Weight gain is one of the most common complaints I hear from the women I talk to about menopause.

It frustrates me that there is still far too much talk about counting calories and how achieving a calorie deficit is essential for losing weight.

This outdated thinking is perpetuating the misery and frustration of all the women who are locked into the endless cycle of dangerous yo-yo dieting.

Here’s why it doesn’t work for long term, sustainable weight loss.

When you cut calories to achieve a calorie deficit, your body starts thinking it could be entering a period of famine and adjusts to doing less, ie your metabolic rate slows down.

You may lose some weight in the short term, but that weight loss will slow down, making you frustrated and likely to give up the restrictive diet.

Unfortunately when you start to eat more, which is inevitable once your initial discipline and determination have worn off, you will put back on the weight even faster.

Once your metabolic rate has slowed, it doesn’t magically speed up when you start eating more. The only result is weight gain

This is just one reason why it’s time to cut the calorie cr*p, after all what is a calorie?

It’s a measure of energy, based on work done by measuring the heat of combustion of human pooh with a ‘bomb calorimeter’, after eating different foods.

Yes really! As humans, we’re not bomb calorimeters.

The calorie approach also takes no account of what different foods do in the body. All calories are not equal – 100 calories of doughnut does entirely different things to your body than 100 calories of rump steak.

Reducing calories is NOT sustainable and does NOT take into account your age, sex, weight or whether your body is in fat-burning mode.

What you REALLY need for long term sustainable weight loss AND to keep it off is a personalised weight loss strategy.

This is what I teach my clients inside The Menopause Method my personalised 12-week 1:1 programme for women who are ready to start getting back to normal and feeling like their old selves again.

Apply to work with me from via ritchnutrition.com/method.