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hi
it's so good to see you we are talking
about losing weight
over 40. so to give you some context i'm
43
i also had a hysterectomy a year and a
half ago
so i am very much experiencing a change
in my body
and a change in my ability to lose
weight so i wanted to talk to you a
little bit about why that happens
and then what we can do about it over
the age of 40.
so one reason it becomes harder to lose
weight over 40 is that we
start to lose muscle mass as we age
muscle
burns more calories throughout the day
than fat does so as we lose muscle mass
that alone actually makes it harder for
us to lose
weight we burn fewer calories during the
day just because we are losing that
muscle
mass as we age second factor that has a
big part of being unable to lose weight
as easy as we get older is our hormones
so what happens as we age and we get
into perimenopausal and then menopausal
age and they say perimenopausal can
happen
up to 10 years before we hit menopause
so really a lot of us are in that
perimenopausal stage without even
realizing it sometimes
so what happens is we can either have
very high estrogen
or very low estrogen both of those
things can happen
and it becomes harder to lose weight
what we do is we actually
accumulate fat and usually they find
it's fat around the belly so we can
increase our belly fat because of that
hormone imbalance that happens as we get
a little bit older
so the next thing that can lead to an
inability to lose weight as
easy as it used to be in our life is a
lack of sleep
so studies show that we need good sleep
not only
the length of sleep but actually good
quality sleep to help us
lose weight and as we know if you're
like me and you're getting older
as we age that becomes harder for a
myriad of reasons it can be actually
going through menopause and having hot
flashes
it can be those hormone changes it can
be just the fact that we're getting up
to go to the bathroom more
i have young kids at home so that keeps
me from getting good sleep
so we need to get good sleep in order to
be able to lose weight
and then finally stress really plays a
big
part in that and it's not that we have
more stress necessarily as we age it's
that we just have a harder time
dealing with all of those factors
because we also have the hormone issues
going
on and the lack of muscle mass going on
and so increased stress will increase
our cortisol hormones
which again then makes it harder to lose
weight so those
factors are what really contribute to
the fact that it just
feels harder as we age like what i'm
really finding is the strategies that
worked for me
10 years ago don't work for me now
and they have surprised me which is why
i want to share this with you because
i'm really finding it in my own body and
i think we need to feel
empowered instead of feeling defeated
okay that's what i want for myself and
that's what i want for you is that we
find the
strategies that work for us now in this
amazing body that we have
instead of feeling discouraged so let's
talk about what we
can do about it so one thing to look at
is
our diet so meaning what we're eating
during the day
if you look at the most plain thing
people will tell you on paper
is to lose weight you need to burn more
calories during the day
than you consume it's called a calorie
deficit so that is something that you
can look at
just very generally make sure that
you're moving make sure you're burning
more calories than you're taking
in but there's much more to it than that
i want you to look at
what you're eating make sure it's very
nutrient dense to feed your body right
now
especially protein that's something i'm
personally working on and the more i
read
into research is that we need protein
especially women as we age to help with
hormone regulation
and to help keep that muscle mass so
that's one thing to keep in mind
another thing to keep in mind is you
actually don't want to consume
too few calories either if you consume
too few calories like maybe you used to
in your early 20s right we could go into
that
i'll just eat very little for a couple
weeks not that it was good for us but we
could
we would do it and we could lose some
weight that way
it doesn't necessarily work that way as
we get older the fewer calories we eat
if we are
constantly not eating enough our
metabolism will actually slow down
because your body thinks that it's in
fight or flight that it's in starvation
and it's going to
hold on to that weight and that fat and
not let it go
so that's something really important to
keep in mind please do not starve
yourself you want to feed yourself
really nutritious nutrient dense foods
especially that protein to help with
the muscle mass so another thing that
you can do
after you look at what you're eating is
make sure you're moving every day
exercise is a huge component to helping
our metabolism in two ways
one way you want to strength train
during the week so that can be your
pilates and your resistance bands and
your weights and all of those fun things
you want to get strength training in
during the week to
build that muscle mass which is going to
help you build
and burn calories throughout the day and
then you also want to be doing some
cardio because they show in research
that cardio is going to help us
increase our metabolism over the next 24
hours when we get in 30 to 45 minutes of
that cardio exercise
so make sure you're moving every day
okay so we have looking in our diet
we have also making sure that we're
moving and exercising in a regular
routine
and then you also want to look at your
hormones so that's a big thing that i
had done i worked with someone
after my hysterectomy to check my
hormones and i was
astonished at how imbalanced
they were off the charts imbalanced so
i've been working over the past year to
get those balanced which has helped me
feel
so much better so i highly recommend
that you look into that as well and
there are some great practitioners to
help you do that
you also want to look at your sleep how
much sleep are you getting like i said i
know i am not getting enough right now
so make sure that you're getting good
quality sleep
and then check in with your stress as
well so i am filming this
in early 2021 we know what's been going
on in the world over the past year and a
half i know personally i've been
holding on to that stress for a long
time
and it's not fair of me to really expect
my body to act
optimally when i'm holding on to a lot
of tension and a lot of stress
so i am working on that as well is
letting that go
and realizing how much effect that's
going to have on my body and my ability
to bounce back
my ability to lose fat lose weight or
simply
feel my best okay so things you can do
will recap
look at your diet and your hydration
with that make sure you're drinking
enough water
make sure you're exercising a
combination of strength training
and cardio and if you're not sure how to
put that together i'll have a link below
to my unlimited program we do a lot of
both of those things okay so look at
your movement your exercise
make sure that your hormones are
balanced see a practitioner for that
make sure you're getting enough sleep
and check in with your stress
all of those things combined are going
to help you
on this journey as we age
don't compare yourself to where you were
10 years ago
20 years ago it is a new journey and i
think it's one that we can embrace
if we don't let ourselves get
discouraged so take
care of what the things are that you can
do
right feel empowered in those things and
also realize it's more about how you
feel than how you look and i know that
can be hard to let go of sometimes i'm
working on it too
but truly is i've been at a place where
i don't have my health and where i don't
feel good
and now realizing some of these steps
i've taken like to balance my hormones
they have me feeling
so much better so now how i look can
follow that if i want to work on it but
really how you
feel is going to be the most important
thing so look at your energy levels look
at how you're feeling look at your
function
and then you can work on those next
steps
so i thought i hope that helps you
understand a little bit why our bodies
change after the age of 40 why it
can be harder to lose weight it truly is
it is a medical fact that it can be more
difficult but
it can be done we just need to embrace
these strategies
really embrace the body that we have now
and move forward
one day at a time all right i'll see you
soon
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