Perimenopause & Menopause Weight Loss Help

Why does it suddenly feel like everything that used to work... doesn't?

If you've entered your 40s or 50s and noticed weight gain, stubborn belly fat, poor sleep, brain fog, hot flashes, or low energy, you're not imagining it. Perimenopause and menopause bring significant hormonal changes that affect far more than your menstrual cycle—and many women are left trying the same dieting strategies that worked in their 20s and 30s with little success.

In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn sits down with Debbie Harris, founder of the 30 to Life Solution, bestselling author, certified hypnotist, and health coach, to discuss why midlife weight loss is different and how women can shift from dieting to creating a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle.

Together they explore practical strategies for supporting hormonal health, improving your relationship with food, and building habits that support long-term wellness rather than quick fixes.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why weight gain during perimenopause and menopause is so common
- Why traditional dieting often becomes less effective after 40
- The connection between stress, cortisol, sleep, and belly fat
- How food sensitivities can change during midlife
- Why improving sleep may be one of the most important health changes you can make
- The role of hydration, added sugar, movement, and stress management
- How to identify trigger foods and build a healthier relationship with eating
- Why exercise recommendations may need to change during menopause
- The importance of individualized nutrition instead of one-size-fits-all diet plans
- Questions to ask your healthcare provider about menopause symptoms and treatment options

Whether your goal is to release excess weight, improve your energy, sleep better, or simply feel more like yourself again, this episode offers practical ideas to help you navigate this stage of life with greater confidence.

Connect with Debbie Harris

🌐 Website: https://30tolife.org/

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbielee211/

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DebbieHarrisDietingSucks

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fordebbielee/

📘 Facebook:
- https://www.facebook.com/fordebbielee/
- https://www.facebook.com/30tolifesolution/

𝕏 X: https://x.com/DebbieLHarris

🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@debbieharris4262

Special Offer

Debbie is offering listeners 50% off the first month of her Balanced Warrior Community Membership. Your first month is just $19 (regularly $39/month), giving you access to coaching, accountability, and support as you work toward better health, reduced menopause symptoms, and lasting peace with food.

Resources Mentioned

- Dieting Sucks for Women Over 40 – 30 to Life: The Ultimate Weight Loss and Hormone Balancing Formula
- WOmenopause – Real Talk, Real Stories, Real Women
- Learn more about the 30 to Life Solution at https://30tolife.org

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We are talking about perimenopause and menopause weight gain. And the timing is perfect in my own personal life because I was out with girlfriends last week and several of them were talking about this very thing. Yes, it is super common. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself. If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And let's get started in the rest of the podcast. Today I have with me Debbie Harris from Freedom Eater 30 to Life. She has her own personal story with this. And I love having people on who have their own personal stories because it makes it real. And she has talked about this for a while. So let me tell you a little bit about her. Freedom Eater, we're gonna learn what that is. She's an author, speaker, hypnotist. She's a coach. She's dedicated to empowering women to reclaim their energy, confidence, and well-being. And perimenopause and menopause, this is where everything starts to just fall off that cliff. So this is super important. She is a best-selling author of Dieting Sucks for Women Over 40 and 30 to life. And like I said, she's a very real person, and she comes across as very down-to-earth and my type of person right there. And the type of person who listens to this show. Because if they like my vibe, they're gonna like your vibe because I love people who let's just be real here, right? Perimenopause is hard, and menopause just gets even harder, and it's amazing how many people are becoming more vocal about how much it sucks and how much past generations did not share with us how hard this is. So I'm very excited. First of all, welcome, Debbie. I'm so excited that you're here, that we have a chance to talk about this because I, like I said, know so many people who are struggling with this. And I know how hard it is. I know in the day and age of GLP ones that we are in such a society where we want this quick fix instead of really let's slow down and let's get to the deeper fix, which is what we're gonna be talking about today. So yay. You're so welcome here, and we are so excited to have you here. And there are so many people who are pressing play just because of this title. So thank you for showing up and for giving us this expertise.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Thank you. I'm very, very happy to be here and happy to reach as many midlife women as I can.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

So, first of all, tell us about your own story that led to this journey, that led to this book, and where you're at today talking to us.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

