It's 2024.
Fifty years ago was 1974.
People born in 1974 became young adults around 1992.
Why am I doing this simplistic math?
If you are in your late 40s or early 50s, you don't JUST have the hormonal conundrum of menopause to deal with.
You also likely have problematic diet, exercise, and body image programming from the thin-obsessed 90s and the cardio-and-salads era of the 2000s -- when you came into young adulthood, and your worldview and sense of self was formed.
This math is unique to those of us in midlife right now. And it won't be true for the generations before or after us. This is the Gen X experience.
Midlife female weight loss is different for Gen X women.
We can't approach weight loss efforts without also factoring in the cultural programming we absorbed.
Calorie deficits, meal plans, keto, IF, portion control, "eating more protein" -- these common weight loss platitudes are easier said than done when you have an incredibly messed up relationship with food and body. When you have diet-hopped for literal decades. When you have actual trauma around tracking and measuring your food.
We don’t just have hormones to deal with in midlife. We have deeply rooted conditioning.
Food micromanagement.
Body bullying.
The endless pursuit of shrinking into tiny-ness.
You feel desperate to find a solution that will work because you are terrified of living in a body that you hate, And the only reason you hate your body is because the cultural narrative you came of age in told you it was wrong.
So tracking your macros, slashing your calories, or skipping breakfast isn't the solution.
Dieting harder isn't the solution.
Deciding to become the kind of person who engages with food and their body in a more
meaningful way is.
A slow and methodical march AWAY from the food and exercise behaviours that brought you to this place in the first place.
You need to change the entire approach you take to nourishing your body with food, movement, sleep and stress management.
What worked before won't work anymore.
Midlife female weight loss is different.
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