I Went Through Menopause at 46 With ZERO Symptoms — Here's My Secret - 232
The “eat less, move more” advice is outdated! Get your energy back, manage your weight, and balance your hormones the right way.
👉 Free menopause guide: https://www.disruptivenutrition.com/menopause
Are you struggling with perimenopause and feeling like your body is working against you? What if the reason you're stuck isn't a lack of willpower, but a misunderstanding of what your body truly needs?
In this episode, I’m diving into the truths behind perimenopause, why traditional advice like “eat less, move more” just doesn’t cut it. I’ll share my journey through menopause and explain why the concept of dieting and restriction during perimenopause is not only ineffective, but actually makes things worse.
We’ll also talk about strength training, proper nutrition, and how small, consistent changes in your routine can make a world of difference in managing perimenopause symptoms. Plus, I’ll touch on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and the importance of making decisions based on science, not myths.
So, if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed or frustrated with your body’s changes, this episode is for you. Tune in to hear science-backed facts on how to manage perimenopause with intentional, small actions that make a significant impact.
Conclusion:
Perimenopause doesn’t have to be a battle to be dreaded—it’s a natural phase of life that can be embraced when you understand what your body truly needs.
It’s not about chasing quick fixes or restrictive diets. It’s about finding balance through consistency and nourishment.
If you’re tired of trying to “fix” your body, it’s time to listen to it and give it what it truly needs. Take control, start with blood sugar stabilization, and begin making small changes today.
In This Episode:
00:00 Defining perimenopause and menopause
07:47 Impact of insulin resistance in menopause
11:41 Benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)
16:02 How to prepare for menopause: diet, fasting, and exercise
20:18 Why blood sugar stabilization is critical in perimenopause
23:29 What can you do to manage blood sugar levels?
29:21 The six spinning plates of health
32:14 Is hormonal testing beneficial?
Resources Mentioned in the Episode:
- My Go-to Clinic for Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)
- Previous Episode on Why Dieting Doesn’t Work
- Previous Episode with Dr. Sarah Daccarett
- Menopause Survival Guide
- Functional Health Blood Work
Listen to This Episode on Your Favourite Podcast Channel:
Follow and listen on Apple
Follow and listen on Spotify
Subscribe and watch on YouTube
Connect with Carrie Lupoli:
Other Related Episodes:
Looking for additional tips for a sustainable, healthy lifestyle? Check out these episodes:
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Carrie Lupoli: If you are in perimenopause and feel like your body is fighting you, there's a reason. The most common advice women get, eat less, move more. It's not just outdated, it's actually making things worse. So in this episode, I'm gonna explain the number one nutrition mistake women make during this stage. How it's damaging your hormones and metabolism and what to do instead if you actually wanna feel better and see results.
[00:00:25] Carrie Lupoli: So as a woman that went through menopause at. 46 years old, but actually did not know she was going through it. I can tell you that there are so many outdated and just inaccurate things that are being spread around menopause and what's causing the issues and what to do about it. But first we need to get on the same page about talking about menopause because.
[00:00:53] Carrie Lupoli: Let, let go back to when I was a kid and I first got my period, I, [00:01:00] gosh, I was a teenager and I remember my mom came in and I was like a little scared and stressed out and I remember she said to me, oh, this is something to celebrate. You are a woman. You are going through this whole new stage of your life.
[00:01:17] Carrie Lupoli: And I didn't quite know what she meant by that, but now as an adult, I get it. It really is a special time for a female in. Her becoming a woman. And yet when we talk about menopause, when we actually just complain about menopause, now I get it. I get why we complain about it. But when we talk about it as society thinks about it, and as we de.
[00:01:43] Carrie Lupoli: Find it. It's a diagnosis. It's almost like a disease. And I always get a little bit miffed when I hear about diagnosing menopause because we don't diagnose a woman when she gets her period. This is a natural [00:02:00] phase of life that actually should and could be celebrated. Do you know that in Japan, they don't even have the word for hot flash?
