HOW TO RECLAIM YOUR BODY AT
MIDDLE AGE AND BEYOND
Weight gain at menopause may still be a hotly debated topic by the medical experts, but
ask most women between the ages of 40 and 55 and they will tell you their bodies have
changed! And it’s not just the weight gain - an average of ten to twenty pounds - but also
their new shape. Seemingly overnight, you look in the mirror and see your mother’s body
– a thickened waistline, larger shoulders, flabby upper arms and even fat on your back.
Here are some theories about why this happens during the years surrounding menopause
and what you can do about it.
Is Estrogen Hiding In Fat?
During perimenopause your ovaries decline in their production of estrogen and your body
becomes more hungry and efficient at taking calories into your cells and storing them as
fat. The theory is that these fat cells actually lessen the effects of declining estrogen by
“taking up the slack” and converting other hormones into estrogen. These changes may
be even more pronounced in women who were thin for most of their lives and thus more
prone to the effects of lowered estrogen.
Furthermore, this body fat is most often redistributed to the abdominal region (excess
belly fat). Abdominal fat cells are potentially more dangerous to your health than the fat
cells on your hips and thighs. They can contribute to insulin resistance, and they can
pump out too much androgens and estrogen. The classic “apple-shaped figure” is
associated with an increased risk for heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, hypertension,
and more.
What Is Metabolism?
One of the biggest changes of aging is with your metabolism, or “the engine of fire”
within your body. Metabolism is the rate that your body burns calories. This rate of
burning calories is constantly changing depending on what you are doing (for example,
sleeping burns calories at a slower rate than daily activities). As we age, our metabolism
naturally slows down by 10 – 15 percent. With lowered metabolism, fewer calories are
needed to maintain your current weight.
Another culprit that may be lowering your metabolism is a decrease in thyroid function,
which can be common during these midlife years (about 26 percent of women in this
phase are diagnosed with hypothyroidism). One theory of why this happens is when
estrogen is not properly counterbalanced with progesterone it can block the action of the
thyroid hormone. Your healthcare provider may want to check you for proper thyroid
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function at this time of life, especially if you are noticing symptoms such as fatigue,
depression, irritability, cold hands, thinning hair, and sleep disturbances.
Are Depression and Inactivity Linked?
Even when a supplemental thyroid hormone is prescribed, some women continue to feel
depressed. As we all know, depression can lead to overeating and when menopausal
women compensate for all the perceived “losses” in their lives by overeating, it can get
out of control. With depression may come a pessimistic belief that the middle years bring
only physical deterioration. This state of mind can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as
women can begin to act old and feeble. The less active you are, the more your
metabolism slows down to help you survive, making it even harder to lose fat.
What Is the Impact of Muscle Loss?
Beginning in our late twenties, the majority of inactive women lose about a half pound of
muscle each year – that equals to having lost more than ten pounds of muscle by age fifty
and replacing it with fat. Since muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue, and
there’s less muscle at this time of life, we can’t consume the same amount of food we did
when we were younger and still expect to stay trim. Women often respond to their weight
gain by dieting only, without exercising, and this can result in more loss of muscle, which
in turn, lowers metabolism.
Loss of muscle is a part of the aging process. Scientists used to regard this process as
inevitable and thought that muscle and bone could not be regained. We have since
learned differently. Women can regain muscle and bone and drop unwanted fat well into
their elder years.
What Is Emotional Eating?
If you are eating because of something you are feeling instead of physical hunger, you are
engaging in emotional eating. This can happen at any time – at meals, in between meals,
at social functions, or late at night. People eat emotionally for many reasons, and are
usually unconscious of their feelings at the time of emotional eating. Reasons can
include: feeling something is missing in their lives, unresolved trauma, stress, self-esteem
issues, or simply boredom. Midlife women are also often “sandwiched between” still
taking care of their dependent children and their elderly parents or other relatives, causing
added stress. All of this at a time when they are finding a need to nurture themselves
more and determine how they will awaken to a new phase of their lives. There are lots of
opportunities for emotional eating at midlife!
