Menopause is the end of a woman’s menstrual cycle.  The good news you will not have your monthly period.  Unfortunately, there are many real changes to your body during menopause.  And here is the bad news. We need less calories to maintain our current weight because Estradiol levels drop and so Estrogen drops during menopause. The Estrogen then reduces your leptin and ghrelin levels, which are important hormones for managing hunger and cause your metabolic rate to go down.  It is not in your head; you really need 100 – 300 calories less per day than you did before you went through menopause.  Spoiler alert:  do not, I repeat, do not radically cut your calories. Exercise will increase muscle tone whereas radical dieting will decrease muscle tone in menopause.  And you need all the muscles you can get in menopause!

“Why am I gaining weight during menopause?”

Knowledge is power. Watch and live with ease. Manage your energy levels, cholesterol, mood swings and weight changes every day. Get the help you need now to feel powerful once again during menopause.  Here are the ten best diet and lifestyle ways to maintain or lose weight after menopause:

  • get a physical from your doctor,
  • have goals for yourself,
  • measure,
  • eat healthy plant based foods,
  • stay away from Big Food (processed and fast foods),
  • maintain great posture,
  • avoid a sedentary lifestyle,
  • meditate for stress reduction,
  • exercise, and
  • join a community, like DietCommunity, for support.

Get a physical with your doctor. The weight gain could be due to your thyroid, an ovarian cyst, sleep apnea, stress, the medications you are currently on need to get adjusted, depression, just to name a few. When you are depressed you might self-medicate with food or alcoholic drinks. Unfortunately, depression could be a result of menopause, but mediation and cognitive therapy can really.  The most important thing by going and getting a physical is to rule out a health problem that could be causing your weight gain.

While You are at Your Doctor’s Office

While you are your doctors, get all your baseline labs so you can measure your progress over the next couple of months.  Let your doctor know you want to lose weight.  I was eating a vegetable omelet for breakfast and a big salad for lunch and doing aerobics three times a week.  My doctor said I was doing okay.  But he said I could do even better.  Dr. Kwan recommended to get my thyroid tested.   My thyroid was low.  Dr. Kwan also said I needed more weight training and half my plate at dinner should be greens.  What a difference it made in my life.  Back in the day, no matter what diet you went on, the first step was getting a physical.  You can bet your doctor will not tell you to adopt a diet of overpriced protein bars and protein shakes.

Not Many Studies on Menopause

According to a study that looked at over 3,500 weight related studies published in the Journal of Obesity by Janet Jull, et al. There are not a lot of consistent studies on menopause and weight gain.  The one thing that came up was successful women had a goal and they periodically measure to know if the strategy they were following was successful or not.  Big Food is everywhere now and the convenience that comes with it.  Just being conscious of how bad Big Food has gotten for your health and waistline, is a big win.  As we get older, not only do we get tech neck but hunch more.  That leads to our belly’s gaining more bulk and belly fat. Want to look like you lost ten pounds fast?  Stand up straight.  Plus, the bad posture throws our whole body out of alignment.  Bad posture also puts us at risk for falls.

What is Your Goal?

What is your goal?  Stay the same weight? Make meals at home six nights a week instead of the lure of fast food? Incorporate more exercise? If it is losing weight, what is the exact number of pounds you want to lose, or the exact cholesterol results do you want.  The measuring is ongoing.  What will you eat today? Also, put in your calendar at periodic times (at 6, 12, 18, 30, 42 and 54 months) to see how you are doing.   If you are not measuring you will not know what is working and what isn’t.

 

 

How-to-lose-weight-after- menopause

What’s the best way to prevent weight gain after menopause?

Look at what you are measuring.  What to measure? Your weight, waist circumference, body composition, blood pressure, lipids profile, glucose, physical activity and a food intake journal. Even exercise you must put it in your calendar to make it a habit and really set goals to go at a certain time.

Here is an itemized list of what to measure:

Weight                                 __________

Waist circumference        __________

Body Composition           __________

Blood Pressure                 __________

Lipid Profile                     __________

Glucose                             __________

Physical Activity             __________

Food Intake Journal      __________

You can measure anything.  You might want to have your goal of getting in an old pair of jeans, so trying on the jeans once a month.  Or you might want to try on your old fat jeans and see how much weight you have lost and recognize your incredible weight loss!

I have said it before.   Exercise will increase muscle tone whereas radical dieting will decrease muscle tone in menopause.  Exercise is so important for your weight but so many other things.

How to stop menopause weight gain

So here are some top exercise ideas:

  • Yoga and Pilates will help with posture and stress.
  • Zumba and Aerobics will help with cardio and burns the most calories.
  • Walking is probably the healthiest and cost-effective exercise you can do.
  • Interval Training and weight training is important to build muscle mass and bone strength.
  • Dance class are not just for kids.  Flamenco, Hip-Hop, Salsa, Modern.  With the COVID there are so many more classes available online.
  • March in place while you are doing the dinner dishes.

Exercise will let you get better sleep.   Muscle looks better than fat, so five pounds of muscle takes up about half as much room as five pounds of fat.  Plus, muscle mass burns more calories at rest.  And who doesn’t want that?

A healthy diet is good for your overall health. Forget about a diet program. Weight loss programs are owned by BigFood.  Here is a list of which BigFood companies purchased the diet programs:

Heinz Food in 1978 brought Weight Watchers

Unilever in 2000 purchased SlimFast

Kraft produces the processed food for South Beach Diet

Roark Capital Group (Cinnabon cinnamon rolls, Carvel ice cream) brought Atkins in 2010

Nestle in 2006 purchased Jenny Craig, Lean Cuisine and also owns Optifast/Medifast.