[00:02:09] Carrie Lupoli: It doesn't even exist. Why? Well, because so much of what we are doing right now as a cultural society is actually causing us to have a lot of the issues that we have during menopause, making it very challenging for so many women. So we're really gonna unpack the myths that we've been taught. Why I didn't even know I went through menopause and what we need to be doing instead.
[00:02:37] Carrie Lupoli: Regardless of what stage you're in.
[00:02:42] Carrie Lupoli: Let's just talk a little bit though first about what perimenopause is because I don't think people realize when they say, I'm going through menopause. Menopause is literally like a day on a calendar, like the day that you are no longer getting your period for a year, and so. We're never really [00:03:00] like in menopause.
[00:03:01] Carrie Lupoli: We're typically in perimenopause, which is like before menopause or we're post-menopausal and perimenopause. I don't think people realize this, but we can be like, as someone that went through menopause at 46, I clearly had perimenopausal. Things going on in my thirties because we had a plan about 10 years or so before.
[00:03:22] Carrie Lupoli: It's one of the reasons why a woman in her late thirties, and I this term kills me when I hear about it, will be in considered in geriatric pregnancy if they're pregnant in their late thirties or early forties. But it is because that menopausal time for women actually starts a, a good 10 years before.
[00:03:44] Carrie Lupoli: So even if you're not feeling symptoms right now, there are so many things that we can be doing or not doing that are gonna help us during this time. Now let's talk a little bit about what's actually happening, because the advice that we get, [00:04:00] or that we tend to go to as women is around some of the things we did when we were younger, when we were trying to quote unquote lose weight.
[00:04:09] Carrie Lupoli: Right. If we felt like we needed to lose weight, be on a diet. Now all of us, when I ask women, how many years have you been obsessing about your body and food? Uh, how many years have you been on a diet per se? An average 50-year-old woman will tell me that she has been dieting, obsessing about food in her body for well over 30 years.
[00:04:31] Carrie Lupoli: The average from our polling is 34 years, and it breaks my heart because we're chasing and chasing and chasing this Ellucian number on a scale. But I will also say that when we were younger, the eat less, move more thing, quote unquote worked. Now I'll always say, what is your definition of working? If it's losing weight at first, to then wreak havoc on your body and your hormones, and then to gain it all back when you suddenly stop the [00:05:00] said diet, whatever it is.
[00:05:02] Carrie Lupoli: Well then diets worked. But so many of us have this definition of working around weight loss, and it's almost like weight loss at any by any means possible. And the cycle of yo-yo dieting, I actually just talked about this in my last episode, is what's really caused so much havoc on a woman's body over so many years now, because I realize how, and I was so, so, so lucky and blessed to have a coach, a nutrition coach.
[00:05:28] Carrie Lupoli: I've taught me about the concepts that I'm gonna teach you here today that I teach my clients around how to fuel our bodies and why we need to fuel our bodies correctly. I was in my thirties when I learned this and, and my clients, and I always say like, I wish. Women would embrace this in their thirties because if you're 50 and you have been on a yo-yo rollercoaster of dieting and obsessing and restriction.
[00:05:50] Carrie Lupoli: It's causing a lot of the issues that you're feeling around men perimenopause. Now that being said, it's also around a variety of other [00:06:00] things that are going on, like environmental and toxins and, and stress and our lack of movement. But first and foremost, the foundation is how are we fueling our bodies and this, this myth that we need to restrict.
[00:06:16] Carrie Lupoli: This whole take less calories and you burn thing, which is by the way, just like an impossible equation, but also perseverates, the whole dieting PTSD that we all have. It continues to perseverate the problem that sometimes we don't actually feel until we're in perimenopause. So our body has what I call the check engine lights and check engine lights are your body's way of communicating.
[00:06:38] Carrie Lupoli: You almost like holding you accountable for things that are going on that we need to address. And by the time we get to perimenopause. We have a lot of these check engine lights. It's like a slow drip in a cup and by the time you're in perimenopause and it feels like that cup is really full, but your body has likely been talking to you for a very long time up until then.