My dieting journey started when I was very, very young. I was the fat kid in school. And in those days, and I'm sure it's still true today, fat was a word that was used and ridiculed. And this went on throughout my grammar school, junior high school. I ended up having a situation where I took weight off when I was about 12. But then when I went to visit my dad in California, I was at the Brooklyn, when I went to visit my dad in California, within three weeks I put the weight back and more because he thought that eating Italian thought of Basker Robbins every night was somehow a great idea. And I didn't actually take the weight off again until I was about 19. And then from there, it was just a lifetime of being at the weight that I felt comfortable at, and then being on a diet. So it was constantly, and I tried in my book, I think I left 45 different diets that I tried. I gained 75 pounds with my son when I was 28 and took it off in seven months on the lean cuisine and diet coke diet. And that's something I can recommend. But these are things we do when we're younger. When we're younger, not only do we get results, even though they usually tend to be ultimately temporary anyway, our bodies are more resilient, and we're more resilient emotionally and mentally as well. Those little tricks don't work once you hit perimenopause or postmenopause. So as you mentioned, I didn't really struggle in perimenopause. But once I hit menopause, and just because I know it gets confusing, we throw these curves around. So once you haven't had your period for 12 months, you're in menopause. So you're in literally a perimenopause or menopause, but we use the term menopause to kind of felt this the whole fun adventure. Once I got to that point, I literally hit a wall. And I had gained about 45 pounds. I see pictures. You could see the bloat and the inflammation. Plus, I had the hot flashes, the night sweats, the mood swings, the crazy rage where I used to pray that nobody would cut me off in traffic because I was living in Vegas at the time and I really nobody cuts me off in traffic because I'm not really sure what I might do at that point. But I was having all those symptoms too. And no matter what I tried at that point, nothing would budge the weight. I finally got introduced to a program which I then took to another level, took the weight off. I underwent breast cancer at the same time, and I started thinking, wait a second, I need to get this out there and I need to help other women because the amount of frustration and the amount of anxiety, ultimately depression over it. I wanted to put an end to that. Plus, having been a certified hypnotist for many, many years, I was familiar with the way the subconscious was working to add into all of this that we're trying to do. So that became the book. The book came out in October, Dieting Sucks for Women Over 40. I've since written something called Ending the War with Your Body. It's called The Wrong Map. It's a little booklet, which anyone who wants it, when you have my contact information, it's a gift. I want it in the hands of every midlife woman. And I did a recent TIX about this subject and also about the fact that we live in a culture where women are not being educated on menopause, but our doctors are not being educated either. So it really comes down to changing the way menopause is viewed, not just from the consumer of us, or we're the most important, but when we go to our healthcare practitioner, what is it that we say? How do we engage the conversation? And how do they become trained to really answer our questions or at least be open to researching things that we may have found out that we're interested in? So it's yeah, I actually went back to school. I became an integrated nutrition health coach, and just recently I became certified as a man of bonus coaching specialist. So just to kind of bring it all together, it's something I'm extremely passionate about.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

So let's start with the MIDI, right? That's the new everyone's interested in this. What separates you from them? Have you done any research to know about MIDI? I can tell you the little bits just from hearing my girlfriends talk about it. It's a patch that you put on. Oh, yes. It's supposed to help with all of the symptoms. How are you different from this? And I think this will help for people who are being flooded because right now they are doing a huge social media push. So the name is out there everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

And thank you, Autumn. But there, and there's many more than just that. Oh, yeah. And there will be more. First of all, I came into this whole world to help the women first and foremost release the excess weight in a way that was not starving, understanding, and really finding out how foods, specific foods, relate to your body and how you can conquer all that BS that goes on in your head about food and about guilt and about all this crazy stuff that we do, I also teach self-hypnosis. So when it comes to menopause symptoms in general, the patch is just the extension of when I used to go get a cream, and the creams are still there. Here's what I'll say about all this. If you're lucky enough to have an OBG line or a practitioner who really understands this stuff and you can talk to, please talk to them before you do any of this stuff. The second thing is if you don't, then you really want to start looking into finding someone who does. And that's actually a project I'm working on. Because every woman is different. And the thing is, some of this stuff is good, and some of it may have a different reaction. It's just like the GLP ones that you mentioned. People are using them for cosmetic purposes. I just read two articles yesterday from doctors warning women not to do it for cosmetic reasons. And it's very simple. It's not that the doctors know everything, it's that we don't know everything. Which is the point. Same thing with all this other stuff that's out there. Now I mean they're pushing the GLP once. I mean, you can't look at uh social media for 30 seconds without and now that I'm discussing it on my phones over here, I'm sure. That it's listening and I'm gonna have even more. But these things do work. You need to find out what's gonna work for you, whether it's a cream, whether it's a patch, whether it's a a supplement that you're taking, and there's tons of those too. Herbal supplements, but it is really, really important to talk to somebody, especially if you're doing other stuff too. If your doctor is like dismissal about it, talk to a pharmacist. They're initially really good at saying, well, you know, if you're taking this supplement, you might not want to be taking this one. That's kind of where I'm at on that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

