Wondering why you are consistently adding weight during menopause even after sticking to your diet and exercise? Don’t worry! It is normal for women to gain some pounds before, during, and after menopause. This is greatly influenced by age, genetics, and the hormone-metabolism connection. As estrogen levels decrease, your metabolism slows, making it harder to lose weight, especially belly fat.
Does Menopause Lead To Weight Gain?
You may notice that it becomes more difficult to maintain weight as you age. Many women tend to gain weight around the menopause transition, particularly around the abdomen. This is greatly influenced by hormonal changes of menopause that make you more likely to gain weight. However, hormonal changes are not the only factor that triggers weight gain during menopause. Weight gain is also related to aging, lifestyle and genetic factors.
For instance, as we age, muscle mass typically diminishes while fat increases. As one loses muscle mass, they experience a slowdown in the rate at which the body uses calories, making it challenging to maintain a healthy weight. If you continue eating as you did before without increasing physical activity, you’ll likely gain weight.
Genetic factors also play a role in menopause weight gain. For example, if your parents or close family members carry extra weight, especially around the abdomen, you will likely do the same.
Other lifestyle factors like unhealthy eating, lack of exercise and lack of enough sleep may contribute to menopause weight gain.
What Is Perimenopause?
Perimenopause is the period around menopause when your body naturally transitions to menopause, marking the end of the reproductive years. Women start perimenopause at different ages. During perimenopause, the level of estrogen, which is the primary female hormone, tends to rise and fall unevenly. This results in menstrual irregularities. You may also experience menopause-like symptoms like vaginal dryness, hot flashes, and sleep problems. The perimenopause period is over when you’ve gone through 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period. At this point, you have officially reached menopause.
Why We Lose Muscle In Perimenopause?
Perimenopause is associated with a natural decline in bone density, muscle mass, and strength. During this phase of life, women experience a decline in estrogen levels linked to muscle loss. Ideally, estrogen promotes protein synthesis and inhibits protein breakdown, increasing muscle mass. As estrogen levels decrease during perimenopause, dysregulation in muscle protein is experienced, with the balance tipping away from protein synthesis toward protein degradation, contributing to an overall loss of muscle mass.
Does Menopause Slow Your Metabolism?
During menopause, one tends to experience a slowdown in metabolism. During this period, the changes in hormone levels cause a shift in your metabolic rate. For instance, estrogen plays a significant role in metabolism regulation. Therefore, as the estrogen level drops, you will experience a slowdown in the metabolic rate.
Does age slow your metabolism?
You may have heard people say that you can’t eat like your younger self as you age. This is because your metabolism tends to slow with age. As you age, you tend to lose muscle mass. As muscle mass decreases, the overall metabolic rate decreases as well. Similarly, as one gets older, one tends to be less active. When you are less active, you experience a decrease in calorie expenditure, contributing to a slower metabolism.
Why Resistance Training Is Important Whilst Going Through Menopause?
Menopause is when women commonly experience a decline in estrogen levels, resulting in bone density loss. This tends to increase the risk of osteoporosis, which causes issues with your bones that may lead to pain and increase your fracture risk. It is, therefore, essential to focus on keeping bones strong by keeping the muscles strong. This can best be achieved through resistance training. Resistance training also helps promote better flexibility by stretching the body's muscles. To get started with strength exercises, you can try the following:
- Bodyweight exercises such as squats, pushups and planks
- Weight lifting, for example, lifting kettlebells and dumbbells
- Exercising using resistance-based gym machines
- Doing yoga or Pilates
Some of the benefits of resistance training for women include:
- Increased skeletal muscle
Strength training helps minimize age-related muscle loss and potentially reverse muscle wasting effects common among women transitioning through the perimenopausal to postmenopausal stages.
- Better bone density
During menopause, the decline in estrogen results in a loss of bone density. Strength training helps increase bone mineral density.
- Improved pelvic floor health
Strength training helps activate and control women's pelvic floor muscles and deep core muscles.
- Lower injury risk and back pain
As strength training helps preserve skeletal muscles in older women, it, in turn, helps reduce the risk of falls, and in the event of a fall, the chances of a bone fracture are lesser.
Why we don’t need to change our approach with nutrition and training when trying to achieve fat loss?
There are so many misconceptions about fat loss. You always come across media content on fad diet, exercise, and magic fat-loss potions supported by celebrities and other personal success stories. Though most diet and exercise plans may help you lose fat while following them, once you resume your lifestyle, the weight starts to creep back on. That is because losing fat is not necessarily the problem, but rather achieving a long-term fat loss strategy. Ideally, managing your weight is a lifelong commitment that should not be supplemented by a few weeks of dieting and exercise to lose fat. Any strategy you adopt for fat loss should be something you’ll be able to follow for the rest of your life to avoid regaining any fat you lose. It’s essential to remember that a crash diet is mostly from lean muscle and water, not body fat.
