4 reasons why you are eating healthily…. but the weight won’t budge

Are you frustrated because you are looking after yourself and doing all of the right things and you still feel like you have excess weight? And despite you your best efforts the weight is going on? It can be be very distressing. 

In this training, I share some of the reasons why women over 40 on the perimenopause menopause journey stay stuck despite eating healthily. And how you can change this. 

(this one is 10 mins but you can speed me up 😁)

Key Points (and for those who prefer to read):

1. They are not eating the “right” balance of healthy foods for them.

What is healthy and balanced for a child, teenager, man or even a woman in their 20s is very different to what a woman over 40 needs. Most of the women that I work with in the Burnout Fix have been trying to eat healthily. However, when we take a look at what they are actually eating on a day-to-day basis we see a few things. They can be eating too many healthy carbs or they are cutting out carbs completely. Both wreak havoc with our hormones. 

Also, they are not consistently getting enough antiinflammatory fats, complete protein and fibre. 

These are paramount not only for blood sugar balance (which is needed for us to utilise the stored energy in our fat cells) but also for healthy bowel movements. It is so important to excrete the toxins we release from fat cells as we begin to support weight loss. If this is compromised, we cannot eliminate this additional toxin load, and the body can increase inflammation, but we may also hold on to additional water weight. 

2. Some people are undereating, without realising.

Whether it is not eating enough at mealtimes or skipping meals and relying on caffeine instead. Although this may still work for men and women in 20s with primed hormones, under eating causes the metabolism to slow down. Simply put we just don’t use as many caolories as energy each day, because it isn’t expecting it in. 

Now your body can’t handle a normal amount of food, and it is much easier to gain weight when you do eat normally or overindulge at times.

3. You are trying to eat healthily but you are so tired and/or stressed out. 

In the Burnout Fix, my clients experience varying amounts of fatigue when they join. Some crash in the afternoons and maybe get a second wind at night and can’t sleep. Some are just tired from the minute they wake up to the minute their heads hit the pillow. 

Whatever the experience of fatigue, it is really hard to support a healthy weight for you if you are tired, because the metabolism is sluggish. There can be a number of reasons why someone is tired and this needs to be uncovered. Otherwise, the body stays stuck in a place where it feels it needs to hold on to the extra energy (fat stores) for emergencies. 

Similarly, if our stress response is on fire, we are running from one thing to the next and pushing on through the fatigue, our stress hormones will also keep us stuck in a fat storage imbalance.

4. The excess weight they are carrying comes from a more profound imbalance that needs a therapeutic personalised protocol to address. 

Eating healthily and exercising more will not, on it’s own, be the solution. 

Very often, it comes down to compromised digestion and gut health, which can cause food intolerances; this contributes to not absorbing nutrients, impaired detoxification pathways and/or hormone imbalances. 

For example, someone who is constipated (not having an entire proper bowel movement, type 3 or 4 on the Bristol stool chart) and getting really heavy periods and PMS off the charts, will need a different protocol than someone who is exhausted a lot of the time and experiencing unexplained bloating after meals, so much so they look 6 months pregnant. 

Yes, eating healthy is a brilliant first step. Still, if it isn’t enough, personalised protocols and perhaps testing around adrenals, gut, food intolerances, and nutrient deficiencies can help get to the root cause of the problem when we are stuck. 

The most important thing is to ensure you work with a qualified practitioner with a breadth of experience with root-cause fatigue resolution and weight loss for women over 40.

If you are ready to get started and and would like my help , let’s chat.