The Pitfalls of Restricting Calories with Louise Digby

Wonder what happens when we cut calories and don't eat enough to fuel our body?

In this episode with Lousie Digby, we unpack fat loss and weight management during menopause.  Louise is a BANT-registered nutritional therapist and weight loss expert on a mission to help menopausal women discover and fix a sluggish metabolism.

The discussion delves into the hidden factors that truly impact fat loss in peri and postmenopause, and the surprising role of hormones, gut health, toxic load, and even social media in weight management.

Louise is the host of the podcast The Thriving Metabolism and the creator of the Nourish Method, an online programme that addresses fat-burning and the mindset challenges causing self-sabotage.

• Learn more about Louise on her website
• Connect with Louise on Instagram and Facebook
• Louise's recommended read Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken, and Rushing Woman's Syndrome by Libby Weaver (not affiliate links)

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Transcript

Louise Digby: 0:00

Your thyroid and its hormones control how fast your metabolism is, how fast the fat burning process happens. If your thyroid isn't functioning optimally. Everything's going to slow down, and again, even if you're on a calorie deficit, you're not necessarily going to be getting into fat burning and burning efficiently. And actually under fueling your thyroid by not eating enough can, slow down your thyroid even more, so you're going to find it even more difficult to lose weight.

Mary Lee: 0:34

Welcome to All Things Menopausal. My name is Mary, and I'm a menopause doula. I created this podcast, to build community for women going through menopause transition and to foster resilience through the stories that connect, educate, and empower. These stories are real, raw, relatable, And they're very much relevant to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual whole person that we are. Each week, you will hear from courageous, vulnerable, and knowledgeable guests sharing their passion, their journey, and lived experience. These are little clues to finding solutions to our unique situation. The menopause symptoms are personal, but the experience is universal. In this episode, I sat down with Louise Digby and you're going to hear about the topic of a weight gain and some of the underlying issues that cause stubborn weight loss in menopause. In particular, we talk about hormone imbalance and hormone irregularity and how muscle plays an active role in keeping our bodies metabolically active. We also talk about the calorie deficit and the calorie in calorie out concept, why eating less is doing more harm to our hormones, leading to an increase in cortisol, which strips away sugar from muscle, not from fat. It's not a fat burner. It's using Muscle mass that we need to maintain an active, metabolically active body. We also talk about blood sugar and insulin resistance. And I learned a lot about thyroid and thyroid antibodies. Here's something I also wanted to ask Louise, because I feel that apart from menopause, There are many women, in premenopausal years, early 20s that are facing inflammation and that stubborn weight gain. And so I wanted to understand, is there a correlation between the lifestyle that we're living today that could be causing this, and I'm not talking food. I'm talking exposure to social media. You want to stay tuned for this and what Louise has to say about social media scrolling. We unpacked a lot. but before we start, here's something you need to know about Louise. Louise Digby of Essex is a seasoned nutritional therapist who specializes in helping women tackle the challenges of weight and hormonal balance. Louise stands apart from conventional diets that focus strictly on calorie intake and expenditure. Instead, Louise takes a comprehensive and enjoyable approach, passionately believing that losing weight should not strip away the joy of eating one's favorite foods. Instead, we should be focusing on the underlying issues that often cause stubborn weight problems, particularly as women approach the 30s and 40s and then into their menopausal years. Louise has designed tailored programs that transform dieting into a pleasurable experience. She ensures that delicious meals remain at the heart of every plan achieving lasting results. Louise is also the host of the very popular podcast, Thriving Metabolism. And after this episode, if you want to learn how to repair your metabolism after 40 and get the Practical Woman's Guide to Boosting Metabolism, well, you can go check out her cheat sheet, at louisedigbynutrition. com. I encourage you to check out her masterclass to learn more about how to boost your metabolism and say goodbye to hiding under baggy clothes. I love that. so sit back, enjoy, Well, good morning, Louise Digby all the way from Essex in the UK. So happy to have you on all things menopausal. We're going to talk about one of these areas that many women are complaining about, and that is the stubborn weight loss and the increasing belly fat in our midlife, the menopausal years. We'll unpack that all, but first of all, welcome.

Louise Digby: 4:54

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to digging into all of this and unpacking it with you.

Mary Lee: 4:59

Absolutely. And I know the listeners are just going to be listening with pen in hand, but let's unpack it all. First of all, I always like to tell the backstory of my guest. What led you to the career path that you're in and what does that say a little bit about what you are passionate about?

