Why Diets Stop Working After 40 (And What to Do Instead)

Ever wondered why the diet and exercise plan that worked in your 30s & 40s suddenly feels like pushing a boulder uphill? You're not alone, and you're definitely not imagining things.

When you hit your 40s, your body undergoes a profound shift that most diet plans completely ignore. The clean eating, calorie counting, carb-cutting, and intense workouts that may have helped you maintain your weight in your 20s and 30s can suddenly become frustratingly ineffective. This isn't a failure on your part – it's biology.

In this deeply informative episode, I break down exactly why your old approaches stop working during perimenopause. We explore the five major biological shifts happening behind the scenes: fluctuating reproductive hormones, gradually slowing metabolism, natural muscle loss, increased stress response, and growing insulin resistance. These changes aren't visible on the surface but dramatically alter how your body processes food, stores fat, and responds to exercise.

Traditional diet culture relies on outdated assumptions that simply don't apply to women in their 40s and beyond. Restrictive diets can actually worsen hormone imbalances and trigger stress responses that make weight loss nearly impossible. Instead, I share six powerful, science-backed strategies that work with your perimenopausal body instead of against it. You'll learn why balancing blood sugar, prioritising protein, reducing inflammation, strength training, managing stress, and personalising your nutrition are the keys to feeling energetic and maintaining a healthy weight during this transition.

If you've been feeling frustrated, stuck, or betrayed by your changing body, this episode offers both validation and practical solutions. Your body hasn't given up on you – it's simply asking for a different approach. Listen now to discover how to work with your hormones, not against them, and reclaim your vitality, confidence, and wellbeing. Ready for real solutions? Book a free Peri Weight Loss Assessment with me to start your personalised journey to feeling amazing again.

Send me a text!

Are you a woman feeling stressed, flat and experiencing the challenges of perimenopause?

It’s time to reclaim your youthful energy, radiance and self-assurance (and your ideal weight).

I’m here to help with my proven method.

Here's how I can support you -

1. Hit your health and wellbeing goals this year, balance your hormones and lose weight with your own personalised protocol, based on your body's biochemistry. Sounds awesome right!! Book a free 30 minute Peri Weight Loss Assessment with me so we can discuss your health and wellbeing goals and also see how I might be able to support you. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book your call here. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

2. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@the.perimenopause.path

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Susie Garden and this is the Ageless and
Awesome podcast.
I'm an age-defying naturopathand clinical nutritionist and
I'm here to bust myths aroundwomen's health and aging so that
you can be ageless and awesomein your 40s, 50s and beyond.
The Ageless and Awesome podcastis dedicated to helping women

(00:24):
through perimenopause andmenopause with great health, a
positive mindset and outrageousconfidence.
Hit, subscribe or follow nowand let's get started.
Hello, gorgeous one, andwelcome to this week's episode
of the Ageless and Awesomepodcast, the show that helps you
thrive through perimenopauseand beyond with practical,

(00:48):
science-based wellnessstrategies.
I'm Susie Garden and I'm soglad you're here with me this
week.
Today, we are talking aboutsomething that so many women
over 40 struggle with, and thatis why the way they eat that
used to work suddenly stopsworking after 40.

(01:09):
And, most importantly, what todo instead.
So if you've been eating clean,counting calories, cutting
carbs, fasting, ramping up yourworkouts and still not seeing
results, you're not crazy.
Your body has changed, andtoday we're going to unpack why

(01:29):
and what your body actuallyneeds right now.
So grab a cup of your favoritebeverage, or pop those earbuds
in if you're on your walk, andlet's dive in.
So firstly, I want to talkabout why what you used to do
back in the day in your 20s and30s, why that used to work and

(01:51):
why it may not be working now.
So if we rewind a little backto your 20s and 30s, you could
probably drop a few kilos justby skipping dessert for a week,
right?
Or maybe hitting the gym moreoften.
That's because back then yourmetabolism was running pretty
efficiently, even if you didtreat your body like rubbish,

