Friday, March 2, 2018

Weight Changes During Menopause

As you can probably tell by the title of this blog, I'm going through menopause and my weight has been fluctuating. I've been eating "right" and exercising faithfully the past ten years and maintaining the low end of my maintain weight range with no issue. However, in the past three months, I'm still following my normal regimen , even making more healthy choices in my eating, but I'm staying at the higher end of my maintain weight range.

After doing some research, I found a very helpful article from MSNBC, "Losing the ‘matronly look’ of menopause":
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24058512/ns/health-fitness/t/losing-matronly-look-menopause/ 

Some of the key ideas I want to share are:

- "menopausal women may need to eat fewer calories or burn more through exercise in order to stay at the same weight. And to lose weight, they'll need to work even harder, probably in both areas. It's no magic bullet," says Stuenkel. "It comes back to the things we always say — diet and lifestyle."

- "One study found that women who do work at diet and exercise can stave off weight gain as they enter menopause — and stay healthier, too. ... Results published in the journal Circulation showed that during nearly 4.5 years of follow-up, the women who worked hard at diet and exercise did not gain weight but actually lost an average of .2 pounds. ... The women in the intervention group also were healthier with regard to their blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood levels of glucose and insulin."

- "...you may want to try increasing your aerobic activity. Keep in mind that an exercise program that worked for you in your 20s, 30s or even 40s may not be enough now, ..."

- "Keep in mind that incorporating different types of activity, including weight-training, into your fitness routine can give you more all-around benefits."

And this is why I named my business "AMPS Lifestyle Change", because as long as we're alive, we will go through changes! (in my best grandmother's voice 😉)

Time to be more strict with my calorie intake, increase my cardio and drink a lot of COLD water! 😰