Why Menopausal Metabolism Slows – And What You Can Do Today

In this episode of The Menopause Method, we dive into why your metabolism slows down during menopause—and what you can do today to boost your energy and reclaim your strength.                                                                                                     

Ever wonder why, despite sticking to your diet and exercise, your body seems to work against you? You’re not alone.

We explore how hormonal changes, chronic dieting, and shifts in thyroid function, body temperature, and even your daily movement (NEAT) contribute to a slower metabolism. Imagine feeling energized and confident, even in midlife, with a simple plan that works with your body rather than against it.

Join me as I share practical, easy-to-follow strategies for supporting menopausal metabolism through mindful nutrition, strength training, and lifestyle tweaks that fit your life. If you're ready to transform your energy and unlock a healthier, more vibrant you, listen in now and discover how to start making real change today.

Tune in to understand why menopausal metabolism slows—and take action with simple, effective tips designed specifically for midlife women.

Free Home Gym Guide

Free Menopause Sleep Guide

Get the Menopause Mini Workouts

You'll Hear: 

1. Role of Hormones: Discover how declining estrogen and its impact on muscle mass and fat storage play a crucial role in your metabolism changes.
2. Importance of Movement: Learn how strength training can keep your metabolism humming and why everyday movements (like walking your dog or standing at your desk) are more vital than you might think.
3. Diet History Insight: Understand how past dieting habits can affect your metabolism and why it's time to change the game from "how little can I eat?" to "how much can I eat?".

Key Takeaways:

1. Menopausal metabolism changes due to hormonal shifts, primarily the decline in estrogen.
2. It is a myth that metabolism must slow down in menopause; adaptation is possible.
3. Strength training is crucial for maintaining muscle mass and boosting metabolism.
4. Stress management and self-care are vital activities during menopause.
5. Reframe dieting from restriction to optimal nourishment for better metabolic health.
6. Small daily movements and activity are key to enhancing metabolic rate.
7. Tracking your body's response to food and exercise helps tailor your approach to energy levels.

Timestamps:

00:00 "Adapting Metabolism Through Menopause"

05:43 Menopause, Metabolism, and Movement

07:50 Reframing Mindset for Menopause Health

12:07 Boost Metabolism with Simple Movements

13:39 "Sustainable Changes Boost Metabolism"

