Midlife weight gain and one way to help prevent it.

Please excuse the rather dodgy picture but it was what I used to demonstrate during a recent Facebook life I did about Midlife weight gain.

During the PeriMenopause MOST women will put on some weight. Nearly ALL the women I coach say that they don’t want to put on weight BUT that they also want to live a lifestyle that allows them the freedom to have the odd glass of wine or gin and tonic and dig into a piece of cake or tasty bowl of chips SOMETIMES.

And I get that.

If we are lucky enough to be heading into our Peri Menopause it means we are still alive and I don’t say that flippantly.

My 57 year old body will, I hope, be around for a good many years yet so I want it to be able to function properly, pain free and let me get on with enjoying the things that I want to do.

So it’s all a balance isn’t it.

I have to balance out the right nutrition for optimum health, the right movement and exercise to keep me supple and strong and what you may not know …

That I also have to get enough sleep and rest which can in turn help PREVENT the dreaded Meno Belly.

Here’s the science in brief. The information is taken from The Wisconsin Sleep Study of just over 1000 participants.

When you are asleep your body is repairing tissues and cells and producing hormones which do different things. There are two hormones you may not have heard of.

Leptin and Grehlin.

• Grehlin is a hormone that is produced to make you feel HUNGRY. As we head towards meal time your grehlin levels go up and your tummy starts to rumble to make you eat.

• Leptin however, tells your brain that you are full up, you don’t need that second portion or an extra piece of cake.

BUT - If you consistently sleep for 5 hours or less each night the production of these hormones is affected. The amount of Grehlin goes UP by 14.9 % making you generally more hungry and your production of Leptin decreases by 15% so that when you do eat - you don’t have the normal STOP eating triggers.

This will obviously cause an increase in weight if it continues over a long period of time.

What can you do?

The Peri Menopause is a challenging time for sleep as hot flushes, anxiety, itching etc all affect the amount and quality of sleep we get. It is therefore a good time to take a look at some lifestyle changes you can make which will help.

One of the huge benefits of HRT is that hot flushes disappear almost overnight once Oestrogen levels settle and Progesterone helps with the quality and depth of sleep.

Try these tips to improve your sleep hygiene

1. Don’t exercise after 8pm in the evening - it raises your core temperature which can have a negative effect on how well you sleep.

2. Don’t read your phone, laptop or iPad in bed. In addition to the blue light issue which is disproved and reproved almost monthly, the content of what you are reading is a brain stimulant rather than a relaxer.

3. Try a hot bath with Epsom salts before bed.

4. Turn down overhead lights in main rooms about an hour before bedtime. Use low light only.