How I Help Women Lose Weight (continued)

Now that you have the big-picture view of how I get women to lose stubborn belly fat, I will give you a closer look at the first step in the process -- their nutrition. Whether we're using the "FREE" formula or the "FRESH" formula (see the previous article), they both start with FOOD. This doesn't just apply to women who want to lose weight. Having a nutrition plan for achieving fat loss is the single most important element for every single demographic, whether you're a 45 year old woman or a 28 year old man. (Side note: there actually is ONE demographic who can out-train a poor diet -- teenage boys. Don't tell them that. It's our secret.)

Eat well. THEN exercise!

You've heard it a million times, it's "diet and exercise". You've heard them so many times that they lose their meaning, if one ever understood what they meant in the first place! And because they're said in tandem with one another, it gives people the incorrect impression that they are equally important. Worse still, most people overestimate how well they eat and think, "Oh, I just need to exercise more", without realizing that their efforts are pointless.

So I start with a woman's height, weight, body composition (i.e., how much body fat she has) and age. Then, I use three different formulas to calculate what her total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is. Her TDEE tells us how many calories she requires to maintain her current mass. It will vary depending on how active she is. Does she exercise once a week or does she exercise six days a week? Once I know that figure, I typically have women start with a modest 10 - 15% deficit. This means they will consistently eat about 15% fewer calories than their bodies requires to maintain their current mass. The key for them is consistency, and this is where people tend to fail most often. People sometimes treat their diet the way they treat their job -- it's a thing to focus on during the week, but then they ignore it on the weekends. The problem with that approach is that it not only takes the person out of the deficit, it typically comes with blood sugar spikes that accompany the indulgence in their favorite high calorie foods. Worst of all, it teaches their body to not adapt metabolically to a new size, and to cling to their old, heavier body size instead.

I expect my clients to lose around 2 pounds of fat per week, when they stick to their program. After a few weeks, we re-assess their body fat and consider increasing their daily calorie deficit to 20%. The deficit can be larger if the individual is in the morbid obesity category, though I tend not to exceed a 24% calorie deficit. I want the shift to be modest, but sustainable and to not feel like torture.

This is how I succeed in helping women in perimenopause and post-menopause to lose belly fat.

Let's get right to it!

I love lists and easy-to-remember acronyms, so I developed two acronyms to help women understand our priorities for losing fat quickly and healthfully. The first acronym is FREE, and the second, more updated acronym is FRESH-CC.

FREE stands for food, rest, exercise and effort. Food specifically stands for being in a caloric deficit for a consistent, continued amount of time (at least 90 days). This is the first item on the list because it is by FAR the most impactful element to losing fat. You could do nothing else on this list, and still succeed in losing fat if you just stayed in a modest caloric deficit. Rest specifically means getting adequate sleep on a daily basis to help regulate hormone production and allow your body to naturally cycle through several metabolic processes. The third and fourth letters are exercise and effort. Almost any form of exercise will aid your fat loss journey, so long as it's done safely and consistently. That could be walking, jogging, resistance training, strength training, or any other number of activities. Effort means the degree of work or intensity related to those workouts. This would be sprint interval training or High-intensity interval training versus walking. Exercise and effort level are the two elements where a personal trainer can help a client achieve their goals in the gym, or online via workout plans, exercise "homework", and regular check-ins. The FREE formula applies to any adult at any age who wants to lose extra fat.

FRESH-CC makes the formula even more specific to women in perimenopause and post-menopause. The list is still in order of precedence, meaning the first letters are significantly more important than the last ones. FRESH-CC is food, rest, and exercise (strength training, hypertrophy training, and cardio + core training). Food and rest are still the two most powerful elements, so I typically spend the first three to four days working on that part with a new client. Strength training is absolutely critical to helping a woman build stronger bones and stronger muscle fibers and has an immediate, positive impact on her metabolic wellness. Hypertrophy is a fancy word for building larger muscles, and this also improves metabolic wellness, as your body will retain less fat as you ask it to build muscle. By the way, building larger muscles doesn't mean looking like a bodybuilder. For the majority of women, it just means you look healthy and capable. Finally, cardio + core is a great approach to really targeting belly fat, where we typically spend 29 minutes doing steady-state cardio followed by 16 minutes of abdominal exercise (yes, that part is intense)!

