Stress: Stress has a direct effect on weight gain by causing levels of the hormone cortisol to rise. Cortisol turns on fat-cell storage throughout the body as part of a phenomenon known as the "famine effect". (In times of stress, such as when food was scarce, our ancestors developed this physiological response to conserve energy reserves.)

You will also manufacture more cortisol if you don't get enough sleep - something that Janice is already experiencing as she nears menopause. "Night sweats often wake me up and make it hard for me to get back to sleep", she says. "Then, I feel too tired to exercise in the morning. No wonder I'm putting on weight."

Finding Solutions

The key to controlling midlife weight gain focuses on establishing a healthy diet, while maintaining (or building back) lean muscle mass. Ensuring you burn off as many calories as possible through aerobic activities is also an important component of your program, as are mastering an activity that reduces stress, and getting enough sleep to keep your cortisol levels as low as possible.

Eat a Healthy Diet: Consuming a diet that is rich in fruit and vegetables, complex carbohydrates and lean protein will help you keep weight gain to a minimum in the long run. It is wise to restrict starchy carbohydrates to the morning hours, when you are more likely to burn them off, and have a salad and lean protein for dinner.

Always eat breakfast! You need this meal to kickstart your metabolism. Since you have gone the entire night without eating, your body craves food to provide the energy to carry out daily activities. Never skip breakfast to cut down on calorie consumption. Your metabolism will simply slow down. Nutritionists also recommend eating small meals every couple of hours to help increase the metabolic rate.

Be sure to take your calcium supplement and boost your calcium intake with low-fat cottage cheese, yogurt, skim milk and tofu (but check the packaging to make sure the tofu has been processed with a calcium salt). If you do not experience loss of bodyfat, you might consider reducing your caloric input by 100 calories. Significantly, women who exercise tend to consume fewer calories than those who don't. It may be that the feelings of well being that accompany regular exercise dampen cravings for food.

Be active: The importance of exercise before, during and after midlife cannot be underplayed. Physical activity fights fatigue, improves mental clarity, encourages sleep, stabilizes mood, strengthens bones, reduces the severity and frequency of hot flashes, and lessens the risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and heart disease. Physical activity also raises the metabolism, helping to trim the pounds.

You can increase your activity level easily, even if you already lead an active lifestyle. (Always check with your doctor first if you are new to working out.) Park your car away from the shopping centre and walk a quarter of a mile there and back; walk the dog twice a day; take a couple of flights of stairs before catching the elevator. Most importantly, write it all down and challenge yourself to do a little more every day.

Remember that an extra burnoff of only 50 calories a day adds up to a loss of 4.5 pounds (two kilograms) in a year, and a burnoff of 100 additional calories daily can result in a loss of nine pounds (four kilograms) a year.

More important for managing weight is the maintenance of muscle mass. As a woman ages, hormonal changes cause her muscles to diminish. Although she may consume the same number of calories, fewer are required to sustain metabolically active muscle tissue, meaning more are stored as fat. Increasing muscle mass through weight training helps ensure that the muscles continue to burn calories effectively.

Many women are concerned that, if they work out with weights or on weight machines, they will develop bulky muscles. This is not the case. The female weight trainers and bodybuilders that you see in magazines spend hours at the gym, overloading their muscles to create growth. A woman working out with weights will create new muscle cells, but these will make her muscles more dense and capable of burning more calories. They will not cause bulging in the same way that a man's muscles will bulge, because a woman's testosterone levels are too low.

Manage stress: Midlife is often a stressful time. Since many women started their families in their 30's, they may find themselves coping with teenagers, while caring for aging parents. Many are juggling these responsibilities with a full-time job inside or outside of the home.

There are many techniques that can help you manage stress. These include breathing exercises, meditation, physical activity such as going for a walk, yoga, etc. Before employing any of these, try to identify your stressors and determine if there is anything you can do to lessen their impact. Asking family members or friends to help out when you are feeling overwhelmed may be a more productive solution than trying to deal with the feelings of stress and anxiety that accompany having too much on your plate.

Get enough sleep: Declining estrogen levels are believed to play a role in sleep disturbance. Women in the early stages of perimenopause experience a lesser degree of sleep disruption than women who are closer to menopause.

Studies show that women who get at least 7 hours of sleep a night are generally slimmer than their peers. If you are not sleeping well, or you exist on fewer than 7 hours sleep a night, you may want to remedy this.

There are many ways to help combat insomnia. Many women find that melatonin supplements help them get a good night's sleep. Please check with your London Drugs pharmacist before purchasing a melatonin supplement.

Check your thyroid: Since thyroid activity also declines as menopause approaches, it may benefit you to undergo a thyroid function test. (You should discuss this with your doctor.) The thyroid gland plays an important role in balancing the hormones and affecting bone density. The thyroid produces the hormone calcitonin, which helps regulate calcium in the bones and bloodstream. Adequate thyroid function is also necessary for the production of the hormone progesterone, which plays a vital balancing role with estrogen.

Hormone Replacement

The judicious use of hormone replacement treatments (whether synthetic or bioidentical), tends to shift the distribution of 'female fat' back to the hips and thighs. Since many women have started synthetic HRT at or before menopause, and have gained weight at this stage of their lives, they have assumed that HRT causes weight gain. While it may be true that HRT may initially cause water retention and bloating, these symptoms tend to disappear once the dose has been modified to a woman's individual needs.

Recently, the use of bioidentical hormones has become popular and many doctors and anti-aging clinics are recommending this form of hormone therapy. The appropriate balance of natural progesterone/estrogen has been shown to help keep off those stubborn midlife pounds, and/or shift them back to the hip and thigh area.

Managine Midlife Weight Gain - part 1

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