It's a lot of what's hot right now. And how are you going from what's hot to tried and true? I'm totally feeding you the answer in the question here. But tell us about how you're using a lot of nutrition instead of synthetic things that are out there.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

So there are no synthetic things, there are no drugs. My 30 the life solution, basically, the first 30 days is a program called Balance Warrior. And I'm gonna be honest, in those first 30 days, you are gonna cut out certain things by the diet. And it's really to allow your body to get into balance. So what happens is you release weight anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds, minimal symptoms diminish, your overall health gets elevated, whether it's blood work or sugar and cholesterol, whatever it is, everybody's different. But the key here is that's not meant to be a sustainable lifestyle. So once you get through the first 30 days, wherever you're at, you start adding foods back into your diet and paying very close attention to how you react to those foods, not just on scale. Did you wake up with a headache? Did you wake up feeling bloated? And I'm not talking about eating ice cream or a candy bar and then saying, Well, yeah, I woke up feeling bloated. I'm talking about any food at all, whether it's dairy, whether it's flu, whether it's a particular vegetable like a nightshade, like eggplant or tomato. We add one food at a time, and we put on our little detective hats and say, now what's different? Do I feel any different today? So you begin to actually learn what foods work best for you. And then you ask me about Freedom Eater. Freedom Eater is stage three. Stage two, adding foods back, is called the Hermony heroin. And stage three is the freedom eater where I teach an 80-20 lifestyle, which simply means that 80% of the time you're going to eat the way you've learned is best for your body to release weight to get to your ideal healthy weight and to maintain it. Basically, if you're going on an all-inclusive vacation, if you're going out for dinner, whatever it is, that 20% of the time you're going to do pretty much what you want. But that 20% is going to be more of a food freedom for those things that are not in your normal eating. And you what you learn is that by living that way, you do maintain your ideal weight, and you learn how to do that. So you can still enjoy food, which I believe you should be able to.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

So it sounds like it's about detoxing your body, having that reset, healing your gut lining, that type of thing is going on with the removal. And then slowly adding back in and seeing what works, what doesn't, and why.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

And then combined with that, we learn self-hypnosis. We talk about trigger foods, we learn what to do when we go out to eat it, how we deal with dinner parties, how we deal with alcohol. So all of that head stuff is the bulk of what's in the paper.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

That makes sense. The comfort foods, what do you do?

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Trigger foods are mid eat. Most people know what their trigger foods are. It's basically a food that if you start eating it, you know, somebody has to physically remove you from it. Like pops to the fun don't stop. Yeah, me and cashews. And it's funny because we don't buy nuts. Nuts in general, the cashews in particular, we don't buy any nuts unless we're having company. And then I'll get the big giant, you know, mixed nuts thing from constore or something. And if I have friends over, and my husband will literally come over to me and say, Can you stop picking out the cashews? And then I don't even realize, you know, I'm just doing it. And then at the end, those nuts go back within's ever been there. I can't care that I keep them in the house. It's but you learn that, and you learn how to deal with trigger foods. Because and some people are living with teenagers, and they'll say to me, Dad, that's all very well and good, but my teenager is this in the house and that in the house, and what am I supposed to do? So we have to work through all that.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

So it's a lot about lifestyle and mindset. And my question here is yes, people are going to you for weight loss. What other benefits happen along with this?