Louise Digby: 5:19

So I got into nutrition, I think because when I grew up, my mum always had a really strong interest in nutrition. It's what she wanted to do, but unfortunately at the time you needed to have things like chemistry A level and she didn't have that, so she couldn't do it unfortunately but she was so interested and passionate and That meant that I grew up knowing about what foods did for you and what was good and not so good and all that sort of thing. And I wanted to continue that learning. So I went straight into studying nutrition out of school. And then once I graduated, I, like most nutritionists do, I worked with everyone and anyone in terms of whatever problem they had, whether it was IBS or eczema or acne or depression, you name it. But what I noticed was that everyone that I worked with, pretty much everyone also wanted to lose weight. And there were also people that came to me. Who just wanted to lose weight. And what was interesting was it was the people that were more focused on their health addressing their IBS or addressing their skin issues or whatever the problem was, they were the people who got the best results when it came to the weight and the people who were more focused on just the weight, they weren't getting such good results because they were more focused on portion control and cutting things out of their diet and burning as many calories as possible. And then what I also noticed was that it was women who were perimenopausal, menopausal who were struggling the most with their weight. And yet they were often the ones who were the most dedicated, the most focused when it comes to eating well and staying active, but they just weren't getting the results that you would expect. So all of that really led me to Specializing in weight loss for women over 40, because I really wanted to understand why it was it becomes much more challenging and ultimately help women to thrive through that time of life because unfortunately Not only does the weight tend to go on, but also health can start to deteriorate as well, despite not really changing anything still eating well and staying active. So I think it's such an important time in women's lives to. To get the nutrition right and make sure that they're supporting their health and wellbeing so that they can age really healthfully and have the second half of their life being one that's full of joy and health and wellbeing.

Mary Lee: 8:03

Oh my goodness. That's so true. That is what we thrive for. And I appreciate the fact that you love the women to work with the women who are, who want to put in the work and putting in the work means why like understanding the why. Getting that knowledge and, that really talks about the science of the body, is understanding what is happening so that they can get out of that blame and shame attitude and more into, okay, I'm in the driver's seat, I'm in control now. So let's go back and talk about that science. What is happening with the, our bodies as we hit even as early as 35. And we start to see those shifts and how it manifests in our physical and even in our psychological wellbeing.

Louise Digby: 8:47

So the totally normal thing that happens is basically our, we're starting to run out of eggs and your ovaries are starting to reduce their function, eventually shutting down. And that transition can take 15 years from the age of 35 ish up until 50 ish. So it's a very, gradual transition where your ovaries are shutting down and therefore they're producing less of the sex hormones. Again, it's a really normal, natural transition. And In an ideal world, because it's such a gradual transition, it doesn't present us with many problems. But in the modern world, where we have a lot of stress and a lot of nutrient insufficiencies and inflammation and all sorts of things going on for us, this transition can be very disruptive, which is when we get a lot of the symptoms and the stubborn weight that tends to come with the perimenopause and menopause. And essentially Stress is a really big factor. Stress is something that can accelerate that decline in your hormones or exacerbate the fluctuations in your hormones as well, which can make this transition a lot more problematic. It's the shift in your sex hormones and how that's disrupted is one of the big factors. And at the same time, we're also losing muscle mass through this, phase from the age of 35, if we don't use it, we lose it when it comes to muscle. And muscle is so important because it's metabolically active. So the less muscle you have, the fewer calories you're burning, even when you're not exercising. No, even when you're sleeping, still burn calories when we're sleeping and the more muscle we have, the more we're burning even at rest. So I think for women, it's a double whammy of the loss of muscle and this change in hormones that makes things more complicated.

Mary Lee: 10:55

Yes. So the, metabolic changes, as you talked about, it happens with the muscle, the muscles, we lose muscle mass because of estrogen egress. And then we're having a cascading effect throughout the whole body. We're seeing changes in the brain health as well. So when you are confronted with your, or your clients come to see you, and They're in the state of like, what do I do? How do I go about this? What is the very first thing that you would do to sit down with them and say, okay, look, we can do this. We can accomplish what you're set up to do, but we need to do it in X, Y, and Z. So explain to us that process so that it doesn't seem for the listeners out there who are in this situation. It's not so daunting, like, okay, counting calories, cutting calories. How do we go about planning a regime that is. It's both doable and also one that's I guess you could say the smart goal principle.