[00:06:59] Carrie Lupoli: [00:07:00] And so when we restrict, when we continue to lose weight, gain weight, yo-yo, when we aren't consistent in what we're doing, when we're not moving our body, we're not strength training. All of these things cause little drips. When we are on what I know, most of us are on a dysregulated blood sugar rollercoaster.
[00:07:19] Carrie Lupoli: We are wreaking this havoc for years and years and years. So many people today are insulin resistant, pre-diabetic, diabetic. And it wasn't because of what they've done in the last couple of years. It's because of this rollercoaster that they've been on for decades. So we need to understand that and what we are doing and or the symptoms that we're experiencing by the time we're getting to perimenopause have been a compilation of many, many years, and that's why I continue to be so grateful for learning what I learned in my late thirties.
[00:07:53] Carrie Lupoli: That by the time I was 46 and went through menopause, I actually didn't have those symptoms. And I remember my [00:08:00] doctor actually said to me, how is it that you are full blown, like through menopause and you didn't have any symptoms? I didn't have weight gain. I had some hot flashes here and there, but very, very little.
[00:08:12] Carrie Lupoli: And he said to me, remind me what you teach your clients again? And I'm like. I teach blood sugar stabilization, and he's like, yes, because you know, it's all about insulin resistance. And while I'll get some hate on this, says it's not all about insulin resistance. It is foundational and insulin resistance actually.
[00:08:33] Carrie Lupoli: Wreaks havoc on almost every single aspect of our body, including our gut, including our hormones, all sorts of things. Like, think about it, insulin's a hormone and once one hormone is off, all hormones are off. So we need to be really cognizant of the role that insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity and, and blood sugar regulation is playing for the long term, especially by the time we get to.
[00:08:54] Carrie Lupoli: Perimenopause and he said to me, it's all about insulin resistance, which I understand, or insulin [00:09:00] sensitivity, insulin resistance, which I understand the concept of, but I don't understand how to teach people how to mitigate that problem. And I was like, well, that's why we get along so well. And so when we are in this eat less, move more kind of a thing, what we're not realizing is that there's so many problems with it that end up causing the issues that we end up, that we have when we're in perimenopause.
[00:09:25] Carrie Lupoli: And yet when we were younger, we were like, it worked. But again, what is your definition of working? It worked. If you were looking for short-term weight loss, it didn't work. If you were looking for long-term longevity, health, menopausal balance, and just true food freedom. Because a lot of what we have learned around Eat Less, move More has just contributed to our obsessive compulsion about our body and weight and not having a good relationship with our body and food.
[00:09:56] Carrie Lupoli: And because we don't celebrate menopause, but we almost [00:10:00] demonize it. We have this, yes, like I feel like it's this like sisterhood around menopausal women, but I, I know that it is something to celebrate now that I'm through menopause. It's like my sister-in-law reached said the other day. I love 50-year-old Carrie.
[00:10:16] Carrie Lupoli: 'cause she doesn't care anymore. And it's not like I'm mean or anything. I just like, I don't let little things get to me. My sister, the other day, we were out on the beach, we were on a little family vacation and I was wearing a swimsuit that had like cat sleeves on it, and she said to me, oh my gosh, that that bathing suit is so cute, but aren't you worried about tan lines?
[00:10:33] Carrie Lupoli: And I'm like. I could care less about tan lines, uh, like no. And that's when my other sister-in-law said, oh, I love 50-year-old Carrie, because she doesn't care. Like I'm just gonna wear what I like and I'm not gonna worry about the tan lines and all that kind of stuff. And that's where I feel like some of the celebration is around being at this age.
[00:10:50] Carrie Lupoli: Like I am not trying to impress every anybody. I am trying to live as. Possible the health and be the healthiest version of myself in every single way possible so that I can [00:11:00] serve my purpose, that I can have balance, that I have joy, that I could have contentment, and really celebrate this half century of my life.