Conagra (Banquet check potpie, Reddi-wip are some of their products)in 1988 launched Health Choice

The Nordic Way shows the success with avoiding foods that have a high glycemic index. Which is very high in most processed foods and fast foods.  It is also not on the labels.  Just don’t buy BigFood. And that is ultra processed foods like those chicken nuggets they sell at fast food restaurants.  Stay away from fast food restaurants.   Better to cook yourself, prepare your meals in advance, eat authentic, genuine food you make yourself.  Who isn’t distrustful of Big Food and our entire food system? The dairy industry lied to us on the benefits of dairy.  Protein can come from plants not just meat.

 

Tom Brady number one rule is to avoid processed foods!     Eat more greens.  Lots and lots of greens. Try for ten servings a day.  I said try!  Menopause also increases bloating and gas so this will make both of those better.  Oh yeah, not at first though! Eat more beans.  Take Beano if your body first rejects the beans.  Your body will make less gas as you get use to eating healthy!  Do not skip meals but try to eat a bit less at each meal.  Make sure you are staying hydrated by drinking plenty of water or iced tea with no sugar or sugar substitute.

The best way to prevent weight gain after menopause?

Do not forget your fruit but stay away from fruit juice because it is way too easy exceed your calories for the day with fruit juice. Most importantly, staying away from Big Food, that is fast foods and processed foods.  All around the world the food pyramids stress fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean sources of protein.  If you like soup, have more vegetables and bean soups.  Studies have shown that soup eaters weigh less.  Some hospitals in Europe serve only soup because they think your body heals much faster eating just soup.

Cutting out sugar will help. Especially soda and sugary drinks. I worked with one woman in a chronic disease program, and she lost 100 pounds in less than a year just cutting out soda.   Again, those sneaky Big Food companies! You can get a coke anywhere but try getting a club soda or iced tea with no sugar.  I drink herbal teas, which is perfect and a lot better than water all the time!

Big Food makes lots and lots of money selling you bad food covered in salt, fat,  sugar and questionable chemicals.  They are destroying your health, decreasing your quality of life, and cutting down on your life expectancy.  I am an operating room nurse and if you want to avoid surgery or the complications from surgery, stay away from Big Food.  Please be very aware what you are putting in your body. More vegetables less BigFood.

According to articles in the Journal of American Medical Association there is a relationship to stress causing weight gain and obesity. Stress is one of the reasons we go to our doctor. The best way to cut down the stress in your life is to mindfully meditate.  I know you say you are not stressed out.  But how many of these other stress symptoms do you have?

  • Trouble sleeping?
  • Headaches, dizziness, or irritability?
  • Tension in jaw or shoulders?
  • Diabetes Type I and II?
  • Abdominal Pain?
  • Irritable Bowel Syndrome?
  • Decrease Sex Drive?
  • Muscle Tension?

 

Which brings me to a great trick I learned at a yoga class years ago.  We all won’t be perfect and it is a work in progress eating better.  We all got a piece of chocolate that had two bits to it.  We savored those two bites over five minutes.  To this day, when I am eating out and we get desert I share it and I only have two bites. Okay if it is good then three bites!  After the first two bites you do not really taste it anyway.  It just goes right to your waist.

Join the DietCommunity platform. DietCommunity was started  by an operating room nurse who got sick and tired of seeing woman who needed surgeries get delayed on when they would have their surgeries.    The  surgeries were  delayed primarily due to Covid and nothing was offered to these patients while they were waiting for their surgery date.  Not even simple interventions like a  a change in diet,  starting a simple exercise routine or trying to reduce the women’s stress levels down.  There are non-operative care available to women.  And with the Covid delaying surgery dates, there is a big need to find alternatives while you are waiting for your surgery.  There are other things you can  look into in the meantime.  Getting some physical therapy.  Try yoga, stretching, daily walking,  zumba, and weight training to maintain your healthy equilibrium. There are registered nutritionist who can design a detox program for you to reduce the inflammation in your body.

You can see all the different areas Mindful Mediation can help with. Meditating a few times a week to reduce your stress levels and make you more aware when you are stress eating is great too.  Starting a Mediterranean diet which is total supported by medical research as helping your body get healthier.  Easting a plant based diets that is lots of vegetables, fruits, beans and grains.  Joining DietCommunity and having a community of people to help you get healthier while you wait.  It provides the support and accountability of your community of people who want to get a healthier lifestyle and what is working for them. It supports you to be free of BigFood and help understand how BigFood tries to get you addicted to very bad for you processed and fast food.   There is way too much sugar, fat, salt and chemicals in fast food and processed food that is not helping your body at all.

You will find success.   Having a happy, safe place to have a community to share wins and figure out how to get healthy with friends is a great way to reach your goals and maintain them.  Meet and discover and connect with members who share similar interests and maybe even similar problems.  There are recipes for starting out.  There is an actual online community to get help and help others on their journey.   If you need additional help at the beginning, there are coaches to help.  Join DietCommunity to express your identity to live a healthier lifestyle after menopause.  You can be healthy, wealthy and wise.  And getting yourself a lot healthier in case you do that surgery.  You will recover amazingly faster from my surgery if you are eating right, exercising and dealing with your stress.  Best of all I have seen women change so much with lifestyle changes.  How much? Their upcoming surgery were  cancelled because the lifestyle changes resolved their health problems.

2014: 824310.

Published online 2014 May 26.  10.1155/2014/824310 PMCID: PMC4058255 PMID: 24971172 by Janet Jull, 1 ,* Dawn Stacey, 2 , 3 Sarah Beach, 3 Alex Dumas, 4 Irene Strychar, 5 Lee-Anne Ufholz, 6 Stephanie Prince, 7 Joseph Abdulnour, 4 , 8 and Denis Prud’homme  Lifestyle Interventions Targeting Body Weight Changes during the Menopause Transition: A Systematic Review