Cracking the Code of Unexplained Weight Gain of Women in Their Forties

The term perimenopause refers to the timeframe during which a woman makes the transition to menopause. It can begin as early as the late thirties and often lasts for up to a decade. During this time, a woman’s hormones change significantly, affecting her, both physically and emotionally. Women in their premenopausal years may experience sudden, unexplained weight gain – even if they follow a clean low-fat or low-carb diet, exercise, and live a healthy lifestyle.

What’s more confusing is the measures they relied on to manage their weight in the past, no longer yield the same results. If you gain weight unexpectedly, you may ask what is causing so and what would be the best way to lose weight in your forties.

This blog will give you a starting place but you may need to speak with your primary care doctor or gynecologist. At our nutrition and weight loss clinic in San Diego, we closely work with esteemed gynecologists, helping women to lose weight and maintain.

Insulin Resistance

Most think of insulin resistance when your diet includes too much white sugar and processed pre-packaged foods. Your cells may become numb to the effects of insulin, which is essential for transporting glucose into the cells.

This numbing effect is gradual and can eventually lead to Type-2 diabetes. Due to resistance to the function of insulin, your body must respond. You begin to store the excess glucose in the blood as fat, resulting in weight gain. Women following a “Standard American Diet” often make this situation worse with well-meaning interventions:

Swapping Out Sugary Drinks with Diet Sodas

Although you can lower caloric intake by drinking diet sodas and beverages, many have a glycemic response equal to or greater than sugar. This means they still make you produce insulin, contributing to your insulin resistance.

Cutting Calorie Intake With a Low-fat Diet

Cutting calories with a low-fat diet may seem like a great approach.

Nevertheless, this approach can backfire as carbs and protein can both convert to glucose.

Removing the fats from the menu while leaving an abundance of either carbohydrates or protein is a mistake. The body prefers these quick energy sources and readily burns them at the expense of fat stores. Women on a low-fat, carb-rich diet accelerate the release of insulin after meals.

The drop in blood sugar leaves you hungrier and the lack of fat reduces satiety. Even if you lose weight this way, you typically regain it after the diet is over.

Relying on Liquid Diets

Drastic liquid diets, like Slim Fast or medical weight loss liquid diets, can also create issues. On a liquid diet, there is no fiber to buffer the insulin response. Even if you lose weight on a medical weight loss or liquid diet, you will likely regain once you finish because of insulin dysregulation.

More importantly, with this approach, there is no long-lasting behavior change. Statistics reflect this statement as 73% of women on medical weight loss programs will regain the weight within 3 years.

Choosing Diets Without Proper Knowledge

Women who already follow a “healthy diet” may be aware of the dangers for those who diet “the wrong way.” Today, there are many popular low-carb ketogenic diets available, like Keto Diet and Atkins.

These diets may be successful at helping you initially lose weight but can wreak havoc when you stop. This is our definition of dieting the wrong way, leading to rapid regain of weight and even insulin resistance.

In this scenario, the low-carb diet relieves the body of the need to produce insulin. Remember, insulin’s two main functions are to lower sugar in the bloodstream and store fat. When the diet is abruptly stopped, deviated from, or done wrong, the pancreas is left untrained. This dysregulation is the setup for regaining the weight you’ve lost and also becoming insulin resistant.

How Ideal Protein Provides a Solution

One effective low-carb ketogenic diet, Ideal Protein, factors this vital element into its design. Ideal Protein’s Phase 1 is ketogenic but contains adequate protein (not high protein). Moreover, while it’s a low-carb diet, it is high in fiber – stabilizing the blood sugar, supporting the bowels, and providing satiety. This approach maximizes weight loss, energy, and minimizes hunger.

Once you achieve your desired weight, you transition to the vital Ideal Protein Phase 2 protocol. This phase focuses on stabilizing both the lost weight and retraining the pancreas to respond appropriately to the carbs you reintroduce into the diet. This “retraining” of the pancreas is crucial in eliminating rebound weight gain like on other popular ketogenic and low-carb diets.

This long-term effect is why clients at our San Diego weight loss clinic, who are in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s, opt for the Ideal Protein protocol for weight loss. It works whether they have just 10 pounds or 100 pounds to lose.