[00:11:08] Carrie Lupoli: My goal is to get to well past a hundred. That's the number I'm looking for, not a number on a scale, and yet we've been so conditioned for so long to think a certain way and do a certain way that by the time we get to menopause, it's like. Everything just blows up the body that we used to know we don't know anymore because it's not quote unquote working for us anymore.
[00:11:30] Carrie Lupoli: And then our emotions kind of get all out of whack and we don't know how to handle that. But when we can honestly understand how to fuel ourselves correctly, it's amazing how that sets the foundation for everything else. And then I know people will ask me about HRT, like hormone replacement therapy and end.
[00:11:46] Carrie Lupoli: I actually am on hormones because I know the power and the benefit of them proactively for women's health, as well as the fact that like the sky is [00:12:00] blue. It is absolutely known that our. Hormone levels will drop as we get older. Our estrogen, our progesterone, our testosterone, all of those will decrease.
[00:12:14] Carrie Lupoli: And so it shouldn't be a surprise to us that it happens. It's a math equation and we know that estrogen, for example, helps us to manage our moods. It regulates our appetite. It controls our body temperature. It helps us build strong bones. It also keeps our vagina happy, and one of the reasons I knew that I actually needed to dig into this a lot more was because I was getting recurring UTIs.
[00:12:41] Carrie Lupoli: That was one of the things I got once I was postmenopausal and I had a lot of dryness and I knew that. That had to do with my hormones, but it was because my estrogen levels are continuing to decline since I've actually been on hormone replacement therapy and I have estrogen now and progesterone, I haven't had [00:13:00] any UTIs and everything's working really, really well down there, and so I want us to not be scared of that.
[00:13:06] Carrie Lupoli: I'm not really. Dig that much into it, but it's really important to recognize that it is a math equation. It's going to decrease when our progesterone decreases. That impacts our bone health. That actually impacts our heart rate variability, our body temperature, inflammation, immunity. And then testosterone.
[00:13:25] Carrie Lupoli: There's a piece of testosterone that every single woman has. It's very different than in men. And a lot of our research around testosterone and hormones, it's been around men, and we are not just small women, but testosterone really does help our energy and vitality. Our mental clarity and our mood, our muscle strength, our lean muscle mass, which is so important as we get older for longevity, our libido, our sexual health, our hormonal balance, our bone density, and so those three hormones now, there's many, many more, but just to keep it really basic, are going to decline as we get older.
[00:13:58] Carrie Lupoli: And so [00:14:00] it's almost to me like, and everybody's gotta speak to their professional, but I've actually engaged a hormone specialist versus my OB because I realized my OB isn't actually a specialist in hormones like this. Uh, there are so many different kinds out there. Uh, I actually see Dr. Sarah Dre from Inner Balance, which I highly recommend.
[00:14:23] Carrie Lupoli: She might kill me because a whole bunch of people may now come to her, but for information on that, I actually had her on my podcast a few episodes ago. We can link that in the show notes because under understanding, HRT is really powerful. And again, we as women have been misled by data that is not accurate around HRT.
[00:14:45] Carrie Lupoli: Super important to understand, but when we recognize that as we get older, we are automatically gonna have hormone shifts, we're gonna have our metabolic adaptation is absolutely a thing as we go through [00:15:00] perimenopause. We need to understand this and not be surprised by it, but it's like we don't communicate enough about this to expect it, and then we get shot by it, and then we feel like our body is broken, and that's why menopause gets such a bad name.
[00:15:12] Carrie Lupoli: Our nutrients like we are. It isn't. We are what we eat, it's we are what we absorb. And as we get older, our nutrient depletion becomes more and more problematic, which is why as we get older, we actually need to be eating cleaner whole unprocessed foods and working on balancing our blood sugar. Our insulin resistance is actually.
[00:15:32] Carrie Lupoli: Becoming more problematic automatically as women age. So these things are natural occurrences, and yet the things that we've been doing up until this point have accelerated the issues when it comes to those things. So no wonder we are experiencing what we are experiencing now. The good news is that.
