Why Does Weight Loss Feel Harder After 35? – An Interview with Marianne Waldbroel
Drawing on seven years in holistic health clinics, Marianne Waldbroel helps women over 35 build nutrition and lifestyle habits that fit their changing needs. Her own experience of putting work before her health, until thyroid concerns prompted her to seek medical attention, brought the gap between knowing what to do and consistently doing it into focus.
In this exclusive interview, she discusses how sleep, stress, hormones, and established food habits shape weight management in midlife, and why a personalized plan needs to work on a busy Tuesday, not just on paper.
Marianne Waldbroel, Women’s Health & Weight Loss Coach
What changes most for women after 35 when weight loss suddenly feels harder than it used to?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that once a woman reaches 35 or 40, her metabolism suddenly slows down. In reality, it's usually much more complex than that.
Several things can start changing around the same time. Hormonal fluctuations may begin during the perimenopausal years, while sleep quality, recovery, muscle mass, activity levels and even everyday responsibilities can look very different from what they did in our 20s. Together, these factors can influence appetite, energy, body composition and how easily we maintain the habits that once seemed to work without much effort.
That's why I think we need to move away from looking at weight loss as simply a matter of eating less and exercising more. A strategy that worked perfectly well at 25 may not give the same results at 40, not because the body has stopped responding, but because the circumstances have changed.
The important thing is to recognize those changes rather than fight against them. Once we understand what's different, we can adjust our approach to support what the body actually needs at this stage of life.
How do hormones, sleep, stress, and daily habits interact when a woman is struggling with weight during perimenopause?
During perimenopause, we can't really look at hormones, sleep, stress and daily habits as separate pieces. They are constantly influencing one another.
Hormonal fluctuations can affect sleep, mood, appetite and energy. If a woman isn't sleeping well, she may feel hungrier, experience more cravings and have less energy to exercise or prepare nourishing meals. Add stress to the picture, and those everyday choices can become even harder to maintain.
It can create a domino effect. A woman may think she simply lacks discipline because she's reaching for something sweet in the afternoon or skipping her workout, when actually she's exhausted, stressed and trying to function on poor sleep.
That's why I look at the whole picture rather than focusing only on calories or the number on the scale. Sometimes the most helpful place to start isn't eating less. It might be improving sleep, managing stress, supporting more stable energy or creating routines that work better for her current life. When we support the whole system, healthy choices often become much easier to sustain.
What did seven years in holistic health clinics teach you about creating health changes that people can actually sustain?
Seven years in holistic health clinics taught me that there is no single formula for lasting change. Working in that environment exposed me to an incredibly diverse range of people from different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles. What fascinated me was how differently people approached their health. I saw some completely change their lives after one visit, while others preferred to return once or twice a year for a reset.
It made me realize that even when people are given similar information, what they do with it can be completely different. Knowledge helps, but knowledge alone is rarely enough. Most people already know many of the things they should be doing. The real challenge is finding a way to make those things work in their own lives.
What I observed was that lasting change was much more likely when people found an approach they genuinely believed in and could realistically maintain. Personality, motivation, mindset, emotional well-being, and support from family can all play a role.
One of the biggest lessons I took from those years is that you shouldn't have to fit your entire life around a health plan. The plan needs to fit your life. That's when healthy choices have a much better chance of becoming part of who you are, rather than something you're temporarily trying to follow.
Why do restrictive diets often become less effective or harder to maintain as women move through midlife?
Restrictive diets can be tempting because they often promise quick results, especially when there is a specific goal or important event ahead. But a result achieved in the short term is very different from creating something the body can sustain.
This becomes particularly important as women move through perimenopause. Estrogen and progesterone begin to fluctuate, while maintaining muscle becomes increasingly important. This is a stage when the body needs good nutrition, adequate protein, strength and recovery.
There's also an important difference between creating a sensible, sustainable calorie deficit and following a restrictive diet that leaves you hungry, exhausted and struggling to maintain your results. When you add the demands that often come with midlife, a highly restrictive diet can become even harder to follow. Hunger, low energy and cravings can easily lead to a cycle of restriction, frustration and starting over. I generally advise against highly restrictive or crash diets, particularly during this stage of life.
For most women, I think there's a much more useful question to ask: "Can I still see myself eating and living this way six months from now?" Because ultimately, the best approach isn't the one you can follow perfectly for two weeks. It's the one you can actually live with.
Where does the weight loss conversation around perimenopause tend to oversimplify what women are experiencing?
One of the biggest problems is simply a lack of awareness. Menopause is still not talked about openly enough, and perimenopause receives even less attention. Many women know very little about the years leading up to menopause, despite the fact that hormonal changes and symptoms can begin long before they expect them.
Some women can begin experiencing symptoms in their late 30s, long before they think of themselves as being anywhere near menopause. They may notice changes in their sleep, energy, mood or body composition without understanding what might be contributing to them. Instead of recognizing that their body may be going through a transition, they assume they're doing something wrong.
