Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello everyone. And welcome back to the hormone hub. It is so great to have you here. And I want to have a big shout out to all of my listeners. I kind of, when I started this podcast sort of thought, oh, well, it’ll be a bit of fun. And there might be a handful of, you know, clients who listen. Now, what I didn’t realise was actually how many of you are listening which, you know, blows my mind. It truly does. And I really appreciate, you know, the beautiful feedback. I’ve had some lovely emails, some lovely messages. I’ve met women in person who are enjoying the podcast and it just sort of gets me excited and I’m, you know, it makes me wanna keep going.

So yeah. Big shout out to the nurses at Kowan hospital. I have heard that there’s quite a few of you listening in, which is fantastic. So , if there’s any particular topic that you’d love me to cover, you know, I will talk about, just about anything [00:01:00] so happy to, you know, to cover anything that you have been wondering.

All right, so let’s jump into today’s episode. So we are gonna have a look at the hormone that’s driving weight gain when you’re in your forties and fifties. So, you know, and I’m talking about weight gain because that is sort of like one of the biggest bug bears of so many women that I work with now, even if weight loss, isn’t one of your issues, you know, certainly listen in today because you know, this sort of can certainly apply to you from a health perspective as well. Alrighty. So as our estrogen and progesterone levels start to fluctuate and then, you know, in our forties, and then once we hit 50, you know, our body naturally produces less.

Our body becomes more sensitive to signal a key fat storage hormone. Okay. So this particular hormone is insulin. All right. So insulin can either tell our body to burn fat or tell it to store [00:02:00] fat. And then, you know, because we’ve lost that sort of resistance to it, or we’re a bit more sensitive to it, you know, it’s more likely that for the first time for a lot of women, you’re putting on weight. Some women really notice that they’ve always carried weight in their bum and their thighs. And then all of a sudden they’re carrying it around the middle. Okay. So this is, you know, insulin is a big driver of this.

So our body is undergoing the biggest change since puberty. So this in itself can leave us feeling exhausted, waking up in the night, cranky, reaching for sugar, chocolate wine, cheese, you know, just to keep you going through a busy day and how your body burns fat, or not, has completely changed. If you are going low carb keto, if you’re doing crazy long fasts, restricting your calories, it may have worked for you back in your thirties, but now that you’ve hit your forties and fifties, this is the fastest way [00:03:00] to, you know, hit a plateau, zap your energy, leave you feeling exhausted, or, you know, gaining weight.

To say the very least, once you hit your forties and fifties, regaining your energy and shifting that weight requires you to work with your hormones. Okay. So maybe, you know, some of you might be in shock from a recent health scare. Um, you know, maybe your GP’s suggested medication, you know, which you’re not entirely sure about.

 And a lot of women are for the first time in their lives, put in a compromised health category. Okay. So, and we need to take action. A nd what I wanna do is sort of, you know, don’t be scared. Don’t be confused. You know, if diets haven’t worked for you in the past, or you haven’t been able to stick to them, don’t panic.

I’ve got you. All right. So our goal here, when, our GP might have mentioned, you know, insulin sensitivity, insulin resistance, you know, or just, [00:04:00] if you’ve noticed it, our goal is to reverse this, either prevent or reverse this insulin resistance. And we also want to lose that abdominal weight. So that belly fat. Now convention, you know, conventional treatments are, you know, reduced calories. Okay. Now I’m just gonna bust this myth right here and now, because this is based on the faultier option, that high insulin is the result of abdominal obesity. Okay. So because you are carrying, belly fat, you know, you are more prone to insulin resistance.

Now let me say, this is not the case. There’s growing evidence to show that abdominal weight gain is the result of insulin resistance. So it’s kind of like the, the cart before the horse. So because we have insulin resistance, this is why we are putting on weight around the midsection. So when we are told to lose weight, it’s actually not [00:05:00] particularly helpful.

All right. Now you might also like if you’ve been diagnosed with insulin resistance, you might have been prescribed, you know, common medications, which is, you know, something along the lines of Metformin. Okay. So this is all well and good but what happens is a lot of women are sort of put onto medications like this, and they’re never told how long for, or, you know, they’re never, and they’re always tested when they’re on the medication.

So of course their levels then start to, to improve. So one thing to be sort of mindful of. With something like Metformin is always ask, well, how long do you need to take it for? And also be aware that it can cause digestive issues and also a B12 deficiency. So if you are low in energy, you know, and you are taking Metformin, it’s worth just getting that B12 checked.

We, you know, it’s something that we wanna keep an eye on. Okay. So. What are the [00:06:00] signs of insulin sensitivity. Okay. So first up we, you know, it’s that increasing weight and storing fat around the middle. Okay. So we ideally have a waist circumference under 80 centimeters. So that’s the, I always measure around the slimmest part of your waist.

So we want that to be 80 in an ideal world. Now, if you are, we’ve got a bit of a gray area, which is totally fine. And if you are over 85 centimeters around the waist, it does put you in a higher risk category for insulin sensitivity. Now on a blood, blood test, it might show high triglycerides and high LDL cholesterol.