Transcript

0:00

Ever wonder why it feels harder to lose weight during menopause or why your energy levels seem to be slumping? When I first noticed my energy levels dropping and my body changing, I wondered if it was just me. Until I learned my metabolism was just adjusting to this new season of life. Welcome back to the menopause method. My name is Cam Allen, and I help you figure out your menopause journey. Because honestly, you deserve to thrive during this season of life. Today, we're gonna talk about why the menopausal metabolism feels so different. And of course, I'm gonna share simple strategies for things you can actually do about it. So when we're talking about the differences in our metabolism when it comes to menopause, we have to talk about how our hormones have shifted. The key to this is to understand that your metabolism is adaptable. So if it feels like it's really slowed down in menopause, if it slowed down, that means it also can speed up. It is literally adapting to its environment, and my job is to help you shine a light on some things that are maybe making it slow down and then obviously things to make it speed up. It is a myth that a slow metabolism is inevitable, and it is also a myth that only intense workouts can boost your metabolism. Those are false. And today, you're gonna learn all about it. So the first part of the story is our declining estrogen and menopause. Estrogen has lots of roles, but for this conversation, as estrogen's main roles are to keep your muscle mass and decide where you're gonna store fat. So without estrogen, it is more difficult to keep your muscle mass. And also, you may have noticed your fat storage has changed. Before menopause, you may have noticed that your stored hips, like you stored more fat in your hips and your booty. And now that the estrogen is gone, you may notice that the fat storage is more in your midsection or your belly. Because we know that muscle burns more calories even when it's at rest, having less muscle mass means your metabolism slows down. This change makes it really easy to gain fat especially around your belly, and it makes it more difficult to lose weight. It doesn't make it impossible. I'm just telling you what's happening on the inside so you can understand and make better decisions for yourself. And, of course, this is why strength training and building muscle is extra important in menopause. It keeps your metabolism humming and keeps you strong and energized. So let's talk about energy for a second. When I think about our metabolism, we have two sides. We have the calorie calculator side, calories in calories out, But that is only part of the story. The other part of the story is the thermostat, the heat, the energy, and we're gonna talk about how estrogen affects your thyroid. Your estrogen drops during menopause, especially estrogen. It can throw off the balance of other hormones because I like to think of your hormones as a huge spider web. And so when you walk into a you're hiking in the woods and you walk into a spider web, you're not really sure where that spider web started. You're not even sure where the spider is located, even if the spider's home or not. That's kinda how your hormones work. So when we lose our estrogen and menopause, it often affects our thyroid. And I want you to think of your thyroid as your body's thermostat. So that's that side of your metabolism. So we've got calories in calories out, and then we've got the thermostat. And the thyroid controls a lot of that. One of the things that thyroid does is controls your body temperature. So if it is low because there's less estrogen, it does not produce as much heat or energy leading to a lower body temperature. Now I know this. That was actually my first official diagnosis. I think I was 48 was hypothyroid. Meaning, my thyroid was already starting to down regulate before menopause. Now I had just gone through a extremely stressful season of life. I was cross fitting like a crazy lady. I had an empty nest. I had gone through a separation and a divorce. And in my early forties, I left my teaching career to coach CrossFit. So there was a lot of changes in my forties. That's a lot of burden on your body. And typically, when you are living under an immense amount of stress, your thyroid, the gland that's in, like, your throat area, tends to down regulate. That's what happened to me. I went to the doctor, and I'm like, I'm not like, why am I gaining weight? Why am I always tired? Why am I always cold? Why, like, can no amount of coffee give me the energy that I need? And they're lo and behold, hypothyroid was my first official diagnosis. So when these hormones start to shift your thyroids oomph, like your get up and go, you may notice some weight gain, you may notice more trouble losing weight in midlife. So we know that the energy part is lower, what's going on. And that leads to the next thing. There's something called non exercise activity thermogenesis. The acronym is NEAT. NEAT is your everyday small movements that burns more calories than exercise and digesting food. And when we don't feel like moving because our thyroid is not optimized, then our metabolism decreases immensely. In fact, your non exercise activity accounts for about 15% of your daily calorie burn. So it's me moving my hands or standing at my desk or walking my barking dog right now. All of those things adds up to a lot of calorie burns. Again, it's three times more than your exercise alone. So if your thyroid is not working optimally, you just wanna lay on the couch and couch rot, and you don't really wanna move. Are you following what's going on here? When we lose our estrogen and menopause, it affects our body. It affects our body's metabolism, how we store fat, where we store fat, how much muscle do we have, and how much energy do we have to even wanna move. So it's kind of like this is all happening. We have less muscle and more fat. We have less energy, and that means we have less movement in our life. So that's what's going on with their hormones. So now the next part of this story is our diet history and what our diet history has to do with our metabolism. Because if you were a chronic dieter, if you had repeated cycles of dieting, yo yo dieting, chronic calorie restriction, has it has a cumulative effect on your metabolism. So your past dieting habits actually turn down your metabolism. It down regulates your metabolism over time, and that makes it harder to burn calories. Your body's like, oh, here she goes again. She's not gonna feed me, and we're gonna be living on these really low amount of calories. I like to think of it this way. Let's turn it into a game. How much can you eat instead of how little can I eat? Let's think about how much can I eat to get the body composition that I'm working for? Maybe it's a health goal. Maybe it's fitting in your pants better or whatever it is. The goal is to eat as much as possible versus as little as possible. So transitioning from that restrictive diet mindset is one thing that will help support a healthy metabolic rate. As a health coach, I've been health coaching now for five years. It is so common for women to come to me under eating. And they think they're overeating because the scale is going up, the scale is not moving, maybe they are even exercising, but