(02:14):
your metabolism was runningpretty efficiently and your
hormones were relatively stableand your body was less sensitive
to stress and inflammation.
And if you want to learn moreabout inflammation, last week's
podcast covered all about that,so go and give that a listen.
So you know, back in the day,even restrictive diets could

(02:36):
give you fast, if not alwayssustainable, results.
But once you hit your forties,perimenopause starts changing
the game behind the scenes andoften without warning.
So many women come and talk tome and don't even realize
they're in peri, because theymay not be having all of those
classic kind of symptoms likehot flushes, night sweats, et

(02:59):
cetera.
Sometimes it's just literallythe resistant weight.
Sometimes it's just literallythe resistant weight.
That's the problem.
So let's break this down.
What is actually happening.
So, firstly, there are thehormonal shifts.
All right, we all know this isthe estrogen, the progesterone,
the testosterone, a number ofothers all begin to fluctuate
and this impacts where your bodystores fat, how much lean

(03:25):
muscle you carry and howsensitive your cells are to
insulin, and we'll talk aboutthat in a minute.
Number two your metabolism canslow down.
So from about age 35 or yourmid-30s onwards, our resting
metabolic rate graduallydeclines.
Again, this is all gradual.

(03:46):
That's why often we don'tnotice, and that means your body
burns fewer calories at rest,even if you're doing all the
same things that you always have.
Number three we start losingmuscle, and I really noticed
this.
That's something I actually didreally notice is the loss of

(04:08):
muscle mass.
So without resistance, trainingand adequate protein, we will
naturally lose muscle mass everydecade, particularly after 40.
When I was in my 40s, that'swhen I really noticed it, and it
didn't matter.
I was just training andtraining and in the gym several
times a week.
I have an awesome home gym andstill found, even though I was

(04:29):
doing all of the same things Iwas even changing it up my
muscle mass was just doingnothing.
And since muscle burns moreenergy or calories and fat.
This contributes to a slowermetabolism.
Fat this contributes to aslower metabolism.
Number four is increased stressand cortisol.
You've probably heard me talkabout cortisol before, but many

(04:55):
women in their forties arejuggling careers.
Certainly, for me, that waswhen I was the most busy and the
most stressed in my career.
It's often when women are inmore senior roles if they're on
the corporate kind of track.
Often, you know, family-wise,you may have teenagers that are
causing a bit of stress.
You may have aging parents andother responsibilities going on,

(05:17):
all while you're navigating.
The hormonal chaos ofperimenopause.
And chronic stress elevatesyour cortisol, your stress
hormone cortisol, and that canincrease fat storage.
It messes with your bloodglucose metabolism and
especially promotes fat storagearound the belly Awesome, right,

(05:37):
the menobelly.
And it also cortisol alsomesses with your hunger hormones
like ghrelin and leptin.
So you can see that thehormonal kind of influence is
massive, not just yourreproductive hormones but these
other hormones.
Number five I wanted to mention,which I mentioned briefly just

(05:58):
before, is insulin resistance.
So as we are getting into ourforties and fift and beyond, we
are naturally, as part of I hatesaying this the aging process,
we are naturally going to becomemore insulin resistant and that
means that your cells don'trespond to insulin as well as
they used to.

(06:18):
And insulin has many roles.
One of them is that it is a fatstorage hormone.
So if you're especially if yourdiet is high in refined carbs
or sugars or you're skippingmeals, you can have more fat
storage happening because yourinsulin isn't working very well.

(06:40):
So, yes, diets stop working andthe way you were eating before,
like before now, can sometimesnot still continue to work for
you, not because you're doinganything wrong, but because your
biology has shifted.
Yeah, it kind of sucks, and youknow.

(07:00):
The problem with diet culturefor women over 40 is most diets
are built on three outdatedassumptions.
One is that weight loss issimply about calories in versus
calories out.
Two is that all bodies willrespond in the same way and we
definitely know that's not true.
And three, that restrictionequals results.

