Menopause belly fat - HELP ME PLEASE

lavetteowens67

Anyone suffering with menopause belly? I'm full menopause. I am on a estradiol patch and estrogen insert. I have struggled with my weight for the past 5 years. I have started at the gym and now at my 65 day mark and have only lost 4 pounds. Feeling very discouraged!

I joined the gym and do Zumba 4-5 days a week and strength training about 2 times a week on average.

csplatt

How many calories do you average for each day after you adjust for exercise?

MargaretYakoda

1) You’ve lost 4 pounds. That’s decent news.
2) If you weren’t working out prior to 65 days ago, much of your fat loss is likely masked by muscle gain. Muscle weighs a lot more than fat. Have you been tracking other metrics like your waist size, or how a piece of clothing fits you?
3) Our bodies do change as we grow older.
Keep going to the gym. You will get as fit as you are able to.
4) But do keep in mind that you can’t lose fat in one area only. You can tone your muscles. But the fat will come off wherever your body decides to lose it. Don’t let that discourage you.

ji225

I dont have any huge answers, only to say that I'm in the same boat...im peri, and I've put on 6kgs in 3 years. Alcohol totally messes with my hormones soi I'm coming to the realisation that it had to be minimised.. the only thing that seems to work is counting cals and macros and staying in a deficit of 300 or so cals, so I'm on 1550 and I'm 5ft 8. Making sure I get enough protein fibre and water, and enough quality sleep. I've list 3lbs in 3 weeks but I always gained and list the same amount in the past so we shall see if I can get past 4lbs!!

cmriverside

I didn't do any hormone therapy during or after menopause. I did put on some weight, and that's when I got serious about getting it under control. I was post menopause when I lost 80-ish pounds over a period of just over a year by logging food, staying as close to my calorie goal as I could (most of the time) and getting some moderate level exercise 3-5 days per week for an hour.

Log everything, study that food diary and stick with it.

pawsrbabies239

I feel your pain, I lost 85 pounds, gain 25 back, got back on track. I am 5’2” & 57 years old & 1500 calories a day, walking 20 - 30 minutes a day & not an ounce. So discouraged. I’m thinking it’s an age thing as I’ve always been able to loose.

lisakatz2

I have the meni-pot (I am post-menopause). It's so depressing. I've lost 12 pounds but most of it has come off my chest.

I used to have a great hourglass figure. Don't know if I'm ever going to see my abs again, even if I continue to lose.

nannykely

Same post menopause and started gaining weight in my middle area.

lisakatz2

pawsrbabies239 wrote: »

I feel your pain, I lost 85 pounds, gain 25 back, got back on track. I am 5’2” & 57 years old & 1500 calories a day, walking 20 - 30 minutes a day & not an ounce. So discouraged. I’m thinking it’s an age thing as I’ve always been able to loose.

Are you tracking your food intake here? How long have you been trying to lose? How much do you weigh currently?

I've been able to lose a pound a week eating 1400-1500 calories and walking for a half hour every day. I also walk to and from my bus stop, which is 15 minutes each way. I've lost 12 pounds so far. I track everything on MFP.

I'm 61.

tomcustombuilder

Aging is an extreme sport

wm3796

You need to be in a calorie deficit each day or for the week if that is a better approach for you. Exercise is great but often the calories you burn are overestimated. So eat back those calories with that in mind( I ate back only half of my estimated exercise calories during weight loss). I lost 25 pounds in perimenopause/early menopause and my belly fat came off with overall fat loss. I used a digital food scale and weighed and logged everything. In my opinion weight loss is mostly about food and much smaller proportion exercise.

AnnPT77

Personally, I feel like an overall tendency to lose muscle mass as we age (sub-ideal nutrition, little/no strength exercise, history of yo-yo diets), and a tendency toward less movement-centric lifestyles as we age, are bigger factors in weight gain around that time than menopause per se.

