You’re doing everything the same as before, maybe even eating better and moving more, but you can’t lose weight. Well, here come the reasons 🙂 Calories in, calories out, all that math — it’s no longer useful. You need to drop those calculations and instead turn toward what your changing body actually needs. In this article, I’ll talk about 2 reasons behind the inability to lose weight, or weight gain, during perimenopause.

The first is that, as our reproductive hormones become imbalanced, our insulin rises on its own. Even if you’re eating perfectly, insulin rises during perimenopause. This rise in insulin comes back to us as increased appetite. As appetite increases, we start reaching for pastries, bread, and sweets. This raises the already-elevated insulin even further, and we fall into a vicious cycle.

🌸 To break out of this cycle, we need to manage insulin. We can’t expect a woman with high, unstable insulin to have properly functioning reproductive hormones. So how do we lower insulin? Through low-carbohydrate, high-fat eating, and daily walking or other movement. I’ve explained low-carb, high-fat eating many times before. If you can’t do it on your own, I can guide you through it — you’re welcome to join my 6 Centimeters program 🙂 If your waist circumference goes down, you’ll experience your symptoms and the transition much more easily.

The second reason is estrogen dominance. This seems to be a fairly major, but rarely discussed and unresolved, problem. While our ovaries continue producing estrogen, in the second half of our cycle we start producing less progesterone. Producing estrogen is easy, but producing progesterone is hard. Progesterone is the hormone that takes estrogen by the hand and balances it out — but once it steps off the stage, estrogen is left alone, and elevated. And this is exactly what leads to what we call “hormone imbalance.” Of these 2 hormones that are supposed to be in balance, one stays high and dominant, and this causes fat accumulation in the body.

🌸 To deal with estrogen dominance, in the second half of the cycle — that is, after days 14–15 — we need to take good care of progesterone. Activities that calm the body, rest, sleep, meditation, and breathwork should take priority. You really need to take good care of yourself during this phase.

🌸 To help clear excess estrogen throughout the whole month, we need to support the liver. Zero alcohol, no smoking, the lowest-toxin lifestyle possible (cosmetics, makeup products, plastics — meaning xenoestrogens), lymphatic massage, and in terms of nutrition, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, artichoke, banana, walnuts, sesame, sunflower seeds, almonds, sweet potato, and quinoa all help a great deal.

🌸 Movement and clean eating should already be a given.

🌸 Once a week, especially right after ovulation, doing a 24-hour water fast. It’s very helpful for clearing estrogen. That’s actually why I started doing longer fasts myself. You can go through the steps above first, and then move on to this part.

If you too are in perimenopause and experiencing an inability to lose weight or weight gain, you’re most likely dealing with one of these two issues.

Don’t be afraid, it can be handled 🙂

With love,
Sema Özpekmezci Hadjichristofi