BODY COMPOSITION THROUGH THROUGH THE MENOPAUSAL YEARS
As we get older, through perimenopause and postmenopause, our body shape changes.
This can be a really confusing and distressing time for many women who may find they start gaining fat and losing muscle, despite not changing their exercise or eating habits.
Just to say, we are all fabulous women of all different shapes and sizes. The purpose of this articles is to help us stay strong, energised, and feeling good in ourselves to tackle all life has to throw at us. They are not meant to make us get down on ourselves, or try to be stick thin. We just want to feel confident, happy and healthy!
Some women become much more 'apple' shaped, and get that 'middle age spread', and either start frantically 'exercising more, and eating less' or are so uncomfortable and tired that they stop exercising at all. Neither of these scenarios will help...
Unfortunately, a lot of the research into exercise has been done on men, so you may have been advised to try things like Intermittent Fasting, or the Keto diet, which do work on men. But because our physiology and hormones are completely different to a man's, these diets do not help us as women through our menopause years.
What's going on?
We get a massive hormonal shift through perimenopause (the 5-10 years before you actually stop your periods).
Estrogen levels wildly fluctuate and eventually decline through our 40's. It plays a huge role in our metabolism, how we store fat, and respond to and recover from exercise. As estrogen levels drop, our body composition changes, and we accumulate fat in our belly (which raises the risk of of fatty liver and cardiovascular disease) rather than our hips and thighs.
The body struggles to build muscle as easily and actually switches to breaking down your muscles to get protein for energy. If you can't maintain muscle, you don't have as much power for movement, and you'll actually start slowing down, especially if you're also gaining body fat. Muscles are great fat burners, so with less muscle you'll also burn less fat than you used to.
As we lose estrogen, we also become more resistant to insulin, (which balances your blood sugar levels). So the body pumps out more insulin to clear sugar from the blood, which actually promotes more fat storage. This leaves you on a blood sugar rollercoaster, which can make you feel tired and hungry all the time.
So we need to do exercise that keeps building and maintaining muscle. Muscle also helps our bodies control our blood sugar levels as it draws sugar from the blood to use for energy.
The main takeaway from today's post is a reminder to ideally do some sort of weight training 3 times a week if possible. It's one of the most important forms of exercise we can do as we get older.
Remember if you need extra support and guidance through the menopause sign up to our mailing list and …
Please don't suffer through the menopause alone. Millions of women are feeling the same way.
Spirit love and strength,
Sara & Dr. Clare