All of those are factors in our control, things we can potentially reverse. We can still add muscle mass (albeit slowly), increase movement (exercise and daily life stuff), and improve nutrition (especially but not exclusively getting adequate protein).

There sure is a lot of marketing of supplements, exercise programs, diet plans and such aimed at menopausal women these days, though. I guess we're good for profits?

According to recent research, metabolism is fairly stable from our 20s into our 60s, after which decline is fairly slow for some time.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8370708/

In general, my experience is like Riverside's: I finally committed for real to weight loss at 59, lost close to a third of my body weight (obese to healthy weight) by somewhere age 60, and have been at a healthy weight since, now 68. I went into menopause at about 45, triggered early by chemotherapy, then took anti-estrogen drugs for 7.5 years thereafter. (In some ways, those drugs effectively create a hyper-menopausal state. Even now, HRT is out of the question because of my cancer history.) On top of that, I'm severely hypothyroid (properly medicated). None of that prevented weight loss (or fitness improvement), once I sincerely committed.

For many people, women and men, abdominal fat is among the last to go. If muscle mass is low, one might have to get pretty thin to get there, possibly undesirably thin for other aesthetic reasons. That's going to be an issue for the women in our demographic who've lost muscle mass over the decades: The same bodyweight that correlated to a flat(-ish) stomach at age 20 will leave us with remaining abdominal fat at 50-60. On top of that, posture issues common in our demographic can emphasize the prominence of whatever central fat does remain.

The situation isn't impossible, IMO. But personally, I don't think menopause is the place to focus. We can't change menopause. Well, HRT maybe, but that's it (and not for me).

Therefore, I'd suggest focusing on things we can change:

* Strength exercise and cardiovascular exercise, the totality of that increased gradually so as not to trigger counter-productive fatigue
* Working to increase daily life movement (For ideas: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1)
* Appropriate calorie intake, whether counting the calories or by some other method
* Taking a serious look at posture, and doing exercises aimed at improving it as needed

Granted, as always, the above is just my experience. YMMV.

P.S. I can't tell you how fervently I wish it were otherwise, but I'm extremely skeptical that any menopausal woman in a calorie deficit is building muscle mass so fast that it masks any reasonable rate of fat loss on the bodyweight scale. Strength increases fast at first, yes. New muscle fibers get added slowly - well less than a pound a month, probable.

lavetteowens67

lisakatz2 wrote: »

pawsrbabies239 wrote: »

I feel your pain, I lost 85 pounds, gain 25 back, got back on track. I am 5’2” & 57 years old & 1500 calories a day, walking 20 - 30 minutes a day & not an ounce. So discouraged. I’m thinking it’s an age thing as I’ve always been able to loose.

Are you tracking your food intake here? How long have you been trying to lose? How much do you weigh currently?

I've been able to lose a pound a week eating 1400-1500 calories and walking for a half hour every day. I also walk to and from my bus stop, which is 15 minutes each way. I've lost 12 pounds so far. I track everything on MFP.

I'm 61.

I just started logging my food this week. Per my weight and height my calorie deficit is 2000 calories. I do Zumba 4-5 days a week and that's generally a 500 calorie burn...I also do walk...I typically get 10K+ steps in daily.

Praying that tracking my food will be the key to some changes.

lavetteowens67

csplatt wrote: »

How many calories do you average for each day after you adjust for exercise?

I just started logging my food 2 days ago. So I will have a better picture in the next couple of weeks.

stevensamanda7396

I feel your pain. I am seeing a naturalpath to help me deal with menopause. thru blood work he found many issues where me body was depleted in several hormones and no vitamin d. he got me straight and this has helped immensely. not only with hormones but weight, energy, thought process, and processing situations. now I'm trying to stay strong 💪 and think about what goes in my mouth before I eat, trying to stay consistent with a plan and not lose muscle or bone mass.
second opinions and views in the medical are always an option.
food for thought here. stay strong and look at your options.