So I don’t pay too much attention to your overall cholesterol measure because there’s good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. And if you think of HDL as your happy cholesterol, H for happy, obviously then that’s the one that’s good. That’s totally fine. You know, we’re totally okay if that’s over the normal [00:07:00] limit. Now it’s the LDL, if you think of that as the lousy cholesterol, if that’s high, then we’ve got a problem. Another high reading that indicates insulin sensitivity is HBA1C, and fasting insulin, elevated liver enzymes. So we also wanna have a look at, you know, you might have be done a glucose tolerance test, that on its own doesn’t really tell us much.

So we wanna have a look at the actual insulin tests as well. And then, you know, we’ve got this beautiful, very unsexy term called fatty liver. This all used to be called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And this sort of this fatty liver comes about, you know, usually it’s diagnosed by ultrasound and also blood tests.

And it’s good to know that it’s not always alcohol. It can also be poor digestion. It can be, you know, if you’ve had your gallbladder removed, it could be, you know, you’ve got [00:08:00] high levels of fructose in your diet. Now I’ll go into fructose in a sec, but you know, fructose, this is not from fruit.

Okay. So it’d be things like, you know, your high processed corn syrups, things like that, processed sugars, vegetable and processed oils. Certain medications can cause fatty liver. And then also that insulin resistance. So you’ve got this sort of vicious cycle where, insulin resistance can make fatty liver worse and fatty liver makes insulin resistance worse.

So we really want to get in and look after and support that liver as well. So the good thing is like they’re all the, the sort of the markers and things to look for, but what we want to do and all of those are totally reversible with the diet and lifestyle. Okay. So the, and this is what we wanna do instead, we wanna improve your sensitivity to insulin.

So even if you haven’t been diagnosed with every, anything, you’ve just [00:09:00] noticed a little bit of weight going on around your midsection. This is where, you know, all of these things counts to improve that insulin sensitivity. So first up, you know, we wanna have a look at, you know, overcoming our cravings because that fluctuating blood sugar and cravings often go hand in hand.

So things like craving bread, sugar, cheese, dairy, chocolates, even meat for some women, you know, can show that sign of, you know, that, that insulin sensitivity. Now just know that insulin resistance causes cravings. So it’s a biochemical response and you know, a lot of women have a lot of guilt, a lot of shame sort of around these, you know, cravings and when they give into them, but just let you know, it’s not your fault, you know, and there’s a lot we can do to overcome these cravings.

Now first up, like know that they will [00:10:00] subside. Cravings don’t last forever. And also too, our taste buds will change over time so we can desensitize ourselves to that super sweet, you know, taste. All right. So how do we do this? Like, just with food, like if we have a look at what’s on our plate, what we wanna do is we wanna pull in protein and healthy fats.

And if we think of these as the anchors to our blood sugar, they fill us up, they, you know, keep us filling full for longer and they don’t spike our blood sugar up as much. So protein, so things like, you know, meat, chicken, fish, legumes, tofu if you’re plant based. So they’re, you know, just quick examples and healthy fats are, you know, are plant based fats or fats that occur naturally.

So avocados, nuts, seeds, olive oils, coconut oils, off the [00:11:00] top of my head. Yeah. There’s a few and then we still wanna have, you know, enjoy our carbs as well. So we think like if insulin sensitivity and weight loss is a goal, we do need to be mindful of our portions. But if you think of carbs, like the healthy carbs as being plant based.

So our sweet potato, our pumpkin, our, you know, legumes, our b rown rice, quinoa, you know, things like that. The carbs we wanna stay away from are carbs in packets, but you know, those plant based carbs, totally okay. But do watch your portions, if that, you know, insulin sensitivity is an issue. Having enough fiber, so fiber, you know, is like a broom for our bum.

It keeps everything moving. And if you think of it, it just gives everything a good sweep out. So this is where, particularly like that fatty liver, you know, you, we want that fiber to kind of like all the goodness goes and cleans it all up, mops it all up. So yeah, definitely we wanna get onto that. So [00:12:00] one of the things that can help is, you know, there’s a lot of talk and a lot of connection between intermittent fasting and insulin sensitivity.

But let me tell you ladies that 12 hours is more than enough. Okay. Because don’t forget and I’ve talked about this before. We’ve got that double whammy of our stress hormones lurking in the background. So, what we wanna do is make sure that, you know, we are not putting our body under more stress, so you can get the benefits of intermittent fasting and what this does, you know, just with a 12 hour fast.

So if you finish dinner at seven o’clock at night and you have breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning, that is plenty, you know, cause what we’re doing here is we’re giving your digestive system a break. We’re giving your liver a break. Everything gets a bit of time to repair, replenish, you know, restore.

 So 12 hours is enough for, you know, that in your forties, in your fifties sort of age group. [00:13:00] Don’t skip meals because when we start to skip meals, this is where we get those spikes and those big crashes in our blood sugar. Focus on sleep. So sleep, you know, when we’re not sleeping well, we tend to, our blood sugar is imbalanced right from the get go.