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Well, what you find is that once your body starts balancing, particularly we talk about cortisol, which is your fight or flight hormone. And so because we're stressed, and because the reduction in estrogen adds to that as we get into menopause, cortisol is going to hold on to things. And in particular, it's that battery notice around the middle. So we work with reducing stress, giving your body the foods it wants. So all of the other things get better. Maybe the hot flashes go away, migraines go away, root swings get better, you sleep much better, and sleep is a big issue. And many women don't realize that the ultimate culprit, if you will, uh in perimetabodis is the lack of sleep, irregular sleep, because that begins to affect everything. So research is now beginning to show that it's actually this sleep issue that is a major player in all the other stuff that's going on. Weight, the other symptoms can all be traced back to the way we're not sleeping properly. It's the biggie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

I've had that conversation with several clients.

unknown 18:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

They're okay, that's all good, but I want to work on weight. And I'm like, okay, we're gonna work on that, absolutely, but we're gonna take care of all these other things to get you there.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

And it's our culture to, you know, we just we have not been a culture that celebrates sleep. It's kind of been the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

We celebrate lack of sleep.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

You can survive on three hours of jet.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Oh, wow. Tell me your magic pill that you take to be able to do that. Yes, yeah. I was the same way.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, and everybody's different. I know people who can literally take a cat nap standing any place. I've never been able to nap. If I nap, there's no sleep.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Like oh, my nap is 90 minutes. I can't do one of those 20-minute cute little cat naps. And you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

And some people need to go to bed at a certain time. Some people feel that if I stay up till midnight and sleep a little later, I'm better for me. Whereas someone else might go to bed at 9:30 and get up earlier, they're getting the same amount of sleep, but that works better for them. All of this improves as you start learning about food and your relationship to food.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

From the work that I've done with somebody else who works with hormones, it was really interesting to see when I fixed my vitamins and minerals. So many of my symptoms went away. Yeah. And really it goes back to is it Socrates? Let food be with thy medicine.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Oh, I think that's Plato. Yeah. Well, food is. And I think we've gotten so far away from that. But the other thing is we've gotten so far away from food being actually food. That this is the other issue. And that's another thing that I work on is reading labels and understanding. You know, I had so many clients who would send me a picture of a label and say, Can I have this, Dad? Because it has zero fat, zero carbs, zero sugar. And I'd be like, Well, what is I mean, what is it made out of? And I'd be like, look at the ingredients. First of all, if you can't pronounce them, or if it's this amount of ingredients, it's not a food or a drink, if you will. And again, these are cultural things, particularly in our American and Western culture, that we've become accustomed to. A lot of marketing.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

So it sounds like same for you, people come to you with weight loss, maybe having a broken relationship with what is a healthy diet. And I don't mean diet as a losing weight, but diet as As in your food lifestyle. Right. We need to have a separation of diet, both the words, because they're two different things. Yay for English language with all the sarcasm inserted. With Spanish, it makes sense. English is stupid. There are other languages that make sense. And as they get older, we will very much be spending a lot of time on learn a language, learn another language, see the difference between English and any other language. But there are different meanings for diet here and diet. Yes. Let's think of it when we're talking about diet in this mindset of lifestyle and have it be something that is maybe not for the rest of your life, because what worked for you, like you were just saying, what worked for you in your 20s is not going to be the same thing in your 40s because I've taken a bunch of nutrition classes for my own learning. And then eventually because I wanted to share it with other people during my undergrad. So definitely not a nutritionist, not a dietitian, but our needs change over time, including the amount that we eat. So the amount of calories that we need. And we can forget that when we're in such a state of fight or flight, like that amount of stress and lack of sleep. Have you noticed when you don't sleep enough, you eat more? Or if you're not drinking enough, you're gonna eat more. But what you actually need is some good old liquid, water in particular, or electrolytes with your water. I was noticing that for me. I would have so much water that I wasn't having enough electrolytes and I was just flushing it all out. So the idea is that your needs will change over time. So this is where you can work with someone like Debbie to understand how are things not working? What do I need to change? Knowing that, especially through menopause, my needs will become less and less of the amount of food. So I need to make sure that it is powerhouse nutrients.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

You are so right. Unfortunately, what what happens often is the oh okay, so I probably need less food than I did before. So I'm just, you know, I'm not gonna eat very much. So we get into that thing too: that less is more. Oh, okay. I figured now. Well, in actuality, it has nothing to do with that, it has to do with what you are eating. And and you know, I taught them the book, and I'm sure you talk about it all the time, intermittent fasting, and all the different things that what it comes down to is what is gonna work for you is not necessarily what works for your neighbor or your daughter or co-worker. It's really very individual.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

