Mastering Midlife Metabolism: The Key to Fat Loss After 45

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What are you waiting for? Good night. If I had the key to fat loss after 45 and I could get every woman to use it, we could change history.

I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: 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.

If you are struggling with weight gain during menopause, you're not alone. Tune in to learn about the unique challenges and effective strategies for fat loss specifically tailored for women over 45. We're unpacking how to adapt your exercise routines for fat loss and boost your metabolism in midlife. And you might guess resistance training is going to play a part. But we're really not playing favorites today. In this episode, I'm gonna explore the intricacies of fat loss during menopause, focusing on how changes in hormones affect your body, what you can do to rev up your metabolism, and discover exercise strategies and lifestyle tweaks that are effective for women navigating the shifts that come with menopause. Recently we've had a discussion about this and It's usually we live in this more, more, more society. So you should be strength training and you should be doing HIIT and you should be moving like walking. And if you're walking 2 miles, you know, you think maybe I should be walking 3 or maybe I should walk 2 in the morning and 2 at night. You know, there is all this more, more, more push on the gas, see if it works. And often the very first thing that I will have women do is take a week of not doing it. Stop it. Like, listen and get quiet. So in this episode, let's talk about this. How does menopause impact metabolism and weight? Well, we have that decline of estrogen, we have the decline of progesterone and of testosterone. What do each of those mean? Well, with the decrease of estrogen, we have a decreased stimulus of muscle. So your muscle, almost like lifting another dumbbell having another 5 pounds on the weight plate so that you made more progress doing what you used to do. Now you don't have that. It's like somebody took the weight away. Now you don't have that extra little edge that was always there on your shoulder. Not there and gone. So you don't have the help for the muscle. You don't have the help for the bone density, and you don't have the progesterone. And what does that do? Because really, when we're talking exercise, we don't talk about that, but we need to. Because we talk about sleep. If you're not acing your sleep, and I don't mean a B-, I mean an A, we need to get this one right. You're going to struggle with optimizing your body composition. I've worked with clients over the years who do not sleep well and due to excess weight, sleep apnea, that situational and then maybe consistent insomnia. Because, you know, once you have a sleep issue and, and you've got situational things going on in life and the situation is over, but you've become paranoid about going to bed because you struggled and you worry that, oh, am I gonna sleep tonight? That's the moment that I've seen for a lot of clients, males and females of different age ranges, sleep becomes a real problem. And if you're not sleeping, you don't get that reset that we need desperately for your brain, your bones, your muscles, and for all your connective tissue. And we need to fire on all cylinders now, don't we? So what type of exercise will help with fat loss the most? I can't answer that for you collectively. So you, listener, the answer you need is different than one of the other 100,000 women who may download this episode? This is where it's tricky. This is where if you're listening to another podcast or you're watching a YouTube video and you're hearing an influencer talk on Instagram and it may not be for you at this moment in time that you're at, the best thing that I could do is to teach you how do you assess your own signs and your symptoms? Or better yet, how do I teach 20 trainers and coaches how to assess signs and symptoms, how to pivot in the moment, how to change the exercise workout that you had planned for today because it's really not the one that you need depending on what's happened in the last 24 to 48 hours for you? That's the key. So in a very recent study I'm going to share with you, and, and I'm gonna double-check my notes here so that I've got