Are You Using Menopause as an Excuse for Your Muffin Top?

  If you're a woman, like it or not, menopause is heading your way. You can't stop menopause from occurring - it's a fact of life that your body is going to experience some changes as you age. One of those changes is a postmenopausal weight gain.

In our mid-forties and fifties, it's so easy to blame that additional luggage around the midsection that spills out over the tops of our jeans (muffin tops, anyone?) on postmenopause.

But the fact is that while postmenopause does indeed cause some weight gain, that weight gain is only a few slight pounds that could easily be taken off within a few weeks. The type of weight gain due from postmenopause is because of changing hormones and retaining water.

If you’ve developed a spare tire around your midsection, you can’t blame it on your body changes. Well, you could blame it on the changes, but you wouldn’t be completely accurate.

Most weight gain during our postmenopausal years occur because of the same reason no matter what period we’re at in life. We eat too much, we don’t exercise enough to work off the extra calories we consume and we gain weight.

See: How to Count Calories to Lose Weight

Reaching the point in life where you body begins to undergo hormonal changes doesn’t have to mean unnecessary weight gain. Although it’s become almost commonplace in the society we live in today to carry around that ‘middle age spread,’ you don’t have to accept this.

There’s a saying that as we age, our metabolism slows down, leading to weight gain. This is partly true. The body’s metabolism does slow down as we age, but what happens is, the metabolism slows a little and right along with it, so do we.

We change our mindset to match the slowing metabolism and accept that weight gain is inevitable. That’s the wrong kind of thinking.

Gaining weight over and above the couple of pounds postmenopausal hormones give us is not a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t have to happen unless we sit back and allow it to happen.

See: 7 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

Sure, waning estrogen levels can have an impact on your body, but it’s actually what we think in our minds that can cause the most weight gain.

If you think it’s too late to get started once you hit those postmenopausal years, you’re wrong. By taking part in an active exercise routine and watching the amount of food you eat, you can reverse the weight gain, and also feel better about your health as well.

The hard truth to face for many of us is that barring any kind of weight gain related health condition, we gain a spread because we overindulge in food and then sit too long not doing anything about it.

Be determined to do something about it. You don’t have to accept the myth that with postmenopause you’ll gain weight. You can prevent it and if you’ve already gained, you can undo it.

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