5 Hormonal Signals Sabotaging Weight Loss — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] If you're a woman over 40 and you have tried everything to lose weight, you have dieted your way into insanity, you have exercised more than you've ever exercised in your life, you are

[00:13] fasting like a queen and you're still not losing weight, I want to show you why. In this video, we're going to talk about how weight loss, especially after 40 for women, is not a calorie

[00:28] problem. It is a signaling problem. And it is the signals, the way in which our cells signal to each other that actually control weight gain and weight loss. So I want to walk you through five signals

[00:46] that get disrupted as you move into the perimenopause and menopause ages. This is also for 50 and 60 year olds that may be still struggling with weight gain. You can't lose

[00:59] that menopausal belly weight or that menop, the extra weight that came on. I want to show you how you can start to incorporate these five things. So let's dive in. So first I just want

[01:11] to point out, because I know from experience being here with you all and those of you who join me on my lives, I go live here on YouTube at four o'clock Pacific time every Tuesday. that some of you are still holding on to that calorie idea.

[01:27] And it's fine. Like, no judgment here. You know, I'm a product of the 70s and the 80s, and we counted calories, and we ate low-fat, and that's how we dieted. But the thing is that that's outdated.

[01:40] And it comes largely from two scientists who, in 2018, published a review in JAMA Internal Medicine, which is a big publication,

[01:52] something called the Carbohydrate Insulin Model. And it was back in 2018 that they started to bring to the world that it wasn't a calorie in, calorie out situation weight gain,

[02:06] but it was a challenge with one hormone, one particular hormone, which was insulin. So remember that our hormones are signaling molecules.

[02:18] molecules. One hormone gets released to create an action somewhere else in the body. Sometimes that action is the release of another hormone. And what these two scientists found was that when

[02:31] we're eating a lot of carbohydrates, we're increasing insulin. And when you start to bring up insulin too much, you become what we know now as insulin resistant. And when you are insulin

[02:46] resistant, it becomes very difficult to lose weight. And so what the scientists said is we have to stop counting calories. We need to look at weight loss as a hormonal issue, not a calorie

[03:02] issue. And I'm not saying that calorie in, calorie out doesn't work. I'm saying that it's hard to sustain over time. And if you take your focus from calorie in, calorie out over to hormones, you're going to find that you can drop weight for good.

[03:17] Put it in the comments if you're one of those people. So here are the signaling molecules that break down as you move past your 40th birthday into, you know, your 40s, your 50s, 60s, 70s.

[03:32] Here's what gets off, the signaling molecules that get off. We talked about insulin resistance. So insulin sensitivity starts to decline, especially after 40 for women, because as estrogen goes down, estrogen helped with that insulin sensitivity.

[03:50] She's leaving the building, so it's a lot harder, and she's not there to help you with that insulin sensitivity. The way I always say it is that the same meal that you ate at 38 and you got away with it

[04:04] and you did really well with it, you may not do so well with it at 48. Okay, second signaling molecule that breaks down is cortisol. And this one's interesting because estrogen was a buffer for stress.

[04:19] Estrogen, if you've read Age Like a Girl, I talked in here about how after 40, even our neurotransmitter production like dopamine and serotonin, those can actually go off because as estrogen declines, so do all those other neurotransmitters.

[04:37] But what's interesting is that we don't give enough language to the fact that we're not able to regulate cortisol as well without estrogen.

[04:49] So it's not just showing up as irritability, but it actually shows up as more belly weight. And let me explain this. So the Seattle Midlife Women's Health Study had documented elevated and dysregulated cortisol patterns through the perimenopausal transition.

[05:08] And what they found is that we have cortisol receptors in visceral fat. So I've done a lot of videos here on visceral fat, and that it was these, that when you have cortisol in your system, what ends up happening is it activates these receptor sites and activates the production of fat.

[05:29] And estrogen used to balance cortisol, but she's out, she's not around. And so now you just have cortisol running feral in your body and it's going into visceral fat and it's actually stimulating more fat production.

