Tired After Working Out in Menopause? Eat More, Do Less.

You're eating less. You're working out more. And the scale still won't move. That's not a willpower problem, it's a formula problem, and I'm breaking down exactly why the old "eat less, move more" math stops working in menopause.

In this episode:
→ Why declining estrogen and progesterone signal your body to store fat, not burn it
→ Why pushing harder in the gym can spike cortisol and backfire completely
→ The real fix: eating like an athlete, not a bird, and training smarter, not longer
→ A real client story: 6 workouts a week, barely eating, stuck for months, here's what actually moved the needle
→ Why the mindset shift has to happen before your body will follow

I'm Cam. Surgical menopause sent me into a tailspin in 2018, and for the last 7+ years I've helped hundreds of women over 50 rebuild strength and energy despite menopause, not by doing more, but by finally doing the right things.

🔗 Get the Menopause Minis: https://www.camoyler.com/meno-minis
🔗 Apply for 1:1 Coaching: https://www.camoyler.com/4-body-1-1-coaching-application
🔗 Watch next: NLP for Menopause: Rewire Your Mind to Actually Want to Work Out: https://youtu.be/Mov3BPXbw9A

👋 I'm Cam. I help women 50 and over build strength, energy, and self-trust through The Midlife Method, blending functional fitness with mindset and identity work. New episodes every week.

📩 Get Strong & Unfiltered, my newsletter: https://www.camoyler.com/
📸 Instagram: @heymomma_cam
✉️ cam@heymommawellness.com

Chapters:
00:00 Menopause and metabolic challenges
04:37 Exercise and recovery for menopause
07:36 Changing workout and diet approach
10:01 Promoting personalized coaching services