this, but Date-wise, I wanted to share this— 2023, and I don't have the month. I'm sorry, I thought I did, but it's very recent. So we're talking within the last 12 months, this one was published. The study is called The Effects of Exercise Training on Body Composition in Postmenopausal Women. So, hey, we like it, it's us. So we're getting more impact. For those of you who are in perimenopause, don't worry, your time is coming. But imagine where postmenopausal women are. We are a little bit easier to study for researchers because We're not irregular with a cycle, irregular with our hormones going back and forth. We're, we're flatlining. So yes, we're very low compared to where we were premenopause, but that's at least predictable. And we also are a case that needs some study because we are older, whether that's 5 years or 10 years postmenopause compared to peri or premenopause, we are— we have been losing muscle mass for a longer period of time. We are getting older. Many women postmenopause are in their later 50s or early 60s. Those of you who have peaked early, I see you, and, and we're not ignoring you, but collectively that's where we're at. But if you are postmenopause, you've had a longer period of time where you're missing those hormones that were a natural stimulus for you. So it's where do we look to kick it up? And ideally, we look at resistance training— muscle stimulus, bone stimulus. We look at protein— muscle stimulus, somewhat bone stimulus, but support from the muscle pulling on the bone. But in this study, Effects of Exercise Training on Body Composition in Postmenopausal Women, this systematic review meta-analysis, meaning looking at a lot of studies, looked at how different forms of exercise influence body composition, particularly fat mass. Did it make it go up, make it go down, stay the same? And the research synthesizes results from various studies, so numerous ones, to conclude that while all forms of exercise are beneficial— and I'm going to come back to this— resistance training and aerobic exercises— and we'll define that— stand out for their significant impact. Meaning yoga's wonderful, but it's not potentially going to have as big an impact on your body composition. So said the study, and I'm gonna beg to differ and say there may be an exception for you. I'm going to also say walking or dancing may also be an exception for you depending on the moment that you're in. Resistance training is especially effective at maintaining and increasing lean muscle mass. Which in turn helps more efficient fat burning and metabolic rate enhancement. Aerobic exercise, on the other hand, contributes significantly to overall fat loss, improving cardiovascular health, and reducing fat percentage across the body. So the research paper in this article discusses different forms of cardio training, often referred to simply as cardio is such a blanket statement that you're going to interpret it one way, I'm another, someone else in the room another. And we should come back to this, emphasizing both aerobic training and resistance training. And so the different forms of cardiovascular training is really important, but what it looked at is different modes, and that's what it's coming back to, to refer to. So it didn't look at, say, the level of intensity and say walking. Now that's cardio, but it's not very high intensity. And then looking at, say, jogging, a little higher intensity, running, sprinting, right? We're going up, up, up, up, up. High intensity interval training, much higher, but do we qualify that as cardio? We can, and I do this, put it under the umbrella of cardio while it is less aerobic and more of an anaerobic activity. But we associate it with cardio because we're getting breathier. Is that a word? Breathless sounds like color of the month club, but getting breathless, we're breathing harder. We associate that more with cardio effort than we do anaerobic work, which truly is sprinting for a very short period of time because it's not using oxygen, it's using something else that you have immediately available. It doesn't mean you don't get breathless. If you've ever lifted weights and you've lifted— let's say you, you were moving, you carried a box upstairs, heavy box upstairs— you were breathing hard by the time you got to the top, right? And you just lifting and doing a set of squats or lunges—