Keeping note of how you are feeling when you are triggered to eat, or just asking
yourself if you are truly hungry before you put something in your mouth, can help to
make changes in this behavior. Pay special attention to the late afternoon hours when the
hormones that allow us to respond to stress – serotonin and cortisal – tend to fall, leaving
us feeling especially vulnerable to our underlying emotions.
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Is There A Healthy Way To Eat At Midlife?
Skipping breakfast, eating lunch on the fly, snacking whenever there’s an urge, eating a
large dinner while watching television, and topping it off with a late night snack,
(otherwise known as the typical American diet), is a sure way to gain weight at midlife.
You need to organize your eating so that the majority of your calories are consumed
earlier in the day which will raise your metabolism and energy level, rather than late in
the day when these calories are more likely to be stored as fat. Experts agree with
organizing your meals to include: eating a healthy breakfast, eating a moderate lunch,
having a snack in between lunch and dinner, eating a moderate dinner and stopping
eating completely at least two hours before bedtime.
Instead of radically changing what you eat when attempting to lose weight, make an
effort to choose healthier foods in more reasonable portions. Bob Greene, exercise
physiologist and Oprah’s trainer, recommends the following:
 limit your consumption of fat, especially saturated fat, and “bad” carbohydrates
 eat two servings of fruit
 eat four servings of vegetables
 eat no more than seven servings from the whole grain group of foods
How Can Aerobic Exercise Help?
When women say they want to lose weight, they really mean they want to lose fat. The
body automatically protects itself against losing too much fat too quickly. It essentially
guards your stored fat to protect against starvation. Therefore, slow, methodical weight
loss, which includes strength training and aerobic exercise, is what you want for longterm results. To lose fat you need to look at increasing your metabolism.
Your metabolism needs to be revved up to lose body fat. During exercise, your
metabolism increases in direct proportion to the amount and intensity of your exercise.
But you can make more permanent changes to your total metabolism and elevate it
twenty-four hours a day by aerobically exercising regularly. Aerobic exercise requires
you to use oxygen, which leads your body to produce and store more of the aerobic
enzymes that are found in your muscles. (Having more of these enzymes helps you to
burn more fat).
You’ll know if your metabolism is changing by noticing that you’re perspiring more
during exercise, and sooner into your workout. And if your clothes begin to fit more
loosely, even before you’ve reduced the number of calories you’re eating, you can
conclude that your metabolism has increased. If weight loss is your goal, a minimum of
fifty minutes a week of aerobic exercise; for at least ten minutes at a time, is the place to
start.
Why Is Strength Training Important?
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Strength training is key to losing fat because it will maintain or increase your muscle
weight, allowing you to burn calories more efficiently. Strength training has the added
benefits of combating the effects of age by improving bone density, balance, flexibility,
muscle tone, and mood. It also will increase your ability to perform your aerobic exercise
at higher levels, which will further decrease your percentage of body fat. Strength
training raises your metabolism while building muscle.
Lifting weights needs to be performed at challenging overloads at least twice a week for a
half-hour duration. Muscles are your primary calorie burners and when you begin
training with weights, your appetite increases. That’s why many trainers recommend
starting your program with aerobic exercise and looking at negative eating habits first,
and then moving on to strength training. Weight training to improve your muscular
strength and muscular endurance can be performed at a health club but it can also be
performed at home, if you have a set of dumbbells.
How Can I Start A Program to Reclaim My Body?
Bob Greene suggests many useful tools in his book, Get With The Program. The
Women’s Health Resource Center is offering a course this fall based on Greene’s
program that will teach midlife women how to begin a program of exercise, strength
training, stretching, and stress relief. We are also offering strength training classes for
osteoporosis prevention and a course in exercise for pregnancy. (See “Classes” inserts).
These classes are geared to teaching women the concepts of exercise and how they can
succeed in maintaining an exercise program in their own homes. WHRC also has many
library resources that can be borrowed and opportunities to meet with health educators
and nurses. Call us for more information at 603-650-2600.
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