Menopause weight gain, rosé and the “I’ll sort it in September” trap

Why summer can make menopause weight gain, cravings, sleep and energy feel harder to manage, and why waiting for a September reset probably isn’t the answer.

August has a habit of eating your routine. One minute you’re merrily doing your normal thing. Breakfast. Walk. Gym. Bed at a vaguely sensible hour. Next minute it’s BBQs, weddings, holidays, “shall we just have a drink in the garden?”, lunches that start at 1pm and somehow finish at 7pm, and an airport breakfast consisting of coffee and whatever you can wrestle out of WHSmith before boarding closes.

Then menopause comes along for the ride - because apparently summer socialising wasn’t quite enough fun without adding dodgy sleep, hotter nights, unpredictable energy, bloating, alcohol suddenly hitting you like you’ve necked three bottles of Lambrini, and a body that can feel considerably less forgiving of a week of eating on the hoof than it did at 32.

None of this means you’ve “been bad”. It’s summer. You’ve probably had a bloody lovely time (and maybe a little more chicken wine than was necessary). But somewhere around the third week of August, lots of women arrive at the same place:

I feel a bit puffy.

I’m knackered.

My digestion has gone rogue.

I’ve barely moved for a fortnight.

Why am I craving everything?

And whose jeans are these because they appear to have shrunk?

Closely followed by:

Right. I’ll sort myself out in September.

There it is, you see... The September trap.

Why summer can make menopause weight gain harder to manage

Most women don’t head into summer thinking, “Excellent. I shall abandon every habit that makes me feel good and spend August feeling increasingly like a hot, tired potato.”

There were intentions. Maybe you were going to keep walking, eat plenty of protein, not drink every time somebody opened a bottle of rosé within a 30-metre radius, keep some sort of sleep routine... Then everybody else’s plans arrived: the neighbour’s BBQ, the wedding, the weekend away, the kids being home, the holiday, the “we might as well, we’re on holiday” ice cream, the second “we might as well, we’re on holiday” ice cream.... And before you know it, your normal routines have disappeared faster than Joey Tribbiani when somebody says “share food”.

Here’s the important bit I want you to see. The BBQ isn’t the problem. The ice cream isn’t the problem. Nor is eating chips on the beach, birthday cake, cocktails, hotel breakfasts or the frankly magnificent amount of chocolate you bought “for the journey”. The problem is when everything that normally anchors you disappears at the same time.

And in midlife, you often notice that more. Sleep goes wonky and you’re hungrier the next day, you skip breakfast, run on coffee and suddenly the biscuit tin is giving you come-hither eyes at 11am, you drink more than usual and your sleep, temperature regulation and energy all join forces to ruin your Tuesday, you stop moving, feel sluggish and then feel even less like moving. One thing nudges another. It’s rarely one spectacular dietary disaster. It’s death by a thousand “oh sod it, it’s August” decisions.

You do not need to become the woman who takes Tupperware to a wedding.

The answer is not a stricter set of food rules. Please do not become the person solemnly declining your best friend’s birthday cake because MyFitnessPal says you’ve used all your carbs. I will personally stage an intervention.

What helps far more is knowing which habits make the biggest difference to how YOU feel. Not the things Instagram says you should be doing, the elaborate morning routine involving lemon water, journalling, 10,000 steps and possibly standing on one leg facing east but YOUR things.

The menopause habits that make the biggest difference

When life gets busy, I often ask clients:

Of everything you normally do for your health, which one or two things make the biggest difference to how you feel when you keep doing them?

You probably know. Maybe it’s sleep. If three late nights turn you into an exhausted carb-seeking missile, protecting bedtime most nights might matter more than whether dinner contains broccoli.

Maybe it’s movement. You don’t need your usual gym routine on holiday, but walking every day means you still feel like you. Your mood is better. Your digestion is happier. Your body feels less creaky.

Maybe it’s breakfast. For plenty of women in menopause, having a decent protein-rich breakfast means the difference between a fairly normal day of eating and spending the afternoon rummaging around the kitchen looking for something sweet.

