Feel Great and Lose Weight During Perimenopause

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more so you can look and feel better fast.

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Today we're talking perimenopause, which is pretty much your body's warning shot that menopause is coming and you will definitely want to be prepared. And since we're usually focused on menopause like it's some line in the sand we cross, perimenopause doesn't always get the attention it deserves. But this whole phase before you go into full blown menopause is the beginning of some really big changes in your body. So you have to be prepared and know how to take care of yourself during this transition so you can feel great and yes, even still lose weight. With so much flux happening. I hope these seven tips will help. On this channel I share a lot of information, tools and tips about ways to feel great and lose weight. So please like and subscribe to make sure you don't miss any of it. So let's talk perimenopause first. Here are a few things you'll want to know if you don't already. For some women, perimenopause can start as early as in their 30s. But for most women, the obvious signs start when they're between 40 and 44. And it may last between four to eight years because it doesn't officially end until one year after your final menstrual period, which is the international sign for welcome to menopause. And then you are technically postmenopausal. So of course we know menopause is called the change. And when you say that, I think someone plays the Jaws music, you know. So calling it the change pretty much sets up our expectations that things will happen when we hit menopause. But the changes in weight and metabolism and overall health that a lot of women experience after menopause, well, it actually starts years earlier. And if you can tune in, you can get a jump on them and make sure they don't hit you like a ton of bricks. So how do you even know you're in perimenopause? Well, it's sort of like puberty in reverse. It's this long, slow process of hormonal changes you probably won't notice for the first few years. During that time, your body is making more and more of a hormone called follicular stimulating hormone. And when that hormone FSH crosses a certain threshold, your ovulation suddenly gets less regular. And that's usually when you know, because the first obvious symptoms are changes in menstrual flow and changes to the length of your cycle, your cycle could be shorter or it could be longer. And you may notice your periods getting a little heavier or lighter than usual, or you might get some hot flashes or get a little drier. You may even find yourself on an estrogen roller coaster. And that creates its own fun symptoms like moodiness and fatigue. Okay, I know this sounds a little bit like a nightmare, but hang in there. We're going to address all of this in a second. So this FSS FSH creeps up higher and higher until the whole journey ends with menopause. And again, menopause is that last bleed. And then 12 months after that, you are postmenopausal. All right, so how do you stay as balanced as possible during this time? How do you keep your metabolism humming and feel good in your skin? Let's start first with managing stress. Now, you're going to want to make handling your stress your top priority if you want to feel good and lose weight during perimenopause. Plus, stress doesn't stop there. I mean, it takes a toll on everything. The reason it's so important to jump on it in perimenopause is because your stress is mostly managed by cortisol and dhea or which are two hormones produced by your adrenal glands. And your adrenal glands are going to take on an even bigger burden when you get into menopause with additional androgen and estrogen production. So if you don't have the strategies to support them now, the adrenal fatigue is going to be a killer when you get into menopause. Now, chronic stress puts you into this survival mode where your body thinks either you're about to become part of the food chain or, or you're going to starve. So it cranks up the stress hormones to get your attention. Cortisol is the main one here. And when your cortisol is constantly elevated, you can't sleep, you're irritable, you're hangry, and you're craving carbs. And guess what? This results in weight loss resistance. You can't seem to shake the weight, especially around your belly, no matter how good your diet is. So there's a direct connection between stress and weight gain. And of course, it ages you faster too. So I'm going to give you a few of my stress busting strategies for weight loss. Now, the first one is to eat by the plate. You see, stress messes with your blood sugar. And when you eat protein, fat and fiber, my trifecta, you counteract that because you keep Your blood sugar really balanced. Next, I want you to start drinking green tea, if you don't already. Green tea contains an amino acid called L theanine and that naturally reduces blood pressure and anxiety. And of course you want to exercise, but there are a few specific kinds of exercise that really help with stress. One of them is HIIT training, high intensity interval training because it trains your nervous system to handle stress better. The other one is yoga. And yoga is like a tonic for your nervous system. Help balance it out and then just walking after a meal. And one of the reasons I love walking after a meal is you've got both the stress reduction, but it also helps lower your blood sugar response to a meal. And then meditation. Meditation can be a game changer as far as a tool for handling stress and anxiety. And candy. What? See, I just instantly lowered your stress levels. You're going, did I hear her right? Yes, candy. All right. Not just any candy, dark chocolate. The flavanols in dark chocolate boost brain function and lower stress hormones. And then you can also use lavender around the house or on your pillow or in your bath before bed. Lavender reduces blood pressure and heart rate. And if you want more, I did a full video on stress busting strategies, so you can check that out as well. All right, so after stress, the next one up for feeling great, losing weight during perimenopause sleep. And this may be a time when you are not sleeping. You know, when you're in perimenopause, everyone thinks it's all about estrogen. And yes, estrogen can be a wild ride. But you've been dealing with that since your first period, right? So we know about that and we know what we can handle there. What you may not know is that a lot of your symptoms are actually being caused by low progesterone. The irregular periods, the increase in your stress hormones, the feeling of anxiety and irritability, and you want to crawl out of your skin and. And then not sleeping well. So there are a couple of things that you can do. First, you may want to take a little bioidentical progesterone. It's great to use at night to help with sleep. It also helps with stress. The way it works is that it's usually cycled in 14 days after the start of your period. So if you want to try that, I recommend you work with a functional medicine doctor who can talk to you about it and help you get started. Now, for extra help sleeping better, you can also use my sleep candy. Candy seems to be a theme here because it has melatonin in it, which you need to stabilize and reinforce that circadian rhythm in your body. So, nighty night. Next, number three, you're going to want to add muscle. Now this is super important. It's going to have a huge impact on the way you feel and how easy it is for you to lose weight. So do not wait on this until menopause and post menopause because it's going to be harder then you want to do it now and get your body really used to using fat as fuel. So perimenopause is a use it or lose it time for muscle. If you do nothing, which I hope.