At the same time, I think we need to be careful not to attribute every change to hormones. Thyroid health, medications, sleep, stress and other health factors can also play an important role. That's why understanding individual circumstances matters so much.
Then there's the opposite misconception: that getting older simply means getting bigger and that weight gain is something women should automatically accept as inevitable. I don't believe that's true either.
We need to talk about perimenopause earlier and more openly, so women aren't only discovering it once they're already struggling. The answer isn't to blame everything on hormones, but it also isn't to ignore them. Understanding what may be happening gives a woman the opportunity to make informed changes rather than feeling confused or defeated by her own body.
When a woman already knows how to eat well but cannot stay consistent, what do you look at first?
When a woman already knows how to eat well but struggles to stay consistent, I don't immediately assume she needs more nutritional advice. I'm much more interested in understanding the habits and patterns behind her choices.
Some of those patterns can go all the way back to childhood. What role did food play while she was growing up? Was it used as a reward, comfort or celebration? Were there rules around finishing everything on the plate? What did family meals look like? These early experiences can shape our relationship with food in ways we may not even recognize as adults.
Then I look at when things tend to break down today. Is there a particular situation or emotion that triggers an old behavior? Are certain choices simply automatic because they've been repeated for years?
For example, someone might find herself reaching for food every evening, even when she's not physically hungry. Rather than immediately focusing on what she's eating, I'd want to understand what's happening at that moment. Is she tired, stressed, looking for comfort or simply following a routine that's become automatic?
Once we understand what's driving a behavior, we can start finding more helpful ways to respond. This is where strategies for changing behavior can be incredibly useful. Rather than depending on willpower, we can identify existing patterns, interrupt the ones that no longer serve us and gradually create new ones.
Consistency isn't just about knowing what to do. It's about understanding your behavior well enough to make a different choice easier to repeat.
What makes a nutrition or lifestyle plan truly personalized rather than simply another set of rules for healthy eating?
For me, a truly personalized plan starts with the person's real life, not with a list of rules I want her to follow. I like to look first at what she already enjoys eating, what's already working and which healthy habits are naturally part of her routine. Then we can build from there.
Sometimes relatively small adjustments to portions, meal composition, timing or daily routines can make a meaningful difference without making someone feel as though everything she's been doing is suddenly wrong. I also consider her goals, schedule, preferences, health history and what she can realistically maintain. Two women of the same age with similar weight loss goals may need completely different approaches because their lifestyles, responsibilities and challenges are different.
A plan can look perfect on paper, but if it doesn't work on a busy Tuesday when life is happening, it isn't truly personalized. I don't want a woman to leave feeling that overnight she has to become a completely different person who eats completely different foods and lives a completely different life. The goal is to build on what's already there and make changes that feel realistic enough to maintain, but meaningful enough to move her forward.
How did your own health changes in your 30s reshape the way you think about the gap between knowing what to do and living it consistently?
For a long time, I thought knowing what to do was enough. I had the knowledge, I understood health, and yet in my own life I was doing many of the things I knew weren't serving me.
Throughout my 20s, I worked a lot, slept too little and ate inconsistently, and my body seemed to tolerate it. So I carried the same habits into my 30s. The difference was that my body started telling me very clearly that something needed to change, and I wasn't listening.
I ignored symptoms and kept pushing through because there was always something more important: work, responsibilities, the next thing that needed to be done. By the time I finally sought medical attention, my thyroid health had been significantly affected.
That was a turning point for me. I realized how easy it is to understand health intellectually while still putting yourself at the bottom of your own priority list.
I think many women will recognize that pattern. We become very good at taking care of everything and everyone around us while expecting our bodies to simply keep up.
That experience also changed the way I look at consistency. I understood that knowing what is good for you doesn't automatically mean you're creating the space in your life to do it.
Sometimes the biggest change isn't learning something new, but finally giving yourself permission to act on what you already know. I stopped expecting my body to work around my lifestyle and started creating a lifestyle that worked with my body. That changed everything for me.
What is the one thing you want women over 35 to understand about working with their bodies rather than fighting against them?
I want women to understand that it's completely normal for our bodies, and what our bodies need, to change as we age. Aging isn't something we should fear. It's a beautiful part of life. It means we're living, evolving and moving through different stages, and our bodies evolve with us.
The difficulty often comes when we expect the body we have today to respond exactly as it did ten or twenty years ago. But rather than seeing those changes as something going wrong, we can begin to see them as information that helps us understand what we need now.
I like to think of it as learning the language of your body. The more you listen, the better you become at recognizing its signals and responding with the right nutrition, movement, rest and support for the stage of life you're in.
Getting older doesn't mean accepting that you'll feel worse or become less comfortable in your body. You may find that with the right approach, you can feel stronger, healthier and more confident than you did ten years ago.
The goal isn't to fight aging or try to make your body behave as it did in your 20s. It's to understand how it works today and use that knowledge to become the strongest and healthiest version of yourself at every stage of life.
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