[05:47] So I want to say don't stress, but I understand as a 56-year-old woman that as these hormones are changing, that's easier said than done. I'm going to give you some advice here on how to go back and regulate cortisol without sitting in your chair and meditating for hours on end.

[06:04] Okay, so a third thing I want to bring to your attention is that muscle mass declines. So sarcopenia is real. You're trying to work out, but you're not building as much muscle.

[06:16] And you have to think of muscle as a pantry for glucose. It's where glucose goes. So if I don't have as much muscle, then glucose doesn't have anywhere to be stored,

[06:29] so it's going to be stored as fat. And then the last one is your sleep architecture can start to fragment, which means basically you have trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep. Sounds familiar?

[06:42] But it is deep sleep that really matters for weight loss. And as progesterone goes down around the mid-30s, you start to move into this sleep fragmentation,

[06:55] and your deep sleep can go off, which can start to accelerate waking. Okay, so I'm going to give you action steps for all of these changes, these signaling changes.

[07:08] Let's break each one down. So action number one is you want to stabilize your blood sugar. Okay, you know after 40 you're going to become more insulin resistant,

[07:20] so we want to target this declining insulin sensitivity. And so here's what we can do. First we can look at our food order So I been talking a lot about that here on my channel There is clear research that the order in which we eat food matters largely for things like GLP hormone

[07:43] which is the hormone that everybody's getting in the weight loss drugs. But what's interesting is that we have research all over the place showing how important food order is.

[07:55] Research from Weill Cornell Medical College has shown that eating fiber and protein before carbohydrates in the same meal can reduce post-meal glucose spikes by more than 40% without changing anything you eat.

[08:15] This means you could have a salad and maybe a chicken breast and then have a bowl of pasta. If you ate it in that order, you would have a 40% reduction in glucose spikes.

[08:30] That's massive to a perimenopausal woman. Okay, second thing you can do is that there is science on a post-meal walk. So there was a 23 meta-analysis in sports medicine that showed that exercise, a light exercise, as an after meal reduced our glucose response.

[08:52] 10 to 15 minutes. You're not talking a long amount, but think about it. You eat. Glucose goes up. You move. Glucose now starts to get relocated to your muscles, not to your belly.

[09:08] So a post-meal walk is incredibly effective. Okay, third thing you can do to help with insulin sensitivity is you can do time-restricted eating, fasting.

[09:20] And there was a really popular fasting study, 2018 in Cell Metabolism, that showed that compressing the eating window, specifically this study was done on 16 hours of fasting and eight hours of eating so you

[09:38] compress the eating window that that became improved insulin sensitivity it improves blood pressure it improved oxidative stress markers without changing the total calorie intake

[09:55] I am one to sit here after over 10 years on YouTube teaching the world how to fast. I am more convinced on the power of fasting than I have ever been.

[10:07] If you're new to fasting, you can start with Fast Like a Girl. It's a great book that explains the power, healing power of fasting. But time-restricted eating, a.k.a. intermittent fasting, is not going anywhere.

[10:21] So how does this work in a complete package? So what can you actually do if you want to improve insulin sensitivity? So first is at every meal, eat vegetables and protein first.

[10:37] Easy, right? That's pretty easy. Then you eat your starches like potatoes and sweet potatoes and rice and your sweets, like maybe if you have a dessert, make sure it has lots of,

[10:50] make sure if you're doing dessert, you're doing fiber first. And so you look at your meal order where you're getting vegetables and protein, and then you're adding starches and sweet flask,

[11:02] and then you walk 10 minutes after lunch and after dinner. And a really big one that we have found in this community is you stop eating three hours before bedtime and you aim for 12 to 14 hours of fasting.

[11:19] Now, if you're new to this, you might be like, what? What? What? I just got to do all of that? That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying here is a very simple formula. That order of food, walk afterwards, watch your eating window, don't eat right up till

[11:35] you go to bed, and let's shoot for 12 to 14 hours every day of fasting. This is not hard. In fact, those of you that have been following me for a while, put it in the comments how it's not hard

[11:47] so the newbies can understand that. So that's a lot. That is a lot we can do for insulin resistance or the challenges with insulin sensitivity signaling.

