Figuring Out Calories You Need in Menopause

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function.

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What are you waiting for? Good night.

Tell me this, and tell me this very honestly. If you could have the tone, the energy, and the body confidence you want, have the clothes fit the way you want, and still not be the number on the scale that you may be attached to, Would that be okay?

This is your episode.

I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal to to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman, and it's not just about you but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made-for-menopause-and-beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve.

Exercise nutrition isn't always— was important, but at no more pivotal time than in menopause. So the intuitive response To desire to lose menopause weight or belly fat is to eat less and/or do sit-ups and tons of cardio to get there. All bad ideas, and I know you know this. First, let me tell you that I'm not an advocate of telling anybody how many calories they need or of tracking. However, I am going to sound hypocritical in the podcast episode we're about to do together. I'm going to talk about calories. I'm going to talk about tracking them. I'm going to talk about monitoring your macronutrients, that is your protein, your carbs, and your fat, because it does have a place. And I hope that by the time you're done with this episode, you understand what that role is and that I don't want you to do it forever. I don't measure food. I don't recommend it. I don't use points. I don't recommend that either. At Flipping 50, what we do is focus on a simple formula, and that was key. Two things: number one, that there is a formula to follow, there's a framework. And two, it's a lot simpler than having to weigh your portions. It's a lot simpler than counting your calories or your macros. Putting them into an app, counting calories is not best for those of you who actually really want to change your body composition. Tracking your macros is a better approach for recomposition, which is what? Well, that is your body is percent more fat than you want it to be. You're at a higher percent body fat. Meaning you got padding in the cushions that you wish wasn't there, and you don't have adequate muscle. So what we're trying to do is decrease the amount of fat, increase the amount of muscle. By doing so, we're recompositioning you. So now we have a higher percent of lean muscle, we have more metabolically active tissue, you feel better, you probably look leaner you may weigh more. Oh, I said it. Or you may weigh the same. Ultimately, you may lose a little weight because you just generated more metabolism. You're more energetic. You're going to want to do more things, move more. That's all going to burn more calories and you're moving more muscle. And guess what? You get to eat more. You don't eat less. We're going to talk all about that coming up. But again, calorie counting really isn't the best method if number one, what you really want is not weight loss. And by the way, I always have to clarify, you don't want weight loss, you want fat loss. If you have weight to lose, it is fat. You got to get specific with this because over 40, definitely over 50, more over 60, more, more over 70. You don't want to lose any muscle mass, and we really have to control for that. For anybody listening out there who happens to be on a GLP-1 peptide, who's taking that, please be sure you're changing your lifestyle habits, that when you do eat and you have an appetite, you put your protein first so that you can spare muscle losses that will and are happening. We just want to shrink the percentage of that muscle loss down as far as we possibly can. And your resistance training. These things are key for every woman, but definitely for those of you who are slowing down your digestive system, making you not eat as much. And for most women, most women that I've worked with, the problem isn't eating too much. It's been chronically eating too little for so very long that you've slowed your metabolism. And until you increase the caloric account and increase the amount of muscle tissue, potentially we're not actually going to get to a healthy, disease-free life. That will come. You will see the evidence and hopefully pivot on the go as you're doing it. Calorie counting also isn't great, and I'm sure that you can identify with this if you have a history of disordered eating. And I don't mean it has to be anorexia or bulimia binge-purge cycle. And often anorexia turns into— anorexia turns into bulimia. It could be chronically feeling like, oh, it's got to be healthy, I have to count every calorie, I, I have to starve and starve and starve. And then you do binge You go out, you have margaritas and chips and go crazy, as opposed to just eating normal and having a meal out and being done with it. And there's a place for that, by the way. So number 1, if you just want to recompose your body and have less fat, more muscle, calorie counting is not the way to do it. There's a far easier way, by the way. Number 2, if you have a history of disordered eating Here's the deal. You just don't have a good relationship with food. I don't recommend calorie counting. And number 3, if you're not actually sure how many calories you need to eat, this is where I can say 90% of my customers live when they come to me. They don't know how much they are consuming, but most women again are under eating. And I hear this. In fact, I listened to a podcast today of someone else who was talking in the space of working with women in midlife menopause. And she also commented, I think she had maybe 10 or 15 years experience, not 40. Those people who are working specifically with women in midlife, it's what we see chronically. And most often it's the larger size people. So if you're out there and listening, that's all said with respect. You often know the calorie counts of foods better than I do, and you're so conditioned into what we've heard for years and years that you have downsized, decreased, deprived, that now it's hard eating a normal day. A normal meal would feel almost like a binge. So if you're out there and you're thinking that, you're not alone. I've coached a lot of you through that, and it's taken years, but we've turned some very slow metabolisms