The Livy Method Podcast - Menopause and Weight Loss with Dr. Jennifer Zelovitzky - Fall 2025

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

In this episode, Gina sits down with Medical Doctor and Certified Menopause Practitioner Dr. Jennifer Zelovitzky for a wide-ranging chat on aging, hormones, weight, and the medical gaslighting that so many women still face. With her signature candour, Dr. Jennifer shares how she’s helping women navigate everything from perimenopause to postmenopause with clarity and compassion. They talk HRT, bone density, belly fat, and the importance of advocating for yourself at the doctor’s office—even when it feels uncomfortable. If you’ve ever walked away from an appointment feeling dismissed, this one’s for you.Find Dr. Jennifer:Instagram & YouTube: @drjenzeloYou can find the full video hosted at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodfall2025To learn more about The Livy Method, visit livymethod.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy, and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams for my 91-day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews, and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on ACAST, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music.

We're focusing on sustainable habits, not quick-fixing. Is it an opportunity to get curious? We're here, help people get to their health goals. One piece of time. Be build and build and build and build. Menopause and weight loss or menopause and weight gain. That's the topic of conversation today. Joining me is Dr. Jennifer.

Zalovitsky, she's an MD, she's a menopause practitioner, she is the clinical director at for Women's Health at Megcan. She is just amazing. Hello. Hi, Gina. Thank you so much. That's very kind of you. I should say for any of our new members, Jennifer was a part of our menopause add-on that we did, I think three sessions last year, very familiar with the program and our members and how hard they are working to lose weight in the healthiest of ways. So where should we start with this conversation of, I think at this point, the conversation of menopause has blown up so much. We have a general understanding of it.

But what about when it comes to weight loss and weight gain? What's happening there? I wish I could tell you we have great clarity on this. I just returned from Montreal. I went to the Canadian Menopause Society conference. And I sat through two whole days of very engaging and interesting talks, many of which touched on this very topic. And the bottom line is we know some things.

We don't know everything. And it's not as straightforward as it's all hormonal, right? Think of weight gain and weight loss at midlife, especially for women, as a giant interconnected web of different factors. But that. Because of that and because they will affect each individual woman to a different degree, it's a process of untangling it sometimes, attacking various aspects of that web and seeing what actually moves the needle for you as an individual. Yeah. I mean, I've had so many women join us over the years and say, is your program going to

work for me? I'm in perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause. And I'm I'm like, yes, of course, because we don't just look at what you eat and when. We look at other factors, like your sleep, like your stress, like what's happening in your body. To me, I think, you know, menopause, we feel the effects so deeply because I think by the time we transition to that age and stage of our lives, we are so broken down and stressed out. And we've gone on so many diets and starved ourselves that are really not in great shape as we roll into. this part of our lives. Yes, the changes are starting in our 30s, right? Around 35, we start to experience loss of muscle mass, lean muscle mass. That leads to some of the issues downstream with respect to more visceral fat deposition, which means more inflammation. We're also at a point in

our lives where we really are dealing with so many things. Many of us are dealing with a career that might be sort of either kicking into high gear or bringing greater responsibilities. We are having maybe children that are getting older and bigger kids, bigger problems. And then we have maybe aging parents. Yeah. We might be going through marital transitions, moves, big life stressors. And then on top of it, we're getting more tired because of some of the things going on in our brain. So you have to think of this as just the crux of all of these things coming together to work against us metabolically well this is where the living method and now i'm not trying to sell you on the living

method because you're already here obviously you're listening is this is where we give the body what it needs so it's no longer feeling a need to store fat help the body focus on fat loss and this is where the things that you're doing to lose weight on the living method are also the things that you're doing to help manage your menopause symptoms. I mean, at the end of the day, every woman's going to go through menopause. It's really the symptoms that are giving us a hard time. For example, if you are not getting sleep and you have hot flashes at night, obvious that sleep is leading into cravings the next day, the way your body processes your food is differently, your body is unable to repair and rebuild and regenerate and rejuvenate and detox, which you need your

body to do when it comes to fat loss. So a lot of our weight gain or our difficulty in losing, weight, would you say, is tied into the symptoms of menopause? Yes, and I will touch on sleep because one of the talks I attended was about perimenopause in particular and how we need a whole new paradigm when we're talking about it, where sleep disruption is actually at the center of it. And I've observed this for a long time in my clinical practice where it is sleep that goes downhill first for many women in perimenopause. Sleep independently, in many studies, linked to greater weight gain in post-menopause, greater BMI increase, greater waist circumference increase.