[11:59] Okay, second thing, action number two. What do we do with the cortisol dysregulation? So I just mentioned we have cortisol receptor sites in visceral fat.

[12:12] So every time you stress out, that cortisol is going to your belly and it's going to keep increasing that menopausal belly fat.

[12:24] So here I'm going to give you three things that you can do for this. One is morning light. So there is science behind getting exposure to morning light.

[12:36] And here it is. Bright light exposure in the first 30 to 60 minutes after waking helps anchor something called the cortisol awakening response. So it keeps cortisol in the morning where you want cortisol.

[12:54] so when you wake up melatonin shifts off melatonin is like peace out I kept this person asleep we're going to go ahead and we need to rest now and cortisol is like hey I got you I got you I'm

[13:08] going to kick in so this person starts to move when you expose yourself to bright light in the morning what you're doing is you're getting that cortisol activated earlier than later and the

[13:21] Earlier you activate cortisol, you're going to move around quite a bit, and the more you move around, you're going to use that cortisol so it doesn't get stored in these receptor sites and visceral sites.

[13:34] Make sense? So let's get us moving or exposed to that light early on. Okay, the second bit of science I found was the science of breath work.

[13:46] And this is interesting. It's a 23-study from Cell Reports Medicine that showed five minutes daily of cyclical sighing. I love to sigh.

[13:59] Any sires in here? A specific extended exhale breathing pattern significantly reduced physiological arousal and improved mood,

[14:11] with effects exceeding those of mindfulness meditation. So what is cyclical sigh? It's just like walking around and going, ugh, ugh.

[14:23] Like, I do it sometimes at night when I can't sleep. I'm just like, ugh. Like, come on, let's sigh. That sighing is actually starting to help regulate cortisol.

[14:36] It's good. It's why we do it. So let's not hold it back. Let's sigh. Okay, the third one I want to bring to your attention is my new favorite, is nature. So exposure to nature, a 2019 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that as little as 10 minutes or more of contact with nature significantly lowers cortisol levels.

[15:00] 10 minutes. Now we also know that you can actually listen to bird noises or ocean noises You can watch something even on YouTube of running streams

[15:12] If you don't have access to nature, you can hear nature and you can see nature in a picture, on a YouTube video. That can bring down cortisol levels as well.

[15:25] Now, a side note on cortisol that I want to point out is that some of you may be noticing that you're more sensitive to caffeine. So a lot of women, as they move into their 40s, realize they've got to bring caffeine down.

[15:41] Cortisol will naturally peak at 8 or 9 in the morning. That's when you want your coffee, at 8 or 9 in the morning, not at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, not even at noon, because then what you're doing is you're spiking cortisol patterns and adding to this dysregulation

[16:00] because you're now out of natural rhythm with your own cortisol level. So how do you put all these together? Ten minutes of outdoor light within an hour of waking up.

[16:12] You can combine that as a walk, and now we're getting a combo there. Five minutes, five-minute session of cyclical sign. I want to know. Let me know if you do that one. It's my new favorite one. A 20-minute walk outside in nature a day. So cut off your caffeine at noon. A lot of you are going to need to drink your caffeine earlier because you're not breaking that cortisol levels down.

[16:39] Okay, action number three. Feed the bacteria that makes your own GLP-1 hormone. So when your microbiome shifts, when you're going through menopause or perimenopause,

[16:54] what happens is that you don't break the estrogen down as well. We've talked about that. But those microbes also make the GLP-1 hormone. and the GLP-1 hormone is what all the weight loss drugs have been built on.

[17:10] And so after 40, you're not making as much of this hormone. So this matters because you not only will see changes in, I mean, the gut bacteria makes everything.

[17:22] So you're going to see changes in neurotransmitter production. You're going to see changes in melatonin production. You're going to see changes in the breakdown of estrogen. and you're going to see changes in making the hormone from these microbes that kills your hunger.