(07:24):
But for women in perimenopause,these rules can backfire, and
here's why so restrictive dietsreally can put the body in
stress.
Your body is already dealingwith hormonal fluctuations, and
adding calorie restrictions orintense fasting can be perceived

(07:48):
as a threat, because ournervous systems are still pretty
basic when it comes to thestress response and this spikes
cortisol and can shut down fatloss in a big way.
So we definitely don't wantblockers to fat loss if we're in
a situation where we're wantingto lose fat tissue.
Also, low calorie diets oftenunder fuel your metabolism and

(08:12):
when you don't eat enough, yourthyroid and metabolism downshift
to conserve energy because it'sthinking are we going into a
famine here?
It doesn't know that you'rechoosing not to eat to your
body's kind of need.
So you might lose a few kilosquickly but then hit a plateau,

(08:32):
feel exhausted and gain it allback, plus more that dreaded
yo-yo effect.
And the thing is, when I workwith women in weight loss, if
they're hungry, if they're notfeeling like they're not getting
enough food, I increase theirfood immediately.
The last thing I want issomeone to be feeling hungry,
because it means that they'renot getting enough food and

(08:54):
they're not getting enoughcalories.
And we definitely need to makesure that that is happening
because things will just slowdown in the metabolism
dramatically.
Body goes into survival modewhen it thinks it's going into
famine.
So that's really important andI will always bang on about that
.
Women need to be fed,especially in perimenopause.

(09:15):
Another reason is that ignoringnutrient density is a big
problem when it is a realcalorie focused eating plan
where people will set aside somecalories, because I've done
this myself when I was doing atthe gym many years ago now,
before I knew what I know now.

(09:35):
I did a 1200 calorie a dayprogram for only well, only a
week.
It was required because it waspart of a challenge, but it
meant that, yeah, I'm settingaside, okay, I want to have a
couple of wines, so that's 150calories per glass, that's 300
of my 1200.
I needed to conserve for that,and so you're not actually

(09:57):
nourishing the body if you'refocusing on that and I've seen
that happen a lot with other bigname programs as well where it
is all about points or it isabout calories, is that the
focus is not necessarily on thequality of the food going in.
It's on the calories and whatyou put in your body really,

(10:18):
really matters.
Particularly in peri andpost-menopause, weight loss is
not just about how much you eat,but what you eat.
If your diet is low inanti-inflammatory foods, for
example you know I talked aboutinflammation last week on the
podcast and how that can impactweight.
So if your diet is low inanti-inflammatory foods and

(10:39):
missing key nutrients likeomega-3s, magnesium, protein.
Your hormones will suffer, yourgut health will suffer, weight
loss becomes very challenging,will suffer.
Weight loss becomes verychallenging.
And then there's, of course, theemotional side of all of this,
because we all have differentkinds of relationships with food

(11:00):
.
Don't we Food as comfort?
Food as punishment, food asreward?
When we're restricting food,that can lead to feelings of
guilt, that can set up obsessivebehaviors that certainly is
what happened with me and an allor nothing mindset.
And at this stage in life, thelast thing that we need is more

(11:23):
pressure or shame around ourbodies.
So what to do?
Instead, what you want to lookfor is a metabolic and hormonal
approach.
So let's talk about a realisticand sustainable approach that
works with your body and notagainst it.
And I wanted to share like sixpowerful shifts I teach inside

(11:47):
my Glow Protocol program, one ofthe number one.
I don't know.
Number one could be this, or itcould be lowering inflammation,
but let's start with this one.
Number one balancing bloodsugar like a queen.
So stable blood sugar equalsbalanced hormones, and it means
that you don't get cravings, youdon't have that energy dive in

(12:10):
the afternoon.
You want stable blood sugarabove all else.
So eating every like five tosix hours, including a
reasonable amount of protein atevery meal, and the GLOW
protocol that I have got.
I let you know exactly whatthat is for you, specifically
the amount.
You don't skip meals,especially breakfast it's so

(12:33):
important.
We're also adding fiber-richcarbs and healthy fats to help
reduce insulin resistance.
So a massive focus on balancingblood sugar.
Number two prioritizing protein.
Women over 40 need more proteinto maintain muscle and support
metabolism, and that gets that.