#menopausemetabolism #over50fitness #midlifewomen

Transcript

0:00

Women in menopause are working harder than ever to figure out their metabolism, yet they are seeing fewer results. The fitness advice that we grew up on was absolutely not designed for this stage of life. And every day we keep following it, that mirror is going to show more fat and less muscle and clothes fitting wrong in all the wrong places. So how do you finally get your energy to enjoy your life again? Let me show you why eating less and exercising more is actually working against you. Hey there. I'm Cam. And surgical menopause sent me into a complete tailspin in 2018. And so for the last seven plus years, I've been helping hundreds of women over 50 get their strength and their energy back despite menopause. That's how I help. And in this video, I'm going to walk you through exactly why that old formula of eat less, exercise more is actually failing you and what actually works for menopausal bodies now. So let's go back to what we were taught when we were younger, in our 30s and 40s. The narrative was eat less and move more, because calories in, calories out is the formula. And that's how you get the body composition you're working for. It was simple. It made sense. You could go to the gym and work off the pizza. And for a lot of us, it actually works. You know, when we were younger, we'd cut back on food and we'd add more cardio, and the scale would actually move down. Or I remember thinking, oh, I'm just going to cut out. Just thinking about cutting out bread. And my body responded. Maybe not as fast, but the scale still moved down. We felt like we had a handle on it. You know, calories in, calories out. So when menopause hit and the weight started creeping back, we. What did we do? Of course, we went back to what we knew. We cut those calories again, and we pushed harder and harder in the gym. Maybe we added an extra cardio class or another mile onto our run, or maybe just more restriction, because that's the formula. Eat less, exercise more. And that's what worked in the past. Well, except for now, it's not working, is it? And I need you to know that it's not a willpower problem, and it's certainly not a discipline problem. It's actually a formula problem, which is good news, because that means there's actually a solution. So here's what we weren't told. When your estrogen and your progesterone drop, everything changes. Your metabolism slows down and your body holds on to fat, especially around your middle, as a survival mechanism, your muscles become harder to build and easier to lose. And your stress hormone called cortisol, becomes much, much more reactive. Have you notice that? So when you slash your calories and you hammer your body even more with intense exercise, you are not signaling your body to burn fat. You're actually signaling your body to survive. And a body in survival mode holds on to every single calorie it can get. The harder you push, the more your cortisol spikes, the more fat your body stores. The more fat it stores, the harder it is to push. It's like this exhausting cycle, Literally exhausting. And here's something we don't talk about enough. What about the emotions that come up during menopause? You know, the anxiety, maybe irritability, these unexpected waves of overwhelm or sadness or other emotions that is also your body speaking to you. And those, again, are not a weakness. They're actually data. And it's part of the burden your body is already carrying. And when we ignore our emotions, especially in menopause, and we just push through harder, we are adding more to the load on our body. We're not reducing the load. So, okay, Cam, what does actually work? And I know this is going to sound wrong at first, but I want you to stay with me. It's actually do less and eat more, not eat more junk or not do nothing, but eat more of the right things. Eat, eat enough protein to protect your muscle. Eat enough food to tell your body that it is safe. And here's another way to think about it. If you are training like an athlete, then you need to be eating like an athlete and not like a bird. You would never expect a professional athlete to perform on 1200 calories. So why are we expecting our menopausal bodies to build muscle, burn fat, have strong bones, have energy. When we're not eating next to nothing, we move in ways that work with our hormones instead of against them. Which means shorter workouts, smarter efforts, using heavy for you weights and recovery, recovery within the workout, and also recovery days between your workouts. When you stop treating your body like an enemy to be conquered and start treating it like a partner to be supported, the whole thing changes. Your cortisol drops, your body stops hoarding fat, your muscles start responding again, and guess what? Your energy comes back too. I know that feels backwards because we were taught that more is always better, but not in menopause. More of the wrong thing is exactly what's keeping you stuck. Less doing it right is what moves the needle now? But here's the thing. Even when we know something intellectually, like I'm telling you this, this is the science, our bodies don't always believe it. Yet there's like this gap between knowing and believing. And really that's a place where a lot of us get stuck. And honestly that's where NLP comes in. NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. And before your eyes glaze over, let me make it really simple. It's a way of working with your brain to the experiences so you can actually change the patterns that are running in the background of your subconscious mind. The ones that say, oh no, I have to push harder. Taking a rest day or just going for a dog walk, that's lazy. No, that's not true. We want to quiet. The ones that say if I eat more I'm going to gain more weight. The ones that have kept that old formula even when that old formula stopped working. You know that you're watching this video, it's like the quote where we keep doing the same thing over and over even though it's not working. I can't remember the quote because here's what I've learned with working with women over 50 for years. The body follows the mind. And if your nervous system still believes that restriction and punishment are the path to better results, then no amount of information is going to change what you do. You're smart women, the information's not changing your actions in the, in the world. You really have to shift the beliefs first. That's not woo, that's actually neuroscience and it's one of the most powerful tools I use with my clients. So let me tell you about one of my clients. She came to me exhausted, extremely frustrated, convinced her body was just exhausted and tired. She lifts weights, she's a runner and she loves running. She's working out like six days a week and she's eating as little as she could stand. And guess what? The scale hadn't moved in months. She even went through a phase of fasting, like a 24 hour fast. And she was doing two a days on that day. Does that sound familiar? Does any of that sound familiar? So we did two things. We pulled back her workouts just a little bit and we added more food, specifically we added more protein. She started tracking her food and like protein, protein, protein, where's the protein? Where's the protein? We kind of like ignored the calories and we just focused on that. But we also did the mindset work because she had deeply held belief that if she stopped pushing like everything would fall apart and maybe I wouldn't be as fit or maybe I would be a bad runner or my muscles wouldn't show. And that belief, which is really common, was running her harder than any workout could. And about six weeks later she reported that she had more energy than she had in years, like energy. Throughout the day she noticed that her clothes were starting to fit differently, first in the upper body and then into the lower body which is completely normal, like very textbook. And for the first time in a long time, she enjoyed her run again. It had been a minute since she enjoyed running and that was like her thing was running. She also noted that her cravings for sweets just like disappeared. Just like gone. The food noise automatically is gone. That's what's happening when you stop fighting the diet culture formula, eat less, exercise more and start working with your hormones of midlife instead. And honestly, if you want to see results like her, I have two ways I can help you. My Menopause minis are tennis minute hormone friendly workouts, strength based. It's a program designed specifically for your changing body and energy. And if you want full personalized experience including all the mindset work that we just talked about, that's what my one on one coaching is for. Both of those links are below in the description. So if today's video gave you that aha moment and you're ready to stop fighting your body and start working with it, here's what I want you to do. Check the description below. The Menopause Minis will get you moving in a way that actually fits your hormone and your life and you'll be amazed at how good you feel all day with just a 10ish minute workout. And of course if you want personalized experience including like all the NLP timeline work I do, I do that with my private clients. So click that coaching link below and let's talk. Because you need to know that your body hasn't failed you, the formula has changed and the work I do in the world, I can help you change those beliefs and the body's gonna follow. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never ever miss an episode and I'll see you next week.