And I feel like the biggest gap is between men and women.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

When we first sat our program, we were working with men and women. 90% of our clients were women, and 80% of them were in perimatas or post-manopause. But the men would almost always release way faster. Their eating is different, what they need is different. It seems like they stop drinking bourbon and beer and comes off. We are different. Yes. Our hormone structure is different. And the whole menopause thing, it is a big deal. You said it's hard. It is a big deal because we don't understand it, and because every woman is different. So what you might be experiencing is not what somebody else might be experiencing. Some people have perimenopause symptoms, and none after menopause. Some like me have not a perimenopause, and then everything in post-manopause. So it makes it even trickier, and it is very difficult for our partners too. I was stopped by a man the other day when I was doing my TEDx. He grabbed me as I was walking down the aisle and he said, If my wife had met you, maybe we'd still be married. I've heard this over and over again. I have a very good friend in Ireland who just wrote a book called Menopausing Mirror. So for everybody listening, it's a tricky time altogether. And if we can use food to calm everything down, to release some of the weight, to sleep better, to feel better, to have a better mindset, to release some of the stress, then how simple is that?

unknown 27:09

Foo.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

And what I do now is I have a program called Jump Start. It's very new, but it's basically a six-week program where people have me every week for an hour in a group form to help them maneuver the program and get started. Yeah, the hardest thing is the support and the accountability. That's the hardest thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

So you said it was super individualized on our needs. So how does that work in the group program? Because having that group support, you get that peer pressure and other people cheering you on, that really helps. But how do you also get the individual needs met in the group setting?

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Everyone is going to start out following the 30-life solution. But everyone is going to experience it a little bit differently. So we discussed that, and then I'm available to reach out to. But for the first 30 days, just about everyone is going to follow the same program for the first 30 days, unless they have particular dietary issues. Maybe I'm going to say for those vegans out there, it's tricky. Finding enough variety is trickier. But we could do it. So everyone is going to start out with those first 30 days. And then as we get to adding food back, then it becomes highly individual. Because one person is going to find that particular vegetable is great, and another person's going to find that a particular vegetable somehow doesn't quite agree with them as much as they thought it did. So then you get that individual. And then, of course, when you become a freedom eater, everybody's 20% is going to be different. I mean, for you, it might be having an ice cream cone every week. For somebody else, it might be once a month chowing down on a pizza. Then it really runs the gamut of being individual. So we handle that within the group.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

That makes sense. What advice or help would you offer people who are not ready to work with you yet, but they need some kind of help? Yeah, help, motivation, just something to just be able to test themselves to on that trust factor of okay, I can actually do this, and then be able to take the next step of okay, now I'm ready to work with you.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Thank you. That's a great question. And you hit on one of them before. So what I usually say to people is first of all, follow me on Instagram because there's a ton of videos on there that have tips if you're doing this.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

But tell us where to find you on Instagram. It's Debbie Lee211.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Uh if you put that in, you'll find me. And I'm everywhere. But first of all, and you hit on this drink water. Plain water. The electrolytes that you mentioned may be important for some people. What isn't important is the smart water. It costs more money and it isn't necessary. What you do need is plain water. So, one tip drink half your body weight in water every day, up to about a hundred ounces. Don't go crazy. Drink it before four or five o'clock in the afternoon, especially at the beginning, because you are going to be up at night if you drink it into the evening. I've learned the hard way. Start out with water in the morning. If you want to put a little lemon, that's fine. So I would say number one, get your water intake up. That will make a huge difference. Number two, if you aren't exercising, get out and just a 10-minute walk three days a week. If you practice what I call and what a colleague of mine taught me is the magic of the minimum, just start with something you will consistently do. If you can commit to 10 minutes three days a week, you will build up your confidence to the point where you want to add more, whether it's another day or a longer amount of time. Secondly, if you are exercising and weight is a concern, don't go crazy with cardio. Don't run, don't jog, get off running on the treadmill, get off the Peloton, except for maybe 20 minutes every other day. Get out of the CrossFit. Give yourself 30 days of yoga, halatis, tai chi, walking, a bar class. If you're lifting, which is right, don't add weight during those 30 days. So many women are exercising counterproductively when they get to midlife. And again, it's the more is better. It's not better. And it depends on what you're doing. So increase the water and pay attention to the way you're exercising. If you're not exercising, start with something that you know you can consistently do over time. And then if you can find something that helps you with any kind of stress, I think if you go to my website, 30 to life.org, you know, free resources, there's info on self-hypnosis. If there's a person you like to listen to for a guided meditation, music, whatever it is. And even if it's five minutes throughout the course of the day, that you can just kind of zone through a little bit. These are just little things you can do. Then a fixed thing, it maybe not so little. If you could take the added sugar out for 30 days and do this other stuff, you're gonna actually notice your body change. And all the other symptoms get better too.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Honestly, how much of this would help somebody who's not looking to lose weight but just be healthier? The added sugar was my oh, hey, this would be a good question. Moment.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

