Jumpstart Your Weight Loss in Menopause

I’m Dr. Deb Butler and you are listening to Thinner Peace and Menopause and Beyond. This is episode number 461.

Welcome to thinner Peace and Menopause and Beyond. This is Dr. Deb Butler, master life and weight coach, and as always, your coach. If you’re a woman and you’re smart and you’re successful and you’ve been struggling with weight your whole life and now menopause is making it harder than ever and you are ready to make this the last time you ever have to go on a diet again, then this.

Podcast is for you.

Stay tuned.

Well, hello all my dear friends all over this world. So good to see you. Today. You can either listen to me by going to wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, or you can see me on YouTube by going to Thinner Peace and Menopause and Beyond Dr. Deb Butler. So you can see me or you can see me and hear me. But either way, welcome. Today what I want to talk about is I want to talk about some of the most basic tools on how you can make peace with food and by making peace with food, how you can actually have the side effect of weight loss.

So I’m not going to give you any big secrets on how to lose weight, but I am going to tell you that I think the biggest secret of all when it comes to your menopause belly or menopausal weight loss is to recognize this number one problem. And this number one problem is that your appetite has been consistently decreasing for years. And yet most of my clients and most of the people that I talk to think their appetite has increased and think they have less control over food than ever, which is all part of what I call a brain problem and not a tummy problem. So when I talk about jumpstart your.

Weight loss, I am really talking about.

Jump starting your brain.

I want to teach you how to train your brain because your appetite’s decreasing and you think it’s increasing because your brain is giving you messages that seem like it’s making you seem hungry. But actually in reality, your body’s appetite is decreasing and your brain appetite for food is increasing. Especially if you’ve been struggling with weight for a long time and you feel like you don’t have any control or very little control over food, especially since you’ve hit menopause. Then not only is my podcast for you, but I have a booklet called how to jumpstart your weight loss and menopause.

And it’s my first five episodes and it goes with five different pieces of homework that you can do with each episode so that you can actually jumpstart your weight loss, not only get rid of your menopausal belly, but get rid of this menopausal weight and make peace with food. I’m going to teach you as much how to lose weight as I am going to teach you how to make peace with food. Because when you think that food does not control you, I think the side effect of that is weight loss. If this is resonating with you, then being able to get this guide, jumpstart your weight loss and menopause, you can go to Dr. Debb butler.com forward/change, c h a N G E. You can get the guide and you can start listening to my podcast.

So if you’re listening now, you’re listening to episode number 461. And this episode is all about how to start at the beginning. Number one, you get my guide. And number two, you start with my very first episode, which was 460 episodes ago, but it’s still as relevant today as it was then.

So I want to go over with you my very first tool on how to get rid of this menopausal weight loss and how to make peace with food. And it starts with your appetite. Now, I said it before and I’ll say it again, your appetite has been decreasing for decades. If you were really connected to your appetite, you would not have this extra weight on you. But if you’ve been struggling with weight your whole life and you’ve been on diets your whole life, you may not have noticed that your appetite is decreasing. So my very first episode is all about connecting to your very true appetite. And there are two different kinds of appetites, really. There is an emotional appetite and there’s a physical appetite.

Today, I want to talk to you just about your physical appetite and talk about how important it is to realize that it’s very good to have an appetite. You don’t want to not have an appetite, because if you don’t have an appetite, that means that you’re probably suffering from some kind of a health issue and you want to get older and get healthier, not unhealthy. So please know that if you have a good appetite, it means that you’re healthy and you should celebrate it. But also realize that over the decades, if you’re like 50 years old now, your appetite has been decreasing. And if you’ve been eating the same as you were when you were 20, you probably notice that you have gained Some weight. So if your appetite is decreasing, why haven’t you noticed it?

And the reason is because there’s an emotional appetite to. Or what we call, or what I call emotional hunger. And emotional hunger is not physical hunger, but emotions live in your body and vibrate in your body. So even when you think something like, I can’t control myself, and you’re around food, it elicits a vibration in your body, a feeling of a lack of control when you’re around food, which makes you feel that you might be hungry, but it’s emotional hunger. So for today, we’re just going to talk about physical hunger, which is what the first episode is all about. If you go back and listen to number one. If you don’t, I’m going to give you a preview of that today, knowing that you can go ahead and get this guide and you can start.

