Why Your Body Can Change in Perimenopause and Menopause, and Why It Is Not a Willpower Problem

Sponsored. This article is sponsored by Calocurb, a sponsor of the Menopause Reimagined podcast. Morphus receives compensation from Calocurb, and the link and code below are affiliate links that earn Morphus a commission. Calocurb reviewed this article for factual accuracy about its product and study. Everything I say about my own experience, and every caveat I raise about the research, is mine. - Andrea Donsky, Nutritionist, Menopause Researcher and Educator, Co-founder of Morphus

Eat less. Exercise more.

Sound familiar?

I hear a version of this every single day from the women in our community. It usually sounds something like this: I haven’t changed a thing. I eat the same way I always have, exercise the same way, yet I keep gaining weight no matter what I do!

Read any online menopause thread, and you'll find some degree of the same wording over and over. For example: “I don’t recognize myself,” “I don’t know who this is in the mirror,” “I gained ten pounds in eighteen months, and I did nothing differently,” and “It happened so fast, I don’t know what hit me.”

One woman described it as dragging a heavy lead body around rather than feeling alive in it. Another said she went to the gym for an hour a day all summer and nothing moved.

I understand because I lived it.

For years I ate less and exercised more, and the weight wouldn’t come off. And like many of us, I assumed I was the problem. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough, or I needed more discipline, or maybe I didn’t know as much about my body as I thought I did.

I was wrong, and it took me digging into the research to understand why.

There isn’t one reason. There are at least seventeen.

In my book, Nourishing Menopause: Powerful Nutrition & Lifestyle Strategies to Feel Your Best, I discussed 17 reasons why weight becomes harder to manage during perimenopause and menopause. Reasons include changes in estrogen and cortisol levels, sleep loss, insulin sensitivity, muscle loss, and thyroid changes.

Notice what is not on that list. Willpower.

When seventeen things are moving at once, and the advice you get is eat less and move more, you’re being handed a screwdriver for a job that needs a full toolbox. Then when it doesn’t work, you blame yourself. That’s the part that frustrates me.

One of those seventeen reasons is your gut, and it’s one that deserves a lot more attention.

Your gut talks to your brain, and the conversation changes

Here is the information I wish someone had given me twenty years ago.

When you eat, your gut releases hormones that travel to your brain to let it know (or signal it) that it’s had enough. Three of the big ones are GLP-1, CCK, and PYY. You’ve probably heard of GLP-1 because of the injectables, but your body has been making its own version your whole life.

These hormones are why you push the plate away and why a meal can keep you full for hours.

They’re also part of why food can feel loud. When those signals are working well, you eat, you feel satisfied, you move on with your day, and barely think about it. When they’re muted, you finish a full meal and forty minutes later you are standing in front of the pantry looking for something to munch on.

Research on how these specific gut hormones change during the menopausal transition remains limited. I’m not going to tell you scientists have proven your GLP-1 collapsed the year your periods got irregular, because they haven’t. What we do know is that appetite regulation is closely tied to sleep, stress, estrogen, and muscle mass, and all four are in motion right now.

In addition, research shows that ghrelin, our hunger hormone, is higher in perimenopause than premenopause. So the signaling system that used to run in the background is now running in a very different environment than before.

What a new study found that could help

The study was published in Obesity Pillars in July 2026, and ran for 24 weeks. The trial was randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled. It included 150 adults aged 18 to 45, and everyone, including the placebo group, attended monthly dietitian-led lifestyle sessions.

Before you read those numbers again, I want you to notice who was in that room. This trial enrolled adults between 18 and 45, which means we're not sure who in that population was in perimenopause and menopause. I am sharing it because it is the strongest data we have on this ingredient so far, not because it tells us what happens in a 52-year-old body. That study still needs to be done, and I would very much like to see it.

What I found interesting was that the weight lost by the Calocurb group was fat, and neither group lost muscle.

That matters enormously in midlife because we’re already losing muscle by default, and muscle is what keeps our metabolism, strength, and bones working for us.

The three studies that came before it

This was the fourth human trial on Calocurb. The earlier three were short and specific, and I’m listing them separately on purpose, because I keep seeing these numbers stacked together into one big claim, and that’s not what happened:

• 2019, Nutrients. 30 men during a 24-hour water-only fast reported 25-30% less hunger than with placebo. (Walker E, Lo K, Tham S, et al.)
• 2022, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Healthy weight men ate about 18% fewer calories at meals, with measurable increases in GLP-1, CCK, and PYY. (Walker EG, Lo KR, Pahl MC, et al.)
• 2024, Obesity Pillars. Healthy adult women during acute fasting reported up to 40% fewer food cravings and roughly 30% less hunger. (Walker E, Lo K, Gopal P.)

The women's study is the one closest to us, but I would love to see a study specifically on women in perimenopause and menopause.

Where this actually fits

I’m not going to tell you a capsule fixes seventeen problems. It doesn’t. The things that move the needle most for women in this phase of life are nutrition and lifestyle. For example, eating enough protein and fiber. Resistance training, at least twice a week, because muscle is the asset we’re actively losing. Sleep, stress management, mindset, and a conversation with a menopause-specific practitioner about hormone therapy, if that’s of interest.

Calocurb sits alongside that, not instead of it. It’s a delayed-release capsule that delivers Amarasate, an extract of New Zealand bitter hops, past the stomach and into the small intestine, where it activates bitter taste receptors and prompts the release of your own satiety hormones. It works within about an hour and lasts four to six hours. It’s not a drug, and you don’t inject it. It nudges a system you already have.

Calocurb emerged from 15 years and roughly $30 million in New Zealand government-backed science at Plant & Food Research, now part of the New Zealand Institute for Bioeconomy Science.

I sat down with Sarah Kennedy, the founder and CEO of Calocurb, on Menopause Reimagined to talk through all of this. You can listen to Ep #194: Tired of Fighting Food Cravings? Try This Instead with Sarah Kennedy.

If you want to try it, you can find Calocurb at calocurb.com/morphus and use code MORPHUS10.

That is an affiliate link. If you buy through it, Morphus earns a commission at no extra cost to you.

And if you take nothing else from this: the fact that your body changed isn’t evidence that you failed. It’s evidence that something changed in your body. Those are two different things, and I want you to stop reading them as if they are.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Calocurb is not a substitute for medical care. If you are taking prescription medication, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or have an existing health condition, talk to your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement.