# @ciarafoyinc on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DcFEPK9CF5J
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/69062247-ciarafoyinc-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/1fc0101dfa.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-08-15T23:31:31.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Ciara Foy // Nutritionist • Hormone Expert • 20 Yrs (@ciarafoyinc) — https://gondola.cc/ciarafoyinc

## Caption

Keeping it real with BTS footage and original audio. 
You’re walking. You’re lifting. You stopped eating after 7 and you’re waiting four hours between meals. And you’re still bloated, you’re still exhausted, you’re still not recovering, and the scale hasn’t moved.

I’m 50, and I’ve spent 20+ years specializing in women’s hormones and metabolic health. This is the most common pattern I see, and almost every woman in it thinks she just needs more discipline.

You do need a calorie deficit to change your body composition. That part is true. A deficit is also very, very hard to hold when your hormones are pulling the other way.

Cut your sleep by about 80 minutes a night for six weeks and fasting insulin and insulin resistance go up, strongest in the postmenopausal women (Zuraikat 2024, Diabetes Care).

Eat the same food later in the day and your hunger goes up, your ghrelin to leptin ratio goes up, and your waking energy expenditure goes down.

Drop to too little calories a day and total cortisol output goes up. 121 women, three weeks (Tomiyama 2010).

Run 16:8 for 12 weeks and you lose no more weight than three structured meals, but you lose significantly more lean mass (Lowe 2020, JAMA Internal Med). That’s the muscle running your blood sugar.

So your appetite is up, your cortisol is up, your insulin is up, and you’re white knuckling a deficit against all three. Then you end up in the kitchen at 9pm and you call yourself weak.

Support the hormones first and the deficit holds on its own. There’s an order to it.

I didn’t get these quads from starving myself. I got them from lifting, fueling, managing blood sugar,  recovering and sleeping.

I’m teaching the whole sequence live and free, Tuesday August 25th, 8:30am PT / 11:30am ET.

Comment ORDER and I’ll send you the link. Follow me first so it lands in your DMs, not your message requests.

Send this to the friend who’s doing everything right and getting nowhere.

Follow for what 20 years of clinical work actually shows about women over 40.

#perimenopause #insulinresistance #metabolichealth #womenshormones #over40women

## Stats

- **Views:** 4,081
- **Likes:** 32
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- **Comments:** 2

## Tags

metabolichealth, over40women, womenshormones, insulinresistance, perimenopause

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