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Health Insights Magazine

The Menopause Belly That Changes Too Fast To Be Fat

Editor's Note

Last week, we received an email from a 53-year-old woman named Kelly Matthews from Clarksville, Tennessee.

The email was about how she had lost her meno-belly and that other women needed to hear her story of how she did it, and what finally did it.

She asked us to post her story here to reach as many women as possible.

Her exact message has been reproduced below with sparse editing for spelling, grammar, and clarity.

Dear Friend,

If you have a meno-belly, I want you to take close look at the image below, that is me 3 months apart, 88 days to be exact, Both of these images are completely bare and unedited, my sister took these with my 7 year old iphone.

My name is Kelly Matthews. I’m a 53-year-old woman in menopause, and I work as a librarian at Montgomery County Public Library on pagaent lane in Clarksville, Tennessee.

The reason I’m writing this is because I started gaining weight in menopause, almost suddenly and almost overnight. I was eating the same amount of food, getting the same amount of exercise, basically nothing in my life had changed.

But somehow, I suddenly had this stubborn meno-belly that just would not go away.

I finally did end up losing that dreaded meno-belly after a year of suffering and trial and error, so I want to share with you how I did it.

If you’re going through the same thing.

Read on.

First things first, let me tell you how bad it got for me.

The first sign of my meno-belly was actually not the weight on a scale, but that my favourite jeans didn't fit anymore. I tried to button them one morning and they just wouldn't, no matter how much I sucked in my stomach.

And my belly kept getting worse and worse over the next few months and it got to a point where I was ashamed of my own body and hated it.

I looked like I was 6 months pregnant, I was constantly pulling my shirt down so my stomach wouldn’t show. I started wearing baggy clothes because I didn’t want anything clinging to my belly.

One Monday morning, on my way to the library, I caught a kid mocking me. He was walking with his stomach pushed out while pointing at me, and I know he was just a child...

But it crushed me, my eyes filled with tears and I wanted to disappear. I went into work and spent the whole day replaying that moment in my head over and over again.

I felt so trapped and ashamed in my own body. I felt defeated.

Then a few weeks later, another kid asked his mom if I was pregnant. The mom looked mortified, and I felt like someone had ripped my heart out and stomped on it.

She then quickly ushered her child away from that awkward, depressing encounter, but I stood there with it. I carried it home.

My life basically turned into a nightmare since entering menopause, afraid and ashamed of being in photos, stopped feeling good about myself and just despised how I looked in clothes.

I went through months like that — going to work, coming home, avoiding mirrors, avoiding cameras, avoiding anything that reminded me of the woman I used to be. Avoided even seeing my friends.

Eventually, I got sick and tired of feeling that way. I finally decided I was going to do something about this protruding meno-belly.

So naturally, the first obvious thing I started with was FOOD. I wasn’t an unhealthy eater to begin with, but I still cleaned up my diet. I cut out carbs, sugar, processed food — you name it, I did it.

At the same time, I started going to the gym and running 19 laps around the track every day. I was so determined to stop being ashamed of my body that I was willing to try anything and everything.

I dieted and exercised hard. I pushed myself for months. But my belly barely changed and was still there.

Still round and stubborn. Still making me feel like a stranger in my own body.

Then I came across something called intermittent fasting, it sounded promising. The idea was basically that you fast all day and eat one meal at the end of the day. This turned out to be very difficult because I had no energy on this diet and was starving all day.

But I continued to push myself because I thought maybe this was finally going to work... but it did not.

Funnily enough and this made no sense to me whatsoever, I gained even more weight on intermittent fasting and my belly looked even bigger.

After that, I tried keto, carnivore diet, paleo and a few others. Every diet that promised to get rid of my belly, I tried.

But alas… nothing helped. Either the diet sucked the life out of me and turned me into a brain-dead walking zombie, or it had the complete opposite effect and I gained even more.

Same went for exercise, I tried different kinds - walking, running, high intensity, weight lifting and a few others.

And look before anyone says it, Yes I did maintain consistency with my diet and exercise, I did not half-ass it. I genuinely was disciplined all along.

By that point, almost a year had gone by. A whole year of dieting, exercising, starving, trying… and yet, my belly was still there. It looked like I’d been drinking a case of beer every day for the last 10 years.

