How much are menopause and weight gain intertwined when two thirds of women are already overweight or obese by this time anyway?
It’s often women who weren’t slim before menopause who struggle the most with their weight at this time. Menopause doesn’t help at all but a lot of the problem is due to existing habits.
Menopause And Weight Gain
Changing hormone levels in themselves don’t make you fat. But low oestrogen does make it more likely that if you put weight on it will be around your middle.
Going through the menopause can really mess up sleep, and this can have a knock on effect to another set of hormones – the ones that influence your appetite. Sleep deprivation increases your appetite and makes you more likely to eat a load of crap too.
A lot of women aren’t taking care of their sleep before menopause. Once menopause hits it’s too much and sleep is totally messed up. There is actually a lot you can do to help your sleep – find out more here.
Middle Age – Time To Increase Self Care
Menopause usually happens at middle-age, a time when health starts taking a slide anyway unless you start caring for yourself more.
Muscles – Your Key To Fight The Flab
At menopause muscle mass in women can take a nose dive – unless you are doing something to preserve it.
Most of your calories get burned up by your muscles, so the less you’ve got the more easily you’ll put weight on.
To preserve your muscle mass you need to do some kind of strength work. Strong yoga classes are good for this, but the best is some kind of resistance work with weights.
Nutrition – What Are You Made Of?
To feel good and stay biologically young you need to give your body what it needs – good nutrition. Your body is made with what you feed it.
If you eat a lot of crap like sugar and refined carbs and refined vegetable oil your body will be made out of crap. By this age you’re not going to get away with it anymore.
The Mediterranean diet is a good place to start if you’re not sure.
Stress
If you identify as a stress head and haven’t learned how to deal with stress by the time you hit menopause chances are it’s going to get worse. Going through the menopause itself can be stressful, so learning how to deal with stress if this is a problem for you is a good thing to do.
When you react with stress to a situation your adrenals secrete cortisol into your blood stream. A bit of stress is fine, but if it’s your default it might not be doing your waist line any favours. Cortisol encourages belly fat to increase.
Expectation
If you expect something to happen there’s a tendency to just accept it as inevitable.
A lot of women expect to find it harder to lose weight at this time of life. Many women employ the same things that never worked for them before, like dieting.
Your body is changing, it needs more from you to be tip top – and it can be tip top, but it’s going to take a new and more holistic approach if you’re going to have nice time while you’re through the change.
Click here for the next Menopause Workshop
Have a great week!
Dr Julie