean body mass, meaning there was a significant loss of muscle. So the emphasis is this is where the scale can lie to you. 2 women, you know, can celebrate weight loss, but one of them is going to be celebrating for a long time, and she's positively supported her metabolic health. The other one, it will take a minute because at first all we're doing is celebrating the weight loss. The size is smaller, but it will catch up with her. So if one is losing predominantly fat, another sacrificing lean tissue, there are absolutely, you know, 2 different outcomes here long-term, particularly for a woman in menopause or post concerned about muscle mass, metabolism, bone density. And healthy aging. So let's talk about this for menopause specifically. Midlife women already experience changes that can affect sleep, so a decrease in progesterone. As most of you know by now, this one's not news. We decrease or decline in our melatonin production, which is kind of sleep. Headquarters in terms of hormones, but progesterone is the one that really for women when that declines, we start getting disrupted sleep, not sleeping as well. And so it's one of three things that habitually I'll ask: trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep, or you're waking too early. Sleep can't be separated from the conversations with menopause, metabolic health, and body composition. And this is where. There's a Kravitz study that becomes important. So in this one, menopause-related changes in sleep, again, affected by melatonin decline. That one is not necessarily menopausal alone. It's age-related most of all. If you do a really great job of getting outside, getting sunlight in your eyes during the day, Your melatonin production is probably better. I wear a sleep mask that has a little kind of pressure points, almost like little pillows that sit around the bone of my eye. That little pressure also helps to increase melatonin. So there are a couple of things you can do. Those would be two things I would recommend before personally or suggesting you might want to look into a melatonin. You can do it over the counter, but I would do this in conjunction with your practitioner. Number one, if you are at risk for breast cancer, sometimes it's recommended. I've been told by trusted advisors and physicians that there is a link between low melatonin and breast cancer. So you might want to look at that if You know, nobody wants to take more supplements, and so it's why I hesitate to throw that out there. But my first preference would always be let's look at progesterone first if you're low on that. That generally is the one that changes things so dramatically for women, positively or negatively. When it declines, it's generally negative. When we get it back in and up to where you need it, ideally not too much, not too little, but just Right, that Goldilocks of progesterone really helps sleep. So what I want you to realize, it's going to help you make all the interventions that you're doing work better when you're sleeping really well. So it's going to make dietary changes that you're trying to commit to or stick with. It's going to make the exercise easier to do, and it's going to make just focus and function and concentration. That much better. Your brain basically is downloading overnight. So you're locking in all the experiences of the day, all the things, the information that you took in, things you learned, things you did, things you wrote, memories. They're locking in. And so recall is better because you slept really well last night. That helps us in every Everything we're doing, whether you're still at work, you're not at work, but you're at home. Inevitably, we need parts of our brain to function really well, so it makes everything you're doing work better. Sleep extension is being studied as a potential target for obesity treatment itself, and there are studies that suggest don't change anything else if you're a poor sleeper right now, you're struggling with it. Dedicate everything you have, every resource to focusing on what can I do? And I would lead with all of the natural things, the sunlight, the movement. Old studies I've shared before, 10 minutes of self-selected pace walking increase self-reports. This is from personal surveys, but self-reports, if you and I would be willing to say, My sleep is 33% better than when I didn't walk for 10 minutes. That's a pretty good investment on time. I would take a third better sleep, you know, no matter where you are. That's worthwhile. But even not changing diet, not changing exercise, so no calorie deficit flipping, just sleeping more. May help you to lose weight as targeted obesity treatment. It's what's being studied, so it's a very different way of framing sleep, and it's not get some sleep because you'll feel better tomorrow or get some sleep even to help preserve your muscle mass. But while it will do that, it also may help you easily lose fat weight. So. Protect your sleep because it influences the metabolic environment in which nutrition and exercise have to work. If you're trying to lose fat after 50, don't judge your progress by pounds alone. I think that's a lesson we've almost all learned. But ask, what are you doing to preserve your muscle while you're losing your fat? And part of that should be resistance training. It should be eating adequate calories. But most importantly, adequate protein. If you're in a caloric deficit, the amount of protein you need, the proportion of it actually goes up. It doesn't stay the same. It's an important distinction. So don't just cut out calories to create that caloric deficit from everywhere. Cut them out maybe of your fat and your carbohydrate, but keep your protein up, and that will help you with maintaining lean muscle mass as well. The references that I've used in today's episode will be in the show notes. So before you automatically just eat less or exercise more, sleep deserves a seat at your table. So I would love to hear from you after this, and here particularly, where are you with sleep? I like a 0 to 4 scale. It's a small scale. Your answer really matters. So tell me, 4 is I love the sleep, the level of sleep that I am getting. It's serving me really well. Or 0, it's terrible right now. I have insomnia where you're coming up, it's 1 or it's 2, but it's certainly not great yet. Let me know how you're doing. And if you don't have it yet, one of our resources is called Sleep Yourself Strong. And it walks through probably 18 to 20 different things that you can be doing, many of which you may already. But I think I find most often that when people say, I tried that, I've tried everything, indeed, no doubt that you have. No contest there, no argument. But often it's not been consistently and/or sequentially in a way that really helps you to determine that did or it didn't help. So there are ways that you introduce, for instance, magnesium. There are ways that you extend the amount of sleep that you're getting. And it's not if you determine we really need you to get 2 more hours of sleep by going to bed 2 hours earlier. For a lot of people, that would backfire. But beginning to back it out by 20 minutes or 30 minutes each time, and then hanging out there for a couple of weeks to allow your body to get used to that new clock and establish a new circadian rhythm. And I will give you this last tip before I let you go. Of the 2, bedtime versus wake time, the one to nail in first is your wake time. Keep it consistent. No matter what, 365, unless you're sick. So that is the most important and easiest way to then adjust your bedtime based on what time you're truly tired. When the eyelids get heavy and you're willing to commit to going to bed, you'll tend to get the best sleep and be in a rhythm that actually works for you. So just like a lot of babies, We need to get on that schedule and stick with it and not change it. All right, look forward to your questions. Thanks so much for being here. And again, if this has been valuable, please share with a friend. The information shared on Flipping 50 the Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult Consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Deborah Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast.