can you give me any advice about getting rid of weight during perimenopause? –Nicole from SC

Hey Nicole,

I’m not an expert in menopause by any means, but I’ve definitely been reading up on it! Because of my own curiosity in my certification process to work with women in fertility, I’ve been checking out a few different books. All of my advice today will come from one book called Next Level by Stacy Sims and Selene Yeager who are experts in the field of menopause. I highly suggest checking out this book for an extensive look! For today’s purposes, I will give you a few highlights I found in the book about weight gain and methods to combat it. 

As you know, weight gain in menopause is extremely common. The book mentions that the average weight gain is about five to eight pounds, but many women gain more. WHY?? Estrogen promotes fluid retention and progesterone decreases it. When you’re in that perimenopausal phase, estrogen is high and progesterone is low. You can end up feeling puffier because of this, too. One of the most common things I hear from women in perimenopause is that even if they don’t gain weight, they feel and see their body composition change. They lose muscle and put on fat in places that haven’t had it before. Changes in estrogen and stress hormones send fat to the abdominal area. 

The main message is to establish a healthy body composition with an emphasis on putting on and maintaining as much protective and powerful muscle as you can. 

How do you do that?----Here are a few pieces of advice that Next Level gives:

1. Sprint (sprint interval training)

You’ll reap more rewards from your exercise time by turning up the intensity and turning down the volume a couple of times a week with true recovery on other days. This can be done through running, cycling, tabata workouts, etc. The key is to get your heart pumping hard, and then take a short break. 

Here’s what the book says as to WHY it works

“High-intensity sprint interval training sessions can provide the metabolic stimulus to trigger the performance-boosting body composition changes that our hormones helped us achieve in our premenopausal years.”

“One of the biggest benefits of SIT training is improvement in body composition. SIT training increases lean muscle mass and reduces fat mass in a relatively short period of time.”

“When you do sprint interval training, your body pumps out more human growth hormone, increases testosterone, decreases estrone, and counteracts cortisol…with less cortisol, you have less stimulus for putting on body fat. With more human growth hormone and testosterone, (both of which are muscle-making), you have an increased stimulus for putting on lean muscle.

2. Lift Heavy

Just as you shouldn’t be sprinting every day, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy things every day either. The book suggests reserving this portion for big, compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, and chest presses because they speak the load across multiple large muscles. The book also says to work up to this with appropriate form over time along with warm ups and cool downs. Heavy lifting means that you are lifting six reps or less with as much weight as you can. Again, this is how you stimulate your body to build muscle at this stage of the game. Remember, the whole idea is that you are building and maintaining as much muscle mass as possible.

3. Plyometrics (jumping, hopping, bounding, jump squats, jump lunges, etc.)

This means that you are purposefully giving your bones and muscles the extra stimulus that comes when you push off against gravity and land back down. This is something that you can incorporate as a warm up before your springs or even your weight lifting days. 

Here’s what the book says about WHY you should be doing this:

“Without estrogen, your body needs a strong stimulus to pick up the slack and keep your muscle fibers strong and firing quickly and powerfully. That’s where plyometrics comes in. The reason plyometrics words so well is that it triggers what are known as epigenetic changes…Plyometrics also maintains, builds, and improves the function of your mitochondria. When you have more mitochondria and better mitochondrial function…you preserve metabolic health.”

“Plyometrics improves insulin sensitivity, so you can get glucose into your cells, where you need it, instead of keeping it in your fat stores, where you don’t.”

4. Feed Your Microbiome

Eat lots of fibrous fruits and vegetables to increase the diversity of your microbiome. These foods use estrone (the less desirable form of estrogen) as a primary fuel source which we want because then it is not stored as fat. Aim to have 25 grams of fiber from plant foods daily. Also include foods that are rich in micronutrients known as polyphenols: berries, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, dark chocolate, coffee, tea, olive oil, and red wine. Include fermented foods like plain yogurt, kefir, miso, kimchi and sauerkraut to naturally introduce healthy bacteria–these are probiotics. Prebiotics like barely ripe bananas, asparagus, legumes and apples are common prebiotic-rich foods.

Here’s more details on WHY this works from the book:

“As the research on the gut microbiome evolves, it appears that the ratio of bacteria you have in your gut has a profound impact on your body composition…If you have a higher portion of Firmicutes in your gut, you will be more apt to gain weight than someone with a higher portion of Bacteroidetes, even if you eat the exact same diet.”

5. Manage Your Blood Sugar

Although a medical care professional would be the best to consult for specifics on your personal dietary needs, a good baseline of menopause macros are:

Carbs–2 grams per kilo of body weight

Protein–2 grams per kilo of body weight distributed evenly throughout meals

Fat–1+ grams per kilo of body weight

Notice that the PROTEIN is most likely way more than what you’re currently consuming (at least in comparison to the women I’ve spoken with!)

Here are some more details from the book as to WHY you should pay attention to this:

“Estrogen promotes insulin sensitivity, so it helps insulin do its job of shutting blood sugar into the cells to be stored for energy. It also regulates GLUT4 activity, which pulls glucose into your cells without insulin. As estrogen diminishes, you become more insulin-resistant. It’s harder for your body to use starches and blood sugar as effectively as it used to and to get that glucose into your cells. The result is fat storage as your body pulls that blood sugar into fat cells to get it out of circulation”

Again, I would definitely consult Dr. Stacy Sims’ book for more information, but these are some basics I picked up from reading that I plan to mention to the women close to me who are struggling with weight gain due to menopause! Best of luck to you!