One night after work, I just fell to my knees in my bedroom and just started crying. And after that, I cried almost every day. I cried because I didn't recognise my body anymore. I cried because I hated how I looked. I cried because I felt like I had lost myself. I cried because no matter how hard I tried nothing seemed to work.

Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night crying. The crying is what would wake me up. Sometimes I cried in the shower.

I just… HATED myself. I hated that my clothes didn’t fit. I hated being seen by people. I hated going out in public. I hated being in photos.

Eventually, I gave up even trying to lose the belly. I accepted it as my new normal. Or at least I tried to...

I kept working at the library. Still depressed. Still miserable. Still ashamed. Still putting on a smile and pretending I was fine. And I thought I was hiding it pretty well. But apparently, someone had noticed.

Now at the library, there was this 78-year-old grandma who came in every Thursday. Her son would drop her off at 10 a.m. and pick her up again at 4 p.m. She loved reading books, and she would sit quietly at the same table every week, never bothering anyone except when she needed help finding something.

Her name was Leslie MacDonald.

About 2 months after I had accepted my meno-belly as the “new normal,” she spoke to me for the first time. She stared at me for about a second and said, “Are you okay, honey?”

And it was the way she asked that question, like she already knew me for years, like how a mother would know her daughter.

At first, I didn’t say anything. For maybe 5 seconds, I just stood there looking at her. And she looked back at me.

Then tears started running down my face. I didn’t make a sound. I just stood there quietly crying like a helpless child, like I had already given up on life.

Because honestly… I had.

Then she said, “Come sit here, honey.”

So I sat with her at the table. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her everything.

We talked and talked and talked for almost 3 hours. Actually, I did most of the talking. Leslie mostly listened.

She didn’t interrupt me. She didn’t dismiss me. She didn’t pity me either. She just listened in that calm, gentle way that older women do — the kind of listening that makes you feel safe enough to say everything you’ve been holding in.

She told me she was from Madison, Wisconsin, and had been a nurse for 30 years before retiring back in ’98. She said she had seen a lot of women’s bodies do a lot of unexplained things over those three decades.

But listen, at the end of that conversation, she said something I have never forgotten.

She said, “Kelly, if this was just normal fat gain, then something would’ve changed. You’d be eating more than before, or exercising less, or maybe your habits would’ve slowly slipped without you noticing.”

Then she looked at me and said…

“But from what you’re telling me, that’s not what happened.”

I was so dumbfounded after hearing this. Because it was such a simple thing… but for some reason, I never even stopped to think about it.

If I hadn’t changed my diet…

And I hadn’t changed my exercise…

And I was suddenly gaining weight anyway… Then maybe it wasn’t just normal fat gain.

Because as Leslie said, with ordinary fat, you’d usually expect something to have changed. Maybe you started eating more. Maybe you stopped moving as much. Maybe your habits slipped somewhere.

But that wasn’t what happened to me.

And all this time, I had been trying to fix it like it was a fat problem by skipping meals, cutting out foods, exercising like crazy.

But Leslie opened my eyes right there.

It was so obvious once she said it… and somehow I had completely missed it.

But then another question hit me.

If it’s not just a fat problem…

Then what is it?

That’s when Leslie asked me something else.

“When did the belly start?” she said.

“Was it around the time your periods started changing?”

I thought about it, “Yeah” I said. “Actually… pretty much the same time.” She nodded like she already knew I was going to say that.

“I was a nurse for 30 years,” she said. “Retired in ’98. And what you’re describing — the belly that showed up out of nowhere, that doesn’t move no matter how little you eat or how much you exercise — I’ve seen that before many times.”

Then she lowered her voice a little.

“Mostly in women aged 40 to 60, who are in the mid-life phase”.

I asked her what she meant.

"Now listen closely, your body has a system most women have never heard of," she said. "It runs through your entire body like a second circulatory system. Its whole job is to drain fluid, clear out waste, and move buildup out of your tissues."

"It's called the lymphatic system. And I'd bet everything that nobody has ever mentioned it to you."

I shook my head. They hadn't.

"Here's the thing," she said. "Your lymphatic system has no pump."

She could tell I didn't understand so she continued.

"Your heart pumps blood. But lymph doesn't work that way — it only moves when your body tells it to move. And estrogen plays a big role in keeping that signal going. So when estrogen starts dropping in mid-life… that signal weakens. The lymphatic system slows down. And the fluid, waste, and buildup that used to drain out of your tissues every day — it just starts sitting there instead. Mainly in your belly.