around. And in doing so, change metabolism, change focus, creativity, energy throughout the day. Wouldn't that be nice? All right, if you are searching blindly online for support with this, you're going to find a lot of different answers to this question: how many calories do you need to eat? So take this. This was my deep dive into this for the purpose of this podcast. Now I'm going to use a woman who is overweight and wants to not be overweight, right? Go figure. She weighs 200 pounds and we're using zero numbers just to make it easier for calculation purposes. So one online example, and this was suggested at harvard.edu. I think we can all agree on the fact that's a reputable source, right? You take your weight times 15 for a moderately active individual. Now I'm preaching to the choir here. Now I might be preaching to some of you who want to join the choir and you're not quite there yet, and we have a place for you. I don't care if it's alto or tenor, by the way, or soprano, but we have a place where we're holding that for you. And maybe you're less than moderately active, so in which case you'd probably use smaller number than 15. If you are more than moderately active, you'd want to use a large number. The problem with this is for my 200-pound right now client, right now times 15 comes out to 3,000. Now that's a pretty high number. Most of you would agree, yeah, probably don't hit that. You'll see as we continue, that's a different number from other sources. And yet harvard.edu any calorie estimator should take into account two things. There are two parts to the estimate on the calories that you need. There is your BMR, your basal metabolic rate. That could also be said as your resting metabolic rate. That is just not your activity level. That is just like for you to have your eyes open, for you to breathe in and out for you to function and circulate blood through your bloodstream, but nothing else. So we have to have that. What's your resting value? And that should be generally based on are you a male or female, because there's got to be a slightly different ratio. Women of all ages have a slightly higher body fat percent. We make the babies. It takes fat. We've got more hormones. Hormones are created in fat, right? So males will have a higher number basal metabolic rate, and thus they're larger size people, bigger bones, more muscle on them. They also are going to have a higher rate when we factor in, say, a high activity level for a female to a high activity level for a male. They're going to equate to something different. So once you find that BMR, your resting or basal metabolic rate, you have an idea that if you drop below that number— I hope you understand this— you're going to risk interfering with bodily function. You're making your body really stressed. It's going to have to work really, really hard. That number is just to keep you alive and functioning. For my client That number is 1,380, 1,380, almost 1,400 calories. How many of you have ever in your life when you really were desperate, really wanted to lose weight, tried to go 1,200 calories, 1,000 calories, drop below that to 800 calories? Now, there may be limited times and limited places under supervision where that might be appropriate. But if you are extremely active, you're going to hear me say why in a little bit. That's a recipe for disaster. So you've got a few numbers here. In one place, for my client, just maintaining would be 3,000 calories. You're going to hear me tell you later that's not quite what I found elsewhere, and I'll give you some resources so you can go figure this out for yourself. So if you're listening while you're on a walk, you're going to be able to go to the show notes and get all the links that you want. So where do you start with how many calories you need right now in menopause? I'm asked this so very much, it's why I'm answering it. But I also hear advice given so quickly online, and nobody is saying this out loud, but what if you have chronically under eaten. When people try to figure for you, here's the calorie amount that you need, say if you weigh 200 pounds and your basal metabolic rate is this based on your activity, you need that. But what if you chronically have under eaten? You've already been doing that deficit for a long time. Why hasn't it worked? That's what we have to uncover. So this is the one time I'm going to invite you to calorie count. I think you should do it if you're not anywhere close to what's the average that I take in on a daily basis. I'm going to give you a little homework today. Are you game? And if you are, I would love for you to DM me. That means direct message, by the way. So if I'm talking language on Instagram and tell me, here was my average caloric intake over 5 days. Before you count calories, we first have to determine how many we need to eat. But we also need to consider what your past has been, your recent past and longer term past. So on paper or the internet, it's so easy peasy. Figure out your basal metabolic rate, your activity level. We now know how many calories you need to hold. Then it's easy to say, what rate do I want to lose? If I want to lose half a pound, a pound, or 2 pounds a week, it'll tell me the calculation for how many calories I need to eat. Well, what if we don't know how many you have been eating on average and we aim for this and it's higher than you've been eating? Momentarily, you may actually gain weight, but there's also going to be a happy ending to that story. So let me break this down for you. For my client coming back, she does a little bit of endurance exercise because she loves it, but we hold back on that because she also understands it's not the best place to spend her energy. But instead, we've gotten her into activities where she can be active and moving, like golf. She can do that for hours and she's not damaging her cortisol level. Further breaking down muscle because she can have snacks out there if she's active and gets hungry. She is not working at the level where cortisol will continue to increase and cause muscle wasting. She does play pickleball. Now that's a little bit more aggressive depending on your play. On a day off, my client is still very active. So when she's not lifting weights, she's not doing HIIT, or we don't have her going out for a jog on a trail for a couple of miles, she's still playing golf for 4 hours or she's playing pickleball. So