FITBODY Success Story · Menopause Weight Gain Before and After
Menopause Weight Gain Before and After: How Suzanne Lost 25 Pounds of Body Fat at 59
Ten years of menopause, a desk that never let her up, and 25 pounds she could not explain. Suzanne stopped waiting for a better year and gave herself twelve months instead.
“It’s hard to work out and lose weight, and it’s also hard to live with the extra weight. Choose your hard. For me, I chose the fitness side.”
Suzanne Stanton, 59, Oneida, NY
The Woman in the Mirror She Did Not Recognize
Suzanne did not stop taking care of herself all at once. It happened one workday at a time.
She and her daughter Jenna had built a business together, an acai bowl stand at a farmers market that grew into a franchised restaurant. Suzanne had told Jenna she would help for a month. Eight years later she was a full business partner, and the work had quietly taken over everything.
“I made the excuse to sit at the computer every day and it was slowly erasing me as a person.”
The weight came on the way it usually does after 45, slowly enough to be ignorable. Twenty-five pounds over ten years. Her legs, ankles and feet swelled by the end of every day, sometimes enough to make walking hurt. Arthritis started creeping into her hands from the keyboard.
And through all of it, menopause. Ten years of it.
Severe hot flashes. Almost no sleep. Mental fog. Sugar cravings she could not talk herself out of. Irritation, low energy, hair loss, and a self-image that kept sliding. She was not a candidate for hormone therapy, so there was no medical lever to pull. She dressed around it instead, in loose, drapey clothes that covered everything.
“I’d look in the mirror and for quite a few years I’d convince myself that ‘I’m not that bad, I can go another year.'”
Her husband started going back to the gym and invited her along. She kept saying no. Her reasoning was one most women over 50 will recognize instantly: she wanted to lose ten pounds before she would let anyone see her there.
This is the part that matters. Suzanne was not a woman who had never taken care of herself. She had trained and stayed active her whole adult life. That is exactly why the previous ten years felt so disorienting. She knew what her body used to respond to, and none of it was working anymore.
“I’ve worked out and taken care of myself my whole life, so this 10 year period has been tough.”
The Phone Call That Changed It
Jenna had quietly gotten into bodybuilding a few years earlier, and Suzanne had watched her daughter fall in love with training. Jenna told her mother it was time to get her own coach, and that she knew exactly who to call.
Suzanne did the math. She could wait, and watch another 25 pounds arrive. Or she could do something.
She emailed me. We got on the phone.
Her real hesitation was not the time or the commitment. It was something more specific:
“I didn’t want to be just another number. I wanted someone I could talk to about some of the challenges I was going through as I grow older. In my mind, I am still young and vibrant. I can do anything. But in reality, I get hurt easier. I was hoping to find a coach who would be understanding of the aging process.”
That is the whole reason I coach the way I do. Every woman in my FITBODY Lifestyle Coaching® works directly with me, not with an assistant, not with an app, and not with a plan generated by someone who has never navigated menopause. I have been through it myself. When Suzanne described the hot flashes and the sleep and the fog, I was not reading it off a symptom list.
“Our conversation on the phone. You were easy to talk to and understood what I was going through with menopause and its challenges.”
She started the next week.
What Twelve Months Actually Looked Like
Here is what Suzanne changed in one year:
| What I measured | Change over 12 months |
|---|---|
| Scale weight | Down about 20 lbs |
| Body fat | Down about 25 lbs |
| Lean muscle | Up about 5 lbs |
| Core / waist | Down 3.5 inches |
| Each thigh | Down 2 inches |
| Timed mile | About 2 minutes faster |
| Pushups | 8 to 32 |
Look at the first three rows together, because that is the entire argument for body recomposition in one place.
The scale moved 20 pounds. Her body changed by 30. She lost 25 pounds of fat and built 5 pounds of muscle at 59 years old, and the scale only ever showed you the difference between those two numbers.
This is why I tell every woman I coach that the scale is one data point and never the whole picture. If Suzanne had judged this year by scale weight alone, she would have credited herself with two thirds of what she actually did. Muscle is the part that holds a body’s shape, keeps a metabolism working, and makes the next decade physically easier. She added five pounds of it during menopause, in her fifties, while losing fat at the same time.
That is not a loophole. That is what happens when training, nutrition, and recovery are actually built to work together, which is what my FITBODY Recomposition System™ is designed to do. If you want the full explanation of how that works, I wrote a complete guide to body recomposition for women.
The side view is the one I would ask you to look at twice. The change through her midsection is not a smaller version of the same body. It is a different shape, held differently, standing taller.
Nutrition That Survived a Real Schedule
Suzanne runs a restaurant. She is on the go, on her feet, and rarely eating at a table. Any plan that assumed a calm kitchen and a free hour was going to fail in week two.
So that is not what I built her.
“I love how you listened to me when I said I am struggling to eat the right way when I am on the go all the time. You came back with a menu that is simple and completely doable.”
