If you are facing any issues like perimenopause weight gain, sudden weight gain in menopause, or you see fluctuating weight due to hormonal imbalances in you last 30’s or early 40’s – don’t panic. Its a natural physiological change happening in your body. You will see that your lower belly fat is increasing even when you have regular eating habits with dedicated workout as well. So let’s dive deep into what exactly is happening inside a female’s body in perimenopause and menopause period.
Just to simplify for all of you, Perimenopause is a phase anywhere between 4-8yrs before actually menopause hits you. Menopause is confirmed when you have missed 12 cycles of your periods that is 12-13 months without menstruation. I am sure now we can figure out wether we are in peri-menopause or menopause phase. The intensity of symptoms for perimenopause and menopause varies person to person. Perimenopause weight gain is very common.
Why Does Weight Suddenly Increase During Perimenopause?
- Estrogen fluctuation: Estrogen is the most important female sex hormone. It controls the menstrual cycles, lining of uterus, maintaining bone strength, skin elasticity, serotonin levels- which regulates mood, sleep, digestion, mood, anxiety, stress etc. During perimenopause there is fluctuation in estrogen, sometimes its spikes and sometimes it drops down drastically and this causes your periods to be irregular. From here it transitions to fall to the lowest when your body stop getting periods. So here your uterus lining is thickened, bone strength reduces, skin changes suddenly, mood swings, hot flashes, bloating, poor digestion, abdominal fat increases. So this leads to hormonal weight gain in women.
- Slows Metabolism: Your metabolism depends much on the muscle % in your body. Higher muscle mass, higher metabolism. With drop in estrogen, muscle mass drops leading to lower metabolism and due to anxiety, poor sleep and digestion, the over all energy levels are down, thereby affecting the average physical activity of the individual.
- Increased Insulin Resistance: Low estrogen change the fat distribution in the body and gathers most of the fat in lower abdomen. This leads to inflammation that worsens insulin resistance. High insulin resistance leads to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, brain fog, fatigue and also pigmentation in skin.
- Muscle Loss: Decline in estrogen and other hormones the muscles are now less capable of repairing, And this loss starts from perimenopause period.
- Stress & Cortisol: As we know the estrogen levels drop and body becomes more sensitive to stress as sleep, mood, digestion everything is affected. All this together elevates the stress hormone cortisol and high cortisol leads to stress, anxiety, poor sleep, mood swings, brain fog etc
Why Does Weight Fluctuate So Much in Menopausal Women?
As I discussed above the changes that a women goes through during her peri and menopausal periods. This leads to lot of other symptoms which she has to manage which leads to perimenopause weight gain. If you are going through hormonal weight gain you can relate to the symptoms very well.
- Water retention
- Poor sleep
- Bloating
- Inflammation
- Emotional eating
- Digestive slowdown
What Actually Helps in Menopause Weight Management?
Menopause weight loss tips or ways by which you can have manage hormonal weight gain in women.
- Increase Protein Intake: As the muscle mass decreases at very high speed due to low estrogen, its important that you give your body good quantity and quality of protein so that there is proper repair and growth of muscles.
- Strength Training: As the muscles mass reduces, strength training helps in maintenance of muscles and also growth if you workout on regular basis with good portion of protein in diet.
- Better Sleep: Try to follow sleep hygiene. Fix up time to go to bed. Less sleep can lead to worsen the process of menopause.
- Stress Management: As we read above that the stress hormone cortisol elevates during this period so its important that you do exercise and breathing that supports to bring down that cortisol. You can opt to follow any of the activity that you enjoy which makes you happy which further brings down your cortisol levels. Yoga meditation also helps for stress management
- Gut Health Support: Change your diet which supports your gut health. diet which suited at 25 may not be same today. So consult a qualified nutritionist or health care professional who can guide you for gut friendly diet.
- Balanced Meals Over Crash diets: Just don’t focus on weight loss or fat loss by opting for crash diets. You will end up with various nutritional deficiencies and poor health status. You have to respect the physiology of the body and make meals balanced so that daily nutritional requirements have been met.
Biggest Mistakes Women Make During Menopause Weight Gain
- Starving themselves by skipping meals and going on a calorie deficit and nutrient deficit diets.
- Excess cardio in order to loose weigh faster, But with cardio you loose fat and muscles also. Its time to preserve muscles. So It will be an absolutely wrong decision. Strength training is Must,
- Following random internet diets which are not personalized to your body. Every body is different and so is the diet and approach. Work with a qualified dietitian to help you achieve your goals.
- Ignoring hormones & stress: Respect your body and go with the flow slow and gradual. I am not saying that don’t work towards your goals, but have a right approach and under supervision
So first rule, don’t panic. Give sometime, understand the transition taking place and then act accordingly. Please feel free to connect with me for nutrition consultation to manage your menopause weight gain, perimenopause weight gain, hormonal weight gain in women, menopause weight loss tips.