Audio menopause vid 1

The video discusses the challenges women face during menopause, including weight gain, changes in body shape, and the impact on mental health. It explains that the decrease in estrogen during menopause can slow down metabolism and lead to weight gain. It also highlights the importance of managing weight and health during this time to reduce the risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes. The video encourages women to prioritize self-care, set goals, and create a plan to improve their physical and mental well-being during menopause. The speaker offers to provide further guidance on diet, exercise, and weight loss in upcoming videos. Do you feel like the menopause is starting to get you down? Has your health started to slip and you've started to put weight on? And has this had a knock-on effect to your mental health? If the answer to any of these is yes, then this video might be for you. I'm going to be sharing the number one reason why you find it hard to lose weight during the menopause, why it isn't your fault and what you can do about it. My name is Morgan and I'm a nutrition coach for The Final Diet. We help women who've tried and failed at dieting in the past to lose weight. So to understand how the menopause affects us, we need to take a bit of a closer look. Don't worry, I won't bore you too much with the science, I just want to start with the basics. So if you look at what happens during the menopause, a hormone called oestrogen goes down and not just a little bit. So let's pretend that oestrogen is a person and is responsible for keeping loads of other things in your body in order. Well, if you look at the menopause, it's a bit like that person's just got the sack, walked out of work and left you to pick up the pieces. So how does this physically affect us then and affect our body and weight? So when oestrogen's there and it's in high amounts, it basically speeds up our basal metabolic rate, which is a bit of a fancy way of saying it stops us getting fat. So you can imagine when oestrogen takes a hit and walks out of the office during the menopause, your basal metabolic rate becomes lower. i.e. you can eat exactly the same foods that you've always eaten your whole life and still put weight on. As well as this, a lack of oestrogen simulates a change in your body shape. And what the data shows is that during the menopause, women tend to gain more fat and also redistribute the fat to the middle of their body, which basically means that you could be slim built for your entire life and then now suddenly find yourself with a little bit of a belly. Now, I'm not one for body shaming and some women are perfectly happy with a bit of extra belly fat, but it's quite important to keep an eye on it for a couple of different reasons. So fat held around your middle is basically the most metabolically active, which means that it can increase your risk of certain diseases like type 2 diabetes. And I don't mean that to scare you, but postmenopausal women are already at an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. So if you struggle with your blood sugar already or struggle with your weight, it's extra important to keep an eye on your diet during menopause. So this leads me on to point three, which is the fact that you might experience a loss of bone and muscle mass. Again, that's not meant to scare you, but I just want you to know how important it is to look after your health. At the end of the day, you want to be able to perform everyday tasks like walking your dogs or holding your grandkids as you get older. So from our first three points, it's obvious that your body changes. And on top of that, you have all of the other potential symptoms of menopause. Now, as well as all of this happening, which can make you feel crap, the hormones itself can make you feel a bunch of different emotions, too, which brings me on to point four. Now, to put it bluntly, the menopause can make people's mental health go to absolute shit. Now, of course, this isn't for everyone and everyone experiences it differently. But for lots and lots of women, the menopause can literally stick up on them like a ton of bricks. So why am I bothering telling you all of this? So firstly, it's because you need to appreciate that your body is going through quite a rough time at the minute. Now, it's as important than ever to be kind to yourself and appreciate that you may find yourself struggling with stuff that you've never, ever struggled with in the past. So it's also important to know exactly what's out of our control, what will happen to our body and what we can do about it. We need to take back the reins, take back control and put a plan in place so that the menopause is as happy and as healthy as it can be for you. So what is it that you actually need to do to be able to do this? So step one, I want you to figure out where you are at the moment with your physical and mental health. So I want you to buy a new notepad and pen from the shop and arrange half an hour of interruption free time to ask yourself some questions. Question one, so how well are you covering at the moment? And make sure to include physical and mental health. Number two, are you willing to be a little bit more selfish? Now, this seems like a bit of a strange question, but menopausal women are notoriously unselfish. You're going to have to prioritise some time for yourself, which means letting a few people down here and there. I know certain commitments are hard to get around, but you need to be able to treat yourself as if you were with anyone else important in your life. And on that note, I want you to ask how much time you currently spend on yourself. I want to know what your current energy levels are like. I want to know what is important to you. And I want to know what you want to look and feel like at the end of this. So you've asked yourself the questions. Now I want you to visualise where you want to be. And by the way, you don't have to aim to be an Olympic swimmer or anything amazing. Just coping with getting through and coping with the changes to your body is absolutely fine. Now that's stage one done and you should have a notebook filled with ideas by now. So now I want you to have a little look at your lifestyle and see where you stand in regards to them. So I want you to have a look at your weight and see whether you're happy or unhappy. I want you to look at your diet and see whether you feel like you're healthy enough for you. And I want you to also look at your exercise and see how you feel about that. If you are unhappy with any of these three, then please subscribe to my channel because I'm going to be covering exactly what to eat and exactly how to lose weight during the menopause in my upcoming videos. So you've got all of your ideas written down and you've got the lifestyle elements that you need to work on. So I'm going to want to get you to circle the top three, which is the most important to you. From these three goals, I want you to make a practical plan of how to get there. So that means splitting each thing up into daily goals. For example, if your main goal is muscle loss, then you're going to want your daily action to be something like strength training at the gym and eating two servings of protein and calcium each day. Review the start of this video again and remember how your body changes and make plans accordingly. i.e. if you already have quite a lot of tummy fat, which you don't particularly like, it may be a good idea for one of your goals to be to focus on weight loss. And just as a side note, if you know your goal, but aren't sure the daily actions to take, feel free to comment down below and I'll be happy to reply and break it up for you. Stage three. So you've got your overall goals and you've also broken it up into your daily goals. Now we need to check in very briefly once a day and also once a week. Now I get that everyone's busy, but it'll make a massive difference. I promise. So let's use an example of how a weekly reflection would go. So have I achieved my goals this week? No. Why? Is there a genuine reason? No. What is the reason? So I've slept in most of the days. Are my initial goals important to me? Yes. Is where I am at currently serving me? No. Is where I am at currently making me unhappy or unwell? Yes, potentially. So is an extra 50 minutes in bed more important to me than achieving the goals at the start? Absolutely not. So how am I going to adjust and make changes for next week so that it doesn't happen again? I.e. if you haven't achieved the things that you set out to do, why is that treated as data and then adjust so that you do it well next week? Can you see how this cycle works? So we are getting to know ourselves, understanding what's important to us, breaking it down into manageable steps, and then monitoring how we're doing. And through all of this, just remembering just how important it is to have goals and have things set for the menopause. I'm going to be covering exactly how to eat, exercise, lose weight, and be happy during the menopause and upcoming videos. So if that's something that will interest you, then please subscribe. Thank you so, so much for watching. I do really, really appreciate it. And I will see you in the next video.