Why Am I Gaining Weight When I Barely Eat And Work Out?
You want to talk about someone who is on the precipice of losing her sanity? It is the woman who is asking this question.
This can come up at various times in a woman’s life but I see it most when a woman is in her late 30’s to late 40’s.
Hello perimenopause, there you are.
Perimenopause is the time before menopause that can span up to 15 years of “interesting” hormonal fluctuations that seemingly change everything you once knew to be true about your body.
And let me guess, no one prepared you for it.
One of the most uncomfortable changes is an increase in fat, particularly around your belly area.
And it is more stubborn than a 2 year old toddler that doesn’t want to get strapped into a car seat (God I hated that make your body like a pencil move..I don’t miss that one bit!).
Most women respond to this by cutting more calories and working out harder, assuming that they must just need to try harder and be a bit more strict with their diet to get back on track. After all, this is what may have even worked for you in the past when the scale ticked up a little higher than you’d like.
But that seems to be a thing of the past now.
It doesn’t seem to matter that you are eating less than ever, as clean as possible, and working out longer, the weight just doesn’t budge the way that you want it to.
Frustrating as hell right?
It doesn’t seem to matter that you are eating less than ever, as clean as possible, and working out longer, the weight just doesn’t budge the way that you want it to.
First of all, I want to make sure you know that these body changes are not just common, they are normal.
Women everywhere right now are experiencing similar and they too don’t like it and are equally frustrated by it.
And second of all, I want to talk more about WHY this is happening and that it is not necessarily bad or unhealthy.
When women are menopausal and postmenopausal, the estrogen production of their ovaries declines and eventually stops producing estrogen.
But fat cells DO produce estrogen and will continue to do so after your ovaries stop. And estrogen does perform a number of beneficial functions in our body.
In light of this, it makes total sense that our body would increase its estrogen producing fat cells in preparation for a decline in estrogen production from our ovaries.
There is also something else I think is worth mentioning when we are talking about weight and aging that may be closely related to this very topic or not (we are still trying to understand the why behind it), but what we do know is that people having more weight on them as they age can result in a longer life.
So that stubborn fat? It is stubborn for a reason.
And all of the calorie cutting and excess working out is likely causing more stress on your body and further slowing your metabolism.
And if I know anything from the hundreds of women I have helped with nutrition and body image, it is also likely causing you a lot of mental stress. Thinking about food and what is a healthy choice constantly. Feeling guilty if you take a day off of your exercise routine to rest. Relentlessly seeking out health information to figure out what diet or plan will help you be healthy and either lose weight or prevent weight gain.
It can be a great burden that is super normalized by our culture, so it can be hard to recognize it as a stressful burden, but it is. And I believe that this can have a negative impact on your health.
If you would like to be introduced to a different approach to navigating nutrition and weight in your perimenopausal years, I made a free resource for you. I’ll call it a workshop, it is a series of short videos and a workbook - they can go together or stand alone. You can click here to download it and get started!
Hi! I’m Meg and I help women stress and obsess less about food and their body so that they can enjoy life more and make a bigger impact on this world!
If you want to become more nutrition and body confident, click the button below to get my free video and workbook series, 4 Steps To Becoming Body Confident.