Welcome to our taking control of Menopause blog.
Perimenopause and Menopause are not the end, they are just the beginning.
June 16, 2022
Weight Gain- is it a foregone conclusion or manageable?
We were having some deep thoughts before our workout the other day and questions were posed.
Why does everything seem to change because we hit perimenopause?
Why does it seem like our hormones start spiraling out of control causing us to gain weight?
I mean let's be honest, we have been under their influence for most of our lives at this point, right?
Why are they being blamed for so much of what is happening to us right now?
Is it really our hormones' that are jacking us up?
OR
could it be the choices we are making and we really do have more control over things than what we are lead to believe?
Assuming our hormones are doing the jacking, which we know are changing, is it the hormones that are messing us up on their own or is it the consequences of the changes that need to be made that we aren't addressing? Bear with me, if you are driving on a road and the speed limit is 40mph until you get to a school zone where it drops to 25mph, do you continue to drive 40 past the school or do you correct your speed accordingly? SO our hormone fluctuations are causing us to be tired, (lack of sleep from stress, night sweats, hot flashes, insomnia) which then causes us to move less, which in turn causes us to struggle to maintain an appropriate caloric intake, which ultimately impacts our ability to maintain our weight/physique. So is it the hormones or our reaction to them? Could it be we really don't know how much we are supposed to consume now based on our activity level to maintain our weight?
We spend most of our adult lives vacillating between periods of caloric restriction where we pay attention to what we eat, to periods of time where we don't pay attention at all. How do we really know how much we need to eat? Is it the hormones or just a caloric surplus? Could we be drinking more because of increased stressors; taking care of kids transitioning to adulthood (this is not for the faint of heart), becoming empty nesters, caring for aging parents, increased job demands yada yada yada.. adulting is HARD, perhaps this is pushing us into a caloric surplus? (Fun fact did you know you need to count alcohol calories as a fat as well as a carb because of how they are processed by the body? - this is a whole other blog) Are we eating out more because we don't have time for all the demands we juggle in our lives? Are we pushing the F-it button more and indulging more than we used to because we can and it's more readily available.?
All of this is a way to ask, are we really controlling all of the things we do have control over? Meaning, yes, we can control the perimenopause symptoms with hormone replacement therapies but after that, are we really working on OPTIMIZING the things that we have control over and will impact our results?
Are you consistent or working to OPTIMIZE your SLEEP?
Are you consistent or working to OPTIMIZE your WORKOUTS and/or hitting those 10K STEPS
Are you consistent or working to OPTIMIZE your FOOD both the QUALITY and QUANTITY and WATER intake?
What happens when you are consistent in getting sleep, hitting your workouts/steps and food/water intake? Why would our changing hormones change the results that worked for our life up until now? If you continue to control what you have control over, the results will still follow.
We still have control over quite a bit, we just need to pay attention and OPTIMIZE !!!
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