(12:55):
You know, burning fat like a,like a.
What did one of our clientssaid to me once?
She said I feel like a fatburning machine.
And that is what happens whenyou balance blood sugar and you
prioritize protein.
There are a number of multipleswhen I say multiple like, if
you want to work out how muchprotein you need if you're over

(13:16):
40, I've read anywhere from 1.2to 1.6 grams of protein per kilo
of body weight per day anddepends on your activity level
and also, I guess, your goals.
But honestly, having apersonalized amount of protein
prescribed for you rather thanjust using one of the multiples,
is going to give you way fasterand more targeted results and

(13:39):
when you're having enough goodquality protein, it helps reduce
cravings, it increases satietyso you're not feeling hungry,
and it supports muscle and leanbody mass.
Super important number three oneof these powerful shifts is the
inflammation.
Focusing on anti-inflammatoryfoods, because chronic low-grade

(14:02):
inflammation and this isinflammation that could
potentially not have anysymptoms it's a hidden block to
fat loss and when I'm workingwith women in this program,
probably in the first one to twoweeks, we see massive shifts in
inflammation and thatcorrelates with a good start to

(14:23):
weight loss.
So some of theanti-inflammatory foods that you
want to be really making sureyou have a good intake of are
things like leafy greens,colorful veggies, colorful
veggies, berries this can befresh or frozen fatty fish,
extra virgin olive oil, flaxseedoil, hemp seed oil, herbs and

(14:52):
spices like turmeric and ginger.
This not only will support fatloss, it'll also improve your
skin.
It'll help reduce pain in yourjoints, help make you more
flexible in your joints actuallyas well.
I get that a lot Helps your guthealth and your mood.
So many benefits from focusingon anti-inflammatory foods and
they don't need to be so-calledsuperfoods.
These are just all fruits,veggies, et cetera, herbs and

(15:14):
spices that you get from thesupermarket.
Herbs and spices that you getfrom the supermarket.
Number four that I recommend islifting heavy.
Cardio is not enough anymorefor healthy weight management
and weight loss.
You need resistance training,probably two to three times a
week.
Again, it all depends on theindividual to build muscle and

(15:34):
protect your metabolism and youwant to be doing some pretty
heavy weightlifting.
Again, I would always recommendworking with a professional
that can help you with that sothat you avoid injury and just
taking your time with it.
Working slow, getting educated,doesn't have to be, you know,

(16:01):
really flogging yourself, butgoing two to three times a week
to build muscle is really,really important.
And, to be honest, I mean I'mdoing refocusing myself on
resistance training at themoment for my bone health and I
am loving it.
I've got a PT at the moment andabsolutely loving doing

(16:23):
training with a PT.
That's giving me a goodchallenge, a good workout and it
makes me feel safe that I'm notgonna injure myself.
So I highly recommend.
Also, number five of the sixpowerful shifts is supporting
stress and sleep, and in fact Ihave a whole module all about

(16:43):
that in the glow protocol vipspace.
So you've got to remembercortisol does many things, as
many of our hormones do, butit's a fat storing hormone.
So you want to make sure you'rekeeping that cortisol well
managed because Because remember, when you are in perimenopause
that progesterone dives, itmakes your ability to manage

(17:06):
stress a bit more challenging,shall we say, and so cortisol
can rise more easily than whenyou're in your 20s and 30s.
So managing stress ideally bydoing preventative things, so
not just when you get stresseddoing something to manage your
stress, but proactively gettingsome sort of routine so that

(17:32):
your baseline stress actually isa little lower and that will
make you less likely to triggerup with some of the daily
stresses of life.
And whether that's somethinglike having a bath every night
with some magnesium or somelavender oil, or doing some
breath work and it doesn't haveto be anything fancy, even just
doing deep breaths into thebelly when you're driving, when

