The Dr. Jules Plant-Based Podcast
Hey, I’m Dr. Jules! I’m a medical doctor, teacher, nutritionist, naturopath, plant-based dad and 3X world championships qualified athlete. On this podcast we’ll discuss the latest in evidence-based and plant-based nutrition, including common nutrition myths, FAQs and tips on how to transition towards a healthier dietary pattern and lifestyle that creates little friction with your busy life!
The Dr. Jules Plant-Based Podcast
Weight Gain After 40: The Science and Solutions
The scale's creeping up, but nothing about your diet or exercise has changed. Sound familiar? That frustrating weight gain after 40 isn't your imagination—it's biology. And while it may feel inevitable, science shows it's absolutely reversible.
Your body undergoes significant shifts after 40 that directly impact weight management. Estrogen and progesterone begin their gradual decline, changing how and where fat is stored—shifting from subcutaneous (under the skin) to visceral (around organs) storage. This redistribution not only changes your silhouette but increases inflammation and insulin resistance. Meanwhile, muscle mass naturally decreases by 2-7% per decade unless actively maintained, lowering your metabolic rate and making weight gain easier even without eating more. Add in the sleep disruption and increased stress common in midlife, and you've got a perfect storm for weight gain that has nothing to do with willpower or laziness.
The solution isn't found in restrictive diets or punishing exercise regimens. Instead, focus on evidence-based strategies that address these biological changes: prioritize resistance training to maintain muscle mass; emphasize high-volume, nutrient-dense foods like fiber-rich plants that keep you fuller longer with fewer calories; ensure adequate protein intake (1.2-1.6g/kg daily) to support muscle preservation; and implement stress management techniques to improve sleep quality and regulate hunger hormones. Remember, self-compassion isn't just nice—it's effective. Research shows women who approach weight management with kindness achieve better long-term results than those using harsh self-criticism as motivation.
This journey isn't about shrinking your body. It's about reclaiming your strength, energy, and metabolic health for decades to come. With the right strategies, you can feel strong and vibrant again at any age. Ready to transform your relationship with your changing body? Listen now to discover exactly how to work with—not against—your biology.
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Dr. Jules
Hey everyone, welcome to Season 2 of the Dr Jules Plan-Based Podcast, where we discuss everything from plant-based nutrition to the main pillars of lifestyle medicine. On medicine hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about gaining weight after 40 and how to help reverse it. Now, you didn't change the way you eat, you didn't stop working out, but suddenly the scale starts creeping up and nothing seems to work anymore. Now, if that sounds familiar, today I'll explain why weight gain happens after age 40, the real science behind it and what you can do without fad diets shame or without starving yourself. So if you've been gaining weight after age 40, especially around perimenopause and menopause, this is not something that you're imagining. Something does change after age 40, and it's not that your metabolism is broken, it's not that you're doing anything wrong. It's your biology that's shifting and your lifestyle needs to shift with it. Now, this is not about shrinking your body. It's about reclaiming your strength, your clarity and your energy, and a healthy weight too.
Speaker 1:Now in your 40s, a lot of hormonal shifts will start to happen, including estrogen, progesterone and insulin. Estrogen and progesterone. They start to decline, and it's not just about your cycle. Estrogen helps regulate fat storage and insulin sensitivity, and when it drops, fat tends to redistribute to the abdomen. When estrogen starts to decline, fat will be shuttled from being stored underneath your skin to inside of your organs, so basically going from subcutaneous fat storing to visceral fat storing, and that can make insulin resistance increase, making it easier to store fat and harder to burn it. You may also experience higher cortisol, especially with poor sleep and chronic stress, which pushes fat storage specifically around your belly, as visceral fat Now we know visceral fat will be more inflammatory, may lead to more insulin resistance and increases the risk of metabolic dysfunction. But this isn't about willpower, it's about understanding your own internal chemistry. Now, the other thing that may impact your weight in your 40s is your muscle loss. Now, after 30, we naturally lose anywhere from 2 to 7% of muscle mass per decade unless we actively fight it. And although I don't have any data to back it up, I have heard the saying that something like 90% of people will not sprint after age 35. I think most people become progressively less active as we age, and not just that aging causes muscle mass decline, it compounds if you're more inactive and sedentary Now.
Speaker 1:Muscle is a very metabolically active tissue and it burns more calories at rest. Active tissue and it burns more calories at rest. So if you have less muscle you have a lower BMR, or basal metabolic rate. And if you have less muscle you have less strength. And if you have less strength you're more easily fatigued, which typically leads to less daily movement and a slow and steady weight gain. So not just the hormones that are changing. Muscle mass is changing and typically drops with age, and with age people naturally move less. And if they move less, the amount of calories they burn while active or even at rest goes down. So BMR goes down because muscle mass goes down, and muscle mass goes down because people tend to naturally move less with age. So the solution is to prioritize resistance training. Even just a few sessions per week can make a big, big difference.