[00:15:51] Carrie Lupoli: While, yes, I would love women in their twenties and thirties to understand what they need to be doing. It's never too late to [00:16:00] be able to make it better and to be celebrating. And one thing I love, Dr. Stacy Sims, she wrote a book called Next Level, and she has talked a lot about all of these pieces of the puzzle, especially for women athletes in menopause.
[00:16:13] Carrie Lupoli: Now, if you're not an athlete. I want you to be one. Strength training is one of the most important things that we can do for women, especially as we are getting older. We can get big, stronger bones. We can actually reverse osteopenia, osteo osteoporosis. We can't, but we can reverse that initial bone density issues that we have with jumping and with heavy strength training.
[00:16:39] Carrie Lupoli: And Dr. Stacy Sims talks a lot about that, but in her book, next Level, I have it here right in front of me. I wanna just share with you, so you know what, it's not just my opinion on why intermittent fasting, which is a bougie way of just saying, eat less, move more. It's a bougie way of restricting calories.
[00:16:54] Carrie Lupoli: Most of the research that we have on fasting is around men and women, and their hormonal balance will get [00:17:00] so thrown off because everything relies on blood sugar regulation, stabilization, insulin sensitivity, and our fasting. Is impacting us, not only because we're not giving ourselves, we're letting ourselves get really hungry in our body that has to go after muscle for nutrients, but because nutrient depletion is part of getting older, we need these nutrients absorbing in our body all day long.
[00:17:27] Carrie Lupoli: We are refuel as you go machine. And so she talks about how intermittent fasting was a way to help people with obesity because it was a way for them to control their caloric intake. And that's really what we need to recognize and how men do pretty well on some of these testings. But women is, it's a problem.
[00:17:47] Carrie Lupoli: No benefit to insulin sensitivity from calorie restriction. Women who had high blood sugar and were on the cusp of becoming diabetic saw worsening in their insulin sensitivity and blood sugar levels. Women had [00:18:00] minimal, if any, improvement in auto au autophagy, which we can get. A lot of people will talk about autophagy because of the benefits of that when it comes to cellular regeneration and cellular damage, but we can get that through strength training and through sauna and getting and heat.
[00:18:18] Carrie Lupoli: We don't need to do that through fasting. Because it actually is known to cause more oxidative stress. And oxidative stress is like little lightning bolts in our body zapping all of our cells, even our good ones. So it's actually doing the opposite of what we think fasting has the ability to do for women.
[00:18:38] Carrie Lupoli: Thyroid function slows down as well as our metabolism, and your body will. Start try to preserve energy when you're fasting at the same time. Keto is another thing because again, we focus on the weight gain around menopause as one of the symptoms, but there's so many that could be occurring and because we've.
[00:18:58] Carrie Lupoli: Maybe done like [00:19:00] eliminated carbs before, cut our calories before, and lost weight. We keep thinking that's what we should be doing now, but we're not recognizing that that actually contributed to the issues that we're having now. So Dr. Stacy Sims writes in her book around the idea of giving up carbs without carbohydrates, PR providing or supplying blood glucose.
[00:19:19] Carrie Lupoli: The keto diet forces our body to produce it in ways that's not beneficial for us, especially as we're in menopause, because on paper it sounds good, but our body uses carbohydrates to kickstart fat burning. So even if we're primed to use fat for fuel and women, more so than men are already primed to use more fat as fuel, you still need carbohydrates to access your fat burning metabolism, denying your body.
[00:19:46] Carrie Lupoli: And I quote. Denying your body carbohydrates during exercise is a huge stress. How many people are fasting before they exercise? Research shows that the keto diet has an [00:20:00] unfavorable effect on muscle fatigue on women. It also shows markers of bone remodeling that are impaired after short term, low carb, high fat diet.
[00:20:08] Carrie Lupoli: None of this is good for menopausal women. So, and then when we try to exercise on top of all of that stress that we're putting on, because we're not fueling our body correctly, that is where we get so problematic. All right, so what do we need to be doing instead? What was I doing in my late forties where I.
