This is probably the most common thing I hear from women who come and see me!
I am doing everything the same and all of the sudden my weight has increased!!
What the heck!?!?
Why is this happening? How can you help combat these changes? A lot of this weight change is due to a shift in hormones and the decrease in estrogen.
Estrogen plays an important role in
- muscle mass composition and both the frequency and intensity of muscle loss can increase during menopause
- promoting muscle production, regeneration and muscle health and metabolism.
- When estrogen declines you end up losing muscle mass at an accelerated rate. In addition, as you lose muscle, without estrogen, there is a promotion of increased fat!!
Essentially it’s a race against time to preserve your muscle mass to combat the increase in fat!!!
This means you have to PRIORITIZE resistance training!
Lift heavy!!! Research has shown that 2-3 training sessions a weak can be vital for this!! Maybe it’s time to lift up those weights finally? Ideally incorporating an upper body, lower body and full body strength session can make great gains to combat the weight changes!!
