Quit Cardio, Ate More, Lost 60 Pounds in Menopause

Speaker: If you're in menopause and you feel like your body has completely turned on you, you're gaining weight no matter what you do. You're exhausted. You're on medications you never thought you'd need. And you're starting to think that maybe this is just what life is from here on out. I need to tell you my story, because six years ago, I was exactly where you are. I was 47. I'd gained 60 pounds for the fifth time. I was fatter and sicker than I'd ever been in my whole life.

My doctor kept upping my antidepressants. My hair was falling out. I wanted to quit my job. I wanted to end my marriage. And there were mornings that I dreaded opening my eyes. And I was working out 20 hours a week. Today, I'm going to tell you exactly how I went from that to where I am now: the leanest, the strongest, the healthiest I've ever been in my entire life. Not by working out more. By doing the opposite of everything I had been doing for 30 years.

Let me take you back so you understand how far gone I was. I've been teaching fitness classes since I was 16 years old. That's not an exaggeration. 16. Cardio was my entire identity. I owned a dance studio and I spent my life in a leotard and working out. If I wasn't dancing, I was usually running, hiking, biking, or in a fitness class. And for decades, it worked. When I was 30, I started running marathons. I got pretty lean. I lost my period from how hard I was training.

And then I stopped and I gained it all back. So I just started again. Triathlons this time, in my mid-40s, right as perimenopause was starting. I was working out 3 or 4 hours a day, running for 2 hours before I'd even touch a weight. And then the scale went up. I did the only thing I knew how to do. I just kept adding more. More miles. More classes. More hours. This pattern, lose 50, 60 pounds and then gain every pound back, happened 4 times in my life.

The 5th time, that was different. The 5th time, I was 47. I hit menopause. And the exact same effort that used to produce results produced nothing. I was doing more cardio than I'd ever done, and I was gaining weight faster than I ever had. And it wasn't just the weight. When you lose estrogen, your cortisol levels go through the roof. You become less emotionally resilient. The stress that you used to just kind of absorb starts to crush you.

I wasn't sleeping. I had gut issues. My relationships were suffering because I wasn't available to anyone. I was working a full-time job. I was getting kids out of the house. Grandkids were on their way. And I was trying to maintain 3 to 4 hours a day of training on top of all of it. Just the stress of that schedule paired with the decline of hormones, it was really destroying me from the inside out. My doctor's answer was to continue to up the antidepressants. And then up them again. And then again.

And I just kept getting more and more depressed. More anxious. More tired. More sick. Just feeling more flat. More disconnected from everything and everyone I loved. I felt like a robot. I wasn't who I wanted to be. I wasn't who I recognized. And then my first grandbaby was on the way. My first grandchild. When that baby was born, I walked into the hospital and I felt flat. I stood there looking at this brand new life, this baby that I knew I was supposed to be overwhelmed with joy about.

And I still felt flat. I couldn't access the emotions I knew I should have. I couldn't reach it. It was like there was a wall between me and the moment that was supposed to be one of the most important moments of my whole life. And I knew. I knew right then, standing in that hospital, that something was fundamentally broken. Something wasn't right. Not in my body. Not in my approach. And everything I'd been doing for 30 years to try and fix it.

That was the day I decided everything had to change. Not next month. Not after one more race. That day. Here's what I did. And I want to be honest with you: some of this felt insane at the time. I knew I had to do something different. I quit cardio. Cold turkey. No tapering. No "I'll just run twice a week." I stopped completely. After 30 years of being a marathon runner, a triathlete, a group fitness instructor who was teaching and attending classes every single day.

I stopped all of it. And I was terrified. I genuinely thought my body was going to explode. My mind was going to explode. I had to educate myself enough to trust the process, because every instinct I had was screaming at me to go run. I started strength training. I'd always dabbled with weights. But dabbling meant running for two hours and then picking up light dumbbells for 20 minutes or so. That's not strength training. That's an afterthought. At 47, I committed fully.

Progressive overload. Four days a week. Real weight. Real programming. I went from working out for 20 hours a week to about five. And every fiber of my being was convinced that I was making a huge mistake. I started eating more. Way more. This was the hardest part. I had wanted to be at zero calories. My goal used to be 800 calories, and then burn 800 calories. Net zero. That's what I was chasing. My coach started bringing up my food.

And every increase terrified me. I had a massive fear of carbs, because that's what we'd been taught. Carbs are the enemy, especially after menopause. Here's what I didn't understand. In menopause, you have fewer hormone receptors. You produce more insulin resistance. But when you build muscle, that muscle becomes a disposal for your glucose. You need the carbs to fuel the muscle. You need the muscle to handle the carbs.

They work together. And starving yourself guarantees that you lose both. I prioritize protein. 150 grams a day. That's what I aim for. That's the only thing I even track anymore. I don't count the rest. I'm probably eating around 2,500 calories a day. More food than I've consumed at any point in my entire life. I cut out processed food. Not because of some clean eating trend, but because when I switched to whole foods, I felt so much better.

More volume. More food on my actual plate. More energy. And the insulin resistance started improving, because I had the muscle to handle the glucose and the food quality to keep my blood sugar stable. Here's what happened, and how fast it happened. Three months in, I started titrating off my antidepressants. Three months. After years of my doctor increasing my dose, I was coming down. Not because I decided to on my own. Because my body was finally responding.