[00:20:24] Carrie Lupoli: For 10 years where I didn't even know I was in menopause. I talk about that blood sugar stabilization. Okay, your body's like foundational goal is to have its blood sugar stabilize, and you know this, right? Because let's say when you're really, really hungry, what are you going for when you're really hungry, like, oh my gosh, I just need to open my pantry.
[00:20:45] Carrie Lupoli: What's the first thing you're pulling? You're pulling chips, you're pulling bread, you're pulling carbohydrates like dense, refined carbs, right? You're not like craving a piece of lean chicken, and that's because your blood sugar is really low and your [00:21:00] body is that check engine light is on, right? And you wouldn't drive your car for too long with the engine light on.
[00:21:05] Carrie Lupoli: But we do that for ourselves. We, we try to bust through hunger, but that's our body talking to us and saying, Hey, we need some help here. But if we bust, just try to push through that, that hunger, or we just start to crave and we just binge eat on the carbs. Both sides of the equation are wreaking havoc on our blood sugar.
[00:21:28] Carrie Lupoli: But that is your body's way of talking to you, and it's our job to listen to it. So I know your blood sugar's low when we're really hungry. 'cause we crave carbs, which is sugar. Right. And when we're really, really full, when our blood sugar is really high, we can get really lethargic, right? Like our energy le levels are really low.
[00:21:48] Carrie Lupoli: We can also, when we on our blood sugar high, we'll come down really fast. If you've ever eaten a whole bunch of like either processed foods or sugary things, you could eat a lot of it and then suddenly feel [00:22:00] really hungry again, not that much later. That's a blood sugar roller coaster. If we fasted and then we eat and we, when we're after fasting, if we've ever dieted and we are just like, I can't do it anymore, and you have a.
[00:22:11] Carrie Lupoli: Cheat meal. This is why cheat meals drive me crazy because we're cheating and our body then like can't handle it because we've been restricting it for so long. And just think about this, yo-yo, for years and years and years and years. So your body is sending you signals. The problem is we look at it as failures.
[00:22:29] Carrie Lupoli: The weight gain, the fatigue, the hormonal imbalances, the hot flashes, all of these things like skin issues, all of these things, they're signals. It's not that your body is mad at you, it's not that it's failing you, and the diet culture has had us believe that we have to fix ourselves, not understand ourselves.
[00:22:51] Carrie Lupoli: Your body's actually saying to you like, I don't feel safe right now. Help me to feel safe. And so. [00:23:00] Regardless of what stage in the menopausal continuum that you're on, stabilizing your blood sugar has to be the very first thing that you focus on because your body will work to stabilize it on its own if you don't wanna help it.
[00:23:13] Carrie Lupoli: It is so much harder on your body, and especially as your estrogen levels, your progesterone, your testosterone levels are continuously decreasing. You are then causing your adrenals to have to work harder to be able to keep up, and all of that is causing a lot of these check engine lights. So how do we balance our blood sugar?
[00:23:31] Carrie Lupoli: It's why I'm so bullish on the concept of PFC three a protein, fat and carb. Every three hours you eat within an hour of waking up. And yeah, you eat sometimes within an hour of going to bed, but you're always feeling ready to eat, satisfied, never really, really hungry. Never not letting yourself get really, really hungry and not letting yourself get overly full.
[00:23:54] Carrie Lupoli: And that portion size of a protein, fat and carb, you want your protein to be a little bit higher than your [00:24:00] carbs. And when I say carbs, ideally for a perimenopausal woman, the dense or and the refined carbs are not necessarily what I'm talking about. It's not to say that you can't have them, but. I always say food is not good or bad.
[00:24:13] Carrie Lupoli: It is not healthy or unhealthy. It serves your body or it serves your soul. And a good pasta meal may serve your soul, but it is likely not going to serve your body. So all I ask is that when we serve our body more than we serve our soul, so that. When we're serving our soul, our body is rested. It feels balanced, it feels strong, it feels energetic, and then it can handle the times that you're serving your soul without guilt.