Speaker 1:Now hormonal chaos isn't just happening below the neck. It's happening in your brain and nervous system too. Increased stress that's common culprit in adults with young kids or busy moms that are trying to keep the family going and all of the chores done have higher levels of stress. Hormones like cortisol and cortisol does increase cravings and increase the deposition of belly fat or of visceral fat. Now high levels of cortisol can negatively impact sleep quality and sleep quantity because before going to bed your cortisol is supposed to decline as melatonin rises and cues sleep. So if your cortisol is high before going to bed, you have poor quality sleep and that leads to lower leptin levels that's the satiety hormone and increased ghrelin hormone levels, which is your hunger hormone. Now people who are sleep deprived can eat anywhere from 300 to 400 more calories per day the next day, often from processed foods that are rich in refined carbs and added fat. Emotional eating and late night snacking and fatigue-driven choices do become more frequent as stress levels increase and sleep quality goes down. My main tip there is to build a calming nighttime routine. Even 15 minutes of screen-free wind-down time could improve sleep and reduce stress eating cycles. Now you see that everything kind of is interlinked right. See that everything kind of is interlinked right.
Speaker 1:As you age, your hormones change. Your BMR goes down as your muscle mass goes down. Women in their 40s typically have higher cortisol levels because of higher stressful lives. They have kids, they have work, they have chores. Their hormones are changing, their moods are changing. They're in perimenopause. Cortisol levels tends to go up, sleep quality tends to go down, ghrelin goes up, leptin goes down and they find themselves craving more ultra-processed foods. And after a poor night's sleep, calorie consumption goes up. Processed foods and after a poor night's sleep, calorie consumption goes up.
Speaker 1:Now, considering this change in hormones change in BMR, muscle mass, sleep quantity and satiety and fullness hormones the foods that worked for you in your 20s and 30s might now be too calorie dense for your current needs. You want to try to limit or restrict ultra processed foods, which typically have more calories and less volume and lead to less fullness. And after 40, eating smarter becomes more important than eating less, and the key is high volume, low calorie density meals like huge salad soups or veggie stir fries or bean bowls. Including whole plant foods in your diet is more important than trying to restrict food groups. Now you want to try to focus on foods that weigh a lot but that contain few calories, like fiber-rich plants, legumes, chickpeas, beans, lentils, soy products, fruits and whole grains. Now what actually works over the long term is having a strategy that is backed in science. Now here's what the research shows could help reverse midlife weight gain.
Speaker 1:Number one strength training and NEAT. Neat is non-exercise activity thermogenesis. It is the calories burned through involuntary exercise. So obviously you want to voluntarily exercise, but you also want to modify your environment where you're moving, without really noticing it. It can be like just having a standing desk at work or parking further from the door at work, putting yourself in situations where you're moving more, and these small steps that you accumulate during the day, they do add up. Now you also want to focus most of your diet on whole, minimally processed foods in the way Mother Nature created them or as close as possible to it. In this way, you're naturally going to be choosing foods that are higher in nutrient density but lower in calorie density. These foods will contain more fiber, more water and will keep you fuller for longer, and these foods may actually help recalibrate different hormones that impact calorie consumption, like leptin, ghrelin and insulin. You also want to make sure to eat enough protein to preserve lean mass. So obviously 90% of the stimulus that leads to muscle growth is resistance training, but 10% relies on eating adequate protein. Now, the RDA signals a 0.8 gram per kilogram per day as a minimum to prevent protein deficiency, but most experts would recommend consuming anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram per day of protein in order to protect muscle mass Another very important part of the diet to consider is your fiber consumption.
Speaker 1:Something like 95 to 97% of Canadians are deficient in fiber. To 97% of Canadians are deficient in fiber. We should be probably eating anywhere from 25 to 35 grams of fiber per day at a minimum, but considering that we probably evolved on diets as high as 50 to 75 grams per day, it's very important that we at least consider increasing. Now, fiber only exists in plants and it exists in all types of plants, whether it's fruits, veggies, legumes, nuts, seeds or whole grains. The more the merrier. But if you increase fiber, you want to go slow, as if your gut is not adjusted, it might cause bloating and it might upset your tummy. So that will simply decrease or reduce the compliance to high fiber foods. Now we know that high fiber diets will reduce hunger.
Speaker 1:Hormones helps regulate insulin, lowers cholesterol, blood pressure, cardiovascular risk, cancer risk. Fiber helps feed your gut bugs that then reward you by producing short-chain fatty acids. These short-chain fatty acids get reabsorbed into your circulation, cross the blood-brain barrier and impact everything from satiety to mood, to concentration and to cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors. So fiber is probably the most important nutrient in your diet, yet it is the most deficient one one. Now.