they're not seeing the results that they want. And it's so frustrating. So they'll double down on their crazy cardio, and they'll double down on the restrictive calories, and your body does the opposite of what your mind says it should do. Isn't that crazy? So one of my favorite tools, like changing your mind about something is called reframing. Instead of I don't have the time to exercise, you can say to yourself, I choose to invest in my health. Or taking the negative thought that is on repeat in your mind and turning into something positive, changing the way you see it is so so helpful on on your journey in menopause. So we know that our body is adapting to reduce thyroid function. It lowers its body temperature. It decreases our, like, natural movement, our nonexercise activity to save energy. When it feels like it's under threat and it's going to be in this prolonged calorie deficit, I'm not eating enough to support my body, Everything turns down. So that's what's going on in the backside. What can you do about it? Obviously, I'm a huge fan of strength training. Getting keeping your muscle maintenance, preserving your muscle, building muscle is crucial for keeping your metabolism active in menopause. I have seen amazing transformations when midlife women commit to a few strength sessions a week. I just read a new study yesterday. In twenty weeks, these women that were doing nothing gained four pounds of muscle. That's amazing. I'm a huge fan of having a smart scale too instead of just believing the number on the scale. A smart scale will tell you how much of your weight is muscle, bone, visceral fat, subcutaneous fat, etcetera. And I think that's a really healthy way to look at what your weight is made up of. And then you can control, you strength train, you eat protein, you see your muscle go up. Even if the scale number goes up to see your muscle mass goes up is very, very encouraging. So let's talk about nutrition for a second. Let's talk about nutrition for a second. We need to uptick our protein intake. So we need to eat enough calories to support our body system and the muscle that we wanna build, and then we need to feed that with protein. We need to avoid extreme dieting at all costs. We do not wanna put our metabolism into panic state. Up, here she goes again. She's not gonna feed me. I've gotta down regulate everything. Me personally, I know when I'm not eating enough, when I feel sluggish, when I feel cold, when I notice I'm losing more hair in the shower, those are all signs to me that I need to up my calories and reduce my stress. In order for your metabolism to work optimally in menopause, it's important to get the right macronutrients and the right micronutrients. So micronutrients are all the vitamins and the minerals that support the muscle repair and your energy levels. For example, b vitamins are great for energy level. And we know protein is amazing for your muscles, but also it keeps you satisfied and full for longer, which is a really nice thing as well. What can we do lifestyle wise to optimize our metabolism? Stress management, as I just mentioned, is your duty. It is, time to let go of the idea that stress management is selfish, that self care is selfish. It's time to figure out what can you do to take that burden off of your body. Now it could be lots of things. It could be sitting in the sunshine by yourself or going for a walk alone in the woods or whatever. I have a red light over there. That's one of my stress management tools that I've been using lately. That's really important. Make it your job to figure out what lights you up and takes the burden off of your body. We need to remove that pressure from your body and that will help optimize your metabolism. Sleep is important. There's a sleep a free sleep guide if you're need some help getting your menopause sleep dialed in. I'd be happy to help you on that. I'll link that in the notes below. Smile daily movements will really boost your nonexercise activity even if it's just short walks, even if it's just doing 10 air squats an hour, even if it's just standing at your desk. But when you take breaks and on purpose, getting up and moving, your metabolism will respond in a positive manner. So how do you know if all these little things are actually adding up and changing your metabolism? I really like the idea of keeping a simple journey to track the changes in your energy levels. Like, if you eat a meal and you just wanna go to sleep and you're really crabby and you feel bloated and blah, whatever you just ate isn't for you. So I would take note of that. Because if you're laying in the couch, you're not moving and that's gonna reduce your non exercise activity, which is a huge part of your daily metabolism. So that's one example. Or if you eat something and you feel amazing and your brain is working and you wanna go out and exercise or take a walk, make note of that because that food is good for your body. You responded in a positive manner and you're outliving your life instead of couch rotting on the couch. The way I like to think of all this, it's really just a huge puzzle. So we have the hormones shifting, that's what happens in menopause. We have our diet history. Do you have a history of extreme dieting? We have our lifestyle factors. Are you going to bed at a certain time? Are you waking up? All of these contribute to the menopausal metabolism. And I just want you to know that small sustainable changes can actually help jump start your metabolism, keep your muscle, and increase your energy. And really, that's what it's about. Having muscle means you're gonna have better health, better blood sugar, more confidence, clothes are gonna fit better, all those things, and your metabolism will be optimized. So whenever you find yourself in a negative frame of mind, I don't have time. I don't want, you know, all this negative, Work on reframing your thoughts and see if you can switch it. Like, I have to work out or you could change it to I get to work out because I I'm honoring and loving myself at this stage of life. Just by changing, by reframing, you'll notice you have a more positive attitude. If you're ready to take control of your metabolism and explore more of these topics with me, please hit the follow button and share the menopause method with your friends. It is the easiest way to get the word out because my mission is to have every woman feel supported as they transition through menopause and for them to understand what's happening with their body and take control of things. Below, I'll link some free resources. I have the home gym guide. I have the sleep guide. Those are free resources for you to get you on track if you're looking to build a home gym or if your sleep is not optimized. And then also, I have the menopause minis. These are ten minute strength workouts that have changed the game for so many women, including myself. I had been in this exercise rut and it's really easy to say it's just ten minutes and you go do your strength workout and then as a result, I have more energy for the day. Remember, your journey to a stronger and more energized you starts with one small intentional step. Thanks for being here. Again, hit the follow and the subscribe button, and I'll be back next week with another topic to make your menopause marvelous.