[00:24:43] Carrie Lupoli: So when I talk about carbs, ideally if you're serving your body, you're looking at fruits and vegetables as your carbohydrate intake, maybe a dense carb for a meal or two, like sweet potato or rice, those have lots of nutrients in it. And remember I said you are what it isn't. You are [00:25:00] what you eat. You are what you absorb.
[00:25:01] Carrie Lupoli: So you wanna be eating that clean whole unprocessed food. As many nutrients as possible, and you can't get more nutrients than a whole lot of variety of plants, vegetables and fruit. Along with your protein. Ideally, animal protein is the most readily available for our body to be able to use in the way that it needs because that protein is actually going to replace the need for your body to release insulin at a high level.
[00:25:30] Carrie Lupoli: 'cause when you have carbs, your body will spike your, your glucose will go up. You will what's called glyc, but when you actually eat it. Eat a protein first before those carbs, your body will won't need to release that insulin. And then, which causes insulin sensitivity because you've got that protein there to help mitigate it.
[00:25:49] Carrie Lupoli: But also that protein, but that nutrients has those amino acids that your body can't produce on its own. It's helping you. So when you strength train, you actually build more [00:26:00] muscle instead of decreasing it. Because women, we are decreasing our muscle mass every decade. We can't afford to do that. That's what keeps us upright.
[00:26:08] Carrie Lupoli: That's what keeps us strong and longevity alive. And then a fat, oh my gosh, like I was born in the seventies, right? So fat, by the time I knew anything was bad, everything was low fat. No fat. And that was problematic because we need fat to burn. Fat actually helps us digest our protein and our carbs. It, it fuels our brain.
[00:26:32] Carrie Lupoli: It cushions our, our organs and, and we need to have all of those things that we're actually meant to be eaten together. So if we can actually stabilize our blood sugar in that way, the longer we do it, the better it gets. It's like a fine wine. And it's not about counting calories, it's not about depriving ourselves.
[00:26:51] Carrie Lupoli: In fact, it never was. The whole concept of a caloric deprivation drives me absolutely batty because I will always say, what thrives in a deficit? [00:27:00] Nothing. And your body is no different. It, it's like the weight loss industry and 99% of nutritionists, and most doctors say caloric deficit caloric deprivation.
[00:27:12] Carrie Lupoli: Put your body at a caloric deficit. What it actually needs is the right amount of food because do you realize that the calories that you're burning through exercise is only 10% of your caloric burn? And and being able to really measure that is very, very complicated. And again, if it's about nutrient absorption, 350 calories of an Oreo cookie is gonna be very different than three 50 calories of like Turkey, almond, and apple.
[00:27:42] Carrie Lupoli: It's like my go-to PSC like example. So we have to recognize that calories versus calories out. All that is is energy and food. We need to focus on those macro nutrients, but we don't need to focus on counting them for the day. It's just each meal, a, a protein of fat and carb [00:28:00] every three hours. We know we want our protein a little bit higher than our carbs and our fat to be about half of that and about half of our protein and.
[00:28:08] Carrie Lupoli: We should be ready to eat, satisfied, ready to eat, satisfied. That's literally all the math we need to do. And it's not about food rules, but it's about food understanding, understanding how food works in our body, and if we can serve our body more than we serve our soul and we're listening to it, it's amazing how everything gets better and over time it gets even better and better and better.
[00:28:30] Carrie Lupoli: I just did the function health. Blood work from Function labs and which I can put a link in here for that because it was over a hundred different markers that I had tested. And at 50 years old, my actual metabolic age is 43.6. And what's so interesting is that when I was 38 years old, I had some testing done to figure out my metabolic age, and I was 42.
[00:28:59] Carrie Lupoli: So at [00:29:00] 38 I was functioning as a 42-year-old, but at 50 I'm functioning as like a 43-year-old. I mean, that is a key piece of this, the foundation of understanding blood sugar stabilization. And at 38, that's when I was gaining weight, super frustrated with my body, had all the check engine light signals on, and then learned how to use food as fuel.