active, right? There's not much sedentary time. One day a week she takes off. So she might go for a walk on that day because we don't say off, don't move. We just say you don't need to focus on gaining muscle or getting breathless. Just move, just have fun, go places. And if you feel like you need a total rest day, you've earned it. The calculations on calculator.net will tell my client this: in order to maintain— so it's going to give you, if you plug in your weight, your gender, your age, your activity level, it's going to say, okay, based on that, you need 2,381 calories. To maintain your body weight. So let's just round up, 2,400, right, to maintain. Now remember what it was before, 3,000, but that was, I think, kind of a bogus number given they didn't care. They didn't ask what gender or how old, nothing. If she wants mild weight loss, and mild weight loss is categorized as losing about a half pound a week, The caloric intake is 131 calories. For weight loss of about 1 pound a week, she'd be at 1881 or about 1900 calories. Now we're getting below 2000, right? If we wanted extreme weight loss, this is what calculator.net will tell her. This is not what I'm suggesting. 1381 if you want extreme weight loss. Remember, the number I quoted was her basal metabolic rate was 1380. So there's no accidents here. But I would suggest that's a little dramatic for somebody who is highly active. So my guesstimate, just a guesstimate, is she's burning at least 500, if not 600 or more calories on a given day. On average. There are days she strength trains, does a run, plays golf all day. There are days she does interval training, then plays golf and/or pickleball. Same day. She's burning a lot of calories. She's creating a caloric deficit, but only eating 1,381 say 1,400, just to round, and we subtract 600 if we err on the conservative side from that, she's taking in then a net of maybe 700 calories. What do you think that's going to do to her metabolic rate? Bingo, right? She can't live there. She can't sustain life there. She won't feel good there. She will gain fat. Hold on to fat, her body's gonna lock down, shut the vault, say no way, baby, you're gonna hold on to this because this might be a rainy day and you might not eat enough again in another day. So based on her being extremely active, you know, although that's not the highest of activity levels, so in Calculator.net it will ask you, are you sedentary, are you somewhat active, Are you active 4 to 6 days a week? Are you active more like 5 to 7 days a week or every day? So I said the one just below the very top, not quite the max, but she's pretty close, right? Reality is the problem. Her usual caloric intake, because we did track and we will periodically track because I know that the temptation when you're a woman over 50 or over 60, we have a default mechanism. We've learned for decades, 5 potentially, and in our adult life that we should cut calories and we will go back to those old habits and we don't understand the sensation of hunger. Of needing energy, low blood sugar, of feeling full and sated, being okay. Sometimes for women, we've ignored our need to go to the restroom when we actually need to go because somebody else needs us. We're in the middle of something. We have to get here and here to here. We've started to actually create our own problems in part, right? So pelvic floor issues, incontinence, that didn't all come from a loss of estrogen. Some of that we brought on ourselves. So when you have the urge, you gotta go. When you're hungry, you gotta think about, should I be hungry? Has it been 3 to 4 hours since a meal? And, and am I due for something, or am I expending a lot of energy and actually I need to keep going and sustain for good performance? I need to do this. So earlier I mentioned harvard.edu as a source. Here's Mayo Clinic from their calculator. I get 2,100 as the average calorie need daily for a woman of her age and her activity level. So 2,100 versus 2,400, little difference, right? So that is congruent with the numbers from calculator.net, not too far off at least. So remember, for mild weight loss, the number was 2,131. 2,131, 2,100, not too far off. Here's the problem again, reality, right? Her usual caloric intake for years, years, guys, has been 1,500 to 1,800, you know. And every once in a while we will check in this and she'll bump it back up after a week of consciousness and say, I didn't even realize I was getting that little. Right? Because you just kind of slip back into your old mentality, your old habits, where it's, I should eat less, I shouldn't eat more. Thinking about putting ingredients in your smoothie— well, I'm not going to put that in because it's, you know, high in fat, or it's high in carbs, or something. It's turning us against ourselves, essentially. So what's really important is she's not kicking up her metabolism with her meals. Remember, that is a source of muscle protein synthesis. So you're boosting your ability to restore muscle, but you're also bumping the thermogenic effect of food, impacts the metabolism. Now, that's not a great way to start boosting your metabolism, by the way. Don't go around eating small meals throughout the day. That's not a good plan. She's not also picking up her metabolic rate with her activity. Why? Because she's not eating enough. Her body, though it might be going through the motions, is conserving energy so it won't expend when it doesn't have any fuel in the tank. So if you wanna get fit faster, you've got to fuel around your exercise. And if you haven't been doing that, it will take a mindset shift in order for you to do it. Give yourself the grace. Give yourself the opportunity for your brain to play tricks on you, for you to start and to feel a little uncomfortable, maybe because you haven't experienced full and satisfied for a period of time. She's eating so little for so consistently such a long period of time. And exercise significant amounts that she's slowed her metabolism. Now, we haven't taken her into a lab and actually hooked her up and looked at her basal metabolic rate. So we're looking at your metabolic rate. But if you, like her, are putting one foot on the accelerator, the exercise, and one foot on the brake, the low-calorie diet, You can't lose weight because we're not eating enough. So what's the answer in menopause or beyond? And it's not too late to fix a broken metabolism.