If you're adding your ideal healthy weight, then chances are you are moving somewhat. In other words, you're doing something with your body, but if you add water and you watch the added sugar, then yeah, it's gonna help, it's gonna help with sleep. One one other thing. Alcohol. I'll just touch on alcohol because you mentioned it too about sleep. Alcohol will reduce your ability to actually pay attention to what you're eating, or when you're full, it also can disrupt your sleep. So it's not a question of don't drink, it's a question of maybe cut back. Now, in my primogram, alcohol is one of the things we take out and then we gradually put back in. And what you find after your body balances, certain alcohols will work for you and certain others won't. And that changes. So many women referring that a white wine works, a red wine doesn't. A particular red wine does, only vodka does. For me, it was crazy. The only thing that actually worked when I reintroduced alcohol, strangely enough, was beer. But again, everybody is different. So yeah, it's not just and that's the thing. Thank you for bringing that up, Anam. It's not just about releasing weight. And by the way, don't say losing weight, say release weight. It's better for your subconscious. It's not about that. It's being at whatever healthy weight is right for you. And even if you're at that healthy weight, it's about getting your body in balance to release and reduce some of those symptoms you're having, like night sweats, like hot flashes, like brain fog. It will help. It will help a lot.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Yeah. And I know I've gone through big lifestyle changes at different stages of life. The biggest one was I was suffering with infertility. I made huge lifestyle change in the way that I ate. And within I think a month is when we got pregnant. That's fantastic. Yeah. And we kept a lot of that in our lifestyle. And it's made a huge difference. And we've come back to it. And okay, how do we dial this up so it's better? And every time we have, we have had where we lose weight and then we bring weight back in because our body needs to do that. Okay, let's get rid of the unhealthy fat and bring in healthy fat within our bodies because it's storage, right? Are we storing good things within that fat or bad things? And it's made a huge difference in our skin, in our sleep, and our hormones.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Thank you for bringing that up because it is amazing what happens. And you're right about the fat and the weight, too. I talk a lot in my book about non-scale victories. The scale is one two, and at the beginning, it's an important tool because your body is going to release pretty quickly once you cut out certain things. So that makes you feel good. You notice it right away, you notice it in your clothes, but it's one tool. And there's so many other things you can notice in how your body is responding to a lifestyle change. Not everybody does want to reduce weight. Some people just want to get rid of the headaches, get rid of the shot flashes, sleep. It is a crazy time. And think back. So if you're listening now, think back to puberty. Think back to those early days. And the fact is, we get a lot more information about puberty. I had this pink booklet, my mother brought holding. Anyway, think back to those days. What a change that was. And everything that we went through. And it's the same thing. Our pregnancy is another one. We get tons of information. It's a hormonal change. Now we go through this one, we get almost no information except what we're being marketed to. But that's what it is. It's a normal transition. And I find that women will say, Oh my god, is this as good as it's gonna get? This whole midlife thing, the divorce rate is sky high right now. In the mature ages, it's gone down. In the ages under 45, it's skyrocketing over 50. So again, it's all understanding what's happening and understanding what you can do to help yourself and understanding how to talk to your healthcare providers so you're not dismissed with, well, it's in a book.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Yeah, I went to my gynecologist and I did not like the answer I was given. It was one of those you can go to Target, and here's a coupon, and here's a vitamin that you can get that helps with estrogen. I'm like, no, I don't want a band-aid.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Be careful out there because my breast cancer was estrogen-based. That's why I say be careful. Don't use something just because some friend of yours said it's working for them. At least ask someone, a naturopath, your pharmacist, somebody. Or, and this is another thing I teach what's going to be coming out soon. Learn how to use AI and learn how to use it the right way so that it actually knows you and you are getting some of the information that you need, because we have an amazing tool out there right now to help us understand what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Thank you. And I would go with ask several people who you know that work in this field. Yeah, they can double check answers because just because it's your gynecologist doesn't mean they know. And that's why I say part of it is let's say you do your own research.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