I can't say we completely understand the mechanisms of this, but we do know too little sleep and too much sleep, interestingly, we're both associated with weight gain. So less than six hours, greater than nine hours. want to land somewhere in that sweet spot seven to eight hours and I'm not saying pointing my finger at you and saying get better sleep. It's not always as simple as sleep hygiene for women at midlife. Yeah, well, a couple things. First of all, we're going to do a whole sleep series next week. We're going to have sleep and your brain. What's happening there? Actually, sleep hygiene

and tips and then what's happening with your hormones. My other statement is who the fuck is getting more than 10 hours sleep, Dr. Jennifer. I mean, come on. You know, the only thing I can think of is maybe depression can manifest as we call hypersomnalance where you're just sleeping all day because you don't want to be awake. And it may not necessarily be high quality sleep. Like the sleep architecture, I know you'll get into this with your sleep expert, but sleep architecture is changing.

We're not getting as much deep sleep. So if you're only getting superficial sleep, you may be napping all day. you may be sleeping longer than you need to or want to because it's not high quality sleep. Yeah, so that you're exhausted and you're sleeping 10 hours and you're still tired. Yeah, I totally get that. You know, how is the conversation different when it comes to weight loss for perimenopause versus postmenopause? Because I know we generalize a lot because they all kind of fall under the same umbrella. and menopause is just like your one day after gone a year without your cycle.

It's also confusing, but is it different when you were younger versus when you were older? Because I have a comment here from Scarlett, 74-year-old, active senior, still experiencing night sweats, although not as bad as in my 50s and 60s, right? Still trying to get a good night's sleep. So lots of, yeah, lots to unpack there. So there are a lot. The good news is, even if you are outside of that window where hormone, therapy is likely to be effective.

And the reason for that is the receptors about 10 years after that final period, the estrogen receptors just aren't as sensitive anymore, but there are other factors that might be influencing hot flashes and sleep. We now have new non-hormonal options, which would be a potential option for someone like, it's scarlet, right? I don't want to get it wrong. Something called a candy neuron targeted therapy that will. help with hot flashes non-hormonally, so it will still work because it works directly on the

brain. And it also can help with their, therefore, help with sleep. But there's also something called anorexin receptor in the brain. Anorexin is the receptor that controls our wakefulness and our ability to sleep. And this becomes overactive in women as estrogen declines. And there are medications called orexin um erexin receptor agonists that actually or antagonists sorry that help suppress that they suppress wakefulness uh these medications lemorexsant or de vigo there's another one called quivique that are available now that are very safe they are not habit forming uh safe for the vast majority of women and men and can be very helpful because there's many things at play with sleep when it comes to postmenopause.

But with respect to weight gain, I would say, what you have to remember is perimenopause is a time of complete chaos. I often refer to it with patients as like a bucking bronco, right? Like we're trying to control things when internally your hormonal levels are out of control. Whereas post menopause, which may only be one day, but it lasts for 30 years if we're lucky. these are more stable. So even though you have to be mindful that the processes that started in perimenopause will continue, often women can find that they can remain more consistent with what they're

doing because the hormonal levels aren't as chaotic. Things are at least stable and some of the trajectory of weight gain can start to slow down a little bit. I get this. So when I was going through perimenopause, I had, I had night sweats so bad. I had frozen shoulder, vertigo, heartburn, heart palpitations. I literally thought like I was going to have a heart attack. I mood swings, all that. It was very chaotic. Now I've gone, well, I went like seven months without a menstrual cycle. Then I came back. Now I'm on my second seven months. And I feel so much better. And full transparency, I have not done HRT or MRT yet, yet, because I'm looking into it for other health benefits.

As we go through the menopause into the postmenopause, it's not that you don't experience any symptoms. It's just that they seem to be less chaotic. Is that correct? Correct. Things do tend for most women to at least settle down. reduce as they get past that final period and beyond. But there are many women like Scarlett who continue to have some hot flashes long beyond that final period.