The challenge for a lot of women is that when they try to lose fat on their own, they wind up executing this list backwards. Specifically, they will self-assess that in the food category they "eat pretty well" or "I eat okay", and they will self-assess in the rest category that "I go to bed around the same time and I get up in the mornings", so they skip to the exercise and high-intensity elements. This frequently leads to no meaningful results or a mild injury, which sets them back even further from reaching their goals.

Real, hard numbers: for women between 40 and 60, exercise alone can account for roughly 2.8 pounds of fat loss in 6 months. Diet alone (consistent 20% deficit) can account for roughly 8.5 pounds of fat loss. Diet and exercise combined leads to 10.8 pounds of fat loss in the same amount of time. Many women think they're in the last category (diet + exercise), but unfortunately the numbers on their scales say otherwise.

After years of training people, I have come to learn that "I eat pretty well" roughly translates to "I don't eat like a glutton, and there are people in my life who eat worse than I do." That is usually completely true, but it is not the same as eating in a consistent deficit of at least 10 - 20% of your maintenance calories. When you're in a deficit, you absolutely feel it! Most people feel a serious struggle for three to five days, and many wind up quitting within that time frame or "taking the weekend off because they earned it". Part of my job is to empathetically guide clients through that part of the journey by reminding them of their end goals, and redirecting them when stress, fear of failure, or life events cause them to deviate from their path to success.

Wait for Me! Why Men Need Longer Rest Periods Between Sets

At the start of the year, many individuals and couples renew their commitment to fitness and wellness. Maybe you and your loved one have done it before, or plan to! Sometimes, couples start a new fitness class or program together to improve their health and hold each other accountable. Early on, a pattern emerges: a couple starts a resistance training workout, and the first few sets go well. The husband notices his wife is ready for the next set, while he still feels winded. His first thought is, "she's not lifting heavy enough." His second thought is, "what's wrong with me?" The wife, similarly, notices she's ready for the next set and recognizes the look on her husband's face that says he's not 100% himself. She thinks, "he's not as fit as I thought," along with all the implications that come with it.

The truth is, both the husband and wife are performing within their normal expectations. During resistance training, men require longer rest periods between sets. Scientists have observed this for the past two decades and now understand why this difference exists.

It helps to look at the woman's body as the baseline. Women can sometimes rest as little as 30 seconds between sets, averaging between 30 and 90 seconds before they feel fully prepared for their next resistance training set. A woman's muscle fibers, hormones, and cardiorespiratory system help her recover in about 90 seconds or less. By comparison, a man's body has a higher proportion of Type II muscle fibers, which create more metabolic demands. A woman's higher proportion of Type I muscle fibers allows her to complete a set of exercises without the same metabolic demand. Relative to their overall mass, men have less estrogen in their bodies. Estrogen has muscle-protective properties, reducing damage and inflammation to the muscle fibers. Estrogen also enhances blood flow, delivering oxygen and nutrients to muscles more effectively, which accelerates their recovery between sets. Men's bodies do not have the same density of capillaries near their muscles compared to women, which inhibits their ability to clear out metabolic byproducts and lactate build-up. Finally, because men tend to lift heavier loads relative to their overall mass, there is greater demand on the neuromuscular system and greater use of phosphocreatine, both of which require time to reload, alongside the replenishment of glycogen stores and ATP within the muscle cells.

So, take the rest period that works best for YOU. If your partner is ready to go and you aren't, let them go ahead. They can also wait for you if you'd like to stay in sync throughout the workout session. Women should aim for a 90-second break (or less) between sets, while men should aim for a 2 to 3-minute break for optimal recovery. If you're working with a personal trainer or going to a fitness class, your coach is trained to respond to your needs and tweak the timing of the workout accordingly. And if you do need more time, ask for it!

Celebrate the differences!