Cycling higher and lower calories for her active and her rest days, that'll help.

So let's say it's a day she is doing interval training. Then going to play pickleball, and then she's going to go try and get in some golf, right? Super active. We've got to make sure that before she goes to do the running, she's broken a fast, she's got something in her system. She does the intervals, she doesn't immediately take off and then go play pickleball or golf. She fuels again, takes something with her if she's going to be on the pickleball court for 2 or 3 hours, or she's she's going to be on the golf course in order to sustain that lifestyle and then eat really well if you're away from actual food for a very long time. So we cycle higher calories on those days where she's very active. And if she were strength training, remember that you have a, a big bolus of muscle protein synthesis after that, and it stays elevated for, say, 48 hours if it was a significant workout. You want to actually consume higher levels of protein during those days as well because you're just bump it up with the strength, bump it up with the protein. Now we've got a really great lift for you. I'm gonna imagine doing that regularly through the rest of your life. You're gonna age a lot slower with a lot more muscle and a lot more energy. So in this case, if you're not getting enough protein, shown in studies with both peri- and postmenopausal women. It's a key indicator of fat loss. She'll lose a significant amount of lean muscle when she loses weight. With all weight loss, there's a percent of fat and a percent of muscle loss. Now we can keep it small as possible and then offset that by resistance training, good sleep, good recovery practices after exercise. But if we're losing upwards of 25, 35, 45, or 50% muscle because we're not eating enough protein, we're not eating enough, period. Both of those count as two strikes against you, not just one. Chances are we're slowing metabolism with every effort she thinks she's making for weight loss. We're going to slow the metabolism. What are we going to get from that? The opposite of the desired effect.

Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want went daily. I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want, that I don't want, hiding in most protein powders, that's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never ever ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first.

But it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich. Sometimes the protein—

and don't forget the fiber— they kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use code PODCAST for 10% off your First Order at flipping50.com today.

Protein recommendations vary significantly, but from the work of Dr. Donald Layman, Blake Rasmussen, and Douglas Paddon-Jones, they've shown consistently that distributing protein in a minimum of 25 to 30 gram per meal doses, right? Increments. So for breakfast, at least 30, try to hit that. And same at lunch, same at dinner. But that still may not be where you need to be. Work shared by Dr. Bill Campbell, and that's Bill Campbell, PhD. He told me there are several Bill Campbells out there, tells us that increasing protein without changing calories at all spurs fat loss. In peri- and postmenopausal women. Let me say that again. Let's say you find out how many calories you have been eating, and while you're doing that, because you're tracking anyway, you're going to look at how many macros are you eating, how many grams or how many calories are coming from protein, how many calories are coming from fat, and how many calories are coming from carbs. And you can do a little math that way, by the way, right? We know that protein and carbohydrates each have 4 calories per gram, and fat has 7. So it's loaded with energy, and that's why we sparingly need to add that or be careful about it. We've shown that equal distribution of protein throughout the meal. Now, if you're looking at the amount that you need. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who also studied under Dr. Donald Layman, has shared a simple way of estimating protein steeped in science. That is 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight as a goal. Now, for weight loss without muscle loss, right, that number increases Shooting for just a weight target is not the best idea, but it gives you a point to start, and I get that. What I want you to do is lose your attachment to the weight. I want you to focus on how you feel, how much muscle you have, how much energy you have, how the clothes in your closet fit. You may be smaller, more compact, and yet full of energy at a much higher weight than you've ever associated yourself with. Let it go. Let the number go. Feel the strength. Do that. Yes. Okay, so what has to happen is you take 200 times just 10%. What would that be? So 220 might become her new goal. She's gonna hit that at a small caloric deficit if she can. Now, if she's already eating low calorie, she's going to bump up her calories, but do it with protein. And she still may— get this— she still may lose weight. Why? Because she's fueling her body now. She's giving it a little bit more. She's allowing the engine to turn on so she can push on the accelerator and she's taking her foot off of the brake. That's why it will work. So listen to this. Intermittent fasting, those of you who are doing it, that can be helpful for some twofold. Not for everybody, all right? But one, intermittent fasting reduces your eating window, almost automatically reducing your caloric intake. So if you are somebody who tends to snack and you're overeating and your caloric intake is higher then would be recommended for someone who wanted to lose weight effectively. Then intermittent fasting automatically helps you shorten the window. Here's what I'm going to eat, here's when you're going to eat last, because right before you close the window, you want to eat to sustain lean muscle and have it be a high protein meal. When you break a fast, you want to eat significant high protein meal. And in between, that may be such a short window that you can have a little something, but you're not really all that hungry yet because high protein plus fiber will keep you full and satisfied for much longer. So you do have to fuel your exercise. If you adopt a very strict schedule of intermittent fasting, you're doing the same thing every single day. It will backfire. You're much wiser to rotate. I'm going to throw in a longer day, or maybe two longer days of fasting over the weekend, or days when I'm not exercising hard or high intensity. And so I'm not stressing my body with the intermittent fasting and with the hard exercise. I'm going to balance that and juggle it. So those are smart things to do. Shorten your eating window some days, lengthen it others, and also allow your caloric intake to come up and down with your activity level. Now what you're doing is staying metabolically flexible. So all this might sound a little complicated, but what I'm hoping that it sounds to you like is commonsensical. It's actually fairly easy. Take a look at what you're doing right now. Be sure you're not under eating, and if you are, gradually begin to bump that up. But do it with protein, changing nothing else but increasing your protein. The amount of protein that makes up the calories you eat is known to be a fat-burning activity. Simple, right? You didn't even lift a finger. Or, well, maybe a fork. Okay, so cycle your intermittent fasting. Anytime you add a strict schedule, that'll backfire on you. That has the opposite desired effect. You have to fuel your exercise. Exercise, remember, it's a muscle breakdown activity. A little micro tears are happening in the muscle as you exercise. The fitness, the gain of strength, the repair of that muscle depends on rest between. And that's not lying on the couch rest. That is on the alternate days, go for walks, do yoga, maybe swim if that's not work for you, right? Swimming is a skill-related activity. So if you are struggling in the swim, try