Louise Digby: 11:58

I think, often where we need to start is rather than looking at what we need to cut out instead, look at what we need to add in. What does our body need to thrive? Because your traditional diets, they're very much focused on just getting you into a calorie deficit in, any means, in any way possible. And the problem with that is that it doesn't actually address the underlying issues. It can make the hormone imbalances worse. Particularly if you've got stuff going on with your thyroid or if you're very stressed or inflamed. Instead of going down that route of cutting stuff out, let's think about what do we need to add in? What is my body going to need to function optimally and thrive? And that will look different for everyone but often the place to start is protein because I've looked at thousands of food diaries in my time and I very rarely see one that has enough protein throughout the day. So making sure that you're, getting protein in and start with breakfast is, such a good place to start. Because if we can have a quality protein breakfast, it's going to set you up for a really good day. It's going to help you to keep your blood sugars balanced. It's going to help you feel energized, it's going to minimize cravings and that all in itself just gives you more willpower. So it just puts you on the front foot if you can get a good high protein breakfast in place.

Mary Lee: 13:40

You have a lot of clients that say, yeah, I don't do breakfast, I don't want to eat breakfast. Sometimes.

Louise Digby: 13:47

Yeah. Sometimes. And I always try to work with someone where they're at. And if someone doesn't eat breakfast, often there's a few different reasons why that could be for some people it might be that they just don't have any appetite. Sometimes people feel nauseous and they just can't eat first thing in the morning and I'd want to dig into that and find out what's going on there. Why are we feeling like this first thing in the morning? Are there gut issues? Is it stress? Is it just a habit? And for some people it's because they believe that, having a longer overnight fast is going to be something that works better for them, which may or may not be true. So it's understanding, okay, why aren't we having breakfast? And if there doesn't seem to be a particularly good reason for it, then it can be worthwhile trying to have breakfast, even if it's just starting with something really small. Because. Eating kind of gets your metabolism going. It gets your system working. It fuels your body first thing in the morning. And oftentimes getting that breakfast in can be really beneficial.

Mary Lee: 14:51

So you mentioned the fast. Let's talk about that for a second. Cause a lot of women are following either a time restricted eating pattern or fasting altogether. First of all, is it safe? And what is the recommended approach to that time restricted eating whereby we limit that window of eating? And how do we apart from breaking fast with protein, I think it's more of how do we address the mindset behind the resistance to have the breakfast in the morning to fuel the body, like you said, to set us up for success.

Louise Digby: 15:30

In terms of, is it safe? I think, Yes, mostly it's safe in if you're not doing fasts that are extremely long, yes, it's mostly safe. But the problem that I see is that fasting can be very, stressful for the body, particularly for women who have perimenopausal menopausal. Your, When you fast and you go a prolonged period of time without eating, it can actually drive up your stress hormones, your cortisol levels, because your body's like, where's the food? Where's the nourishment? And so one of the ways that your body gets fuel when it hasn't got food is it will drive up cortisol basically to help strip sugar from the muscles to give you energy. So we don't want that happening. We don't want to be stripping our muscles. We don't want to be driving up our stress hormones. That's going to make your hormone imbalances worse and it's going to drive weight gain. So that's not the case for everyone in terms of when they're fasting, but. If you don't have a strong nutrition foundation in place, if you've got imbalances, particularly to do your thyroid, particularly if you're stressed, then fasting could very well make those things worse and actually lead to weight gain rather than weight loss. So for me, with my clients, I almost never recommend fasting initially, and it's only when I've been working with someone for months and we've got their thyroids well supported and they're taking steps to manage stress and support their body's stress response that we might consider bringing in fasting, but oftentimes we don't bring it in because it can be more disruptive and cause more problems than it's worth.

Mary Lee: 17:28

Of course, that is worth a million dollars right there that little piece of advice, and I'm going to capture it again by not eating or driving up the cortisol and that cortisol. will then cause the body or can initiate what's called the stripping of sugar from muscle. And here we think not eating is going to burn the fat that's stored in the body, but stripping away the muscle. And of course the muscle is that metabolically active. So it's burning for us. So if we don't have it, we're not burning. And then the bad hormone balance or imbalance thereafter equals weight gain. That is. so critical. And if we could just understand that concept alone, that could change habits so much to bad habits, to good habits.

Louise Digby: 18:21

And it's, I understand why it's confusing because there's so much hype around fasting and that is very good research on fasting to show that it helps with weight loss. It helps lower cholesterol and blood pressure and blood sugars and all these things. But really much of that research has been done on men. And when they've studied women, when they studied women, what they found is that it doesn't actually really help with fat loss. Yes, it can help with blood pressure and all those other metabolic markers, which is a good thing, but it doesn't tend to help with fat loss in women. And when we look at why that is, it's because it's too stressful on the body,

Mary Lee: 19:01

too stressful. That alone is reason to start changing habits. So obviously a lot of habit changing involves a mindset. So do you get to work on the mind, the mindset with your clients and how important is that in the process?

Louise Digby: 19:18

It's absolutely critical because having a healthy mindset around food and lifestyle and your body. It's absolutely key. It helps you to be consistent in your efforts and it's all well and good knowing what it is you need to do or even how to do it, but if you can't do it consistently, then you're going to have limited results and more often than not, it's mindset factors that are stopping someone from being consistent because of. limiting beliefs that they have about themselves or their ability to achieve something. Or maybe it's because of their relationship with food, they might see food as being the enemy or food as only being something that has calorific value and rather than nutritional value. And so that can mean that you. Always default to trying to restrict what you're eating rather than focusing on getting in what your body actually needs.

Mary Lee: 20:25

I would say this is a perfect time. To break for a word from our sponsors. Guess what? You, my listeners are my sponsors. That's right. I would love it if you could support the show. Helping me will help bring these amazing episodes to you each and every week, just packed full of information to help you on your menopause journey. And to support the show, all you have to do is go into the show notes and click just above where you read meet your host. In green is support the show you click on the button and It'll bring you to a page where you have the option to donate monthly three five eight ten You can be a loyal supporter for as long as you want with recurring fee as little as three dollars a month and opt out at any time. Each investment goes directly back into producing episodes with even better content, improved audio quality, and will go a long way in bringing great guests onto the show. The calorie in calorie out concept. Now I sat down and I listened to your very first episode of your podcast, and that was on the calorie in calorie out. And you had said you'd just listened to Dr. Tim, our famous gut health doctor who has has been claiming that calories are essentially ineffective not even worth worrying about. But we are fixated. We grew up in a menopausal women. We will say we grew up in that era where it was all about the calories. Counting your calories all the time. There was weighing machines for your food and to. Calculations to figure out how much calories were in. And I think that's a I'm more solo food. What is happening with that concept of calories in, calories out? Does it still work? Is it a principle still to follow? Or what's Dr. Tim got to say about all of that?

Louise Digby: 22:18

We've been taught that it's very black and white. If you get in a calorie deficit, then you'll lose weight. But that's not true. Getting into a calorie deficit doesn't mean that you're always going to lose weight. And this is why so many women come to me because they're like, I'm in a calorie deficit. I'm burning so many calories and restricting my diet, but I'm still not losing weight. So I see time and time again that it just doesn't work for everyone. And. The reason for this is because there's a lot of things that need to be in place for your body to be able to burn fat that have nothing to do with being in a calorie deficit. So for example, blood sugar hormones. So insulin is a hormone that when our blood sugars are too high, it reduces down the amount of sugar in the blood by moving that sugar into your cells so that we can use it for energy. But if we don't need the energy, something's gonna happen with it and we store it as fat. So you can essentially think of insulin as like a fat storage hormone. And if your insulin is raised consistently. Even if you're in a calorie deficit, you're not going to be getting into fat burning mode. So it's our hormones that control whether we're burning fat or storing fat. Then when you bring into the, picture your thyroid. Your thyroid and its hormones control how fast your metabolism is, how fast the fat burning process happens. If your thyroid isn't functioning optimally. Everything's going to slow down, and again, even if you're on a calorie deficit, you're not necessarily going to be getting into fat burning and burning efficiently. And actually under fueling your thyroid by not eating enough can, can slow down your thyroid even more, so you're going to find it even more difficult to lose weight. And then we can go as far as looking at a cellular level, what's happening when we burn fat. And when we look at the mitochondria, which are the little energy factories in all our cells that take our food and turn it into energy, there's many different nutrients vitamins and minerals that are involved in that fat burning process. If you've got deficiencies, Or if there's some sort of issue that means that those nutrients aren't getting to where they need to be, you're gonna not be burning fat or making energy very efficiently. It doesn't matter if we're getting a calorie deficit, if those things aren't in place, and there's other things that we could go into as well, if those things aren't in place, you're not going to be burning fat.

