Do hormones affect weight loss after 40?

People don't understand. The more you try to run and burn yourself out with this cardio and you're not eating enough, the more the body says oh, I got to shut down and survive, I've got to preserve those calories, and you burn fewer and fewer calories. And then you wonder why you can't lose weight. Eating 800 calories a day and running two hours a day, right, so the less is more is really important. I've had female clients come to me like that. Their hormones are out of whack, they're on thyroid medication and all we do is we say let's drop everything. Let's drop everything. We're going to train maybe three days a week. We're going to lift heavy. You're not going to be doing all those reps necessarily. You're just going to lift heavy and then see what happens, and oftentimes what happens is just the reduction in stress and the extra carbs and calories.

Welcome back to another episode of the 2% Solution. I'm your host, Dai Manuel, and today we're discussing a crucial topic for our health and well-being understanding cortisol how to thrive and not just survive. You might have heard of cortisol as the stress hormone. Did you know that chronic high levels of cortisol can wreak havoc on your physical, mental and even your spiritual health? That's right. When cortisol is out of sync, out of balance, it can lead to everything from anxiety and depression to weakened immune function and even spiritual disconnection. So if you've been feeling overwhelmed, constantly tired or uninspired lately, this episode is for you. Let's explore what cortisol is, its role in our health and, most importantly, how we can regulate it to start thriving. All right, let's get into it.

It's like our home ones hitting this news button. But don't worry, we're not doing become grumpy old men quite yet. But let's talk turkey, or rather how to keep your testosterone levels strutting like a peacock. Here are eight natural ways to keep your tea in tip top shape. And, trust me, they're easier than folding a fitted bed sheet. And those guys out there, you know what I'm talking about. Kristi, my wife can test to this my efforts. When I get that out of the dryer, I roll it up into a tight ball and I just throw it in the top of the closet. I don't even try to fold those fidget sheets in where I just don't know how. So I refuse to invest any time in it. But no, testosterone is not just a buzzword from fitness mags. It's literally a crucial hormone for men's health, and as we age, our tea levels tend to take a bit of a dive.

So it ties into a bunch of other myths that ultimately lead to the restrictive diets, whether it's keto, carnivore, high-fat, high-carb, whatever, the idea that eating, the different composition of things is going to cause you to gain or lose weight, when really it does come down to energy balance. And the composition affects many of the other things not related to energy balance, like your hunger, like your metabolism, things that ultimately then come back to energy balance. So that's the big one that ties into all of the other myths, I think.

You know cuz he's a very good expert in that space, so he can add a lot more to this and explain a bit better of how he was able to help me get back to not only a Thriving level of testosterone but also been able to maintain it all these years in spite of dealing with the chronic autoimmune condition. So Nice preamble, huh? So let's get into this today, right? Because first up, you're probably wondering what the heck is testosterone? I mean, think a bit of this way it's. It's basically the gym buff of hormones flexing its muscles in men's bodies and, yes, it makes cameos in women's bodies too. But it is the unsung hero behind muscles, bones and basically the oomph in your step on the day-to-day. It's also the maestro orchestrating your mood.

That's where supplements can be really, really helpful at reinforcing, supporting as well as helping develop more resiliency in you. So let's talk about supplements that can help regulate cortisol. It's important to remember that supplements work best in conjunction with lifestyle changes, number one being ashwagandha. It's an adaptogenic herb and has been shown to lower cortisol levels and help the body manage stress. Study published in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine found that Ashwagandha sometimes I always tongue-tripped over that one significantly reduced cortisol levels in chronically stressed adults.

These are simple. They're accessible. They don't cost anything. Mindfulness and relaxation techniques are powerful. Whether it's meditation, tai Chi, maybe just going for a walk outside. These practices can significantly reduce stress and start to balance and harmonize your cortisol levels. The American Mindfulness Research Association has found that mindfulness practices are highly effective. These are just a few things. There are a few things that don't take a lot of energy to go out and do, but what it can pay you back as far as dividends is immense. I mean, it's life-changing. So what's holding you back? Just start doing it right. Get out there for a walk. Download the Insight Timer app. It's free and they got so many different types of meditations and breath work techniques there's really no excuse it.