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I noticed this in last year ago, about right now, I was in Breckenridge, Colorado, and I went to just rented a condo and I shot videos for a week. And I was painfully out of breath during the warmup. And I was like, oh, this is pathetic. This maybe was a bad idea. I should have gone to sea level. What was I thinking? But, you know, you've gotta think about just moving more and consistently in a flow is aerobic. As soon as we disrupt that, we go really hard and we're only doing it in bursts or sprinting and then stopping, that's usually anaerobic. But when we discuss mode, we're talking about walking, running, cycling, swimming, those repetitive motions where you're doing something over and over again with same large muscle groups. So it doesn't have to be pretty, but running, cycling, walking. I mean, most people get that pattern. Swimming is a little bit more skill-related, so that can, you know, maybe it's not happening very pretty, but it could be happening still all the same. Aerobic training was found to be effective not just for reducing fat mass, particularly visceral belly fat, and the higher the intensity, the more that is true. Unless you're under a lot of stress. Yeah. So if you're under a lot of stress, walking actually may be something that helps decrease your belly fat most. And the reason being is that blood sugar control. So decreasing your blood sugar level post-meal, or because you're walking 30 or 45 minutes once a day when you can fit it in, you potentially are not having as high a spike after a meal for your blood sugar as if you weren't doing the walking. So even though we equated— those of us who are grown-ups who grew up in the late '70s, '80s to be our own young adult and maybe did Jane Fonda in the living room And maybe did it a lot so you could recite it. Anybody else? You knew that was aerobic, right? We were doing aerobics with her. And I know there was a conditioning piece as well. I kind of blocked that out. I think we did leg lifts to borderline, if I'm not incorrect. Don't ask me to sing, not going to do that. But in terms of, you know, the type of exercise, generally it's performed at a moderate intensity when we're talking aerobic. That's where you can still talk, but you might be too breathless to sing. Right. And some of us, those of us who can't sing, would say there's other reasons why we wouldn't do that in public anyway. In terms of resistance training, the research highlights its role in improving muscle strength and lean muscle mass. And I know, you know, that's a twisted word for women in midlife because never ever have we ever said, I want more muscle mass. And I'm going to guess that for anybody to say that out loud, we may not still be there collectively. Some of us are still pulled back to, but I want my skinny jeans to fit. And those of us who've had thicker thighs for our entire lives, no, no skinny jeans whatsoever. And it just didn't work out well for us. But that's okay. So resistance training involves exercises that cause the muscle to contract against an external resistance. That might be a dumbbell, that might be a machine weight, that might be you pushing on something, pulling on something. And that could include lifting weights, using resistance bands. It could be doing bodyweight exercises like push-ups, squats, using something like a TRX. I know many of you use— any of that works. The intensity of these exercises was not specifically quantified in the abstract, which is problematic, I think. So in this study, they didn't look at what was this low, was this high, were they getting breathless, where were they, meaning where was their heart rate. But resistance training often involves varying intensity depending on the load and the number of repetitions performed, typically structured in sets.. And we may not want you lifting heavy for the shoulders. I don't like anyone lifting heavy above their shoulders. I know you're seeing a lot of it happen. They'll come back when they're having a shoulder issue, right? And I'd prefer we prevent that. We can work the shoulders without stressing up and overhead. So it's just something to think about. So overall, the study underlines both aerobic and resistance exercise are integral for maintaining health outcomes in postmenopausal women, with specific benefits attributed to each type depending on the targeted health outcome. However, I'm going to argue this. So in this study, yes, both are equally beneficial, and yet It's truly my personal and professional belief that strength, muscle strength, enables us to do the cardiovascular work safely, effectively for longer. And I don't mean 45 versus 35 minutes. I mean, till we're 85, till we're 95, until we're 100. The strength will enable us and empower us, pun intended, to do the other things that we love, whether that's golf or it's the exercise that we're doing for cardio. You'll have more, more choices, more modes of exercise to choose if you maintain strength. And as soon as you begin to lose that strength, you begin to lose your choices. And your independence. The key to fat loss is really the key to everything, to longevity. So if you are finding you're gaining fat, I would suggest first, the very first thing that you're putting in there is just movement all day, every day. It's your first layer. Then you're focused on building in resistance strength training to muscular fatigue, and whether that's higher repetitions, it's lower repetitions it will still have a positive impact on the lean muscle mass no matter what. If we're talking bone density, there are very specific protocols. 10 or fewer repetitions seems to have the edge, but not everyone should do that every time depending on frequency. Go back and listen to an episode that actually I've, I've done several, and I have another one coming up for you that pay close attention to what you need. If you need a— you may want to take a look at something like our 10-day Hot Not Bothered Challenge. It's only open a couple of times a week. Looking back at stepping back, anything you're doing right now, pushing through, trying to do it when you're tired, will be there after you've taken a week to just reset. Because many of us are not listening to how we feel. How are we sleeping? Am I really hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I just tired? Am I stressed? And we need to quiet things down by taking things off of our plate to get in tune with how do I feel? Because I may actually be eating and I'm just tired. I may actually be eating and I'm just thirsty. And you can't pay attention to all the cues all the time. So remove some things from your plate, remove other things on your schedule, block yourself off as busy, put the things in there that you want, but give yourself time for really relaxing and then come back to fat loss can be a matter of one or two things. The need to actually increase lean muscle mass so that you can burn more calories around the clock. And it may also be a matter of needing to remove the obstacle. If you're highly stressed, You're exhausted. We first have to remove what's being there, put there to protect you, which may be fat storage. Like, I'm not going to do anything right now because I've got to preserve. We're tired, things aren't working well. And then when you remove that gate, you may find that fat loss actually comes far easier to you. And sometimes there's confusion. So not to plant a brand new seed at the very end of an episode, but it's exactly what I'm doing. Sometimes what you think is fat may actually be inflammation, which could be from doing too much, pushing too hard, being dehydrated, eating foods that are inflammatory for you right now.

And taking a look at all of those things can be beneficial.

I'm gonna put the link in the resources for this show to the 10-Day Hot Not Bothered Challenge. We're only open a couple times a year. We try to hit that at the beginning and at the end of the summer because those are big times of approaching that desire to feel better and enjoy your summer and getting back into routine. So no matter when you're listening to this, it will be coming up for you. All right, what are you waiting for? Let's start flipping 50. Today. You'll find the show notes at flipping50.com/key-to-fat-loss-after-45.

Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes and I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra-important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife woman. So go and listen right now. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you'd love to ask? Or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers. My community coaches and I provide answers daily inside of this group, but it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions, or tell your story, would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insiders group. That's Flipping 50 Insiders on Facebook.