Mastering menopause weight loss with Dr. Bruna Galobardes

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast, where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset mentor and life coach, Trista Guertin.

Hi everybody. Welcome back to This Daring Adventure. I have another very special guest today, Dr. Bruna Galabardes. She She is a life coach and health coach in menopause weight loss, helping women in menopause lose weight for the last time. And I will tell you that Bruna and I go way back. We We were certified as coaches together back in 2020, and we've been colleagues and friends ever since, although we never have met in person. We have a very close Zoom relationship, but we have never had the chance yet to meet in person, but hopefully this year. Welcome, Bruna.

Thank you very much. Delighted to be here,

Well, I'm excited to share your work. I've watched you over the past few years and the progress that you've made and really the work that you've done with some of your clients and menopause. And of course now, it's becoming more and more applicable for me, unfortunately. But. Yeah, so I definitely, I wanted to showcase some of the work that you're doing because I think it'd be really helpful for a lot of my listeners. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into coaching?

So yeah, thank you. And yeah, it's true. Our zoom relationship has been really, really nice. And one day, one day we'll meet in person. So I'm a former doctor, health researcher, and basically all my life, working around health and how to have a better physical health. I turned life coach a bit by accident by, various reasons I looked for coaching. And then I learned with, about the school that you and I met. And I realized that the tools that we were learning there on how to make your life better actually were the tools that I had always missed when I was a doctor. That they were the part that literally were helpful in understanding how to change health behaviors, how to understand why we don't do the things we want to do, and why we do the things we don't want to do. And it's sort of all clicked. I was going through menopause with weight. it's a very interesting place, as you say, that you find yourself now where things are not going the way you want. And the weight is the one that most women will encounter. It's almost 50 percent or more of women experience weight gain during menopause. And it just adds and makes you feel that nothing is. going in the right way. My thought, it was so frustrating because on top with my background, health background, if I didn't know how to lose weight. And I had all the health information, and not only that, I was telling people how, they should lose weight to improve their health, but never being able to really help them with that. So, is the time where you think, gosh, is that it? Is downhill from here? Which was my most prominent thought, the frustration, desperation of not knowing what to do, and maybe resignation at some point. When someone told me you just need to embrace this new you, I thought, no, I don't want to embrace this new me. I want to change it. I want to, I want to somehow get better. And then those tools were the ones that helped me. I lost the weight. I understood how it worked, the body, the brain habits, which is how I centre now my work. And that was it. That's then I decided that I wanted to help women get past that. and yeah, that's what I'm doing now.

And I think for myself, it's been such a humbling experience going through this, and it also feels like I'm in some sort of bad carnival ride or something where, I've been very conscious of my weight, I've been trying to be healthy, I've tried to exercise throughout my life, I've had some ups and downs, but I never experienced anything like this, where It just feels like my metabolism has stopped, I just feel like I look at something and I put on weight. Extremely difficult then to lose the weight. And I remember, I was probably very cocky and very self righteous thinking, looking at older women previously when I was younger and thinking, yeah, it's not going to be me when what are they doing? Like, it can't be that hard. And I'm like, Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes, it is.

and there's like two different stories of where we find is either the woman that has never had, weight struggles before, and then suddenly you are completely caught by surprise and how is this and how could this happen? And then there's also the women that who struggled all their lives with weight and then everything gets worse. So it's really affecting, your self esteem, your self confidence in many different ways. And the sentence I hear the most is nothing works anymore. The other one is that I'm eating the same, this I'm still eating healthily. What's wrong with me? And because we try the things that we done in the past, some work a little bit, we think, yeah, that should be, I should do more, and we can't. So we end up thinking it's our fault. And as I said, the frustration for me was feeling hopeless and helpless and really thinking if that's it, that's not fun. And it's still lots of years to come. So I, yeah, it was a bit of a sad place to be for a while and humbling. I love, I love the way you describe it. It is humbling. It really makes you stop and think my one and how can I change this?

Right. Yes. And so you've had great success working with your clients. You've put together a program. Maybe tell us a little bit about how you work with your clients and how it's been so successful for them.