Mary Lee: 25:07

Very interesting. The thyroid alone is a topic that, I don't think we talk about enough when it comes to women's health and in particular when we move into the menopausal years. And A lot of women either don't get thyroid testing done or, the numbers aren't clearly understood, I would think. So let's talk about that. I really like the concept where you explain the underfueling of the thyroid. So when you're working with a client, is it recommended first that you get some tests done on some blood testing, blood sugar levels tested, the thyroid levels tested to best understand where they are with their thyroid and with that in mind is if one of the first steps then is to get the thyroid back to a functioning where it's functioning optimally.

Louise Digby: 26:01

And

Mary Lee: 26:03

can that be done alongside building a proper nutrition plan?

Louise Digby: 26:08

Absolutely. So yeah, getting proper testing done is often really, helpful because over here in the UK, and I'm sure it's similar where you are, the tests that your doctors do as standard are very basic. They don't go into any real depth in terms of telling us how the thyroid's functioning. for listening. They'll look at things like your TSH, which is the hormone that communicates between your brain and your thyroid. It doesn't actually give us a indication of the thyroid function. Sometimes if you're lucky, they may test your T4 as well, which is the thyroid hormone, which is helpful to know, but still not the whole picture because your body has to convert that T4 into T3, which is the most active thyroid hormone. And that's the thing that never gets tested. And if that isn't happening efficiently, then you're not going to be burning fat very efficiently. You're not going to be feeling very good either. Even if the TSH and the T4 are optimal. Having a more detailed thyroid test that looks at the T3, ideally also your thyroid antibodies, is really, helpful because that helps us start to understand, okay, why is thyroid not functioning as well as it could be. And there's lots of other things that We like to test like HbA1c to do with your blood sugars, and gut health and all sorts of other things, but certainly a thyroid, a detailed thyroid test is a good place to start. And then in terms of what to do about that once you've got that information. There's so much that you can do to support your thyroid function and it starts with understanding why you have a problem in the first place. Is it that you don't have enough of that T4 hormone? Is it that you're not converting the T4 into the T3? Is it that your antibodies are elevated and that means that your immune system is essentially attacking and suppressing your thyroid? And if that's the case, then we want to be thinking about why is that happening? Is it because you've got imbalances in your gut, inflammation, deficiencies, a high toxic load? Stress. Maybe it's because you're highly stressed or you're not sleeping properly. Maybe it's all of those things and more there's lots of things that we could think about. But when you start really getting into the nitty gritty of it and digging down into the underlying causes, there's so much you can do to optimize your thyroid, which I think is so important to talk about because when you go to the doctors, if they do pick up a thyroid issue, it's one treatment for all. That's all you get.

Mary Lee: 28:58

exactly. it's the cookie cutter approach. I love how you say we got to unpack it just like we said very beginning and getting into the nitty gritty because the body is, so complex. And yet I think once it's understood. It's very simple. And one thing leads to another. Appreciate that you also brought up the gut and just that role that it plays, the good bacteria and the bad bacteria. And I just want to close the loop on the thyroid before we get into that gut health issue. I didn't even understand thyroid antibodies before until you mentioned it in the fact that if they're high, our own immune system could be attacking our thyroid. So what does that look like? How does that show up in the body?

Louise Digby: 29:48

So when your thyroid is underactive or overactive, actually, the, One of the reasons why that can happen is because your immune system is being hyper reactive and you know that can be for lots of reasons. Often it can be linked to things like food intolerances where a certain food might be over stimulating your immune system. And then what we get is called cross reactivity. And basically the proteins in your thyroid are a very, similar structure. to certain things like gluten, for example. And so if your body is having a reaction to gluten, sometimes your thyroid can be in the crossfire and your immune system's going out and it's attacking gluten because, for whatever reason, it sees it as a threat. But unfortunately, at the same time, your thyroid, your immune system will be attacking your thyroid. Now, that's just one example. That's not to say that everyone with thyroid issue or suspected thyroid issue should cut out gluten. It's, I do find it's very individual and varied what might be triggering it and often getting the gut functioning properly can help you to tolerate these foods better. And it may not even be a food trigger. in the first place. It could be stress, for example, that's driving an overactive immune system. But that attack on the thyroid can do one of two things. It can, well, firstly, it makes it inflamed, but that can cause overactive thyroid, which is known as Graves disease, or it can cause underactive thyroid, which is Hashimoto's disease. And sometimes it can go overactive and then become underactive, either because of just that natural progression or because. If it goes overactive, then your doctors try to treat an overactive thyroid, which makes it go underactive. So it can be a little bit of a tricky thing to unpick. But ultimately, if we can find out what's triggering the immune system and calm it down, then we can stop that, that basically attack on the thyroid and help it to start repairing and healing.