water walking, right? Getting in the water, floating on the water, just paddling around. Use all the support you need. But the idea is Don't do things that are quite so intense, so long, or so hard. Do move, but do it in a way that's responsible with the other activities that you're prioritizing for either bone density or gaining lean muscle mass. You can play with the calculator.net site, play on that. Go there, enter your— a female, your age, your weight, your activity level, it will tell you here's what you need. And it will also provide you with what's called a zigzag schedule. Interesting why it named it that, but it's basically what I just described to you. We cycle up and down. So you might go higher intake on some days, go lower on others, but what you're doing is keeping your body up and down metabolically flexible, which is exactly what you want. What's most important, even more than the number of calories, is the quality of those calories. So please don't forget that. And sure, there's room for extracurricular, right? And as soon as you say, I can't have this, you'll want it. So you'll be able to think about— so let's not go there. All right. You can experiment, right? So do you ever wonder how much fat or how many carbs you should have? Because my community, the ones in our programs and our membership, do, because I'm always talking about the number of grams of protein I want you to get total at the end of the day, your number, and how to break them down. And then they want a goal for carbs and fat. I'm not going to play that game. So here's how we do it. We do a formula looking at serving sizes and what happens when you have animal protein on your plate or you're cooking vegetables. Inevitably, you're using some fat. That just happens if you are trying to lose weight. Many of us don't need to try to add more fat. It happens naturally occurring and it packs such a powerful punch that it may not be what you want to add because it adds so many more calories. So we're looking at making it easier for you to lose weight. If you have room to increase your caloric intake and you do well with higher fat than carbs, you may want to go that route, but you can experiment. Studies shared by, again, by Bill Campbell, PhD, say it matters very little whether you do higher carb or higher fat as long as your protein goal is met. So let's say you figure out how many calories you need, you know how much protein you need, then you know what's left. I can play with this number for my carbs and my fats. I am genetically predisposed to do better with a slightly higher carbohydrate diet. Now, I'm also cannot ignore the fact that I'm a woman post-menopause, so we are more susceptible to negative effects of stress and to insulin resistance just by the mere fact that we've entered the menopause threshold, right? We're about 6% more likely to experience, rise in our blood sugar, our blood glucose levels. Because of that, let's talk about the type— high quality— the timing of our carbohydrates— at the end of a meal, not at the beginning. We like to see them skewed toward the end of the day, not at the beginning of the day, because what you do early will set you up for the whole day. And if you start with a blood sugar spike, guess what's going on all day long. You want a little bit of carbohydrate after you work out, especially if it was really tough and a hard one. But when we're talking bookending your workouts, that's different than just your meals on a regular basis. Okay, so if you want to lose weight and you aren't, but you're thinking low carb works for you, you could be wrong. I would just be willing to test it, right? So know this, we all get fooled a little bit by going low carb because for every 1 part carbohydrate that we take in, we store in our body, we store 3 parts water. So you feel a little bit more full, you have more water in your system if you stop eating carbs or significantly reduce it. You will shed water weight. And falsely, we feel pretty good about that. We just lost weight. I feel leaner, I feel thinner. And potentially you're a little bit more dehydrated, making your heart work a little bit harder. So be sure that you understand the difference and just be open to testing for yourself. I actually like to cycle, so I will cycle. There are days when I'll do higher carb, there are days when I'll do a higher fat We have a challenge within our Flipping 50 membership, and we applied this to a beta group who did this and got monitoring and coaching throughout and found that, you know, doing several days in a row of higher carb intake followed by several days in a row of lower carb intake, in which case the fat would naturally go up to kind of fill in the gaps. Some of these women did really, really well. Women in their late 60s, close to 70, were losing 15 pounds, 20 pounds. So the beauty of science is that as long as the protein increases within your set caloric intake, the fat or the carb could go up or down. You can have a little bit more of whichever one makes you feel sated. And for every woman, it's probably slightly different. But the beauty of this is you have room to enjoy the birthday cake or a favorite seasonal meal that could be higher in carbs or higher in fat, and you haven't blown it. There's room to play. You'd simply reduce the other. If you are somebody who doesn't like to keep a food journal, I do think that you need to. So you need to go to some resource. Like FDA Food Central Database, or you can go somewhere else to be tracking, but you need to drive yourself crazy with it for at least a week. Try and get 5 days, divide them by 5, take the average. What was my average? Because that'll take into account my higher activity days, my lower activity days, higher and lower caloric, or maybe it's the same for you, but you need all of it. And you can with See How You Eat take pictures to get a good idea of what am I eating during the period of a day.