[00:29:21] Carrie Lupoli: But we also have to recognize that it's not just food. It's what I call the six spinning plates nutrition. That's your key movement. Strength training, exercise. Hydration impacts our blood sugar dramatically. And if you sweat, you need to be replacing it with electrolytes, not just water, because we don't sweat out water sleep.
[00:29:43] Carrie Lupoli: If we are not getting regulated sleep, our body's cortisol levels and glucose levels are through the roof. Again, remember I said this all around insulin resistance. That's also impacting our gut health, which impacts everything else, including our hormones. But once you can start fueling your body correctly, it's amazing how when you [00:30:00] start spinning one plate, another plate starts spinning and sleep improves.
[00:30:04] Carrie Lupoli: So we have exercise, nutrition, sleep, hydration, managing our stress. When I wear a continuous glucose monitor to monitor my blood sugar levels, it's amazing how I can be eating absolutely on point to serve my body. No massive dense carbs and eating, you know, in a way that I've just talked about getting my sleep.
[00:30:27] Carrie Lupoli: But when I am stressed, my glucose levels are through the roof. There's a lot of ways to mitigate and manage stress. We'll talk more about that on the podcast too, but that's another big one. And then also supplementation. Now, when I say supplements, I do mean things like possibly HRT, definitely vitamins and minerals.
[00:30:47] Carrie Lupoli: When it comes to supplementation, I also talk about supplemental like sauna. A sauna is one of the best things that we can do. There are so many studies on longevity and health around doing, being in a [00:31:00] sauna, I consider walking, actually not exercise, but supplementation. Something we all have to do when we are walking at least seven to 10,000 steps.
[00:31:10] Carrie Lupoli: Or supplementing small movements about every half an hour for a minute or two throughout the day. Our glucose levels can stay regulated throughout. So these are the things that we have to be able to think about and then start noticing all the different check engine lights, not just weight, because our body may or may not release weight as quickly as you want it to, but our body holds on to weight as a way to protect itself.
[00:31:37] Carrie Lupoli: Often from ourselves, and so we can't use that as a measure of whether or not something is working. I promise you. Blood sugar stabilization is your body's love language. These tactics will help you balance your blood sugar and ways to monitor that progress have to be more than a number on a scale. In fact, I would argue the scale needs to go away, throw it [00:32:00] in a dumpster, because when the scale is gone, you can actually start to.
[00:32:05] Carrie Lupoli: See and feel and notice things that are not scale related, which will give you the markers of improvement. So the last thing I wanna talk about though is, is just recognizing that like when I did the function health tests, yes they talk about hormonal levels and hormonal balance, but, but when we get our hormones tested as women, it is a moment in time.
[00:32:27] Carrie Lupoli: It could be much lower at any moment during the day. It could be much higher at any given moment in the day. And like for example, the hormones that I'm on is a vaginal hormone. If I use that hormone and then do a blood test a few hours later, it's gonna be much higher because it's in my system right then and there.
[00:32:47] Carrie Lupoli: So the hormonal testing. Can or cannot be beneficial because at the end of the day, we know we're depleting in those hormonal areas. We know that it's got to be so much more around the [00:33:00] foundational piece of those six spinning plates, especially blood sugar stabilization, and that. Then based on our symptoms, we could start to decide what supplemental actions we want to take.
[00:33:11] Carrie Lupoli: Testing could or could not be helpful for you, but it cannot be where our first line of action is. Also just saying there's a quick fix here with a medication or a hormone therapy without actually focusing on these other pieces that are the essential foundations. Again, the sooner you can start, the better you are, but it's never too late.
[00:33:29] Carrie Lupoli: Your body will absolutely. Love soak in what you're doing like a sponge and start to reverse what you're seeing regardless of how old you are. So all of this is really, I think, important and powerful, and that's why I actually have a guide for you. All about menopause, all the things that I've talked about in here.
[00:33:50] Carrie Lupoli: So if you wanna download the guide, you can go grab it in the notes in this episode, and you can have all the menopausal resources you need to be able to [00:34:00] truly thrive during this time and actually celebrate it.
