If you’ve noticed you’re putting on a few extra pounds during perimenopause and menopause, you’re not alone. Weight gain is perfectly normal in these phases of your life, affecting at least 50% of women.
Understanding the symptoms and causes of menopausal weight gain can help you adapt your lifestyle to stay healthy and happy.
First, though, let’s clarify what we mean by menopause - because it’s not as simple as it seems.
The different stages of menopause
Menopause is a gradual process, and your symptoms could start to appear over several years. Typically, it’s broken down into three different stages:
Perimenopause can be seen as the transitional phase before menopause. You may start to experience some of the symptoms of menopause, such as weight gain, but you’re still able to get pregnant.
Menopause marks the end of your reproductive cycle. It covers 12 months after your last menstrual period (for over 50s) or 24 months after your last menstrual period (for under 50s).
Post-menopause is the phase after menopause when you no longer ovulate.
The cause of weight gain in menopause
If you’re putting on more weight than normal as you age, it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or letting yourself go. There are a number of social and physiological reasons why it happens.
Changes in your hormone levels
As you enter menopause, your oestrogen levels start to decrease. As well as affecting your reproductive capabilities, oestrogen also affects the release of hunger signals. Less oestrogen means your body may not recognise when it’s not hungry - leading to overeating.
Drop in metabolism
Your metabolism also starts to fall during menopause, which means your body converts fewer calories into energy. And if it’s not converting calories into energy, it’s storing them as fat instead. This has the knock-on effect of reducing your energy levels and limiting your desire to exercise.
Changes to your body composition
Your body starts to store more fat during menopause - particularly around your belly. Alongside this, your muscle mass tends to naturally decrease, leading to less muscle tone and more excess weight.
Again, this is part of your body’s natural processes and isn’t a result of you doing anything wrong.
Changes to your lifestyle
Besides the physiological effects of menopause, it’s also a stage in women’s lives when they tend to become less active, the quality of their sleep decreases, and stress levels gradually increase. All of these factors can lead to additional weight gain.
How to prevent menopausal weight gain
Adapt your diet
As you enter menopause you may need to make a few adjustments to your diet to compensate. These changes could include:
Incorporating more whole foods such as fruit, poultry, seafood, eggs, legumes (beans and lentils), and wholegrains.
Avoiding processed foods (food that has been altered during preparation) whenever possible. Examples of processed foods include white bread, breakfast cereals, savoury snacks (crisps, sausage rolls, pasties), and meat products (bacon, sausage, ham).
Since your body naturally loses muscle mass during menopause, it’s important to add extra protein to your diet to support muscle growth. Good sources of protein include eggs, chicken, cottage cheese, low-fat dairy milk, lentils, and fish.
Reducing your alcohol and sugar intake will also help you to reduce weight gain during menopause. Instead of snacking on sugar-rich treats, try going for healthy alternatives such as mixed nuts, Greek yoghurt, fruit, or olives.
Build muscle mass
Adding extra protein to your diet is one way of maintaining muscle mass during menopause, but you can also support it with strength training. Some examples include:
Weights
Squats
Push ups
Pilates
Try to do strength training exercises 2-3 times a week. It doesn’t have to be too strenuous and you can perform them at home.
Keep moving
The other side of the coin is aerobic exercise. Strength training will help maintain muscle mass and offset weight gain, but aerobic (or cardio) has proven to be even more effective for weight loss. It’ll help boost your metabolic health, improve your cardiovascular health, and keep your stress levels in check.
Work on your sleep hygiene
Although this term sounds like you should be showering before going to bed, it actually refers to healthy sleeping habits. These could include sticking to a regular sleep schedule, avoiding caffeine and blue light in the evening, doing more exercise, and dimming the lights before bed.
Weight loss medication
Weight management is extremely complex, and our traditional approaches to it - eat less, move more - simply aren’t enough for a lot of people. Weight loss medications such as Wegovy or Mounjaro work by stimulating nerve receptors in your brain that regulate your appetite, helping you overcome a network of unhelpful signals in your body.
The numan take
Menopausal weight gain affects at least 50% of women - but there are plenty of things you can do to slow or reverse it. Adjusting your diet, exercising, and working on your sleep hygiene are all simple but effective ways of managing your weight once you hit menopause. It may be a natural part of life, but that doesn’t mean you have to live with the symptoms.
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