Speaker 1:Another useful tool for certain people could be versions of fasting or intermittent fasting. It can help, but only if appropriate and if it fits your life. What people need to understand is that fasting regimens do typically lead to lower calorie consumption throughout the day and to weight loss, but if your calorie deficit is too high, you may put yourself at risk for losing muscle mass if you're not resistance training or eating appropriate amounts of protein. The other thing you need to know is that during that eating window, if it's restricted, you need to have a very high quality diet, because if you're fasting and simply eating in a six to eight hour window, it's going to be very difficult to hit all of your nutrient goals. Eating enough protein and enough calcium and enough magnesium in a very restricted eating window can be hard. Restricted eating window can be hard, and losing weight and keeping a healthy weight on is important, but only if it's done responsibly. And the most important thing of all is probably having self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Now, women who are kinder to themselves actually lose more weight and keep it off longer. This isn't just about body weight, it's about body composition. The goal is to be strong and energized. Now at my clinic, where we work. We've acquired a scanner called the InBody 580. It's a body composition analyzer and what it does? It actually measures not just your weight but your muscle mass, your lean body mass, fat mass and your water weight. So that way we can measure if people are losing fat or losing muscle when they're in a calorie-restricted diet.
Speaker 1:Now what the science shows is that women that go through perimenopause or menopause don't just tend to gain weight. They tend to redistribute that fat mass. So instead of storing fat underneath their skin in the subcutaneous storage, they tend to redistribute that towards the visceral fat storage, meaning that fat is now stored inside of the organs around the organs, and that tends to more negatively impact metabolic health. It leads to more fatty liver, more insulin resistance, and that also has negative metabolic implications. So if you're feeling frustrated with your body lately, remember this that you're not broken, you're not lazy, you're not alone. You're simply living in a body that's adapting to a new phase of life, and now that body needs a new plan. With the right strategies, weight gain after 40 isn't inevitable. It's actually reversible. More importantly, you can feel strong and clear-headed and energized again if you just focus on the right things now.
Speaker 1:I know that it's an unsexy and unpopular scientific opinion, but it is based in high quality data. We all tend to gain a little weight when we get older, but it's not all hormonal in nature. We also tend to work out less, to move less. We tend to lose muscle mass, and if we lose muscle mass because we don't lift as heavy as we used to or we spend less time in the gym, our basal metabolic rate will go down. Our basal metabolic rate will go down If we also have higher stress levels. Our stress hormones will be higher. That leads to changes in how we redistribute fat, much in the same way as visceral fat will accumulate more when women lose their estrogen and their progesterone after menopause.
Speaker 1:If you have higher stress levels, you'll also have poorer sleep, and with poorer sleep you'll have increased levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, lower levels of leptin, the satiety hormones. People who sleep less tend to eat more the next day. Some studies have shown that sleep depriving people to less than six hours of sleep per night can increase calorie consumption by up to 400 calories more the next day, when compared to people who have adequate amounts of sleep. Add all of that together and that clearly explains why people are gaining weight. So if you're like, look, I've been eating the same, I've been doing everything the same, nothing has changed, but I'm gaining weight, why is it? Your hormones are changing, your muscle mass is changing, your sleep quality are changing, your stress hormones are probably higher, your calorie consumption is higher and you need to review your plan.
Speaker 1:What you were doing in your 20s and 30s might not be working in this new body that you're living in, and it's more important than ever to maintain muscle mass. That's probably the most important things Now. The solution isn't this complex, ultra hard, unattainable strategy. It's eating more plants that are higher in fiber and lower in calorie density. It's lifting weights to protect muscle mass. It's increasing protein, which will help you feel fuller for longer and will help protect muscle mass. And it's making sure to have strategies to manage your stress, like a wind down routine so you get high quality sleep that favors your stress hormones, but also your hunger hormones. And if you can do all of that, you have a fighting chance to not just stabilize your weight but achieve a healthy body weight. And, like I've said a few times, the goal is not body weight but body composition. We want to make sure that if you're achieving a healthy body weight, that you're also doing it while maintaining a healthy muscle mass. Your muscle mass is the most important predictor of your basal metabolic rate and this tends to go down with age. So we need to double down on making sure that we maintain our BMR by maintaining our muscle mass Right on.
Speaker 1:If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend who's navigating this same journey. Go check out my website for free advice. Go check out my website for free advice. You deserve to feel good in your skin at every age and I want to help you get there cool. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you at the next episode. Hey, everyone, go check out my website plantbaseddoctorjulescom to find free downloadable resources, and remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr Jules Cormier, and on YouTube at Plant-Based Dr Jules.
