If You Want To Find Your Weight Loss Code You Should: Stop believing that everything that is working for other women is also going to work for you Do a hormone test that tells you what your body is asking for and when Find a balance between a calorie-restrictive diet and a way to nourish your adrenal system and thyroid   I know first hand how frustrating it can be to not know what is going on with your body. The #1 most disruptive symptom I hear from women in perimenopause and beyond is unexplained weight gain and weight loss resistance. Often times it’s a combination of hormones and lifestyle that can be the culprit, but it takes some work to figure out your unique weight loss code.   You Are Not Alone in This Struggle Karen Martel is a Certified Transformational Nutrition Coach and weight loss and hormone expert. After finding stubborn weight after the birth of her first child, Karen tried everything that other women were doing but still found no success. It wasn’t until a naturopath ran a hormone lab that she realized the real source of her issues. Karen is determined to bring this knowledge to other women, and help them breakthrough weight loss resistance to find their own personal weight loss code. Through nutrition and hormone optimization, Karen is passionate about helping the millions of other women dealing with these issues figure their bodies out.   The Goldilocks Protocol Almost every woman in North America is dealing with some sort of cortisol or insulin issue but doesn’t know it. When we enter our late 30’s and early 40’s, our progesterone and estrogen start to drop and can wreak havoc on our hormone levels. A common side effect of this change in hormones is weight gain, but it takes an individualized protocol to figure out what is going to work for you. Over-exercising, restricting our food intake, and trying to place a bandaid on our root cause of hormone issues is not doing you any good. You can’t lie to yourself about your health, and it is time you started listening to what your body is trying to tell you to find lasting change.   Finding The Diet That Works For You As women, we are constantly bombarded with the next new diet that promises to cure all of our concerns. In reality, these fad diets are ruining your metabolism and making us suffer. Methodologies such as the ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting can work as a therapeutic way to get your hormones back on track, but they are not sustainable in the long term, especially for women. Karen recommends a primal based diet, which is easier to follow and puts you in a natural caloric deficit without all of the sufferings. While there is no magic pill to fix your root cause issues, coming to terms with that and putting the work into figuring out your personal weight loss code can have a game-changing effect on your overall health. Are you ready to get to the bottom of your stubborn weight gain and weight loss resistance? Share which of Karen’s tips you are going to implement to discover your personal weight loss code with me in the comments section of the episode page.   Quotes: “There are so many women that are going through what I am going through. And everybody looks at them like ‘well you are not working out hard enough, you are not eating perfect enough, you are not calorie counting’. And I was like, that is the worst advice for somebody like myself and what I was going through.” (10:55) “When women start to get to this stage in their life, this perimenopausal stage in their late 30’s and early 40’s, you really need to start looking at it from this very holistic point of view.” (16:51) “We know that fasting is really hard on your adrenals. So here we have this society of overly stressed-out women who are then fasting all day long and eating a low carb diet, and many of them with undiagnosed hypothyroidism. And that low carb stress, because fasting is stress, is just putting fuel to the fire. And women are really wrecking their metabolisms when they o