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For high-performing women who are exhausted by weight gain, hormonal chaos, and vanishing energy — this is your reset. I’m Dr. Ade Akindipe, a DNP, obesity + hormone specialist, and health coach.
On this show, we demystify metabolism, gut health, hormone balance, longevity, and the root-cause mindset behind lasting transformation.
If you’re ready to stop fighting your body and start living with more clarity, energy, and confidence — this is your space.
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Welcome to the Elevated Woman's Podcast, your guide to optimal health and confidence. I'm Dr. Ade Akindipe, family nurse practitioner and women's health coach. I help women in midlife reset their bodies and reclaim their confidence. So this is the place where real talk meets real solutions. No quick fixes, no fluff, just the tools, strategies and stories you need to break free from stubborn weight gain.
balancing your hormones and stepping into your healthiest self yet. Whether you're navigating perimenopause, menopause, or simply just tired of feeling like your body's working against you, then you're in the right place. Let's get into it.
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Okay, ladies, today's episode is for the woman who's thinking, I don't need another plan. I've tried them all. I just want to know what's actually happening in my body. Here's the truth. Faster results don't come from doing more. They come from knowing more about your body. I feel like most women don't lack discipline. They lack feedback. They lack understanding of what's really happening in their body. So what's happening is that they're making decisions about food,
went to fast, what kinds of exercise, what type of supplements without totally understanding how their body is responding. So when results stall, the default response is, okay, well, I'm eating too much probably, so I should probably eat less, or I need to train harder, or I need to be more strict with what I'm doing. So they're going after the next fad diet, the next thing on social media, or something a friend or family member has said works.
So, but what I'm finding is that discipline without information is just guessing and guessing is exhausting, right? So when I say data, data actually means not numbers for the sake of numbers, but when I talk about data, I don't mean obsessing over every single metric, like weighing yourself every day. I mean collecting relevant signals that tells your body how your body is functioning. Let me break this down. The first thing is,
metabolic data, how your body handles fuel. This includes your fasting blood sugar. Fasting blood sugar is very important and often when we start off our assessments, we're looking at your fasting blood sugar. Is it low? Is it high? So opposite ends of the spectrum is important. If you're on the lower side of your blood sugar early in the morning, your blood sugars are really low and maybe you're not fueling yourself correctly. How are you going to exercise?
if your blood sugars are low. Your body probably would respond by trying to hold on to energy. The same also goes for the upper set end. If your blood sugars are high and you haven't had anything to eat, it means your body isn't processing or dealing with blood sugars the correct way. So your insulin tends to be higher and that means you're gonna store fat. What does your blood sugar look like after a meal? It's supposed to rise, but how long is it staying high like that?
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Your blood sugars after two to three hours should start to go back down, but if your blood sugar stay up for a really long time, your body's gonna wanna store the extra sugar in your bloodstream as fat. Patterns of crashes, what does it look like? What are you craving? Are you tired all the time? This really matters because if your blood sugar is unstable, your body will resist fat loss. Doesn't matter what you do, no matter how clean you eat. So tools that can really help you.
is a continuous glucose monitor or a CGM. I love this because it can give you so much more than just numbers, but if you plug that in with what you're doing on a day-to-day basis, it can give you information about your blood sugars and what you might need to tweak. Sometimes a finger stick, if you don't wanna do the CGM, you can prick your finger and check it. That's something that some diabetics will use to monitor their blood sugar. It works for you. That's fine too. Or simply tracking.
your symptoms after meals. How do you feel? Are you bloated? Are you moody? Are you irritable? Are you more tired? Do you get joint aches? Anything. Look at those symptoms and track them and go to your provider with this information that will give you a lot more than just listen to what my friend said, right? So what progress should look like if you are working with this data is that you should have fewer crashes. When I say crashes, like,
energy crashes, blood sugar crashes. You should have more energy, less urgency around food, not feeling like you need to eat right now or I'm going to pass out, right? Reduce cravings, especially for foods that are higher in carbs and sugar. So let's look into energy and recovery data, how hard you're pushing. This includes your morning energy levels, workout recovery, sleep quality, resting heart rate, or what we call HRV, if it's available for you.