The nutrition side of my FITBODY Recomposition System™ is macro based, which means Suzanne got a calorie and macro target, a sample day built from food she would actually eat, and full permission to swap. Protein anchored every meal, because protein is what supports muscle repair at 59 and what keeps hunger from running the day. I updated her numbers every two weeks based on what her body was actually doing, not on a guess made twelve months earlier.
Nothing here was extreme. I did not put Suzanne on a very low calorie plan, because starting low with a woman whose metabolism has been through ten years of menopause is the fastest way to stall her out. I kept her intake high enough to support muscle and let the fat loss come from consistency instead of restriction.
Training Through a Shoulder Surgery
Partway through the year, Suzanne tore her rotator cuff and her bicep. Not from anything dramatic. Ordinary wear and tear, which is what most injuries after 50 actually are.
She had surgery to repair both and spent seven weeks in a sling. She did three months of physical therapy. Then the repaired bicep tore again, and this time it could not be fixed.
“I have been very sad about it. It’s a strange feeling, almost like I feel broken. My poor bicep has nothing to hang onto now, after she’s carried me through all these years.”
I want to be direct about what happened next, because it is the part most women worry about and almost nobody talks about.
I did not stop her program. I also did not push her through the injury, which is the mistake that turns a recoverable setback into a permanent one. I trained her around it. Upper body work went where her surgeon and physical therapist said it could go and nowhere else. Everything else kept moving. Lower body, core, conditioning, steps, nutrition. Her plan changed shape, but it never disappeared.
“Julie, you were so patient and understanding with me during the healing process. You kept me moving so I wouldn’t become stagnant and I feel that is what helped me get through this difficult period.”
This is the single hardest thing to get from an app, or from a program that was written before it met you. An injury does not just interrupt training. It interrupts identity. The woman who has been strong her whole life suddenly has evidence that her body is not what it was, and if nobody is there to reframe that, she quietly stops.
Suzanne did not stop. And here is where it landed: she finished the year doing 32 pushups.
She is not broken. She is a woman who kept training through a surgery, kept training through a second tear, and came out the other side stronger than she went in.
What She Got Back That Has Nothing to Do With the Scale
Suzanne’s favorite result is not on the table above.
“I am wearing shorter shirts and also shorts and skorts again. I am feeling more confident about my lower half, which has always been out of sync with my upper half. I’ve been going for my walks with skorts feeling more confident in showing my legs again.”
Ten years of drapey clothing, and she put shorts back on.
What Suzanne noticed first was not any of that. It was smaller and it came much earlier, long before a photo would have shown anything.
“Even if you can’t see much in my pictures, to see a shoulder muscle moving and developing, or to finally be able to feel my glutes working again is amazing and completely motivating!”
That is what the first few months of real change actually feel like from the inside. The mirror lags. The muscle does not.
She also looks forward to her workouts now, which she says surprised her more than anything. She found the training high she had heard about for decades and never experienced, and now she chases it every session. Her husband tells her he can see the confidence coming back.
“I’ve decided to start living my life again.”
She is also clear about the hard parts, and I am leaving them in, because a story that only shows the good parts does not help anyone.
The photos and the weigh-ins were the worst of it. Seeing the evidence of ten years is not a pleasant experience, and Suzanne had some long, honest conversations with herself about how she got there. What got her through was not willpower. It was scale.
“Sometimes it isn’t trying to move the scale. Sometimes it is working to see a new muscle become a little more defined or the small win of having your clothes fit again.”
Small goals. Every rep, every set, this week’s steps. Those stack into the big ones, and unlike the big ones, they are actually reachable on a Tuesday.
“I am proud that I’ve realized I am important enough to pay attention to.”
What Suzanne Would Tell You
“If you are looking in the mirror and saying ‘who are you? I don’t know you anymore.’ Then it is time to find yourself again. It is time to give yourself the love you deserve. Maybe you have been raising a family, or taking care of a loved one, or supporting others and not giving yourself the time. Making the decision to care for yourself, heal yourself, your mind, your body, and your soul, will be the best gift you can give to yourself and your loved ones.”
Suzanne Stanton, 59, Oneida, NY
She also does the math out loud, which I appreciate:
“Well, if I didn’t take the first step to talk with Julie, I’d probably have over 30 pounds to lose at this point.”
That is the real cost of waiting for a better year. The year passes either way.
How I Help You Do This
Suzanne’s year was not built on more effort. She had been working hard for a decade. It was built on a plan that matched the body she actually has at 59, and a coach who adjusted it every two weeks instead of handing it over once.
Here is what that looks like inside my FITBODY Lifestyle Coaching®:
- Built around your life, not an ideal one. Suzanne’s nutrition had to work in a restaurant, on her feet, on the go. Yours has to work in yours.
- Menopause is planned for, not worked around. I have been through it. When hormones change what your body responds to, the plan changes with it.
- I train around injuries, never through them. Surgery, arthritis, an old shoulder, a bad knee. The plan bends. It does not stop.
- Progress is measured in more than one way. Photos, measurements, strength, conditioning, energy, sleep. The scale is one line on a longer list.