Mary Lee: 32:09

That is very knowledgeable information. So let's just recap Graves disease is over active Hoshimoto's is under active. Because I have had clients present some of these and, it goes right back to their thyroid, but now understanding how it all works together is the key to the remedy of whether it's got health issues, or that again that stubborn weight loss. One thing that I have come across, and this is not for perimenopause or menopausal women. We're starting to see it in younger girls in their early, twenties that are already faced with the stubborn weight loss. And, I look at it from a point of view as, okay, well, what's their lifestyle. And this is quite interesting. We're going to take a real diversion off topic, maybe just a little bit, but alcohol consumption lends itself to the increased weight, the sugary foods, the sugary drinks, Starbucks, But I think there's something else happening. And you mentioned this with The stress and and the increased stress can cause some of that driving up the cortisol, which again, cascading effect on the body exposure to social media and the comparison and the feeling unworthy. Of course that has got to be the ultimate stressor in anybody's life, perimenopause or premenopause. For females in general. I think what we're exposing ourselves to just from our device can be a huge stressor on the body. So can, without getting into the whole politics of the social media good or not, let's just talk about that, stress, the external stress, not necessarily what's happening internally, but the external environment that drives up that cortisol.

Louise Digby: 34:14

Yeah, I think it's a really complicated issue and it's something that when we're doing it, when we're scrolling we think, It's good for us because it's distracting us and we're having laughing at things or learning things or whatever it might be. But at the same time, we're obviously seeing a lot of. Things that aren't real, that are quite confusing and can put a lot of pressures on us to feel like we need to be a certain way or live a certain way. And at the same time, I think once you finally do stop scrolling, You've got that feeling of I've wasted all that time and I haven't achieved anything. And your dopamine levels are messed up because you've been getting hit after hit of, dopamine after everything you've scrolled through. It does mess us up. I think just from that, but also there's things like how it disrupts our circadian rhythm when we, Looking at blue light and devices all the time, which we are we spend all day on, on our laptops and then we spend all evening watching TV and on our phones and that blue light does lots of things to our body. It suppresses the production of melatonin, which is the sleepy hormone, which is very anti inflammatory by the way. And so when we don't have enough melatonin. It's difficult for us to get to sleep, it's difficult for us to stay asleep and it's difficult for us to have the quality of sleep that we need to do all that metabolic repair that needs to happen overnight. So there's that. But it's also been shown that blue light raises blood sugars, which is like, that blows my mind every time I think about it. Just looking at something can raise your blood sugars and it's to do with heart diseases. Yeah, that is unbelievable. Yeah, and it's to do with how it raises your stress hormone. So that's the other thing that happens. It raises your stress hormone levels It has all this effect on our, various different hormones, which disrupts our sleep. It disrupts our appetite because we start seeking the dopamine from elsewhere. We or seeking behaviors. We can start to, even when we're trying to avoid the social media we can start to try and get that dopamine elsewhere. So Yeah, I don't have a lot of good things to say about it, to be honest.

Mary Lee: 37:00

That is incredible information. Again, so much great knowledge. Blue light raises our blood sugar level. That's incredible. You can almost see a pattern. Ask a client. So how many hours did you spend on your device last night? Maybe two or three. It's nothing. What'd you have for breakfast? A donut, a croissant, needed the dopamine. I'm seeing a pattern here. This is really, interesting information. So much information, Louise, to unpack, but let's move to how you do deliver the, your plethora of information to your clients, because I will say you have a pretty awesome program that all begins with your metabolism masterclass. Did I get that right? Yes. Okay. Tell us all about that because I'm sure the listeners by now are saying, how do I get more of Louise? And we're going to tell you.