I sat back in my chair. "So my belly..."

"Is not fat," she said. "It's fluid that stopped moving.

So no matter how many meals you skip or how much you exercise, the belly doesn't go away — because it was never a fat problem at all."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

After all these months of trying various diets, exercise and starving myself. The problem was never fat, it was just stuck fluid and waste.

"So what do I do?" I asked her.

She told me that back in her nursing days, they would actually work on the lymphatic system by hand.

"Gentle, very specific movements," she said. "Done in a particular sequence to help move the fluid through. It wasn't just massage — there was a real method to it.

A doctor named Vodder developed it back in the 1930s. Nurses and therapists used it for decades after that."

Then she gave me this little look and said, "Of course, that's not exactly something you can do to yourself every morning before work."

She was right. And honestly, the idea of booking some specialist every week — the cost, the time, having to explain my body to a stranger — I wasn't ready for any of that.

She folded her hands on the table. "Listen, I did read about something a few days ago. I don't remember exactly what they called it."

"What was it?" I asked.

"Some kind of liquid herb thing," she said. "Drops. You put them under your tongue. Apparently some women in menopause have been using it to support their lymphatic system from the inside — so the fluid and waste doesn't get stuck."

Then she shrugged. "If I were in your shoes, honey, I'd look into it."

And that's exactly what I did. I thanked Leslie for her time and went back to work.

So after work I went home that evening and started searching on google the exact words that leslie said , at first I didn't really find anything , I had to keep looking for a couple of hours, but then…

I found exactly what leslie described , I came across a small brand called LymFlo , they make something called Lymphatic Drainage Drops.

But by now I'd already blown close to $3,500 on diets, programs, gym gear, and supplements. So I was skeptical to say the least. But after my talk with Leslie, I was willing to try one more time, and the $35 price felt like nothing compared to the $3500 I'd already burned through. So I ordered one...

It took about 5 days to get to me in Clarksville, I quickly ripped the packaging and opened the bottle, it smelled a bit medicinal and I'm not gonna lie, it didn't taste good at all, it has a strong and bitter taste.

Anyways, I took these as instructed which was once in the morning and once at night.

And honestly, the first few days were boring. I didn’t feel some huge change overnight.

I didn’t wake up with a flat stomach on day 2 of using it. There was no dramatic “oh my God, it’s working” moment.

But my belly started flattening in a way that no diet ever came close to touching. Not dramatically at first — but consistently.

Week after week, the belly that kept humiliating me for over a year was steadily going down. My jeans started fitting again around week five. By week ten I stopped pulling my shirt down every time I stood up. I wasn't ashamed of my body anymore, I started looking at myself in the mirror and was taking part in group photos, and feeling like myself again.

I don't know how to explain what happened over those 88 days except to say that the image at the top of this page is real, and my sister took both photos, and neither of them has been touched.

I'm not a different person. I'm the same Kelly, same library, same monday mornings. But I feel like myself again in a way I genuinely didn't think was coming back.

Look I want to be very clear about something.

I have no connection to Lymflo whatsoever. They don't know I exist. They don't know I'm writing this. I'm not affiliated with them, I'm not paid by them, I'm not getting anything for saying any of this.

The only reason I'm writing this is to inform other women in a similar situation as myself, so you don't end up

suffering like I did, so you don't end up wasting a year on diets and exercise like I did, so you don't end up wasting $3500 dollars like I did, and so that you can finally lose all the meno-belly, feel good about yourself, start taking photos again, and stop pulling your shirt down all the time.

I will leave the link to their website below, you can check them out yourself and if you feel convinced, give them a try. If you don't like it, just ask for a refund from them, they do have a 120 day refund policy.

And I thank Leslie for her wisdom and taking the time to listen to my problems, it had been a long time since I felt understood. And I hope everything works out for you, whoever is reading, I am with you. You got this!!

— Kelly

P.S. If you have a meno-belly like me, and no matter how little you eat or how much you exercise it still doesn’t seem to flatten, click the link below and checkout Lymflo.

P.P.S. Last time I checked, Lymflo had a discount going on. But I'm not sure how long do they have it for, so I really suggest you get your hands on one, this is probably the best time to try it out.

P.P.P.S. I still see Leslie every Thursday at the library. And every time I do, I think about how different my life would have been if she had never asked me, “Are you okay, honey?” Maybe this letter is me asking you the same thing.

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