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So go and listen right now. So I will take you to Macros First. That's an app that I'm using and it came recommended by Dr. Bill Campbell. And also I'll take you to mayoclinic.org and give you the calculator there. So just for comparison's sake, it might be for those of you who are science girls, you like to dig in, go to different sites, compare them, see how different they are, and realize that every app is also slightly different. So we are each very unique in the way we go through menopause. We're unique in our preferences for food, and some of us finicky— the way we're finicky is different and unique. And just embrace all of that and take into account, here's where I'm at. If you'd like a little help, I will put one more resource here. There are two ways that you can work with me on a very top level. One, you can do a discovery call. I suggest you do this homework first and then spend a half hour with me, do a discovery call, and let's talk about what would I suggest your next steps are.. And if you are motivated, take off and you will do that yourself. And that's enough. If you want to go deeper, I suggest you still do this and you could register for the ultimate assessment. And in that case, we'll really be able to unpack not only this, but also what is your food log? Take it for me. What is your activity log, your sleep, your lifestyle habits? We will unpack all of that in 90 minutes. We will have a coaching session and then I will deliver to you. Here would be my first steps nutritionally if I were working with you and you can do these yourself. Here would be the first month. This is a workout week for you. Here's what a month would look like so you know how you're progressing. Now, I won't show you the videos. I'm not going to give you a video workout. But I will write those exercises for you so you will understand what you're doing and sets and repetitions going through it. Okay. All of that will be in the show notes today, which will be at flipping50.com/calories-you-need-in-menopause. If this was helpful, would you share it with a friend or 3 who's on this journey with you?

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