But the physical appetite is all about how hungry are you and how full are you. Now, when you were a little kid, you ate when you were hungry and stopped when you were full, because you’re wired that way. And without anybody telling you have to lose weight or that you’re looking for a diet to lose weight, it’s.

The natural way that your body works. So a physical appetite, the way I have you do it, is to measure.

How hungry are you and how full you are.

And in this guide that you’re going to download by going to Dr. Debbbutler.com forward/change, C, H, A, N, G, E. In this guide, you’re going to see your physical hunger scale. And the physical hunger scale goes from a negative 10 to a plus 10. I am going to recommend that negative 10 is starving and plus 10 is stuffed. And what I want you to start doing is to start realizing what your numbers are. So when you sit down to eat, the first question that you’re just going to ask yourself is, how hungry am I? Not what diet am I on and what should I be eating according to my diet? Or what somebody else told you should be doing, or somebody said, this is the time to eat.

I realize there’s a lot of information out there on all of this, but first, get connected to your own body. It all starts with your own connection. And menopause is very much about your connection to your body. Very much. Your body speaks to you.

Are you friends with it?

Are you at peace with it? So the next time that you sit down to eat, you’re going to ask yourself, how hungry I am? How hungry are you? And you’re going to give yourself a number. And the numbers go from zero to.

Negative 10 for hunger.

And what you’re looking for is to start eating at a whisper of hunger, which is a negative 2. Now, you may find it a negative 2, you might find it a negative 3. You may be confused and not know what that number is. Many of my clients and students don’t know what the number is. And because they’re not sure, they get confused, they don’t write down anything, and they never start. So you’ve got your guide, which also has food journals in it. I know. Don’t get upset about food journals, because the way that I use them is only a way to be able to help you train your brain and to help me help you train your brain. I really don’t care what you’re eating. I do care if you’re eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full.

So what you’re going to be doing is you’re going to be writing down the number when you sit down to eat about how hungry you are. And then for how full you are, you can go to a plus 10, which is stuffed. But I want you to be looking for the whisper of fullness, which I call a plus two. Eating between the twos. When you get your numbers down, you’ve done your work, you ate when you were hungry and you stopped when you were full. Or at least you identified what those numbers were for you. That’s all I want you to do for this whole week, is just identify.

Your numbers, write them down, and just start getting to know your body and your connection. And it is a mind body connection. Your body gives a signal to the brain, and then the brain does what it’s supposed to do. And then your brain gives a signal to your body and vice versa. Brain, body connection. It starts in the belly, moves up to the brain, goes up to the brain, goes down to the belly. And there are many emotions that also live in your body that can be confused with physical hunger. But I’m not asking you to do that this week. The only thing I’m asking you to do is write down your physical hunger and get the Jumpstart weight Loss and menopause guide so that you can start immediately. And I can’t think of a better time to do it than today.

Because if you don’t do it today, you know what your brain’s going to say? We’ll start tomorrow, and tomorrow may never come. So when you’re through watching me or listening to me, please download the jumpstart your Weight Loss and Menopause Guide. Go to the next meal and ask yourself these two simple questions. Am I hungry and Am I full? And that’s all I want you to do to begin with. And of course, go to the first episode, which will help you understand anything that I’m talking about today in more detail. So in many of my podcasts, the way that I end is the way that I want to end it today. But I want you to begin by just asking yourself two simple questions. Am I hungry and Am I full?

And as always, I would never end this podcast or this video without saying to you that no matter where you go or who you’re with, please, please be very kind to yourself and I will see you next week.

Bye Bye. If you’re loving my podcast and you would like some more information to be able to follow along with, then please go to drdebbutler.com/change and you can get a free copy of my companion book that goes with this podcast that I refer to in many different episodes, I.e. Dr. Debbbutler.com/change.