Stress

Your body releases a hormone known as cortisol when you are stressed, which prevents you from losing weight. The human body is unique because it perceives stress as an existential threat to your survival, and starts storing calories. The stress may occur in many forms. Aside from the emotional stress of work, finances, and family, the body is also sensitive to other triggers:

Impact of Age on Hormone

Everyone has hormones, but as we age, they can become imbalanced and lead to subtle or dramatic weight gain.

Binging, Fluctuating Weight, and Crash Dieting

All three of these scenarios can put your body under immense stress. Many women have an old idea about weight loss. That is, the “eat less and move more” approach, in which the less you eat, and the more you move, the better.

However, this approach is wrong both psychologically and physiologically.

While these women may believe this may have “worked” for them in their 20’s and 30’s, this approach will backfire in the long-term. The body has a point of diminishing return, known as the Resting Metabolic Rate. This rate defines the minimum number of calories needed to function the brain, organs, and bodily systems. If this number is not achieved, it creates physiological stress for the body. The result:  you guessed it – it notifies the body that it is time to store fat to protect itself.

This deficiency will leave the body performing at suboptimal levels and reducing its energy demands; the body cannibalizes muscle mass (the basis of your metabolism). All of these can greatly affect a woman’s efforts to lose weight.

At our weight loss clinic headquartered in San Diego, California, we often come across many women who are shocked when they have their resting metabolic rate tested, reflecting their actual needs to sidestep the stress trigger. Most women who struggle to lose weight are shocked to find out not eating enough is actually the cause of their weight gain or inability to lose.

Performing Excessive High-intensity Exercise

Many women mistakenly believe that more exercise, quantity, and intensity might be the key to losing weight. Excessive high-intensity exercise, such as spin, HIIT, and Tabata, needs to be balanced with low- and moderate-intensity exercise. Those that skip this step find their “healthy exercise regimen” can also be the source of stress, causing you to store fat rather than burn it.

How does this happen?

First, to mobilize fat as fuel, the body requires oxygen. When we exercise anaerobically (without oxygen), the body cannot use fat as fuel and burns carbohydrates instead. But, the body has limited amounts of glycogen (stored sugars) to burn and once it exhausts the reserves, it then starts to burn muscle.

Secondly, high-intensity exercise stimulates a release of cortisol, tricking the body into thinking you are cycling away from a sabertooth tiger on your spin bike. The body perceives a threat to survival, so it summons up the energy to sprint, calling on cortisol. Excessive cortisol release also signals the body to start storing fat, despite what you eat or expend activity-wise.

Picture the woman going to spin classes five days a week, and while her cardiovascular fitness may improve, she will struggle to lose fat. Moreover, most women in this situation will pass on low-intensity exercises, such as walking, pilates, and yoga, because of the relatively low number of calories it burns. While these low-intensity workouts may burn fewer calories, they build an aerobic base, maximizing overall fat-burning capabilities.

An added benefit! This conditioning reduces the body’s perception of exercise as stress.

Sleep

Adults should aim for 8 hours of sleep every night. The sleep-wake cycle is crucial for repairing the body.

While many scoff at the suggestion of sleeping from 10 PM to 6 AM, this timeframe is essential. The body tackles physical repair between 10 PM and 2 AM.

Once that cycle completes, it addresses physiological repair between 2 AM and 6 AM. Put plainly; if you are not asleep, the process is unable to occur. Now imagine, women in their 40’s are often short on sleep due to lifestyle factors.

Additionally, they also face other hormone imbalances, like progesterone deficiency, exacerbating those sleepless nights. These women may mistakenly prioritize waking up an hour earlier for a spin class or Bootcamp. Truthfully, the extra sleep is a better choice to curb stress, improve overall health, and help her in losing weight.

Chronic Stress

Chronic stress, in any form, is a surefire way to gain or retain fat. Left unchecked, it results in increases in appetite, unidentified fat storage, and even adrenal fatigue, a metabolic disorder.

Hormones

During the period preceding menopause, your ovaries gradually lower the amount of estrogen it produces. As estrogen production in your body reduces, the body adapts. It tries to create it somewhere else, retaining excess fat to maintain your hormonal balance. This sneaky accumulation typically appears in the midsection as belly fat. This process is called the aromatization of estrogen. Virtually, the estrogen stored in the fat cells duplicates, creating more fat.

