Look good, feel good, too.

Making healthier versions of family favourities - one side is pasta and meat sauce, the other is aubergine and spinach with ricotta. Both sides are delicious!

Weight & Fat Loss for peri and post-menopausal women (using GLP-1s or not) requires a healthy diet and behavioural change that is critical for success either way. Being thin not only requires a lot of vanity, but quite a bit of starvation in today's fat loaded world. But, so does being a healthy weight for your body, but with more emphasis on discipline and moderation instead of starvation, and without the obsession and stress. Feeling good and looking good for your body type is much more important, especially now when you look around and see celebrities wasting away before our eyes as well as acknowleding that this skeletal nonsense is a tragic step backward for women. It's not even thinly veiled anorexia and should not be celebrated. Taking the first step toward a healthier lifestyle is challenging, but once you get started and establish a sort of routine, watching your progress becomes the reward.

CHECK YOUR STATS, ESTABLISH YOUR BASELINE, SET REALISTIC GOALS

No matter how much weight you want to lose, you should take your time in doing it so it stays off. So rather than a diet, make a few long-term lifestyle adjustments. If you can, check your body stats on a bio-impedance scale (your local Better gym should have Boditrax, probably cost about £15 for a drop in), or try a fancier Dexa scan like Scanletics (not a NHS bone density Dexa, but a pretty thorough body composition analysis ~approx. £150). Any of these will give you a solid baseline on your overall body metrics and, critically, your visceral fat analysis.

Other important measurements to calculate are your BMI (some say obsolete, but gives you a medical measurement used globally), and your BMR so you know how many calories your body requires just to function. From there, you can easily put yourself into a calorie deficit. And that’s the not so secret ‘secret’. To lose weight, your body has to be in a calorie deficit which means you have to eat fewer calories than your BMR requirements each day without factoring any movement in. A good starting goal is generally about 300 calories less than your BMR. However, if your BMR is already low, say 1350, then don’t go below 1100-1200 as you’ll just end up starving.

TRACK EVERYTHING

A couple of annoying things that go along with successful weight loss are tracking your meals and exercise. A free and easy app like MyFitnessPal is straightforward, mostly already populated with anything you can buy in the store and you just scan your food’s barcodes and adjust for portion size. Also, if you don't have a good food scale, buy a mini one. Salter makes a good product (Amazon, about 13 quid). Once you get into the habit of logging what you eat and weighing your food, you won't have to do it forever because you'll know, more or less, what's in whatever you eat in a day.  

MyFitnessPal adjusts your daily caloric intake if you add exercise into the mix. However, for weight loss, it's best to just stick to your daily calorie goal and not rely on that feature.  

SET FOOD GOALS & TARGETS

To lose fat, your target protein goals need to come up per day to roughly 1.2 grams divided by your goal end weight. So, for example, if your goal end weight is 145 lbs, then divide that by 1.2 to get approximately 105 - 120 grams protein / day. So, in kilos times that end weight of 66 kilos by 1.6 grams protein = 105. It might seem like a lot, but that's about two chicken breasts, a can of tuna and a few tablespoons of full fat 5-10% good quality Greek yogurt like Fage. Plus, protein and healthy fats make you feel full for longer. Losing half a pound every week is healthy and realistic.

HOW MUCH CARDIO IS REQUIRED

The older we get, the more realistic you want to be. Increase your steady state / cardio exercise intake by trying more LISS (low intensity steady state) training. LISS basically equates to taking more steps every day or longer walks (45 minutes a day is ideal), and adding in 2 days at the gym, or at home on a piece of exercise equipment, spending thirty straight minutes on one piece of cardio equipment (yes, it's boring so find a good podcast or playlist). Or break it up into 22 minutes on the cross trainer and 8 on the rower. Your body starts to burn fat after 22 minutes of sustained moderate effort exercise. The longer your increased cardio output, the better off your overall metabolic burn as you transition from burning glycogen to adipose tissue. There’s no need to go crazy with the HIIT exercise after age 50, it can increase your cortisol levels, and no one wants that. But once or twice a week is okay to shake things up a bit, but keep it low impact. Also, just for your general health and well-being, you should be doing a minimum of 10 squats every 45 minutes on days you are mostly at your desk. Set your Smart watch to alert you to get up and move, if even only for a few minutes. It’s also a good time to do calf raises, or stretch.

LIFT HEAVY WEIGHTS?

Yes, please!

Weight training should be minimum two days a week from age 40. In the simplest terms, the more you weight train, the more muscle you build equals the faster you lose fat as building more muscle means burning more fat.  

DIET & SLEEP

Eat plenty of high protein foods: fish, tuna in water, chicken breast (best choice, most protein for least calories), chicken thighs (higher fat, denser nutrients, so eat these on days you are super hungry), Fage Greek yogurt, lean beef mince provides essential B vitamins.

On a high protein diet, complex carbs become essential for perimenopausal woman for sleep. So eat some at dinner time like sweet potatoes, quinoa, lentils, beans, nuts, oats, chickpeas, beets, apples, berries, oranges, and kiwis which are proven to help you sleep better (two an hour before bed - rich in serotonin, antioxidants and fibre). Also, lots of non-starchy veg to keep you full: broccoli, asparagus, spinach, watercress (nutritional champion), and courgette will fill you up for very few calories. Fibre and water are also your friends because they keep you full and your intestines moving.

Struggling with insulin resistance is also quite normal as we age and trying food swaps for starchy staples can be a fun way to spice up your diet a bit. Depending on your palette, aubergine for lasagne noodles, cucumbers for crackers, or celery for bread all make great low calorie, low glycaemic alternatives to more carby staples and snacks. Stores like Lidl also stock amazing high protein, high fibre edamame or chickpea ‘noodles’ that are pretty good and very filling. One serving of Lidl's edamame noodles deliver 40 grams of protein and 22 grams of fibre, all for about 350 calories.

TIME RESTRICTED EATING

If you don't mind skipping breakfast, sometimes time-restricted eating (TRE) can be helpful - your body starts to eat its own fat stores after about 14 hours (ie overnight). However, if this isn't for you DON'T do it. Sometimes when you are trying to lose weight it can be easier to just cut out one whole meal and eat two bigger ones earlier eg 11 am and 5 or 6 pm. Again, the basic idea is to be in a calorie deficit. Also, give up snacking, it’s so much better for your body in terms of insulin output and learning to detect actual hunger. Maybe you are just thirsty. I know it's harsh, but feeling hungry is a normal human bodily function. However, starvation is not so if you are 'dying' from hunger, by all means eat a snack, but make it healthy, eg slice up cucumbers like they are crackers and sprinkle some salt and feta on them. Always have celery, broccoli and cucumbers on hand at all times! These really fill you up plus you know if you are really hungry or not if you don't feel like eating them. And never deprive yourself of your favourite things like peanut butter or chocolate as you'll probably end up bingeing on them later. Make room to eat them a few times a week within your calorie deficit. And celery is an excellent vehicle for peanut butter!

Once you get to your goal weight, you'll still need to eat moderately to keep if off forever. But there is always space for the occassional splurge of pizza, burgers, fries, crisps and sweet treats. Hopefully, what you'll learn along the way is that your body doesn't require that much to function well - just good quality nutrients, movement and sleep. And, if you've been on a GLP-1 that lesson is pretty startling when you realise it. Changing your mindset to 'be more healthy' is essential whichever route you choose. And, as always, everything in moderation, including moderation.