Menopause is that time which occurs in every woman’s life, which they must inevitably face. It is associated with plenty of physical and emotional disturbances and hormonal imbalances. The physical changes are many, with gaining weight as the primary one. It is coupled with plenty of aspects that are stated in the paragraphs that follow.
How is gaining weight related to menopause?
There are a couple of reasons why gaining weight is one of the many consequences of menopause. These may be hormonal or metabolic.
- Hormonal Imbalances: With fluctuating hormones, menopausal women often undergo many physical and emotional complications.
- Changed eating habits: With increasing age, the muscle mass in the body tends to decrease, and is replaced by fat. This indirectly means that now the woman has more fat in her body than before. More fat accumulation is the root cause of weight-gain, which menopausal women are more likely to put on.
- Stress and anxiety: Stress often results in over-production of hormone called cortisol. This directly results in putting on extra weight around the waist and the hips. Also, a disturbed mind may cause over-eating, leading to weight gain.
- Metabolism: The metabolic rates get highly influenced with menopause and an increasing age. Digestion becomes slow, and hence one may have to eat less, and exercise more. This is one of the many reasons why a woman may increase in body mass during her menopausal state.
Is it normal?
Gaining weight during your menopausal period is quite natural and common. Many women undergo this sudden physical transformation where they out on a couple of extra kilos around the waist and hips. This change is with respect to healthy body functioning, and is absolutely normal. Gaining weight differs from woman to woman. There are plenty of factors that play an important role in this regard.
Having said that, there are quite a few methods by which you can easily sort out this problem of putting on extra weight during menopause. With a little exercise, slight alterations in the diet, right eating habits, and plenty of optimism and motivation, one can go through this process of menopausal weight-loss like a cakewalk.
What can be done to address it?
There are plenty of ways of avoiding those extra kilos and looking younger. You need to follow certain precautions in order to keep your menopausal weight in check.
- Limit your calorie intake: as your body in now no longer in the state to digest anything and everything, it is important that you keep your diet in check. Consume just enough calories to last you through the day and nothing more. You will also be required to limit the amount of sweet and sugar in your diet.
- Physical Exercise: One cannot stress enough on the importance of exercising when it comes to weight loss. Eating right will do you no good if you refuse to budge from your couch. Also, during menopause, it is quite necessary to keep your body fit and healthy, lest you wish to fall prey to opportunistic infections.
- Eating habits: Consume the right kind of fat in the right quantity, check your daily protein intake, keeping a tab on your sugars, and avoid empty calories. Switch to healthy protein alternatives like chicken and pulses instead of butter and hydrogenated oils. Also, cut down on alcohol to minimise the risks of liver damage and weight-gain.
What are the other physical changes occurring with menopause?
The consequences of menopause are more or less related to weight-gain itself. Many other complications like hypertension and diabetes are also queued up waiting only if those extra kilos are not shed. These problems can easily be tackled by simple measures like eating healthy and right, exercising regularly, keeping your blood sugar in check, and opting for complete body check-up every 6 months.
The only way to ensure that your condition does not go out of hand is to sweat yourself out. Do cycling, running or some other form of cardio that you are comfortable with and you will never have to face the troublesome consequences of menopause again. If your waistline during your menopausal period is in check, you can very well tick off the other issues that occur simultaneously, and not worry about them.