[17:38] So here is some science you can add in to bring these microbes back. So first is fermented foods. So fermented foods are definitely the hero of the day,

[17:50] and I've done a lot of videos on fermented foods. We got tons of fermented foods in Eat Like a Girl. you need to be having fermented foods every day. So there was a landmark 2021 cell study

[18:06] that put participants on a high fermented food diet. Things like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha. And they did this high fermented food diet for 10 weeks. And the result

[18:21] was it significantly increased microbial diversity, and it reduced inflammatory markers. And it was better than just a high-fiber diet alone.

[18:35] So we want that diversity of your microbiome because that's how you get all the special bells and whistles that the microbiome can make you, including GLP-1 hormone. You can get all those together just by eating fermented foods.

[18:52] Okay, second thing I want you to think about is the fiber gap and eating more fiber. So most American women will consume between 12 and 15 grams of fiber per day.

[19:07] But the recommended level is 25 grams. So for an and what they're saying for GLP-1 stimulation, you need to have 30 to 40 grams of fiber.

[19:22] What I recommend is you actually look at what vegetables you eat or if you do legumes. Just pick one day and just measure your fiber just to give you some kind of indication as to where you are.

[19:37] Because most people think they're eating fiber, but they're not. and many people are not eating any fiber at all. But really important for helping with these microbes that make you so many things,

[19:49] including GLP-1 hormone that will kill hunger. Okay, so what can you actually do if you think your microbes are off? So I'm going to give you some checklists here.

[20:01] Track your plant diversity for one week. Count every vegetable, every fruit, nut, seed, herb, spice, legume, and whole grain, and see how many you get in a week.

[20:15] Research says aim for about 30. You can do better than that. We did this in our Reset Academy, and we challenged people to get 100 different types of plants in one week.

[20:27] It's a fun game to play, and it's really important to get that diversity of plants so that you can regrow these microbes. Second thing you can do is add in one fermented food daily.

[20:42] This can be Greek yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, all those things to add them in. And build your meals around these fiber-dense foods. instead of sort of treating them as side dishes,

[20:55] how about if they're the main course and everything goes around it? Okay, action step number four is build and feed your muscles. So definitely we want to bring back lifting,

[21:09] but we also want to be eating enough protein. So after 40, you're getting accelerated muscle loss. Now, it might be if you're in your 60s or 70s or even 50s, it's like you're not looking for the look of muscles.

[21:26] But remember, muscles is where our body stores glucose. So if we have less muscle, we have less storage of glucose, and the secondary storage for glucose is fat. So we want to keep those muscles up.

[21:40] And so there are two ways that we can do that. And one is by resistance training, like strength training, and one is by protein intake. So the science on resistance training is really coming on strong.

[21:57] So there is a 2026 study that found resistance training in post-menopausal women significantly improved body composition independent of weight loss.

[22:10] What that means is you can be postmenopausal, you can start strength training, and you can actually start to see physical changes in your fat to muscle ratio.

[22:23] And that might be changing despite the scale not changing. Okay. Second thing is you want to target protein intake. and the gold standard is around 1 to 1 grams of protein a day My experience has been that that a lot for women to focus on

[22:46] So I like to really look at can you get 30 to 40 grams of protein at every single meal? Because each meal matters. So if we can get a good dose in one meal, that would be really important.

[23:02] And most women are under eating fiber and they're under eating protein. So here is your to-do action list for this. So try to lift two to four times per week.

[23:18] So this can be, you know, I like to take the biggest muscle groups. So I like to do delts, biceps, pecs, glutes, my quads, and my hamstrings,

[23:30] because those are going to be areas that if I can strengthen them, they're going to have more of a capacity to move that glucose into those areas. And then just like you're building your meal around fiber,

[23:43] let's look at how we can add in a protein, a good solid protein at every single meal, shooting for 30 to 40 grams per meal. Okay, action step number five is your sleep architecture.