Why this matters is that low energy and poor recovery are usually signals of stress, okay? If your body is in a stressed state, it will prioritize survival, not weight loss. What progress should look like is more consistent recovery throughout the day. You exercise in the morning doesn't mean the rest of your day you need to thrive on caffeine. If your body's stressed out, faster workout recovery. You should feel great and recover faster. When you sleep, you wake up, feel refreshed.
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better sleep depth, less reliance on caffeine. If you're getting multiple cups of coffee throughout the day, to get through the day, that's another signal that you are not functioning optimally. Let's move on to the body composition. This I love and I do it on every single client that comes into our clinic. Very important because this gives you data on your muscle mass. Now, muscle mass gradually declines as we age. So,
You have a scale, wonderful scale, you step on it, it spits out all these numbers. And what I want to see women is what do the pounds look like? Are you low? Are you average? Are you above average? You need more muscle in relation to fat. So I will take out the sheet of paper and I will literally draw. And when I see a C shape on the body composition with a very long tail at the bottom, usually this is our body composition I'm describing here. I see a long tail.
that signals a lot more fat and comparing it muscle, that is what you want to be different. You want more muscle. So you want the line for muscle to be longer than the fat line. That's kind of how I used, what I used to kind of judge my women and how they're doing. And we kind of track that over time to make sure that your body composition is helping you to shift into fat burn again. And the more muscle you have on you, the better you're able to burn fat, even when you're not exercising.
We also look at your fat mass. How much fat do you have on you, right? We look at your waist or hip measurements. So if you have a larger waist circumference, right, that's telling me that you probably have a lot more what we call visceral fat on you. That deep fat that sits around your organs, that's a dangerous one. That's the one that leaves women at risk for diabetes, right? So the higher your waist circumference or what we call visceral fat,
That is your risk, that's your signal. How do your clothes fit? The scale alone doesn't tell you if your metabolism is improving. You can lose fat and gain muscle without seeing it on a scale. So what progress should we track? How are your clothes fitting? These are the questions that I ask my clients. Are you feeling less bloated? Are you less inflamed? How strong are you? Waist measurements are decreasing. Let's look at another piece of data that's important.
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When we look at your labs, we wanna look at your iron. Iron storage is important. Even diving a little bit deeper and looking at your ferritin, which is another marker for inflammation even. Sometimes if it's really, really high, you're inflamed. So looking at those numbers, if things are kinda stuck, are you low in iron? If you're low in iron, it's gonna be really hard for you to push through workouts. You don't have enough iron that's going to help with energy levels, right? Vitamin D, B vitamins.
Magnesium, these are great nutrients that you need for your cells to function. Your thyroid markers, right? If your thyroid is not optimal, it's going to be hard for your metabolism to rev up and burn fat. Your stress patterns, your menstrual cycles, right? If you're still having periods. This is why it matters. You can't expect your body to perform well without the building blocks it needs. Okay, so deficiencies like slow metabolism, your energy,
your recovery. So again, what does progress looks like? You have improved stamina, you have better mood, you're more resilient to stress, you're less wired, and you don't have that tired feeling all the time. All right, so what do you need to do with this data that you have? Data alone changes nothing, right? You can have all the data you want, but it's the interpretation of it. So this information should help you answer questions like,
Am I under fueling or overstressing in my body? So when I look at your continuous glucose monitor or your CGM data, I'm looking at those patterns. When are you dropping your blood sugar? Is it at nighttime? That could mean maybe you just aren't getting enough calories and especially maybe you are eating foods that are just, you eat them and then they crash, your blood sugars crash. So we need to change up what you're eating throughout the day. Are you overstressing your body? Do I need more recovery, right? Not more effort.