Louise Digby: 37:59

So the metabolism masterclass is a masterclass that I run pretty much every week. And it's the, basically the steps that I go through with my clients. And touching on some of the things that we've spoken about today to help you to understand why it's not about calories. It's not about willpower. It's about digging deeper and uncovering. These imbalances and factors that drive weight gain, particularly around the time of perimenopause and menopause. And then my program, the nourish method that is like you said today, there's so much information, there's so much to unpack, which is why I work with my clients for six months because we've got to make sure that we do things properly, make sure that we. Go through things strategically and that we're changing things in a way that's going to last. We want to change habits. We're not about overhauling everything and expecting you to have the willpower to be able to keep doing that forever. It's more about taking baby steps, doing one thing at a time, taking the steps that are going to be most impactful for you to ensure that the. The changes you are making are giving you the most bang for your buck, if you like, in terms of health and wellbeing and progress. So we always start with running tests to find out what's going on, what imbalances there may be that could be driving weight gain or any other issues that might be going on whether that's. Skin issues, gut issues or whatever. so we find out what's going on and then we build a personalized action plan. So it's, would be unique to the individual to address these imbalances and that we'll look at food and lifestyle and potentially supplements, if that's something that's going to help to aid their, recovery, if you like. And then, yeah we, work with them step by step for six months to make sure Not only are they able to achieve their health goals and lose weight while they're working with us, but they're also able to maintain that in the longterm.

Mary Lee: 40:07

And so can you work with clients online, anywhere around the world?

Louise Digby: 40:11

Yeah, absolutely.

Mary Lee: 40:13

All right. Well, let's tell our listeners where they can find you.

Louise Digby: 40:17

So my website is LouiseDigbyNutrition. com and you can also connect with me on socials by searching at Louise Digby Nutrition.

Mary Lee: 40:27

All right. We'll get those in the show notes. Louise, I always like to ask my guests one question what is your favorite book or what book are you reading right now? And what does that say about you or what valuable information in that book would you like to share with the listeners?

Louise Digby: 40:44

there's two books that immediately sprang to mind. So if I can say two, that would be

Mary Lee: 40:48

great.

Louise Digby: 40:50

One of them is called ultra processed people. Oh, you've probably heard of it. I can never remember the name of the guy but he's one of the twin doctors who's from the UK and he talks all about ultra processed foods. And I started reading it thinking I'm going to know all of this I've been reading I've, this is my bag, I do this really, I'm going to know it. But there's so much information in there. It's, so interesting. And he really walks you through his experience of changing his diet for the worse. He added in all these ultra processed foods and in a very short space of time his, body changed massively, including his brain. They did an MRI and found really concerning changes. So it's absolutely fascinating. So I highly recommend that book for anyone who needs a little bit of encouragement to start weeding out those ultra processed foods. And also to understand exactly what they are, because I think it's quite confusing to know what an ultra processed food is. So there's that book. And then there's another great book, which isn't all that new, but it's a book I read probably about 10 years or so ago, but still I recommend it to clients. And it's called Rushing Woman's Syndrome. And It very much relates to the conversation that we've been having today because it is all about the modern woman and how the we expect ourselves to be able to do it all and have it all, but it comes at the cost of our hormones. And just this, even if we don't feel stressed, just this constant rushing around and doing everything all the time for everyone and never doing anything for ourselves, it really walks you through the impact that has. And there's lots of like symptom checklists in there, all sorts of things like that. So I really enjoyed both those books.

Mary Lee: 42:44

Okay. We're going to share those books in the show notes. Fantastic recommendations. I'm glad you shared that. I think that is going to be some really great sage advice. In those books. And it's funny because the teacher's always learning, right? We're always seeking new information to enhance our knowledge, to expand our way of thinking. So these are two great books. And we're definitely going to share in the show notes as well as where Our listeners can find you go check out the metabolism masterclass and the nourish method program, Louise Digby, all the way from Essex. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, for your knowledge. This has been an incredible conversation. We unpacked so much. There's so much more to talk about. I am sure.

Louise Digby: 43:29

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been so good chatting with you.