- You work directly with me. Not an assistant, not an algorithm, not a plan someone generated before they knew your name.
- You learn to run it yourself. The goal is not to need me forever. The goal is to know what your body responds to.
Your Questions Answered
How long did it take Suzanne to lose 25 pounds of body fat at 59?
Twelve months. Over that year she lost about 25 pounds of body fat, gained about 5 pounds of lean muscle, and finished 20 pounds lighter on the scale. That pace is deliberate. Fat loss slow enough to protect muscle is what makes the result hold, and it is the only approach that works well during menopause, when losing lean mass is already the bigger threat.
Why is losing weight during menopause so much harder?
Because the body composition problem changes underneath you. A four year longitudinal study found that the menopause transition itself was associated with an increase in total body fat and visceral fat, alongside a drop in daily energy expenditure and fat oxidation. Lean mass tends to decline at the same time. The result is that the same effort produces less, which is why so many women over 50 conclude they must be doing something wrong. Usually they are not doing anything wrong. They are running a strategy built for a body they no longer have.
Can you build muscle and lose fat at the same time at 59?
Yes. Suzanne did both in twelve months while going through menopause and recovering from shoulder surgery. Controlled trials in postmenopausal women show that resistance training improves body composition, and meta-analysis work finds reductions in fat mass when training is paired with a modest calorie deficit. The three things that have to be held together are progressive strength training, protein high enough to support muscle repair, and a deficit small enough that the body is not forced to break down muscle for fuel. Miss any one and it stops working, which is why aggressive dieting fails women over 50 so consistently.
Can I still make progress if I cannot take hormone replacement therapy?
Yes. Suzanne was not a candidate for hormone therapy and still lost about 25 pounds of body fat and built about 5 pounds of muscle in a year. Hormone therapy can make symptoms more manageable for the women who can take it, but it is not what drives body composition change. Strength training, adequate protein, sleep, and consistent daily movement are, and none of those require a prescription.
Can you keep training after shoulder surgery?
Almost always, and you should, as long as you are training around the injury rather than through it and staying inside what your surgical team has cleared. Suzanne spent seven weeks in a sling after rotator cuff and bicep repair, then did three months of physical therapy, then had the bicep re-rupture without a repair option. Her upper body work stayed inside her restrictions. Everything else kept going. She finished the year doing 32 pushups. The women who lose ground after an injury are usually the ones who stop entirely, not the ones who modify.
Is 59 too late to change your body?
No, and the data on Suzanne’s year makes the point better than any argument could. She added lean muscle at 59, after menopause, after a decade of weight gain, and after shoulder surgery. The women who get the biggest changes over 50 are frequently the ones who have been sitting the longest, because they have the most room to gain. Later is harder to start. It is not harder to work.
I sit at a desk all day and I have stopped moving entirely. Where do I even start?
With structure, not intensity. Suzanne came in from a decade at a computer with swelling in her legs and ankles and arthritis starting in her hands. She did not begin with punishing workouts. She began with a set number of training days, a daily step target, and a protein anchor at every meal. Consistency built the capacity. The capacity made the harder work possible later.
What makes my FITBODY Recomposition System different?
It is my method for changing body composition rather than chasing scale weight, built specifically for women over 40. Strength training in structured four week blocks, macro based nutrition updated every two weeks against real data, daily step targets, and progress tracked through photos, measurements, strength, conditioning, and biofeedback together. The difference is that you work directly with me. I am an IFBB Fitness Pro, a Certified Personal Trainer, and a Certified Nutrition Specialist, and I have coached more than 2,000 women through exactly this.
References
- Lovejoy, J. C., et al. “Increased Visceral Fat and Decreased Energy Expenditure During the Menopausal Transition.” International Journal of Obesity, vol. 32, no. 6, 2008, pp. 949-958, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18332882.
- Ioannidou, Paulina, et al. “Analysis of Combinatory Effects of Free Weight Resistance Training and a High-Protein Diet on Body Composition and Strength Capacity in Postmenopausal Women, a 12-Week Randomized Controlled Trial.” The Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging, vol. 28, no. 10, 2024, p. 100349, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39232439.
- Nunes, Paulo R. P., et al. “Effect of Resistance Training Volume on Body Adiposity, Metabolic Risk, and Inflammation in Postmenopausal and Older Females: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Journal of Sport and Health Science, 2024, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10980902.
Your Turn
You Are Important Enough to Pay Attention To
Suzanne spent ten years telling herself she was not that bad and could go another year. When she finally stopped waiting, it took twelve months to lose 25 pounds of body fat, build 5 pounds of muscle, and get her shorts back out of the closet. She did it at 59, through menopause, through a shoulder surgery, while running a business. The hardest part was the first email.
I’m Julie Lohre, an IFBB Fitness Pro, Certified Personal Trainer, and Certified Nutrition Specialist. I have spent more than 20 years coaching women over 40 through my FITBODY Recomposition System™, and I work with every one of them directly.