And the good news is there are so many things we can do now because we do understand it better. Okay. So I do want to get into and not so much HRT because we have to be mindful about this conversation because people really should be going and having these discussions with their health care providers. the problem is some of their health care providers may not be up to speed on, you know, what's new and what's happening in terms of menopause, but HRT or non-HRT options are available.

And what they do is treat the symptoms of menopause. It's not like if you take an HRT, that is going to cause you to lose weight. It's just that it addresses the symptoms, correct? Can we talk about that for a second? Correct, correct. So if, for example, you're not sleeping because you're having night sweats, that would be a very good thing to do to talk to your doctor about H.R.T or non-HRT, something to control those night sweats because if that's disrupting your sleep, the downstream effects of lack of sleep are so detrimental to our weight and our metabolism. We expend less energy. We crave more sweets and fats. we struggle more with brain fog, we have more irritability and depression, which further drive us to snack maybe or eat the wrong things. And then the sleep independently is also responsible

for weight gain. And that visceral fat that starts to accumulate, it's pro-inflammatory. And it can produce a tiny bit of estrogen, which is kind of like its own little biohack, right? So it thinks it's doing our body a favor, but it's actually very detrimental to us. So yes, I would say to the extent that it is causing your lifestyle habits to be impaired, it's a very good option. But many women are disappointed when I tell them HRT is not a weight loss medication because weight loss is too complicated and multifactorial to be chalked up simply to estrogen, right? So the good news is lifestyle modifications remain the cornerstone of weight gain and thereby weight loss in the menopause transition and beyond. And this has been verified as recently as two days ago by a brand new white paper that the International Menopause Society put out that examined all of the evidence around weight and metabolism.

and the importance of lifestyle interventions in menopause. So, yeah, it's in your hands. That's so great to hear that we're on the right track. I mean, we know this, but the people who are following and struggling and frustrated with their weight, they know we need to say it more and more and more. Because I think when women think of dieting, we think eat less, exercise more. And that isn't, I mean, yes, you have to make sure you eat healthy, nutrient-rich foods. yes, you want to make sure you're exercising, moving your body to help manage your stress,

to help with sleep and to, you know, maintain or build up that muscle mass. But it is really, and we're talking about maximizing this week, which is understanding how important managing your stress and your sleep and getting that movement and working with your health care providers is. It's so much more. Really, healthy, sustainable weight loss, really from a physical perspective, comes down to hormones. In the group today, we posted, post just on all the other hormones involved, your cortisol and your insulin and your hunger hormones and all of that.

So this is good news. What we're saying is you have a lot of control over doing something about your weight or, you know, losing weight, preventing weight gain by the things that you're doing when it comes to following the program. In your mind, what is the, so sleep obviously is hugely important. And I would say the same, sleep for menopause, sleep for weight loss. what else like how important is the working out the the the protein the all of that it's all crucial so what was reinforced this weekend for me um was the importance of our our muscle mass of maintaining it so that protein is crucial uh fiber is also crucial because as you i'm sure i'm preaching to the choir here but fiber is essential for keeping our GI

tract coming and maintaining a good in and out kind of balance there but also for weight it's it's associated with weight loss but exercise both resistance training and cardiovascular cardio exercise especially high intensity interval training it's crucial to have both you can't just do one or the other skeletal muscle mass is very important to maintain but it's not really protecting your heart and your brain the way at least short bursts of cardio are. And I just want to say the thing that I see, and I say this with so much love, but we need to get really honest with ourselves and not make excuses for why we can't move. So I often see women completely sidelined by an injury.

Like you, Gina, I had a full year where I couldn't raise my arms. I couldn't reach into the dryer both sides without extreme pain. I focused on my abs. I focused on my lower body. I focused on my glutes. I said, what can I still do? But I think that not only do I see sometimes people just feel so discouraged, they can't do the thing they enjoy doing so they stop doing everything.

But I also hear of even well-intentioned physiotherapists and physicians who are telling patients. you need to just rest. And the interpretation there is, stop doing everything. And that creates just this terrible cascade because I've seen some studies that show that, especially for older adults, it's not a gentle, gradual decline in our ability to move. It's these stepwise, steep declines. So something happens. Life gets really stressful.

you stop and it's a steep decline and then your baseline is never the same and then maybe an injury steep decline you never get back to that baseline so the key is to never stop moving whatever that means to you i just i saw my aunt the other day and she's just she's just lost 50 pounds because she was told if she needed she wanted to have a particular surgery and they said you need to lose 50 pounds so she attacked it through diet and lifestyle and she said all i could do is at first was sit in a chair with two pound weights. But she did it. She committed to it.