Maybe it’s alcohol. You’ve realised that what once felt like “a couple of glasses” now comes with the exciting menopausal bundle deal of 3am waking, night sweats and feeling like roadkill the next morning.

Or maybe it’s something completely different. But there’s usually something. What’s yours?

That’s your anchor. Not perfection, just something that holds you loosely in position. Keep the anchor, let the rest flex.

Healthy eating during menopause doesn’t require perfection

This is the bit I think we massively underestimate. You don’t need to maintain your entire normal routine through holidays, weddings and summer socialising. You need a thread; something that keeps you connected to the version of you who feels well.

You can have the restaurant meal AND go for a walk the next morning.

You can eat the wedding cake AND have a normal breakfast.

You can spend a day horizontal beside a pool reading something wonderfully trashy AND drink some actual water.

You can have a week that looks nothing like your normal week without deciding the whole month is now a write-off.

This matters because one of the most unhelpful habits we bring with us from decades of dieting is this idea that once we’ve gone “off plan”, there’s no point doing anything useful until we officially start again.

Which brings us to September...

Why the September menopause weight loss reset can backfire

(AKA, the magical future woman of September)

Oh, September.... New notebooks, back to school, new pencil case energy, a collective feeling that we should probably get our shit together...

September can be a brilliant time to reset. The problem is when “I’ll start again in September” becomes permission to abandon yourself in August. Because September You is apparently incredible.

She meal plans.

She gets eight hours’ sleep.

She strength trains three times a week.

She drinks two litres of water.

She cooks everything from scratch.

She never feels stressed.

She probably owns matching storage jars.

Current You, meanwhile, is eating a Magnum while scrolling through photos from Saturday wondering whether your face always looked like that. We hand everything over to September Woman because she’ll have more motivation, more time, more discipline, etc. Except she won’t. She’ll have emails, work, school (or university) logistics, laundry, darkening evenings, a diary filling up again, and approximately 14 minutes after the kids go back to school/ university, supermarkets will begin putting out the mince pies.

September does not arrive carrying a metabolism reset button. And menopause does not give a toss that you bought a new notebook.

What to do about menopause weight gain after summer

You don’t need to launch a health transformation on Bank Holiday Monday.

You need two things. First, find your anchor.

What’s the habit that makes you feel noticeably better when you do it?

A proper breakfast?

Walking?

Getting to bed before you start watching “just one more”?

Drinking less often?

Eating some actual vegetables between BBQs?

Keep doing that - loosely, imperfectly, but repeatedly.

Second, do one thing now. Not September, not Monday, or when the kids go back. This week. Something small enough that your brain doesn’t immediately start negotiating with you. It might look like:

Book your gym session.

Buy the breakfast food.

Go for the walk.

Fill the water bottle.

Put your phone down and go to bed.

Make tomorrow’s lunch before tomorrow becomes one of those days when it’s suddenly 2.17pm and you’re standing in the kitchen eating crackers.

Tiny actions aren’t pointless, they’re how momentum starts. September works much better when you don’t arrive there feeling like you need to undo August first.

Quick pep talk

You haven’t ruined anything. Perhaps summer has been messier than you planned.

Perhaps your menopause symptoms have kicked off. Maybe your energy has dipped.

Perhaps your shorts feel tighter, or there has been considerably more beige food than the NHS would ideally recommend.

Fine. What happened happened and what didn't happen, didn't happen. You do not need punishment. You need your next few useful decisions. That is all.

So here’s the question I want you to take away:

What’s the ONE thing that, if you kept doing it through the messy bits, would help you feel more like yourself? Start there, and let September build on it, not rescue you from it.

Fancy figuring out what your midlife body actually needs?

If you’ve reached the point where you know something needs to change but you’re not entirely sure WHAT, have a look at my Missing Midlife Manual. Because throwing another diet at a menopausal body and hoping for the best is getting a bit old.

The Missing Midlife Manual will help you start making sense of what’s going on and where to focus next, without turning food, exercise and your bloody hormones into a second full-time job.

GET ALL THE EPISODES OF THE PRIVATE PODCAST HERE NOW