And you're like, please don't, AI is not the gospel, but it is a way to do research. So let's say you do some research and you go, you know something? This sounds like this might work for me. Take that, learn how to take that to your doctor. If your doctor is even refusing, I don't have time, I don't know, I can't look at that. Then please get a referral, find out who else you can go to and talk to. Because as we learn more, we want to be treated with respect, and we want our healthcare professionals to honor what we are bringing to them.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

Yes, so yeah, and we pass the AI. And there's an episode that came out a little bit before this one, which is how to research for your wellness. And I had a professional on who is a PhD. She does research for a living, and she has taught us how to do research. So if you need help with that, go back to that episode, How to Research for Wellness. Thank you so much, Debbie, for this conversation. We will have links to her TEDx talk, to the free guide that she talked about. There's a link to her social media there and her website. So save this episode, share it with your friends because I know that I'm not the only one with girlfriends like this and people, other people out in the world who are talking about this. There are so many symptoms that come with perimenopause and menopause. And weight gain is one of the ones that women complain about probably the loudest. Do you remember the 90s? I sure do.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Well, I'm a lot older than you, and I will tell you that it's still going on. Yeah, we are still being told that we have to fix something. So yeah, don't get me started on it.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Okay. But maybe we should think about it as we want to live well for as long as possible. That's right. So food is huge and soda is huge. Let's talk about soda for just a quick second. Of course, steals the calcium from your bloodstream. So let's think about aging and bone loss because we do lose bone density as we get older. We don't want to be adding to that by what we are consuming. So I just want to have that be my little soapbox moment.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

So I will add, and I will add a soapbox molar. I don't have soda diet or otherwise. There are some seltzers now that are naturally like fruit. Take a look at the back and read it. But the only sweetener I use is liquid stevia. And in my coffee, I put chocolate and peppermint. And I'm gonna tell you, you used to be able to buy this, the flavors. Used to be able to buy them at Whole Foods and Sprouts, you can't anymore. Honestly, the only place you can get the flavors is Amazon. So, but if you like that, some people don't like steel. And I'm not talking about the powder that's mixed in with everything else. I'm talking about the pure liquid flavor, natural flavoring that will help you in your coffee, even in your water, in your seltzer. That's why I was saying you can do that. But yeah, don't drink it.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

And there's so many things where we're like, it's just a party of life. But when we start really digging into it, especially food-related, we'll find out that's not good for us and we can find alternatives. So that's where we have somebody like Debbie to help us.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Yeah, so it's been gone for a while. Yeah. When I think of all the Diet Coke and Tab that I wouldn't even know Tab. I'm going back a ways. Yeah. But yeah, but no, this was wonderful. And I love that you're doing this and that you're speaking to women about it. The more of us that can do that, and there are so many of us now to really just get the word out, and in my case, to help the women behind me, like you, the younger women, who are just starting to go through this now.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Every time I have anything about hormones, menopause, huge amount of listens. So it's obvious that this is needed. Obvious that there's still so many gaps in there. So because this is being listened to, let me just tell you, your friends need to hear this. Share this with your friends. Debbie would appreciate it. She wants to help more people. And really, all of this is us helping out our fellow women. And for the men who are listening, it's worth listening to because now you can start to understand what is going on with the women in your life.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Oh, yeah. Go and get Menopause Wingmare. A friend of mine wrote it in Ireland that my husband actually contributed to, and it's a wonderful book for the men to listen to men about how they're trying to support the women in their lives going through this.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

I love that. There are so many books like that for fathers who are becoming parents. Makes sense, and there is definitely need for this next huge stage of life with menopause and perimenopause. Yes. Thank you for this. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for. As part of the legal language, I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice taken us. See you in the next episode.