Additionally, as you near menopause, your body produces lower progesterone levels.

Progesterone is the calming hormone that supports the body in retaining pregnancy. As we age and fertility reduces, so do the levels of progesterone in the body. Many women with low progesterone levels note increases in water retention and, more importantly, waking during the night.

While declining progesterone levels themselves don’t make you add fat, they worsen sleepless nights, estrogen dominance,  water retention, and bloating. Let’s not forget; insulin and cortisol (excess or deficiency) are also hormones that can join this symphony of discord.

What You Should Do?

If you are trying your best to lose weight and suspect any of these hormones may be causing you to store fat, consider hormone testing. Typically, the best day to evaluate estrogen is cycle day three. Whereas the best time to assess your progesterone levels is cycle day 19.

Doctors use fasting glucose and insulin tests to evaluate your insulin levels. If the levels of insulin come back out of range, they may suggest a 3-hour glucose tolerance test. Cortisol levels will be assessed in the morning, along with other fasting levels. If you are not sure what exactly is thwarting your efforts to lose weight, schedule a complimentary appointment with our weight loss clinic and experienced nutritionists. 

Body Composition Shifts

As women approach menopause, they often lose their muscle mass and gain fat. The fat may first accumulate your midsection area. Since muscle weighs more than fat, this increase in body fat typically goes undetected by the scale. However, your clothes will begin to get tighter.

Let’s see how that happens.

Skipping Strength Training

You’re not supporting muscle mass with strength training. Many women shortchange themselves unknowingly by skipping strength training. This shortcut will always backfire.

Many are unaware that when we do strength-training exercises, we increase our Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC). This EPOC effect allows us to burn an increased number of calories for up to 24-hours, whereas, with cardio, you are only burning more calories while exercising.

Not Eating Adequate Protein

If you are not eating enough protein, you are not supporting your muscle mass with your diet. Insufficient dietary protein is a significant culprit for many women today who are trying to maintain or lose weight. Especially considering current nutritional trends, more women are opting for vegetarian and vegan diets, the low-carb keto diets, or the dreaded very-low-calorie diets (VLCD’s), like the hCG diet.

While reducing protein is a surefire way to make the scale drop, it is not without a tradeoff. Consuming enough protein is crucial to give your body the raw material to retain your muscle mass.

Women who opt for low-calorie dieting or the Keto diet containing low protein, may intentionally or unintentionally not consume enough protein to support their muscles. When this happens, the body loses lean mass, and your basal metabolic rate (BMR) will slow to adapt to lower availability. This slowing of the metabolism slows weight loss if on a diet. It also increases your chance of gaining fat all around your body but not necessarily on the scale.

Ideal Protein protocol is possibly the best solution for these women who want to lose weight through a low-carb diet but must retain muscle mass. This program helps you to enjoy the advantages of a ketogenic diet while providing your body the much needed high-quality protein. 

Conclusion

As you can see from the points discussed above, many variables can be at the root of unexplained weight gain for women in their forties. When people speak of weight gain being a natural part of aging, it doesn’t necessarily have to be. As you can see, well-intended interventions backfire and produce the opposite results. So, what should you do if you are experiencing unexplained weight gain? Most importantly, you need to identify your relevant variables from the list above and address their source issues.

Often women struggle in finding these answers, even from their physicians. Why? While biology is part of every doctor’s formal training, the intersection of biology, exercise science, and nutrition is not their wheelhouse. Most people don’t know medical school curriculum includes only one or two courses on nutrition. Where should you start? First, review the list above and identify any of the factors that could apply to you.

Once you identify these areas of “opportunity,” it will be time to put interventions in place. Even without addressing all factors, many women will be able to make improvements by tweaking one or two of these variables. A well-versed nutritionist is going to be your best bet to put together a cohesive plan of losing weight and achieve your weight loss goal.

At BioIntelligent Wellness, our nutritionists offer a 15-minute free consultation, in which they can help you take the mystery out of your unexplained weight gain. With the help of our medically proven weight management programs, you can identify the variables at play and put an action plan together to address them comprehensively. Schedule an appointment or call us at 858-228-3644 to learn more.

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