About Helen
I'm not a doctor. I'm the woman who decided to figure it out herself.
I'm Helen. I'm in my sixties. I was a school teacher for thirty years. And after my husband Richard passed away, I gained 37 pounds in eight months while doing everything I was supposed to be doing.
I went to three doctors. The first told me to eat less and move more. The second asked if I'd tried Weight Watchers. The third looked at my chart and said, “This is just what happens at your age.”
I sat in the car park after that last appointment and thought: if nobody is going to explain this properly, I'll find out myself.
Eighteen months in the research
I started reading. Not magazines. Not blog posts. Medical journals. Research papers. The kind of reading that requires a pot of tea and sometimes a dictionary. I have a school teacher's brain. Thirty years of breaking complicated things down into something a twelve-year-old could understand. I like evidence. I like primary sources. I like knowing that the person making the claim can show me the data behind it.
I started making a list. Every reason I could find. Not just the obvious ones. Every single reason a woman in her sixties might struggle to lose weight. Estrogen drops. Metabolism slows. Everyone knows those two. But the list kept growing. Medications that promote weight gain. Thyroid problems. How stress hormones change where you store fat. Sleep disruption. Muscle loss. Grief. Loneliness. Decades of yo-yo dieting.
The list hit fifty. Then a hundred.
137
Real, researched reasons a woman over 60 might struggle to lose weight. The standard advice covers about three of them.
The science exists. It's been published and understood by specialists for years. It's just not reaching the women who need it in a form they can actually use. It's not making its way into a fifteen-minute doctor's appointment. And it should be.
What happened next
I started sharing what I'd learned with friends. Then their friends. Then women I'd never met who'd heard about me through someone who knew someone. I'd sit at kitchen tables with women who were crying before they'd finished their first sentence, because nobody had ever told them what I was telling them.
That's when I realised this couldn't just be conversations over coffee. There were too many women and not enough kitchen tables.
So I built The Silver Sisterhood.
I've now worked with over 5,000 women. I've seen what works, what doesn't, and what the research says versus what actually happens in real life when you're sixty-three and exhausted and just want your jeans to fit again.
“I'm not here to replace your doctor. If your doctor tells you something, listen to them. I'm here for the longer conversation they don't have time for.”
— Helen Roth
On a personal note
I lost 37 pounds after age 62. Slowly. Sustainably. But more importantly, I rebuilt my life. I found my people.
And I founded The Silver Sisterhood because no woman should have to figure this out alone.
Want to see what I've been working on?
The free 5-day challenge is where most women start. Or grab a copy of my book.