Weight Loss Strategies for Sustainable Success

The number one thing I have to tell you is that, as much as everyone would like to believe weight loss is a simple maths equation of calories in versus calories out, by the time you get to your mid-40s, this simply isn’t true. If you clicked to read this article, you discovered this for yourself already and are wondering, if it’s not the thing that people say it is (from doctors to personal trainers), what is the formula for weight loss in midlife?

I struggled a little with my own weight for many years, and I’ve been working with metabolic and hormonal weight management for over ten years. And I think I’ve cracked the code. But, I have to tell you, it’s not as straightforward as you’d probably like it to be, certainly not as quick as you’d hope when you’re in your menopause era, and there’s no one-size-fits-all.

This is exactly why losing weight over 40 feels so hard. You cannot just follow what Sandra did down the road and get the same results. With that being said, let me outline some of the areas I typically explore with my clients. These are some of the topics I go into much more detail in my book, Everything They Told You About Menopause Weight Loss Is Wrong.

1. Blood sugar balance

This is the key to feeling more energised, more satisfied with the food you eat, sleeping better, and a whole host of other benefits. I’ve seen changing people’s diet so it keeps their blood sugar steady (as opposed to huge spikes and troughs) be almost life-changing in terms of how they feel. It becomes even more important in midlife when insulin resistance becomes much more likely for women.

2. Eating the right amount of food

It’s not that calories don’t matter at all, but by the time the women I see are ready to invest in their health, they have tried pretty much everything, and calories have usually been cut already. If you eat too much (and too many calories), you will store the excess as fat. If you have a diet with too many blood sugar spikes, you will store the excess sugar as fat while also experiencing cravings in the dips. If you don’t eat enough food, your body will go into starvation mode. 

Much as some noisy people on social media may claim not to be the case (citing wartime starvation camps as their evidence), this is something I see over and over in my nutrition clinic, especially in women who have lost less than 2 stone (13kg) in weight. Eating the right amount for your body to lose weight is key. In midlife, you want only a small calorie deficit. The bigger the deficit, the more likely you are to be in starvation mode. 

If you are also training a few times a week, too great a deficit is likely to put you in a low-energy state. You’ll actually start to lose weight – and perform better when you work out – by addressing this.

I’m not especially a fan of counting calories, but it is often useful if I suspect a client is under-eating. Using some kind of tracker can give valuable insights into where you are in terms of eating enough. 

I am also interested in how much protein you are eating and how much fibre, both of which become more important for most aspects of health as you get older, including weight loss. This is important because we don’t want to lose weight just to lose weight, and at any cost. I want people to lose weight and feel great on the journey, and create a sustainable, healthy future for themselves over their next few decades.

3. Drink plenty of water

Since drinking water is free and you could drink more at any time, this rarely seems a priority for people, but you’d be surprised at the difference this makes to weight loss. There are all kinds of reasons why you should drink more, but the main two for weight loss (borne out by research) are that staying hydrated curbs your hunger, making it less likely you’ll overeat, and increases lipolysis (which means your body breaks down stored fat to be used as energy). And drinking water helps you poo! Clients have reported a bowel movement accounting for a couple of pounds. Plus, even feeling a little dehydrated makes you feel sluggish. Drinking plenty of fluids is also key for people on weight loss injections, where some of the most common symptoms (nausea, constipation) can be minimised.

4. Focus on sleep

Sleep can feel elusive in midlife, and getting the right amount for you consistently is important. Checking in with how well my clients are sleeping has been – on occasion – the place we’ve started on a programme even ahead of food because, if you’re exhausted, everything looks and feels terrible, and the motivation to make healthy choices is simply not there. Usually, though, it’s where we head right after we’ve addressed food. Sometimes we need to run some tests to get to the bottom of why sleep is problematic (these, by the way, are private tests that your doctor will not have access to or will not consider a clinical priority). Frequently, it’s a case of making sleep a priority and working to create nighttime and morning routines that work for your health but also work in your life.