Yeah. So I work with a framework where I treat weight as a symptom and as a symptom only. So it's the result of something. And I always say that two causes, not one, there is what we eat and why we eat. And we decide that with the brain. The brain is the one that literally decides what we're going to eat that day and why we're going to eat it and why we eat. And that's the, what I call the missing piece in the weight loss puzzle. We are fixated in trying to understand the, what we eat. part, which is the diet. And we'll go on and try and try and try different diets and try different approaches. And it's incredibly confusing of information out there, one contradicting the other. So it literally is hard to figure that part out. and when actually the most important one and the one that people don't know about. is the one that relates to the brain, that why we eat. And it relates in two different ways. One is that there is a biological aspect, the brain reacts to the food biologically. So there's that part. And then there's the part of the brain that is The one that decides why we eat, and we eat for lots of different reasons that have nothing to do with just providing fuel to our body. And these are the ones we need to understand. If we want to solve weight permanently, we need to really understand the real causes of why we eat, and there's plenty, we can go in more detail if you want. And then at the end, so basically what happens is where you are now, the habits you have now are creating the weight you have now. So once we work with the body, resetting them. I work with the body, resetting the metabolism so that it starts burning fat instead of accumulating. What's interesting is, we experience a lot of hunger and cravings during menopause, is one of the typical things, despite our body accumulating fat. So we need to stop that process and there's ways to change the types of food we eat and how we eat so that it stops requesting food. It creates hunger and cravings when it could be using what we have. Once you reset that, once you learn to deal with the cravings and the hunger, not to be afraid of these very biological experiences that we have. Your metabolism sets and pounds a lot, and then we can really go into why. Why were you needing this extra food? Why do you feel still that you can't control? Why do you need food when you go for, when you're bored, when you've had an argument, when you've had a tough day at work, an argument with your partner or with your teenage child? Most of us have teenage children at this time. You, we have children. So it's quite an interesting time to be with them too. So once we solve the real reasons and we provide ourselves with different tools, then we have a set of habits that work giving you the new weight. And that's what we need to set it as a habit so that it becomes a non issue. That's my goal. And what I mean by a non issue is what I would like is make weight and food, something that is not relevant in your life, unless you decide so that you can just eat what you need. Enjoy it without being out of control and be done with it. So that we are free. Our time and energy is free to do the things that really matter for us in life. I don't think we're here to spend our lives in dieting or even perfecting our health. For me, the health is I want to have the best health I can so that I can do the things that I I really want to do. It's not going to be diet and worrying about weight for sure.

Right, right. So how does hormone replacement therapy fit into all this? Does that affect the process?