And she said, the weights got a little heavier. As the weight came off, she was able to walk. You know, it's just, it can start so small. But whatever you can do matters. You know, thank you so much for saying that because you go out there and no disrespect to Stacey Sims. She's jacked and she's telling us we got a left heavy weights. I mean, the science and studies are now showing us heavy weights or lighter weights with more reps.

It's all the same, same. We are trying to look like spicy. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, that's our like, that's what we have. Like in menopause, you have to live, you have to live heavy. Like, fuck that shit. I don't got time for anything throughout my day. And I think that's the problem is that our idea of what we need to do for exercise, it's so extreme that just the thought of it.

is exhausting and or like you know you have to you have to walk 10,000 million steps oh just get out of your house walk around the block the first day you're going to feel great walk a little further but I think of what we want to drive home is it's so important and this can affect your lifespan and quality of life we know you should be able to do squats and whenever we talk about this people like well my knee or my back well your knee and your back is only going to get worse if you can't sit on the toilet and walk downstairs and you got to start slow and build up and do what you can. Your body is meant to move. But it is, it means sometimes we put that pressure on ourselves. Okay. And I just want to say the reason why you have to maintain that

muscle mass is that as you get older, you tend not to be as active. So your muscle mass starts to decline. And what happens is when you eat foods, your body breaks them down into carbohydrates and glycogen. And sorry, when you eat carbohydrates, your body breaks them down to glycogen. Your body stores that in your liver, in your muscles, and in your fat. And if you don't have the muscle to store that, then it's going to your fat. And that's where you get that midsection fat. And even with a new, with just a eat less exercise, more diet or even the new GLP ones, what you're losing is that surface fat. You're not actually getting into that deep and visceral fat. And that's where those lifestyle changes are so important.

Exactly. Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to go off there. I lost my mind for a sec. What else, for the sake of time, we have a few more minutes. Do you think women need to? to know when it comes to metapause and weight loss, when they're trying to lose weight in all the healthiest of ways? Look, I would say the one thing we don't have control over is genetic factors and all of the things that we don't yet understand about how all of these different factors play against each other. It is, I think we have to become more comfortable with a little bit of change in our

weight and our body composition after the menopause transition, I see a lot of women who are extremely distressed to the point where it's ruining their lives because they might have gained two or three pounds above what they consider their goal weight. But what if we shift our goal? What if our goal isn't the number on the scale? What if our goal is how much we can we can lift how many grocery bags we can lift at the same time or how well we can play with our grandchildren or you know how quickly we can walk when we do our little power walk or just anything else that's associated with strong rather than skinny it's so unfortunate because I know all of society, and especially what's going on with Hollywood now,

where perfectly normal-sized women are on GLP-1s to be emaciated. And that is not healthy. That is not normal. And I personally believe that's a new form of eating disorder that we're seeing. That is quite alarming to me. So I want us to shift our, our pain. paradigm of what we're considering to be a healthy body. Yeah, because, you know, it's interesting.

I was talking to Dr. Sheffali. I had her on my podcast and she's brilliant. And I was just like, yeah, talk to us about this. We feel like we're on this decline when we're in menopause and we're no longer this. And she's like, you are. You are. That's just how it is. Like you had, you know, your, you know, your era in your 20s and your 30s and your

and this is a new era. You're not going to look like you did when you were in your 20s. We all want to go back, but there's this feeling of loss when we go through menopause. Physically, our body's changing. Mentally, you know, we're having a harder time. We feel like we're aging or brain fog and all of that. It can be really tough transition. Now, it's great that there's so many things that we can do about it. And again, I want to reiterate all the things you're going to be doing when it comes to following the program. But that part is hard for women. You must talk to to a lot of women who are like, this just fucking sucks,

Dr. Dr. Z. And I'm there too. I mean, I'm going to be 52 early next year, right? I'm right there with you. I sometimes have these little glimmers of a little bit of sadness.

