Youthful New You

Losing Weight After Menopause

Has Menopause Weight Gain Left You Feeling Miserable, Tired, and Unattractive? Learn The Reasons You Gain Weight During Menopause And The Secret To Losing The Weight For Good

Having more trouble than usual getting your pants zipped up these days? Sick of feeling like you can’t even chew a piece of gum without packing on pounds? You’re not alone! One of the most common complaints of women in their 40’s and 50’s is gaining weight after menopause.

During menopause – and often during pre-menopause – you may find that you either gain weight more easily or you have a lot more trouble keeping extra weight off. While this “middle age spread” is totally normal it can leave you feeling crummy, tired and unattractive as well as increase your risk for some really serious health conditions.

So why does it become so much easier to gain weight during menopause? There are a couple of reasons.

• First, as we age most women become a lot less active. Typically the older we get the less exercise we get and our bodies reflect that by gradually gaining weight.
• Second, one of the biggest factors in why women either gain weight or have trouble losing weight after menopause has to do with the amount of lean muscle in our bodies. Muscle takes a lot more energy for our bodies to maintain than fat, which means the more lean muscle we have in our bodies the faster our metabolism runs and the more calories we burn.

  As we age, though, our muscle begins to be replaced by fat and as a result our metabolisms start to slow down. This is bad news since it means that even if you eat the way you always have you might be taking in more calories than your body actually needs. Your body starts storing these extra calories away as fat and as a result you begin to gain weight.

• Finally, after menopause the hormone changes that your body goes through can also change the way that your body handles calories. Typically what this means is that your body needs a lot less calories than before and it also starts storing more calories away. That means that if you don’t change your eating habits and start eating less you stand a good chance of putting on weight thanks to hormonal changes.

Carrying extra weight after menopause can have serious health consequences, too, including increasing your risk for heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Not only that, but according to the Mayo Clinic, menopause weight gain can also increase your risk of breast cancer.

Also, be aware that excessive weight gain could also be a sign that something is wrong with your hormone levels, blood sugars, or eating habits. Visit your doctor if your weight gain is out of control.

The good news is that losing weight after menopause can really significantly decrease these risks. In addition, it can help you to feel younger, more energetic and more attractive. It’s a win-win situation!

So how do you go about losing weight if your metabolism has slowed to a crawl and you’ve become a lot less active? Are you doomed to slowly pack on more and more pounds each year? Absolutely not! By taking some simple steps and making a few easy changes in your lifestyle you can conquer menopausal weight gain and get back to feeling healthy and looking great.

Here’s What You Need to Do to Lose the Weight

First, you’ll need to start building some muscle to replace the muscle tone that you’ve lost. The more muscle you can get into your body the easier it will be for you to lose weight and keep it off.

Make an effort to become a little more active each day. Take a brisk walk somewhere beautiful. Or buy a bike and ride it to run some of your errands. Love to swim? Try taking a water aerobics class. If you can incorporate little changes that you enjoy and that are practical into your routine you’ll be a lot more likely to stick with them for the long term.

Along with exercise if you are trying to lose menopause weight you will want to follow a diet that is geared toward fat loss. Avoid “starvation diets”, or extremely low calorie diets that can actually do more harm than good by causing your metabolism to slow down even further.

Instead, look for a diet that gives your body enough calories each day, that allows you to eat foods that you like and that is easy to stick with.

I’d recommend checking out Strip That Fat, an easy diet program that is based on 2 week cycles. Essentially, when you sign up you use an online diet generator to choose foods you like and generate a personalized 2 week meal plan based around those foods. Here’s why I think this is such a great diet choice for losing menopausal weight:

• Unlike fad diets, Strip that Fat is designed to allow you to lose weight steadily over time which means not only are you going to be able to keep it off, but the weight you lose will be fat rather than muscle or water weight.
• There are over 40,000 different possible combinations of foods to choose from so you should be able to find something you like and that will be easy to stick with. Once you generate your meal plan you simply print out the shopping list that they give you and head out to the grocery store.
• You can generate as many new 2 week plans as you want so you can mix it up each cycle and won’t get bored with the foods that you are eating.
• The Strip that Fat Diet also comes with a lot of really sound dieting advice that will help you get on track with learning how to understand your body and the changes it has gone through after menopause.
• One of the best parts of this diet plan is that they stress that being healthy and maintaining your vitality doesn’t have to be torture. Instead, they encourage you to make simple little changes that are easy and enjoyable so that you can keep it up for the long haul.

Also, be sure to try the nifty little weight loss calculator that they have on their page that will tell you how much weight you could expect to lose on the diet (it’s partway down the page)

Click Here to See How Much Weight You Can Lose with Strip That Fat

Along with that, you should take a minute to sign up for my free email course on how to boost your metabolism.

A slower metabolism is one of the main reasons that it becomes more difficult to keep weight off after menopause, so speeding it up can really help you to keep from gaining anymore weight as well as to start shedding any weight you have gained and get you back to a younger, healthier body. Simply enter your first name and your email address in the form below and you’ll immediately get the first part of the course in your inbox.

The faster your metabolism runs the easier and faster it is going to be for you to lose weight. It’s amazing that making a few simple changes to your diet, exercise and lifestyle can make all the difference and can really help you reach your weight loss goals.