Is not going to happen on my.

Watch, you are going to be able start to lose muscle mass and bone. And yes, you may find that you have to work a little harder than you used to because in perimenopause you're going to need to eat more protein and lift heavier weights. And in order to build that muscle, okay, so you're going to have to work a little harder for it, but it'll be worth it because then you can build that muscle and that's going to prevent bad stuff down the road. There's so much adding muscle can do for you, especially in terms of body fat. And weight gain isn't inevitable. But left unchecked, fat will grow around your belly and more muscle will help you burn fat without even trying. How's that sound? So adding muscles also helps support your bones and helps slow bone loss, which means you have a lower risk of fractures and osteoporosis. Now, believe it or not, those risks can be high for many perimenopausal women. And muscle also helps balance your hormones, especially your stress hormones, and it can help fight insulin resistance. In fact, one of the first places you can start to restore insulin sensitivity is in the muscles. So it's going to help you handle blood sugar better. So, so it's kind of a no brainer, right? Do some strength training, lift weights, use your body weight, use a TRX and do it a couple times a week. I want to do as many things that are full body movements here, things like squats and lunges and pushups and pull ups. And you can get an assist again with something called a TRX trainer. Check it out. It's the easiest way to set up a home gym for like a hundred bucks. So you can do this. But any kind of resistance, again, your own body weight, weights is going to help you build muscle. And when you build muscle, your body is better. Burning Fat. Win. Win. All right, number four, you got to make sure your thyroid is functioning and functioning really well. Now, I'm mostly talking about an underactive thyroid here, but of course, it could also be overactive. That has its own set of problems. But for now, I'm focusing on sluggish. Because if your thyroid is sluggish, the symptoms can be really tough, and the list of symptoms is long. Ready? Weight gain, fatigue. You're cold. Your skin's dry. Your hair is dry. Your hair is falling out. Your cholesterol levels are going up. Your sex drive is going down. You feel puffy and bloated. You can't build muscle. You're a little depressed. You've got some brain fog. You might be losing the outer third of your eyebrows. Your skin might be a little tingy yellow. You're constipated. Watch for those signs. It's actually how I caught my thyroid issues really quick, like within a week or two. So look at those first and do not fall for the numbers that are the normal range. You want to be ideal. Another clue is that if your weight bounces up and down a couple pounds a day, that's not normal, by the way. That could either be signs of a food intolerance or a metabolism gone wild, right? Because your thyroid, remember, it regulates your metabolism, including your energy levels and how well you burn fat. If your body doesn't make enough thyroid hormone, you're considered hypothyroid. And if you're hypothyroid, that means you've got a lower metabolic rate. So obviously, a slow thyroid makes it hard read, impossible nearly to lose weight. But this just is. It's not really about. I mean, it is about your weight, but it's not just about your weight. It's really about your health. Because mild hypothyroidism makes you tired, achy, less likely to exercise. So you pack on the pounds. And when you're tired, you're probably craving and eating sugary foods and carbs. So then you gain more weight for that reason, too. But you could be hypothyroid and not even know it. If you're undiagnosed, that could have a serious impact on your heart health and your bone health. And that's super scary. So you want to work with functional medicine doctor who's going to look past that normal range of the single TSH marker. Now, TSH is a thyroid stimulating hormone, which is produced by the pituitary gland. You want to look at not just your TSH. You want to look at your free T3, your T4, your reverse T3, and your antibodies to get the full picture of how well your thyroid is functioning. And what you're going to find is that in a lot of places, the practitioners only look at tsh, which could be in the normal reference range. Right. But you can still be hypothyroid. So just testing TSH is not going to give you the picture that you really need. All right, another quick thing. You should also take a look at your iron levels and your cortisol levels, as these are often out of whack as well. And an imbalance in cortisol can impact the conversion of T4 to the active thyroid hormone, T3. So