To be able to lose weight around 50 or after 50, it is necessary to know why our body will be more sensitive to weight gain.
Menopause is a hormonal change and as you may know hormones and weight management are closely linked.
I’m not going to go back to what menopause is here, but tell you the reason why at this time in life, we are likely to gain weight more easily, and this may be your case.
We hear here and there that it’s a decrease in calorie needs. However, it is a mistake, our calorie needs cannot decrease in such a short period of time, on the other hand the hormonal change which is intense in pre-menopause and menopause, will have consequences on different groups of hormones, in particular cortisol and insulin.
Indeed during menopause, and it starts in pre-menopause, the levels of estrogen and progesterone decrease. It is estrogen that is interesting, because in less quantity, our body will have more difficulty balancing its cortisol levels and its insulin levels
This hormonal imbalance will have 1 major consequence: A decrease in our sensitivity to insulin. So if you’ve read my approach to Metabolic Nutrition ™, you know that Insulin + Cortisol is the wrong combination for weight loss. It’s actually a bad combination for everyone, but even more for a postmenopausal woman who will be even more sensitive to it.
I add that insulin and cortisol are known to be responsible for gaining “fat” in the stomach, menopause will often lead to localized weight gain at this level.
In fact, during pre-menopause and then menopause, your metabolism slows down, your ability to transform what you eat into energy decreases, which facilitates weight gain.