So this is where we tend to crave carbs, crave sugar. We lose that hormone that tells us that we are full. So leptin, you know, the signaling there doesn’t work as well. So yeah, so we really need to focus in on how can we improve our sleep. We can certainly have, you know, support our blood sugar with some, you know, good quality supplements.

So nutrients to look out for are magnesium, chromium, you know, are two that sort of come to mind. But yeah, we wanna make sure they’re in a therapeutic dose to actually make a big impact and, you know, any liver support that you’re doing as well. [00:14:00] So we want to, you know, to get to improve that insulin sensitivity, we want to either reduce or eliminate soft drinks and sodas like this seriously can have the biggest impact.

Like if you are drinking a can of Coke a day. Or, you know, more than one a day. The quickest way to get sugar into your bloodstream is through, you know, drinking it. So soft drinks, sodas, juices. So we want to reduce or eliminate those as much as we can. Now this includes all of our artificial sweeteners. So our brain tells our body that we’ve had a sugar hit and it releases insulin. So all of your chemical sweeteners, your aspartame, Nutrisweet, you know, all of those things impact your blood sugar. So even if you think you’re doing the right thing with the diet soft drinks, you know, they’re just as bad as the real thing.

All right. So we, obviously we [00:15:00] wanna have a look at cakes, biscuits, all our desserty type foods, any ultra processed sweet foods. Now what it’s okay to have in place, because it’s all, you know, well and good for me to say, all right, you need to stop doing this, this and this, but you know, what can we have?

So it’s okay to have fruit. It’s okay to have dark chocolate. You know, now with fruit, yes there’s naturally occurring sugars in fruit, but it’s portion controlled. You know, you are not going to get insulin sensitivity from an apple, you know, not gonna happen. So all fruit is fine. Okay. So we wanna sort of curb it to two to three pieces of fruit a day.

And you know, if this is something that you are, you know, concerned about the best fruits to pick are berries, you know, any type of berries, it really doesn’t matter. Or citrus fruit is quite good as well. So don’t be scared of fruit. Cacao can be [00:16:00] your friend, if you’re a choccy lover. So dark chocolate, if you can have, you know, like again, we can’t go berserk, but we can cap it at sort of one or two little squares of if we’re looking at Lindt dark chocolate, ideally over 70% dark chocolate.

But you know, what I have sort of most afternoons about three o’clock, four o’clock when there’s sort of that little dip in my energy levels hits. I have, you know, a tablespoon of cacao in hot water and a couple of drops of Stevia. So when, if you are looking for something as a sweetener, you know, stevia is fine.

Xylitol is fine, but ideally what we wanna do is desensitize that sweet tooth. So things like cinnamon are really good. So to put cinnamon in that spoonful of cacao, also, you know, cinnamon tea, licorice tea is really good for killing those sweet cravings as well. 

Now another really big one is movement.

So it’s, it’s one of the single best ways to improve insulin [00:18:00] sensitivity. So it improves our glucose regulation during exercise, by building muscle. And it improves insulin sensitivity even after we’ve exercised. So when we are resting. So you can do strength training, you know, you can go and do it in a gym, but we can also, there’s a lot that we can do at home.

So we can do lunges, squats, pushups, planks, use resistance bands, you know, any body weighted exercise. Yoga, Pilates, you know, these all help because they’re using our muscles. Now if you are taking or considering taking menopause hormone therapy, you can have a look at, you know, estrogen plus progesterone.

So these two together can prevent or reverse insulin resistance, because remember estrogen helps that insulin sensitivity. Okay. And then progesterone also promotes healthy fat loss because it keeps our testosterone in check. It supports our sleep, which then stops those [00:19:00] cravings. And it also progesterone helps increase our thyroid hormone.

So it’s just good to be aware that, you know, if insulin sensitivity is an issue for you, that combination of estrogen and progesterone, you know, if you’ve got other hormonal symptoms, you know, can be beneficial as well. All right. So if you are, you know, curious to find out about how we do this with our clients, you know, one of the first things we do when ladies come into the well balanced woman program is we look at, you know, how we can anchor their hormones.

Okay. So we start off, we do an individual assessment, we put a personalized supplement plan together for you. And we also give you a personalized plate planner. So this is where we wanna get those foundations right. We wanna get the right balance of food at each meal to support your energy levels, to stabilize out your blood sugar and reduce your cravings.

Okay. So I don’t use meal plans because [00:20:00] I find they’re hard to stick to. Everyone has different food preferences and family circumstances, so, and food availability. So a plate planner means you can adjust your existing family meals. So it’s easier to fit in with your life. Okay. So we want this to be realistic for you and something you can stick to long term.

All right. So if you wanna learn more about how we support women in their forties and fifties, with our proven system, the well balanced woman program, why don’t you book in your call to find out more? Now I’ll pop the links in the show notes and yeah, I would absolutely love to hear from you. Okay, everyone.

Well, thanks for listening. And I will see you all next week.