when you focus on healing your thyroid, you're going to want to look at your stress hormones, too. All right, so how do you support your thyroid? Well, mainly with the right diet and supplements. You're going to want to start with the virgin diet. It's just globally great for balancing your hormones, reducing inflammation, bringing down those antibodies and increasing your energy. Sound good? And it's going to help you increase your fiber. And fiber is good for producing the butyrate in your gut that helps regulate thyroid hormones. The virgin diet also removes the key high food intolerance foods that could be triggering an autoimmune response. Those are especially gluten, soy and dairy, and corn. And remember, most of these thyroid issues are autoimmune. You're also going to want to make sure that you're getting enough of iodine, selenium and zinc either from your food or supplements. And you need to know if you have the autoimmune type of hypothyroidism called Hashimoto's. Right. Because if you do, you're probably going to need to supplement with thyroid hormone. Again, work with a functional medicine, doctor. All right, number five, phytoestrogen rich foods. You're going to want to eat these to support and detoxify your estrogen levels. Now, drops in estrogen can cause the release of higher amounts of other hormones. So your thermostat goes haywire, and the clue there is hot flashes. So what do you do? Well, step one is you're going to want to eat more phytoestrogen rich foods. So not all, though. I want you to eat phytoestrogen rich foods except for soy. Soy. No joy in soy. That's what I like to say, because it introduces a whole set of other problems due to its high lectin and phytate loads its goitrogens which can impact your thyroid. And if it's not organic, holy smokes, the GMOs and the pesticide load. And by the way, it's almost never organic. And many forms are highly processed into junk food, like soy hot dogs, hello. Soy ice cream, soy cheese, and all of that can then go in with those goitrogens and mess with your thyroid function. So no joy in soy. But we do want to get into those other estrogens and phytoestrogens. And. And there's great ones that can support your estrogen levels. They're mainly from plant foods like chickpeas and flaxseed and sesame seeds and lentils and rice and carrots and garlic. And then some of the fruits, berries, peaches and apples and cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage. These are all rich in phytoestrogens. Number six, you're going to add I3C rich foods. What is that? All right, I3C stands for ready, indole, three carbinol. And it is a powerhouse antioxidant, is found in those. Those veggies I already talked about that are great with the phytoestrogens. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower. And here's why it's important. It makes sure that estrogen goes where it can do good and does not go where it can wreak havoc like promote cancer. So this is another reason to eat that broccoli.

Right?

There's always more reasons. So you want to make sure that you're getting it, but you may not be able to get it enough in food, so you might need to be supplementing. Which brings me to number seven, and that is dim. So dim is one of my most favorite supplements for any woman, 40 plus. It is a better absorbed metabolite of i3C. It's also found in, of course, vitamin, broccoli, cabbage, kale, watercress. Right. All of these vegetables. But it's hard to get enough of. So it's something that you're going to want to supplement with. All right. To wrap it and tie a bow on it. I'm also going to throw out a few other things that you can do to help you feel great and lose weight during perimenopause. And that would include B vitamins, probiotics, and magnesium. And also you're going to want to support your liver. So you may want to think, okay, don't shoot the messenger. I may want to think about cutting back just a little on alcohol. Keep to the dry farm wines and caffeine. All right? Okay, I said cut back right now. If you're a fast caffeine metabolizer, fortunately like me, then you know, you're probably fine to carry on. Okay? So I hope you can see that perimenopause can be a great time, a motivating time to make some lifestyle changes so that things don't get away from you and make it really hard to reverse later on down the road. Now is the time to take action and if you enjoyed this and learned a few things, please hit the like and subscribe and join me next time for how to Feel Great and Lose Weight After Menopause. See you soon. For more info on this and other health topics I cover, or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojay.com thanks again for being with me this week.

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