Very interesting question. This is one of the myths, I think, around weight and menopause because we are going through menopause and we are gaining the weight at the same time. We think it's the hormones. And it's partly the hormones, but what really happens biologically, it's a play of two mechanisms. And it's both at the same time. And it's that's the menopausal changes, but also aging. And it's not just that they coincide at the same time is that, they're both independently contribute. And I know that in a very simple way, men as they age, they also gain weight. So it can't be just the menopausal changes, right? But we know that menopausal changes contribute also because a woman that goes through menopause at an early age. She will also struggle with weight. So the two things are important. I also know that it's not just the estrogens declining, because if it were, HRT would work, would help with weight. And it doesn't. We know that it's not just the going through the menopause, but what happens is that the process of aging, all the biological changes that happen during this process, make that testosterone declines, our muscle mass declines, we move less, our metabolism slows down. Everything literally means that our body needs less energy. If we look at the, hormonal changes that we go through menopause, what happens is, there's lots of things that happen and we experience lots of symptoms. But in terms of the weight, what is most relevant is we develop insulin resistance. So that's a pre diabetic stage where we'll tend to accumulate. The insulin doesn't work as, well as it should. So we tend to accumulate. Also, there's something very interesting, interesting scientifically, is that the body wants to, it's not, we don't like the result of it, but the body wants to hang on to the estrogen. And one way that it does this is storing it in fat. And that's when we develop it naturally develops fat so that it can keep estrogen and it's the fact that we have the central adiposity that is typical of menopause. We lose our waist, the abdominal belly, so typical of, that's why our clothes no longer fit because we literally change our shape. So there's the body wanting to retain estrogen, the insulin resistance, the roller coaster of Emotions that we feel that we know and resort to food as a way to comfort food has an effect to our brain and we all know it and we all exploit it. So it makes perfect sense that as we go through all these changes and we feel them because of our hormones, we end up wanting, some relief with food. And then literally their hormones create cravings. We were used, I don't know if you experienced it when, the, not having your normal periods. going through, this craving for sugars and carbs. It's happening at the same, same thing and a lot more sort of haphazard in the sense that there's no pattern anymore. So we experience a lot more hunger, a lot more cravings. So all the changes that are driven by the menopause make us eat more. So now you have two mechanisms, one that literally, the aging means that the body needs less food. But we are driven to eat a lot more. And that's what makes it so hard. It's literally, they're not working well together. And that's why. If it's hard, if you feel it hard is because it is hard, it is, your body is experiencing an imbalance of what it needs and what we're giving, what we're driven to keep. And for me, understanding this was so helpful to know that it wasn't my fault. That is not, there's nothing, it's just biology working. And then we need to work with this biology, it's not inevitable, we can change it, but understanding the basis of it, it's, it becomes, I think it, my clients get relieved is like, okay, so it all makes sense. And yes, it all makes sense. And once You know, that also points to what the problem is, and the problem is overeating for what our body needs are. And understanding that, that is the problem we need to solve also then focuses as to, is the food and the behaviors around food.

Okay. So this may be a stupid question, but is it going to be like this for good now, now that I've reached this age? is this it?

It's a very good question. Look, I'm past it. So I can tell you that no, this is not it for now. That was exactly, that was my fear. It's downhill from here. Is this it? No, you, lots of the menopausal symptoms with time tend to lessen. And certainly HRT can help with many of the symptoms. The only one that will not. diminution on the contrary will get worse is weight. So the weight, we need to address it. We need to address it separately because weight gain not only doesn't stop, it actually gets worse because there's the aging part of it. It's not just the hormones. So it's not it. And even the way you can change it, you can change it. So it is all possible, but yeah, it's, all experienced this. I think just knowing this. it's a sort of relief. It's not, there's nothing wrong with us not being able to sort it. There's nothing wrong with us with feeling so desperate. It's just finding the right tools for the newest stage in life that we find ourselves in.

Right. And I think that's a very important message. It's the same message in a way that I use with my clients about being stuck. Where it's not, it's not the body, but it is the brain. if we're stuck, if we're experiencing any of these things where we have a lack of motivation, a lack of discipline, we don't know what we want, we're reacting to our emotions, whatever it is, it is very much, there are reasons, right? There are reasons. Our brain, it's our programming. It's the way we've been raised. It's the messaging. It all comes together and there is a reason for it. And there's nothing wrong with you. And that's one of the things I say, that, which really struck me, and maybe you hear this, you have said you hear this, especially when we started coaching, and, we were all coaching each other, and then we would, join other containers, and listen to women getting coached, and then we started coaching clients ourselves, and that was one of the consistent messages that I kept hearing, is that these women You know, we would think that there's something wrong with us. That we were doing it wrong, that somehow we weren't good enough, that, whatever it was, but it was consistent with woman after woman after woman, regardless of what the specific issue may have been. And that's when I just realized. it can't be, we can't all be wrong.

Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly what I sort of, that's how I start many of my classes or webinars saying for me, the realization was these, if it happens to everybody, for me, the frustration of if I know all the health information and I can't lose weight for good, I can lose weight, but gain it back again. and then I think, Oh, what am I doing wrong? But, the data is there. There's some very interesting statistics that show that if most people who change how they eat in order to lose weight can lose weight. irrespective of the diet that they do. Of course, some will more and there'll be crazy things and we don't want to do crazy things. But if we change food with the intention of losing weight, most people can lose weight, but there's only one to 5 percent who can keep the weight off. So it points that there's something wrong in what we're thinking. But, but it shows that It happens to all of us. Most people cannot lose and maintain the weight. And that's when I realized, yeah, it can't be just my fault. It can't be that we are the ones who are not capable or too weak. No, the approach is the problem. We're not solving the real problem, the real issues, the real causes. And just going back to what you said, this feeling stuck. That's when we get to the whys with my clients. They all talk about being stuck. There's just a common theme, exactly what you, what you help women with is, yeah, we feel stuck. The weight is very often an expression of this stuckness,

right? And we just haven't been taught, haven't been taught. And it's as simple as that. And whether it's managing our minds or being with our emotions or building that relationship with ourselves, goal setting, or in this case, working and managing our weight. Okay. So I have another question. What about exercise?

Oh, good one. This always, always comes up. So, and I always have to be very careful how I say this because I will say something that people will go, what? and there's two sides of it. So let me start with the thing. If you exercise, please continue. It is the best thing you can do for your health is one of the best things you can do for your health. So please keep exercising. That is very good. However, it's not a good tool to lose weight. And it's not a good tool to lose weight because the level and intensity of exercise that we need to do in order to burn fat, which is When if we, if you want to use exercise to lose weight, you basically, it's the way you want to lose, to burn the fat. It is not effective. We should what the majority of people do, the level and intensity of exercise, the majority of people do. does not give enough to burn fat. So you, we can do that with food and rechanging the types of food we eat in a much more easy way. But I want to, just be very clear that if you're exercising, please keep doing it because that's very good for your health independently of the weight loss. So the way I work, the problem is that we think, and it actually can even interfere. When we exercise, it creates hunger, so we might eat more. It also interferes in very interesting ways that, we do what I call preventative eating. It's like, oh my god, I'm going to exercise. I better eat before I do that. I'm going to be hiking for two hours. My clients go like, I need to eat before that. No, we don't. Our bodies are so more resilient than we think. so much more resilient. They can deal, especially if you have weight to lose, you have the energy in your body. You just need to make your metabolism go on axis. That's what we don't realize. It's not that you go, hungry. It's just you are accessing it from a different place, not from outside. So that's the problem with exercise. So the way I work, if a woman wants to lose weight and he's exercising, we just keep exercising and then we'll focus on the weight. If she's not exercising, say, just don't do it. Don't try yet. We're going to lose the weight. And then something magic happens when you lose weight and you see yourself thinner. And then you want to tone up. So if they were not, if you're not exercising because, because you don't like it literally, so it's another thing that you want to change in terms of behaviors. But once you've lost the weight and you want to tone up, you magically want to do that. So you will be able to do it with much less effort. And that also talks of, the fact of changing behaviors, that focusing on one behavior at time is a way more, is a much more efficient. process than, trying to, change two things at the same time, we overwhelm the brain. The brain reasons of why we eat food, why we exercise, the same thing with drinking, why we drink are different and we need to address them differently. So I always say, let's do one thing and after that you'll see how easy it is to change the other behaviors.

Okay. All right. And then, can we touch a little bit on alcohol? Yes. I remember you gave up alcohol during COVID. I remember this because I was like in complete awe of you at a time when everybody was drinking more. Right. You. You gave it up and you haven't gone back to it since.