[23:59] Now, why this matters is, check this out, deep sleep is where growth hormone is made. It's also where leptin and ghrelin are recalibrated and the brain clears metabolic waste. Why does this matter

[24:15] to you. Growth hormone is a hormone you stop getting after 30. It slows down its production. Fasting, by the way, one of the best ways to bring growth hormone back. So, but what's interesting

[24:30] is that it slows down, but your deep sleep, which is you need about 90 minutes of deep sleep, is you'll get growth hormone back because in deep sleep, growth hormone is released.

[24:43] leptin and ghrelin are these signaling hormones that signal fat release or fat oxidation is what they call it and hunger and when you go into deep sleep you recalibrate these two critical hormones

[25:01] for weight loss and then the brain will clear the metabolic mesh which is going to make you feel a lot brighter, help you hold on to memory. Now, there is science on sleep and body composition,

[25:16] and it was a study in the Annuals of Internal Medicine that placed dieting adults on identical calorie-restricted diets, but all they did is vary sleep duration. So, both groups are on the

[25:33] same calorie restriction, but the sleep duration was one group was restricted and the other group was given more opportunity to sleep. And here's what they found. The sleep restricted group lost

[25:48] 60% more lean mass and 55% less fat. So in other words, if you don't get enough sleep,

[26:01] You are putting yourself at jeopardy of losing this lean mass, aka muscles, and you don't burn fat as much. It is in sleep that we burn fat, which is why I've done so many sleep videos here.

[26:16] It's why I have a whole chapter on sleep and age like a girl, because it's so important we learn how to sleep. And every single one of us is going to have a different door in for sleep. Okay, now I also know hot flashes, all of that affects sleep.

[26:32] So let me give you some suggestions for a good night's sleep. First, you need a cool bedroom. It's critical for hot flashes. You've got to get that core temperature down to go into a deep sleep.

[26:48] I have a whole protocol again in Age Like a Girl. You can follow around temperature and light and all those kind of things. Second thing is that you want to take magnesium glycinate before bed.

[27:02] Typically around 200 to 400 milligrams can be well tolerated and is research supported for sleep quality. I also encourage you to have no screens 60 minutes before bed.

[27:16] keep a consistent sleep going to bedtime and waking up time so that your circadian rhythm can get to know your pattern and then melatonin responds it's like oh it's nine o'clock we need

[27:32] to make sure we've got enough melatonin oh it's six o'clock let's let's shut off melatonin your your body's like training an animal right if you train it at when to make melatonin when to

[27:44] like turn off melatonin it will do it but you have to do it every single day to train it so it knows when to go after that so here's what i'm going to tell you that was a lot you can go back and

[27:57] watch this video again for those of you who are really struggling to lose weight go back and take each one of those checklists and just write them all out and then work them one by one by one i'm

[28:09] not telling you to do all five of these major categories. You might say, oh, I've got a lot of cortisol dysregulation. Go back to the part of the video where I talk about cortisol dysregulation

[28:22] and work those principles. Or maybe you're noticing you're eating the same kinds of foods that you used to eat before. Go back to insulin sensitivity and work those principles. Maybe you

[28:34] know your food noise is through the roof. Go back to what I said about your microbiome and work those principles. You don't need to do all of this all at once. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it. But pick where you're struggling the most and then do those key checklist moments that I gave you here

[28:53] because they work and they're based off of science. So tell me in the comments. I want to know If you've used any of these principles to lose weight, I'll tell you I have a sub stack where we're having some really cool conversations.

[29:08] You can come join me over there. And I've asked specifically about weight gain over 40 to my sub stack followers of what they're struggling with. And it's really fascinating to me that there is a lot of women are saying, once I started eating better, once I started sleeping better, once I started fasting, once I started moving,

[29:30] nothing it wasn't like anything major it was like a lot of little things they started dropping weight the food noise went away and they started to have a different experience with their body so you can come join me over there and I just want to say everything I've pointed out here

[29:46] is incredibly effective for weight loss and it's most important is it's not as simple as putting a patch on and just hoping all those symptoms go away you have a lot more control than that and

[29:59] and your lifestyle is massively important on this perimenopausal journey. So, as always, I hope that helps. If this helps, you're not going to want to stop there. Check out this video.