I'm Interested in a Diet for Weight Loss in Stages of Menopause. Any Tips?

Hey JJ Here. Every year around this time, I get the urge to make my home feel a little extra special. A space that feels just like the holidays. And Wayfair is my go to for that. Think cozy textures, twinkly decor, warm lighting, and all those little touches that make you want to curl up with a good book and a blanket. You'll usually find my books stacked on a great little end table I got from Wayfair, proof that function and style give can coexist. Now, whether you're adding last minute hosting essentials, picking out gifts for loved ones, or refreshing your decor for the season, Wayfair makes it easy with beautiful finds, great prices and fast delivery. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Plus, with free shipping for any order over $35, that's fast delivery and a total peace of mind. It's the perfect mix of joy and order, bringing the holiday spirit in, then storing it all with ease. If you're ready to make your home feel as good as it looks, get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair Every style, EVERY home that's W A Y F A I R.com hey, it's JJ here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything. They just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order.

The holidays are all about family. But at the Chrysler Wrap up the Year sales event, it's all about you. Enjoy every mile in the most awarded minivan in America.

America.

The Chrysler Pacifica with the most standard safety features in its class, available Stow n Go seating and the available Stow and back built in vacuum. Make the most of the holidays with a great deal at the Chrysler Pacifica Wrap up the Year sales event based on Ward's small van segment. Based upon the latest available competitor information, Chrysler is a registered trademark of FCA US llc.

I am interested in a diet for Weight Loss in stages of menopause. This is JJ Virgin, New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Lisa from Facebook asks, I'm interested in a diet for weight loss in the stages of menopause. All right, this is a lot to unpack. I will be be right back and we will get at it.

Hey, it's J.J. here. Now let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday school, things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time, and that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with code Virgin.

Some people think nature is like this, but actually it's like this. Mother Nature is not all sunshine and rainbows. Nature can be hotter than a sauna and Colder than an arctic skinny dip. That's why Colombia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever.

Okay. So when we look at the stages of menopause, there are three really when you think about it. There's Peri. That means I'm kind of heading in and things are getting squirrely. That can start at like 42. And the younger it is tends to be because of stress. So we'll talk about that in a moment of why we need to really work on stress. Then you get into the full throes of it where you want to unzip your body and step out and come back in a couple years and then you get past it. So you got perimenopause post menopause. I'm just going to walk through as if you were say 40 and we can set you up perfectly to just ride through this as if you were just riding on a paddleboard in a beautiful like calm canal like I live on and not the crazy bay that I can go out on and then I run back. So first off, there's, here's the super most important thing. Stress is key to manage here because as you start to go into menopause, your body's gonna produce estrogen through your adrenals. You really, really, really want to make sure that you have got your stress dialed in. I will tell you what happened to me at 49. At 49, my 16 year old son, my number one son, was crossing the street at dusk and got hit by a car and left for dead in the street in the hospital for four and a half months, hovering between life and death. And it took us eight years to recover him. I detailed this in Warrior Mom. That is probably the single like as you're heading into that age to have that happen at 49, you can imagine what happened to everything. So you really want to have your adrenals as dialed as impossible. What that means, as dialed in as possible. What that means is that you are practicing really good self care stuff and prioritizing yourself and not feeling guilty about it either. Darn it. So, you know, making sure that you've got practices in every day to help you manage stress, that you're getting great sleep, eight to nine hours of sleep every day. That is super key. Next thing that's really important here that goes along hand in hand with this is good thyroid function. Your thyroid, if it's off, you will not be able to balance your hormones. So you've got to have good thyroid function. So this is something you want to monitor and you really want to be aware of. And I'll tell you, I noticed the minute. Seriously, maybe not the minute, but within a day of my thyroid starting to shift, I knew something was up. Here are the things that are classic signs of thyroid issues. You start to lose the outer third of your eyebrow. You start to be colder than normal, you can get constipated, your cholesterol goes up. Your hands, the outer part of your hands can get orange. You can't turn your beta carotene into vitamin A and so you can't synthesize it well. So your hands get orange, your hair starts to fall out, you get depressed, you can't build muscle. So really, really important, pay attention to those symptoms. If you start to feel any of those, get your thyroid tested. And don't go for normal, go for ideal. Normal is like, I think point two to 5.2 at, at 2.0, I was hypothyroid. All the symptoms feeling crappy. So you want to make sure you get a full protocol, a full panel where you look at not just your TSH, but also your free T3 and T4, reverse verse T3 and your antibodies, super important. And that you're working with a functional medicine doctor who knows how to look at this. So that's the first thing. Next thing there too. So we got adrenals, thyroid, and adrenals, of course, count in sleep, thyroid. And then we're also gonna look at vitamin D, which is a pro hormone. Don't think of it like a vitamin, think of it like a pro hormone. So it sits at the top of your hormone cascade. Super important for making everything work well. Okay, then you really want to. And I'm gonna lead this crusade now on us looking at diets differently. So ideally, you have created a program for yourself of how to eat and how to live where it's easy for you to maintain your weight in the right weight, composition of body fat and lean mass. And you've got everything dialed in so that if something starts to feel off, you go, huh? Like, my sleep is off, I'm constipated, I'm more tired than usual. I'm not recovering from my exercise. And you'll know to dig in. So the first thing that we do with that is we're going to look at diets differently. Instead of looking at a diet as something that you're on, you know, or you blue, right? Look at diets as something you do short term to learn something about yourself to. To either, like, for me, with the virgin diet to figure out your hidden food intolerances and to heal your leaky gut. Or sugar impact diet to figure out where sugar sneaking in the impact it's having on you and how to get rid of your sweet tooth forever. So you're using diets and how to move you from being a fat sugar burner to a fat burner so you can intermittent fasts. You're using diets to figure out what works there and pull it into your daily everyday life. Because what you want to do as you're heading into this is really know the best diet for you, but also realize that it may change. Like you might get a leakier gut during this time and have to have more food intolerances. You might not be able to handle the level of sugar impact that you did before and you'll have to lower it. When you start to get into this time. You have more, much less margin for error. And some of the foods that can really be helpful during this time are phytoestrogens. There's a lot of discussion about them, but basically I like to do garbanzo beans, sesame, freshly ground flaxseed meal are great things to add into the diet as phytoestrogens. And then there's a lot of like fruits and veggies that help here too. I also think it's super important to do broccoli. Broccoli sprouts, things that are high in I3C and diminish to help detox the estrogens and take dim avail as well. And then look at these things too. If you're in the peri or right in menopause, look at black cohosh. That can be super helpful as well. And I am blanking Vitex. I was like, I'm blanking on the other one Vitex. And then also look at if you're looking at this for losing and maintaining your weight, remember, you don't want to be tofi. One of the key things here for your metabolism is to make sure you're holding on or building your muscle. Because muscles where you stay insulated, insensitive muscle is what the biggest way beyond your thyroid that you can support a healthy metabolism. Get the calorie burning up. So you want to make sure you're doing that as well. Sometimes we start to age and hormones go down. We can't do that as well. So you want to make sure you're getting in that clean protein. You're doing those heavy weight training sessions because that will help too. So there you go. That's a whole bunch of it. I will tell you that I'm writing a new book and then I'm going to create a menopausal weight loss program. I'm just. It's in my head, so I'm working on that. A hormonal weight loss program. It's coming. Stay tuned. All right, now, if you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, come on, come on. What are you waiting for? Subscribe to JJ.com all right.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert effort.

I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.