Achieving A Healthy Weight Loss Metabolism in Women After 40
What are the factors that affect metabolism?
Achieving a healthy weight loss metabolism becomes increasingly important we age, and more so in women after 40.
Some factors of course, like gender, age and genetics are obviously out of our control.
However some factors ARE in our control and they’re important to at least know about to ‘help stack the deck’ in our favor, yes?
So, here’s what every women over 40 should know in order to achieve (and maintain) a healthy weight loss metabolism and ‘stack the deck’ in her favor.
First, what IS metabolism?
Put simple, metabolism is the speed in which your body metabolizes or processes food (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) into energy. It’s the main engine in control of the fat burning process.
What affects weight loss metabolism in women?
Basically, there are 9 factors that have the biggest impact on how efficiently (or not) weight loss metabolism works.
1. Age
Metabolism naturally slows down as we get older.
From age 25 onwards, your metabolism begins a gradual decline of approximately 5-10% each decade, so that over the course of a lifetime an average woman’s metabolic rate can lose 20-40% of its fat burning power.
You may have noticed that over time, especially if you’re over 35, your weight has slowly increased and/or it’s becoming harder to maintain.
2. Genetics
What you inherit from your parents plays a role in the speed of your metabolism as well, but it’s relatively minor and can be overcome with a proper diet and exercise regime.
3. Gender
Men typically have a faster metabolism as they carry more muscle mass than women.
Muscle tissue is metabolically active, meaning it burns more energy just to exist.
That’s also why men are typically better at burning calories and losing weight faster than women.
I know...it's not fair!
4. Physical Activity
As we get older, many of us tend to become less physically active.
Big mistake ladies...
As we become less physically active, our metabolism naturally reacts by slowing down.
Gradually, over time it begins burning calories slower and gets sluggish. For some of us it goes on a permanent hiatus! We begin to feel more sluggish and tired too. The result is less calories burned daily.
...And here’s why
The amount of muscle tissue we carry is a 'major player' in controlling the efficiency and speed of weight loss metabolism.
From age 35 onwards, an average women also loses approximately half a pound of muscle per year.
Now here's the REAL kicker...
She will also gain 1 – 1 ½ pounds of fat per year if she makes NO changes in her dietary or activity habits…and you guessed it…her once hour glass figure begins looking more like a beer mug!
Can you see how important maintaining as much fat burning muscle tissue as possible and being physically active especially as we age becomes?
The Importance of Exercise for Weight Loss Metabolism
The more muscle we have, the more efficient our weight loss metabolism will be. The more efficient our bodies are at burning calories, the more calories burned daily.
The end result? You feel and look better, you have lots of energy throughout the day and you lose belly fat!
While we can’t stop the aging process, we can be sure to remain physically active in order to keep burning calories efficiently and keep the excess weight from creeping up on us and aging us that much faster!
5. Insulin
Insulin is the hormone that regulates the amount of glucose (sugar) in our blood.
Many women are insulin resistant today and don’t even know it – but beware that insulin resistance is a slippery slope to diabetes and obesity!
So if you can’t seem to lose abdominal fat no matter what you do, you may be insulin resistant (which can greatly affect weight loss metabolism).
Thyroid dysfunction can affect your weight loss metabolism too.
Hyperthyroidism (too fast) or hypothyroidism (too slow) is a condition that needs to be medically diagnosed and monitored by a doctor.
If you’re following a healthy eating plan and exercising regularly, but you’re weight isn’t budging, you may have a thyroid condition.
I urge you to see your doctor and have appropriate tests done to check your thyroid levels.
This is a condition that IS treatable but it must be diagnosed and monitored by a qualified healthy care practitioner.
7. Estrogen dominance
Estrogen dominance happens when the ratio of estrogen to progesterone is out of balance.
High amounts of estrogen cause your body to naturally increase the storage of body fat.
Too much estrogen circulating in the body can also interfere with your body’s metabolism compromising its ability to metabolize or burn fat for calories.
The biggest mistake women make that sabotages their best efforts to speed up metabolism is chronic, constant DIETING.
They get caught in a vicious cycle of fat loss and fat gain, then more fat loss, followed by even more fat gain – crippling their weight loss metabolism completely.
To better understand how that vicious cycle works (and how to avoid it), I suggest you read
“The Fat Belly Syndrome”.
9. How Often You Eat & What You Eat Affects Weight Loss Metabolism
Yes ladies, it’s what you eat and how often you eat that will speed up metabolism and burn more fat.
First, you MUST eat often if you want to speed up your weight loss metabolism.
Contrary to what many in the weight loss industry want you to believe, in order to lose fat (especially if you want to lose belly fat), you should eat small meals every 2-3 hours. I call it "grazing".
If your body knows it won’t be ‘starved’ of nutrients, it will naturally release fat rather than store it.
In fact, a team of Swedish researchers found that women who eat six times a day consumed MORE calories, yet they STILL lost more weight than women who ate only three times a day!
Secondly, it’s also been proven that certain foods increase metabolism.
Find out which foods increase metabolism naturally by reading:
Honestly, ladies, THAT’s 80% of the solution to healthy weight loss right there!
The remaining 20% is to exercise.
Muscle burns 25% more calories than any other body tissue so you want to keep as much of it as possible.
That could be a brisk 20 minute walk plus doing 15 minutes of resistance training, dancing, yoga, pilates....you get the idea.
Amazon.com has a great selection of Over 40 Exercise DVD’s to choose from. Here's a few...
In a nutshell, it's the combination of eating several small meals consisting of unprocessed, natural, healthy foods along with regular physical activity daily that is THE real solution to maintaining a healthy weight loss metabolism for women over 40.
Did you find this page on achieving a healthy weight loss metabolism for women after 40 helpful? There’s a lot of women over 40 who struggle to lose belly fat and to better understand menopause weight gain...so be a good sister and help a friend or loved one by sharing this information with them, will you?
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