I haven't gone back to it. And the thing that has happened is I don't want to, I don't want to is when it becomes so easy that it's never, it's not no longer struggle. And that's what, if we reach the point of not want to with many of these with the food or with alcohol means that you can drink it whenever you decide, but you don't have the cravings. You're not compelled to, I had some, my look, my main motivations, I didn't want to give up alcohol. That wasn't how I started. I just wanted to drink less. And I wanted to drink less because every time I drank something that happens during menopause, we don't metabolize alcohol so easily. you feel the effects a lot more. That was the main reason. I just didn't feel well. I knew if I drunk one evening, I needed pills. I was taking ibuprofen either the day after some points I just before I went to bed. So the next day I would be okay to move on. And at some point I realized, isn't that crazy? I am medicating myself so that I can drink. No, that, that point didn't make sense. So I decided to drink less. And when you drink less, there's one interesting thing that happens. The less you drink, the less well you tolerate the alcohol. So the effects came very much the same with the small amounts. So I was still taking the pills and at some point he said, you know what, why don't we just stop? And I stopped. And, the thoughts about alcohol came back and then COVID came, disappeared and we all socialized again. And then I had to go through the process of learning to be a non alcohol drinker with other people. So there was a bit of process to then do the brain work that I didn't have to do while we were in lockdowns, but that was okay. Then I knew the tools, I had the tools, I applied the same principles, the same things. And now literally I don't want, and sometimes I do, and somebody brings a special bottle. I will taste it. I don't find it that special anymore. cava I'm a bit still, you know, with cava, it's a celebration, but it's more because it's part of the celebration. So it's just joining in. But it doesn't compensate anymore the brain and I really didn't want to take, my pills just so that I could drink. and that's the real reason of why I decided to stop.

Okay. Because I would think like some of the, like with all the sugar and everything in the wine and the calories and whatnot too, right. That could really.

Yeah. And that, so that wasn't, that wasn't my reason because I didn't lose the weight without changing that. And that's actually how I work with my clients. That's one, one very, you know, I always ask, do you have any red lines? And they say, are you going to touch my wine? No, I'm not going to touch your wine. Okay. The reasons why to stop drinking, again, the why's, one is the what, how are we going to stop drinking, but why are we drinking in the first place? We need to solve that part. And that then starts interfering with the food. So we concentrate with the food, as we go along the way I work, we naturally start regulating how much alcohol we drink. And my clients reduce naturally without make again, without making an effort. So it all becomes a lot easier and yes, there are calories in the alcohol, but we, we start with the food. with some clients. Yes. At some point, we reached the point like, look, this plateau, you are doing your meal plans, following them through wonderfully. I think maybe we need to start touching that. So it could be that at some point to continue losing weight, that is part of the process, but not necessarily. And I realized most women. Naturally reduce already the amount of alcohol, simply women going through menopause because we feel the effects. So it's something that we are doing just because it's just hard. Yeah. All right. Was that your experience?

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. sleeping well, and certainly having a glass of wine just made it all that much worse. and since I, I switched, I, I've started taking hormone replacement therapy, which has really helped, but yeah, the wine, I haven't given it up completely, I have significantly decreased it, but I find, yeah, it's still, you're, I think you're right, like the less I drink, the, I can still feel the effects now, even though I've reduced it, it's really annoying, but. Yeah. But yeah, I haven't given it up completely, but I have significantly reduced the amount. So

it is really reaching the level that you do what you want to do and how you want to enjoy, how to, how you want to give joy. Because one of the things also is discovering with food, how do we want to enjoy food without being out of control with food? And you can do that. And he's really understanding what is the purpose of the food or drink doing in the context. And once you are more intentional and conscious about that, you realize that I thought I needed a drink to be happy and enjoying a party or a dinner, and I actually realized that don't, and I'm as loud and as, talkative without the wine. So it's interesting to discover all the things that we've been told, how many, if not most of them are not true. We can challenge a lot. And during this process, if you want to change behaviors, you really end up behaving different than a lot of other people around you. So it is part of the process learning to maintain the weight, is. understanding that other people can keep doing what they're doing, you've decided to intentionally eat different, you feel fine, you enjoy the food, you don't have that need. And at some point, many of my clients, we start seeing this overabundance of food that exists everywhere that is so conducive to the excess eating. I mean, it's no wonder it's just our biology, but again, our surroundings, our environment. And really making it so easy that it's hard not to over eat. But once you, you detach yourself a bit from that, that you're living your normal life that you've been having without having to respond to all these this environment. And it makes you feel very much in control and very proud of yourself. So it feels good. It does feel good.

hmm. Yeah. No, you're right. obviously here food is everywhere. And one of the things I remember most poignantly was when I was working in Angola and some of the other places I've worked in, but Angola was the most remote, literally. I was in the middle of nowhere. And Coming home and going to the supermarket, just like, I, I would just be, I don't know, my mom said I was just like looking at everything, like everything was catching my eye, just completely overwhelmed. And now it's even, cause that was 20 years ago. So now you go and they're like 500 different types of cereal and all the things, right. And it's all there. And it's so easily accessible.