Is fasting helping me or hurting me? This is very important. Am I metabolically flexible or stressed out? This is why you should share this data, okay? You don't need someone to just give you a meal plan. This is why when women say, they come in and say, what is my meal plan? What is my plan? I can't just give you something that was given to the next woman because it worked for them. You probably don't have the same physiology. So we need to start by looking at your own data, interpreting it, and then coming up with a strategy.
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Someone who tells you to push harder. You don't need someone to tell you that. Someone who ignores your symptoms because your labs are normal, right? How many women will come and say that their labs are normal, so there's nothing wrong, they just need to keep doing it and eating less and moving more. So you need a provider, a coach who understands female physiology, okay? The hormone havoc that happens with us, right? How the stress patterns, how...
Lower estrogen impacts insulin sensitivity. Can connect the dots around metabolism, hormones, your stress level, and your lifestyle. And then adjust strategy based on that feedback. Not ego, not because this is what's out there right now, not because Mediterranean diet is the thing, right? So the next thing is how to track without obsessing. So I don't want you to go and start.
getting out all the different apps and all of the things. mean, what I want you to do is not micromanage. I just want you to track for insight. It doesn't have to be perfect. I don't want you to feel like you're in a box. Simple tracking looks like a few daily notes on energy, hunger, and sleep. And it's so easy right now with all the technology we have. You could purchase an app if you'd like to. You you've got Fitbit, the Apple Watch, the Aura Ring, or you can simply open up a notes app.
Set your alarm, right? Keep it simple. Here's how I'm feeling during the day. You don't even have to type it these days. You can just speak it into your phone and you've got data. Simple. Weekly check-ins. How are your clothes fitting? Monthly reflections on trends. In our clinic, we will do a body composition just once a month. I don't recommend my clients to weigh every week. Just do the things and notice in your body how you're feeling. Are your clothes fitting better? Are you improving in your body? The way you respond to stress, right?
So if your tracking makes you anxious, you're tracking the wrong things or for the wrong reasons. How do know the data is working in your favor? You have more energy, improved sleep, fewer cravings, reduced inflammation, your mood is more stable, your strength and recovery improves. These are the leading indicators, not weight loss. Weight loss comes as a result of your body feeling safe. That's when the fat loss starts to release.
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not whether the diet is working to help you lose weight or a medication for if you're on a medication. So if you're thinking, okay, I need help knowing what to track and why, I created something just for you. I put together a metabolic data made simple guide that walks you through what data actually matters for midlife weight loss, what you can ignore, how to track without obsessing, how to recognize when your body's actually responding.
You can download it for free. in the show notes. It's about clarity, ladies, not complexity. It should not be difficult. And if you're ready to go deeper, of course, come and book a strategy. Call with me a personalized wellness assessment with our team. That's the place to start. We look at everything. Look at your data. It's called a personalized metabolic and hormone assessment where we help you connect the dots and create a plan based on real information and not just guessing. Data is powerful.
when you know what to do with it, okay? You'll find all those links in the show notes. So if you've been stuck jumping from plan to plan, I want you to remember this. Faster results don't come from more discipline. They come from better understanding. Your body is already giving you feedback, okay? Once you learn how to read it, everything changes. I'll see you in the next episode. Stay elevated. Thank you for tuning in to the Elevated Women's Podcast. If today's episode resonates with you,
Don't keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend who needs this conversation too. And if you're ready to stop guessing and start thriving, head over to our website. It's listed in the show notes to learn more about our elevated women's coaching program. That's where we take these conversations deeper and create a more personalized plan for your hormones, your weight, energy, and more. Check out our show notes. I've linked free tools.
and cheat sheets to help you get started right away. For more daily tips and inspiration, come hang out with me on Instagram at The Elevated Woman Coach. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, Thriving Over 40 with Dr. Akindipe. Until next time, stay elevated.