5. Manage stress

Many people know conceptually that keeping stress under control would be a good thing, but are not convinced how negatively it’s affecting pretty much any health goal they might have, including the desire to drop a few pounds. This is compounded by the fact that many of the women I work with are high achievers, and they’re very much in the mindset of handling everything because they can. Additionally, so many women I speak to feel guilty about taking time out for themselves to relax and de-stress.

Reducing stress needs an actual plan rather than a vague notion of doing it, and stress-relieving activities need to be diarised so that other family tasks or caring responsibilities don’t just pour into any free time you might have. 

6. Do the right exercise

Often, with a weight loss goal, women will gravitate towards doing lots of cardio in a bid to burn through as many calories as possible. Logically, I agree this makes sense – but only if the answer to menopausal weight loss was a numbers game. It’s not that cardio, like running and spinning, is not good for you, but strength training is where it’s at in midlife because your muscle mass has been secretly on the slide for years.

Muscle is metabolic gold. The more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn even when you’re on the sofa watching Netflix. Muscles also very happily use up the glucose in your blood (from the food you eat), making this type of exercise the perfect antidote to the increased risk for insulin resistance and for our muscle mass declining at this stage of life. 

In case you’re calling to mind a bodybuilder… it doesn’t work like that. Even women on a real mission to ‘bulk up’ (which is not what I’m talking about here) find that building muscle is far harder than you think. Strength training now will help you stop the decline and is excellent for keeping strong for the next few decades, thus helping to prevent falls, which could lead to broken bones in later life. Added benefit: when you lift weights, you’ll feel strong and invincible walking down any stairs, and your arms will look great in sleeveless tops!

7. Be careful with fasting

Fasting has become super popular in the last ten years thanks to the likes of the 5:2 diet and Fast Like a Girl. I see so many women shrinking their eating window to eight hours based on all the folks online doing likewise. I was always a fan of this kind of time-restricted eating myself, but it was only when I was in the real thick of menopause that I finally realised that it wasn’t working the way it used to – however much I actually enjoyed skipping breakfast. Cortisol is highest in the morning, and fasting is a stressor, so not eating until lunch heaps stress upon stress, which is terrible news in midlife. It’s not that I don’t like fasting as a concept, but you’d be far better jiggling your day around to start eating earlier and finishing earlier. 

8. Don’t exercise on an empty stomach

When you have a full-time job or your schedule dictates you need to exercise at the start of the day, working out how to have a little something (protein and carbs) before you work out can feel like a maths problem. This is something I often see in the

clinic. I’m going to leave this with you to roll around in your head and find some ideas for what might work in your life. This is why it’s important: levels of the stress hormone cortisol are highest in the morning, and exercise is a stressor (although, like fasting, a positive stressor). Stress upon stress again. Your midlife body needs a little something to get to work on, even if it’s a protein-based shake or an oatcake with a few slices of banana and some unsweetened peanut butter. Your body will like that much more, and you’ll get more from your workouts, too.

9. Address hormonal imbalances and hidden problems

Sometimes you really can be doing all the things ‘right’ and yet still something is amiss. That’s when it really pays to work with an experienced professional who can explore any symptoms with you and recommend testing that might get to the bottom (we like to call it the 'root cause') of the problem. Tests might be genetic/DNA testing (you’d be amazed how powerful the metabolics report is), DUTCH testing for hormones, including stress hormones, or stool testing – among others. Often, no amount of your own trial and error will allow you to reveal what’s going on sometimes. 

10.  The answers are inside you

This is not an exhaustive list, but it covers all the key bases, and I appreciate it’s a lot to take in. And – yes – it is a whole lot more to be thinking about than just that calorie equation everyone thinks it is. When I first graduated as a nutritional therapist, I thought that simply giving guidance on what to do would yield results, but this isn’t always the case. Over the last handful of years, I’ve brought more health coaching into my practice, and this is what makes the biggest difference to whether or not the lifestyle work (in particular) gets done.

You are the expert in you. What motivates you is unique to you. Your life is unique to you – and that’s one of the many reasons the one-size-fits-all approach falls down. Without health coaching to help you focus on the right goals, without the space to think about why these goals are important to you and how you can practically put actions into your life, coupled with accountability to actually do the work… frankly, you’ll stay stuck.