Mary Lee: 43:37

We covered so much in this episode. I hope you took notes, but if you didn't, here are my few key takeaways in this episode with Louise Digby, the role of stress. Perimenopause is that time frame, of course, when our ovaries are shutting down and producing less of the sex hormone, estrogen, progesterone. And this is normal and natural, but it feels anything but normal. In an ideal world, wouldn't it be great that it was just a gradual transition to the point where we had little or no problems? But we don't live in that ideal world. Our modern day stresses, including Nutrition insufficiencies and increased inflammation in the body causes more disruption and leads to stubborn weight gain. Stress can accelerate our hormone decline, unfortunately, and exacerbate those fluctuations. So it's really key to address stress, and it is one of my four pillars to health and well being. Role of hormones and muscle in weight management. Hormone balance and muscle contributes to maintaining a healthy metabolism. muscle mass declines significantly as we age, without that muscle, we are burning fewer calories, making weight loss more problematic. maintaining muscle is vital keeping our body metabolically active. The calorie deficit and cortisol conundrum. Now calorie deficit, of course, is when you're burning more calories than you are taking in, but this can negatively impact our hormones, especially cortisol, which can lead to muscle loss instead of fat loss. when we go too long without getting calories, it puts a stress on the body and this raises cortisol levels that are counterintuitive to weight loss, and this is especially true for perimenopausal end. Menopausal women, when they were already undergoing a stress as a result of hormone fluctuation. See what cortisol will do, will strip sugars away from muscle to provide energy for the body. It's not going to strip away sugar from fat unfortunately. Addressing stubborn weight loss should begin with what to add in to enable the body to function optimally. And we've heard this before in previous episodes, The place to start with is protein. Start with protein. protein in the first meal of the day to set yourself up for success throughout the day. It's really like kickstarting the metabolism. And if you are fasting or following a time restricted eating regime, still make protein an important part of that first meal of the day. And again, Fasting can be dangerous, most fasting studies to date has still only been conducted on men, not women, and certainly not perimenopausal women. So while it might be helpful to fast with those blood pressure markers, overall it is too stressful on the female's body. Louise recommends fasting should only be done. When strong dietary foundations are in place, insulin and thyroid, two hormones, we don't often think about certainly not thyroid when it comes to testing it properly for women. Insulin is a fat storing hormone that converts sugar to fuel. If blood sugar levels are too high, regardless of whether you're in a calorie deficit, the body will not burn fat. Same with thyroid. Thyroid controls the rate at which fat is burned. When it isn't functioning optimally, weight loss and fat burning will be problematic. So it's really crucial for proper thyroid testing for women. not to understand what the T4 levels are, but how well T4 is converting into T3, which is the active thyroid hormone. Thyroid issues can manifest as immune system irregularities. So it is so vital to find out what the root cause of the thyroid issue is and address it. And that often can be simply by making food adjustments to address food intolerances. impacting the gut microbiome, or, addressing lifestyle stresses. And, and stresses in the environment, and two such stresses from the environment, social media, and blue light exposure. This will impact melatonin production. Melatonin is a natural anti inflammatory and estrogen is as well. So as estrogen egress, we're losing that anti inflammatory properties, which is so important to maintain melatonin levels. so without melatonin, we encounter sleep disturbances, and this can also become more exacerbated if we're already experiencing some sleep problems with menopause. And then of course, this puts in even more stress on the body, and that becomes a disruptor for weight loss because we are not getting proper time for metabolic repair during our sleep. And then worse. Blue light exposure. I didn't know this. blue light exposure can raise our blood sugar levels which thereby impact insulin sensitivity and cause insulin resistance. not sure where to start? I would say, begin by cutting out things that no longer serve you, and in the context of this discussion, we talked about processed foods. Start adding in what can make a difference, and get rid of what can't. We talked about muscle. Fuel your muscle with protein. Okay, this can be very confusing and I'm certainly seeing it with my clients who are asking, okay, but how much, when and where? I unpack the what, when, where, why, and how much of protein in a free guide. My free guide, Power Up with Protein, you can download. The link is in the show notes. It is completely free. Go check that out. And of course you can check out Louise's program, The Nourish Method. And her masterclass, you can find her online at LouiseDigbyNutrition. com Thank you for tuning in to another insightful episode of All Things Menopausal. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to stay connected, be sure to follow me on Instagram for tips and updates. For even more support and community, Join our Facebook group, personal and universal, where we share experiences, advice, and empower each other through the transformative journey. And if you found value in today's episode, consider leaving a review on Apple podcasts. Your feedback helps reach more women who can benefit from these conversations. until next time stay empowered, stay informed and Remember midlife should be the best life and it will be. Namaste.