The European Journal of Applied Physiology backs this up, showing that regular workouts, particularly weightlifting, boosts testosterone as your body's way of flexing its hormonal muscles. So keep it active, but yet balanced. Number three opt for a balanced diet. I mean literally, your plate is your palate for hormonal health. A blend of lean proteins, healthy fats and complex carbohydrates think eggs, avocados, quinoa it's like a symphony for your hormones. The Journal of NeuroInformation highlights how such a diet positively impacts hormone levels. It's about making each meal a harmonious melody that keeps your body dancing to the right tune. I can literally attest to this.

I have had this conversation with more men than I can count. It usually arrives about ten minutes into a first call, in roughly the same words. I'm not unhealthy. I'm just tired. All the time. Then comes the list of things they have already tried. Going to bed earlier. Cutting coffee after noon. A sleep tracker. A blood panel their doctor called unremarkable. Sometimes a second panel, from a private clinic, because the first one felt like it missed something. Here is what I have learned from twenty years on my side of that call. Most of these men are not sleep deprived in the way they think. They are running a stress response that never gets switched off, and their body has quietly downgraded them to energy-saving mode to cope. That is not a metaphor I use because it sounds good. It is the most accurate description I have found for what is going on.

The adage use it or lose it rings all the truer as we age. Start implementing functional fitness into your lifestyle today to ensure a capable, pain-free future. Written in 2017, and it is the earliest piece in this archive that argues for healthspan over lifespan. That argument is now the whole premise of the coaching. The specific home programs named in the original have been left out because two of them no longer exist. The 2% Solution. Play it here, with the full transcript on the page. Most men over forty who feel exhausted are not sleep deprived. What is actually going on. What held up from my 2016 column, and the part I oversold. The real timeline, and every number from a sixty-day cohort of twenty-three men.

Ask specifically about thyroid function, ferritin and full iron studies, B12, vitamin D, fasting glucose and HbA1c, and a morning total and free testosterone. Anaemia and hypothyroidism are common, treatable and routinely missed in men, because men present late and get less thorough workups. Sleep apnoea is the other big one and it is dramatically underdiagnosed in men over 40 who snore and have gained weight around the neck. Notice this is step five, not step one. Go looking for a lab explanation first and you will usually find a number slightly outside a reference range, spend eight months and a lot of money chasing it, and never address the reason you are tired. I used to publish a supplement list in articles like this.

I still think that is true and I now think it is close to useless as advice, because it describes the destination and not the road. Here is the road. You change the defaults, one at a time, and you wait. Protein at breakfast for a month until it is not a decision. Then fat at every meal. Then the evening cutoff. Each one takes about four weeks to stop requiring thought, and the compounding is what does the work , not the intensity. I have watched this play out with enough men to be confident about the timeline, and the honest version of it is that the first six weeks feel like nothing is happening, and then the fourth month is when someone asks you what you have been doing. Does eating fat make you fat? Not in the way the low-fat era claimed.

This is the tell, and it is the one that finally makes men do something. Any one of these means very little. Five at once is a pattern, and the pattern has a name. Partly, and I want to be careful here because this gets oversold constantly, including by me in older writing. The mechanism is real. Cortisol released under stress affects where the body stores fat, favouring the abdominal cavity, and visceral fat is the metabolically dangerous kind. It is the fat associated with insulin resistance and cardiovascular risk, not the kind you can pinch. Here is the honest caveat. The best-documented human work on stress-induced cortisol and central fat, including Epel's research at UCSF, was done primarily in women. The mechanism is well described there. The evidence base in men is thinner, and anyone telling you confidently that stress explains your gut is going beyond what has been measured.

A man who gets six weeks in and then stops is telling you something about the fuel, not the engine. Because the thing that got you started is not a thing that can keep you going. This is the clearest pattern I have seen in nearly thirty years of coaching, and I first wrote about it in 2016 after running a 28-day challenge and asking the participants a simple question three weeks in: how are you staying motivated? The useful distinction is between motivation that comes from outside you and motivation that comes from inside. Outside: a number on a scale, a wedding, a photo you saw of yourself, a doctor's warning, a bet with a mate. Inside: you want to be able to do something, or be someone, and the training is how.