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The Chalene Show | Diet, Fitness & Life Balance

Lifer Update Plus The Cortisol Belly Answers You Need To Know - 1290

The Chalene Show | Diet, Fitness & Life Balance

Chalene Johnson

Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 7.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Question - Would you rather new episodes drop on Sundays or keep on Fridays? Let me know in the podsquad.

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For women over 40, especially in perimenopause and menopause, belly fat isn't just about calories or willpower. It's about hormones, cortisol, and a specific type of fat most people don't fully understand: visceral fat. And here's the frustrating part… a lot of the advice women have been following for years can actually make it worse.

In this episode, Chalene Johnson breaks down what's really happening inside the body during midlife, why common weight loss strategies backfire, and what actually works to reduce stubborn belly fat without slowing metabolism or increasing stress.

What Chalene Talks About:
• Why visceral fat behaves differently (and why it's harder to lose)
• The real connection between cortisol, stress, and midsection weight gain
• Why eating less can backfire in perimenopause and menopause
• The "protein preloading" strategy that helped reduce belly fat
• A simple way to hit protein goals without tracking or counting
• Why certain workouts may be increasing stress hormones
• The best type of movement to support fat loss after 40
• How muscle impacts metabolism and long-term fat loss
• The supplements that may support blood sugar, sleep, and hormones

If you've been doing everything "right" and still feel stuck with belly fat, this will finally make it make sense… and give you a much simpler way forward.

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🎉 Related Links:

 

🤓 Related Episodes:
STOP Doing 10,000 Steps After 40 (Do THIS Instead)

 

I Tried EVERY Walking Pad to See Which Works BEST for Fat Loss

 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey, before we get too far, I know I've talked a lot about the supplements that I take in powder form.

0:06.3

There's a lot of them.

0:07.6

And there's, of course, the things I take in capsule form.

0:10.7

But I also take a few things in gummy form.

0:14.5

And one of the things that I started taking about a year ago, actually, when we were in Europe last year, is saffron.

0:21.3

And I started taking it because I heard about quite a few studies that demonstrated that

0:27.8

saffron made significant improvements in people's, their ability to reduce their anxiety,

0:36.0

to feel more relaxed, to have mental clarity.

0:39.4

And of course, that's going to improve your sleep, right?

0:42.7

Because that's one of the main reasons why so many of us struggle to sleep and now you lay

0:47.2

down and your brain just doesn't stop spinning.

0:50.7

So anyways, I looked into it.

0:52.2

You know me.

0:52.6

I love to see a good study and there's been a ton of them.

0:56.0

In fact, April through July 2025, this is brand new, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study looking at the impact of taking saffron daily for just three months. And the results I can tell you

1:14.1

were pretty astonishing. A marked decrease in depression, anxiety, and stress. 72.3% of the

1:22.8

participants in the saffron group achieved significant improvements on their mental state. So talking about

1:30.5

having less anxiety. And of course, that I think is one of the reasons why it contributes to fewer

1:35.8

sleep disturbances for those especially who are taking the saffron. So listen, I'm definitely not

1:41.4

telling you to go off your SSRIs. And if you're on an antidepressant, that's awesome.

1:45.8

But if you're one of those people who you've been thinking like, I don't know, I don't know what it is, I just, I don't feel as happy as I usually am. Or I just feel kind of meh. You know what I'm talking about. You can't put your finger on it, but you're like, I'm just not as happy. or maybe I'm dealing with more anxiety or things are bugging me more than they usually do.

2:03.5

You've heard me talk about Organify for years. And Organify

...

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