But then I remember how much more confident I feel now. I think as we get into our 40s and 50s, and I can say from the other side of 50, that no F, to give, it really kicks in. My self-confidence is actually improving and my faith in myself and my ability to make a decision. Yes, I have to adapt how I do things. I have brain fog and at night I don't burn the midnight oil anymore. I used to love getting on my computer and doing my work 12 o'clock at night when the house was quiet. I can't do that anymore. I now accept the fact that I need

my sleep. So if any mentally tasking things are going to have to happen earlier in the day, but that's great because now I prioritize my wind down time at night. And nighttime is truly a time I treasure just to talk with my husband or do things like folding laundry, things that are not too mentally tasking. I adapted it. One fun thing about the shift from my shifting my relationship with my own body is that I started sort of strength training and it's for me it's mostly body weight resistance. I don't have a

fancy gym, right? I have a couple of lightweights, nothing heavier than 20 pounds. And I've been doing this now for about five years, but really three years in earnest. And the other day I was going through my closet and I had to get rid of all my old blue jeans because they didn't fit. And the reason they didn't fit was because my thighs have gotten bigger. Yeah. But not in a bad way. And I had to reframe it because it can feel really demoralizing to not fit into your skinny jeans. Then I said, but wait, this is because I've been really focusing on improving those squats, right?

And walking more and doing the things I need to do. And it's because I got stronger. So that's a great reason to not fit into my pants. And it's just one example of ways that we can reframe. the aging process. It's a privilege. It's a privilege to get older. I lost a sister at 28, right? So it's never that far from my mind that it's a privilege to get older. Yeah. We can't go back, but we can feel the best we can, right? Like that's what it's about. We still have a long way to go and a lot of life to live and we want to look and feel our best.

But if we keep like, you know, trying to put it up to where we were in our 20s, we're always going to be unhappy and disappointed. There's a lot that we can do. Now, we did not get into H-R-T-M-R-T menopause hormone therapy. Yeah, they're calling it now. Because it's such a complicated conversation and it really is best to have that with your health care provider. If you follow Dr. Jennifer Zellivitsky over on her Instagram account and YouTube, Dr. Jen Zello, she gives all sorts of tips and information over there that HRT, M-R-T, absolutely can. and help estrogen creams that's one that I'm taking definitely I'm on that one definitely making a difference I can tell but before we go away we just had our

conversation on supplements this this week if you were to recommend any supplements let's just say your top three or four what would they be my my top I'm gonna say my top five if that's okay sure vitamin D essential magnesium at bedtime, a probiotic, preventatively every day, a B complex for the brain and carbohydrate metabolism, and there is some evidence that creatine, in conjunction with resistance training, is quite effective, especially for postmenopausal women. Okay. I, guys, I did not pay her to say that, because those are also our top five as well.

And I love that you said that, and I love that I asked that because it's not about any crazy thing you're taking or concoction of, you know, whatever that is. It's really the basics that help your body function on the most basic level. The ones I take. So, yeah, it's based in science. It's based in evidence. Yeah, we're all about science and evidence around here. Before we go, you know how hard we're working to make change and to lose weight for the sake

of feeling our best words of wisdom before you go today oh little steps really add up i am i am doing it too i am doing it too and i i feel every one of you i started from a a pretty low place five years ago health wise body wise and i just kept putting one foot in front of the other and i just trusted that even though what i was doing wasn't going to work overnight over the long term it was going to improve my health. And when health became the barometer rather than the scale, everything shifted for me. And I know that you're all here because you feel the same way. And I can vouch for what Gina does.

It's an evidence-based, lifestyle-based program. There are no hacks out there that you're missing out on. Trust me. If there was a miracle, I'd be using it too. but there is no miracle cure for weight loss. Let's work on one. Let's work on one. Again, these conversations are meant for awareness.

It's just to get you thinking and understanding that you're here. You're showing up. You are doing the work already and maybe give you some insight into some of the areas that you can focus on. Dr. Jennifer Zelivisky, we are so honored to have you join us in the program. Again, reach out, follow her, Dr. Jen Zello over on Instagram and YouTube. Thanks to everyone who joining us live, your comments and your questions. And Dr. Jennifer Zelovitsky, thank you again. Thank you so much for having me, Gina.

Have a great day, everybody.