(17:54):
you're shopping, when you'recooking, when you're at your
desk, you know, not puttinganother thing on the to-do list
actually just training your bodyto breathe deeply is very, very
powerful.
There's lots of science to backthat up.
If you like journaling, do that.
If you have other activitiesthat bring you joy, do them.
Or sometimes it's just simplyabout saying no more often when

(18:17):
you don't feel like doingsomething when it comes to sleep
.
Prioritize that.
One of the doctors in the USAthat I follow on Instagram is
always saying guard your sleep,guard it.
And prioritizing ideally eightor more hours of restorative

(18:41):
sleep.
It's when your body resets someof your hormones, like leptin,
ghrelin, growth hormone.
There's a lot of repair workthat goes on during sleep and
it's also when your glymphaticsystem activates.
So that's the like a lymphaticsystem for your brain, and we
know that women in peri areoften struggling with sleep and

(19:02):
it means your lymphatic systemmay not activate and that's
going to increase brain fog, forexample, because your brain
isn't detoxing well enoughovernight.
So sleep is really important,not just so you don't feel tired
the next day, but for all ofthese other body processes that
go on when we're in sleep.

(19:23):
And number six is obviouslynutrition personalizing your
nutrition as well, because thisis where having personalized
nutrition absolutely shines,because it's based on your
personal body sorry, bloodbiochemistry.
So you get a nutritionalprotocol that's completely

(19:44):
tailored to your body's needs,not a generic diet.
It's like a blueprint forrebalancing your metabolism
naturally and effectively.
You get the exact proteins, theexact fruits, veggies, salads,
bread, the portion sizes, themacro balance.
It's extraordinary and I cannotbang on enough about it because

(20:09):
over the past five and a halfyears I've been delivering this
program, the results I see areastounding and I still get
amazed.
And, yes, the weight lossnumbers are really important,
but it's also the improvementsin people's health and
well-being where you knowunexpected things, particularly

(20:32):
when it comes to things likeskin glow, like a reason I
called it the glow protocol is.
That's the feedback I wasgetting from clients is, oh, my
colleagues are telling me myskin is glowing.
And I heard it once.
I thought, oh, that's reallylovely.
And then I heard it again andagain, and again and I thought,
wow, this is really amazing.
And yeah, so having all ofthose other benefits it's as

(20:54):
well as the weight loss is justgold.
So you know, if you've beenfeeling stuck, like your body
isn't responding the way it usedto, you're not alone.
This is happening to so manywomen.
I have these conversationsseveral times a week when I'm
talking to women having theirperi-weight loss assessments.
You know, perimenopause bringslike a whole new hormonal

(21:15):
landscape and with it a need fora, a new approach, and eating
plans that worked in your 20sand 30s just aren't built for
your 40s and beyond.
But with the right strategy,one that supports your hormones,
supports your metabolism andyour nervous system, you can
feel vibrant, you can feel lean,you can feel in control again.

(21:39):
And if you want support topersonalize your journey, I
would love to invite you to booka free peri weight loss
assessment with me.
The link is in the show notesor you can dm me on instagram
and I'll send you the link.
And just to let you know thatmy, my prices are going up on
the 1st of August.
So if you get in now for yourperi weight loss assessment, you

(22:01):
can get at the current price ornot.
The perimenopause weight lossassessment is actually free, but
if you wanted to enroll in theprogram, you can get at current
price until the 1st of August.
So you know you deserve to feelamazing in your body and your
mind and I'm here to help youget there.
So thanks for listening.
If you love this episode, Iwould love it if you would leave

(22:24):
a review or maybe share it witha friend so that more women can
get access to this information.
So until next time, take care,be well.
I'll see you next week.
Thanks so much for joining meon the Ageless and Awesome
podcast.
If you would like this episode,please make sure you click the
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(22:46):
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If you feel like writing me afive-star review, you would
absolutely make my day.
If you found this episoderesonated with you, head over to
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I would love to connect withyou.