The inflammation was dropping. The cortisol was coming down. My sleep was finally coming back. And for the first time in longer than I can even tell you, I wanted to be awake in the morning. I wanted to be present. I wanted to live fully. I wanted to show up as me. People started making comments. Not about the weight at first, but just about the energy. About the look on my face. About the fact that I was laughing again. And then the body just started catching up. Within a year, I was back into my size 10 skinny jeans.

That was my first real goal. Not on a scale. A pair of jeans that had been sitting in my closet for years. Putting those on and buttoning them up without holding my breath. That took a year. And it was worth every single day of it. I really just wanted to feel healthier. The second year, why not get a little leaner without cutting a ton of calories? So I added more gym time. Not cardio. More lifting. More progressive overload. And my body kept changing. By giving it what it needed, the food, the stimulus, the recovery, it just kept responding.

My son showed me a picture one day. I was facing away from the camera. And I couldn't believe that it was my back in that picture. I didn't recognize myself. Not in the way I used to not recognize myself. This time, it was because I looked strong. People started saying it: "Hey, you're ripped." Friends. Strangers at the gym. People I hadn't seen in a year. They'd look at me and say, "What are you doing?" And that's when something shifted beyond my own transformation. People kept coming up to me.

Saying, "What are you doing? How did you do this? Can you help me?" Woman after woman after woman, all asking the same question. And I realized that so many women needed this information. They were stuck in the exact same cycle I'd been in. More cardio. Less food. More exhaustion. More weight. And nobody was telling them to stop. So what did I do? I went back to school. Years ago, I was IDA certified. Then integrative health coaching through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

Then board certified as a nationally certified integrative health coach, because I wanted to get as close as I could to helping other women who were exactly where I had been. I'm 52 years old. I'm leaner than I've ever been in my entire life. I eat more than I've ever eaten. I work out 20 to 25% of the time I used to. And I'm healthier mentally and physically than I've ever been at any point in my 52 years. I wanted to keep working. I actually wanted to switch jobs and do something I love to do.

I love my husband again. I can cry when I hold a grandchild. I've been a size zero for two years. And I never wanted to reach a size zero. That was never my goal. My body got there because the strategy was finally right. I got to quit fighting so hard. Not because I starved my way there. Not because I ran my way there. Because I ate enough, I lifted enough, and I recovered enough for my body to do what it was always capable of doing. I started HRT a couple years ago.

That helped too. But mostly it was because I had the foundation in place. The muscle. The nutrition. The recovery. The hormones supported what I'd already built. They didn't build it for me. My goal changed at the bottom. I completely stopped chasing skinny and I started chasing healthy. I just wanted to feel like a functioning human being again. I just wanted to be present for my kids, my grandchildren, my family, my own life. I wanted to participate. And ironically, when I stopped trying to be skinny and started trying to just be healthy, I became both.

And I want to tell you about someone who was going through the exact same thing that I was. Angela is 51. She lives in Ketchikan, Alaska. She runs a fitness studio. She teaches classes. For 15 years, everyone knew her as the Energizer Bunny. The person with the most energy in every room. The person who was always on, always up, always there for everybody. And then perimenopause hit and she lost herself. She was severely depressed. She had anxiety she'd never experienced before.

The woman who lived for being around people didn't want to leave her bed. She didn't want to greet her guests at the fishing lodge she'd run every summer. She didn't want to teach her classes. She didn't recognize the person she'd become. And she could not understand why, because nothing in her life had even changed. Family was good. Her work was good. Her life was good. But her hormones were rewriting everything. And she was doing what every woman in the fitness space does when things start slipping.

More. She was exercising 12, 13 times a week. Teaching spin classes. Then body pump. Then boot camp. Then going for a five-mile run. And she was gaining weight. She was puffy. Inflamed. Cellulite she'd never seen before, spreading across her body. And she couldn't understand how that was even possible, because she was doing everything right. She found us. Her coach Donna asked her to do the one thing that felt impossible.

Back off. Cut the classes. Start lifting heavy three days a week. Then four. Rest between your sets. And eat more food. 400 to 500 more calories a day than she'd been eating. And Angela told herself the very same thing I did: this can't possibly work. How is eating more and training less going to fix this problem? But she trusted the process. In less than a year, Angela dropped 20 pounds. Four inches off her hips.

Three inches off her waist. The inflammation was gone. The puffiness was gone. Her muscles were fuller than they'd ever been when she used to compete. And the thing she was most proud of wasn't any of those numbers. She got herself back. The depression started lifting. The anxiety started fading. She was the Energizer Bunny again. She was Angela again. She told me something I'll never forget. She said there's no price tag on her life.

That this program saved her. And when I heard her say that, I thought about standing in that hospital six years ago, unable to cry. And I understood exactly what she meant. If you're where Angela was, or where I was, if the hormones are changing everything and you feel like you're losing who you actually are, I need you to hear that it doesn't have to stay that way. It didn't for me. It didn't for her. And it doesn't have to for you. Six years ago, I was 47 years old.

60 pounds overweight, on antidepressants, working out for 20 hours a week. And I dreaded every single morning. Today I'm 52. I eat around 2,500 calories a day. I train four to five days a week for about an hour. And I'm the leanest, the strongest, and the happiest I've ever been. It wasn't willpower. It wasn't discipline. It was the strategy. And the strategy was the opposite of everything I'd been doing for 30 years. If you want to see the exact exercises I start with right now, I break down the only five exercises your body needs after 40 in this video right here. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one.