We've created an environment that is so unhelpful for our bodies. Our body is designed, another way I explain why it's so hard to lose weight is, that our body is designed to store, store the energy. And that makes perfect sense because most of our human life in this planet, Has been on the food scarcity when we were hunting food. It was very hard to get by and very dangerous. But even when we developed every culture, the winters there was no food around. So in order to survive that environment, the body evolved to store everything we give it and it does it exquisitely well. It really never nothing. Nothing goes to waste, which is fantastic at that time to survive. The thing is, we still have the same body, the same biology, but we've completely altered in Western societies. We've completely altered our environment, and we've gone from food being scarce to food being overabundant. So, 24 7 food is available. we are not going ever hungry. We don't even allow ourselves to feel hungry. I think one of the things is that we don't know what hunger is anymore. We're so afraid of it. And not just that, the types of foods that we humans have created and developed. You know, the ones that are most easily stored, the ones that create this huge reward. So completely distorts our relationship with food. And this is something we've done. So that's why you need, part of the process is learning first to understand that, look, if it's hard, if you think it's hard for you, it's, it is hard. It's not just you. It's not your problem. I always go back to something. It's not just you. It's not your problem. We've created really an environment where it's almost impossible not to eat in excess. And the process, is understanding that it's liberating, but also being okay with behaving differently than what you did before and what other people do.

All right. Is there anything else you think is important to cover or any final messages

that you want to share? Yeah. One that I think that because I find it all the time and it really. It's stuck me for a long time trying to solve it on my own. I should know how to eat. I should know this is we're talking about eating. We know what healthy eating looks like. And I always tell my clients, you already know what healthy eating looks like. I actually, my program, I never give them recipes. I always work with what they already know and have. Everybody has a version of. Healthy eating that works for them. So no need to completely overhaul that. Let's work with that to reset your metabolism. But the other parts are the ones we don't know. So The, I should know how to lose weight. That's the one that I told myself for the longest time, especially because of my medical background and, research. So I was very aware of the new research, everything that was coming up. So I could use all that information and that wasn't the reason that wasn't enough. It's all the other part, the part that you and I learned through the coaching, through the habit changing all this, how the brain works and how to work with the brain. I always say. The process is to bring the brain on board with what you are doing. When you try to diet, yes, you want to lose weight, but at the same time, there's something in the back of your brain that says, but I really want the biscuits. And that's, we make our brains fight. We literally fight with ourselves. That's not a good way to do it. So it's a completely different process that we can use to bring the brain. And it's okay. You should not know how to do that. We haven't been taught that. I wasn't taught that at medical school. I wish I had. This is the tool I could have helped so many more of my patients back then. And so it's okay to look for help, seek for help. you'll go faster, but also you'll get the right tools to literally, be able to solve the problem for good. So no, you should not know how to do it on your own. It's okay.

Very good. Yeah. I like that message. And I think that is very important that we realize you're not doing it wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. We haven't been taught this, but the tools and the skills and the processes are out there and we can help. Good. All right. Well, tell people how they can find you.

So, I often have a masterclass, I don't know when this is going to come out on Thursdays, but otherwise you can always go to my website and there'll be information about that. So it's www. and then one word, Dr. Bruna Galobardes. if you put it on the show notes, I know it's hard to spell and I don't want to go this all the whole spelling here, but yeah, we are Bruna Galobardes, one word. com.

Okay. I'll make sure those are in the show notes so that they can easily find you. Good. All right. Bruna. I think that was really helpful. It was really interesting and I'm sure it will be helpful to everybody listening.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. It was lovely chatting to you.

Thank you for listening to this daring adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin. We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life again. As always, you can head to tristaguertin.com for additional resources and to book a one on one coaching session. You can also follow Trista on Instagram at tristavguertin. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time.