During menopause, your metabolism changes: it becomes slower. You can find out here how this affects your weight and how you can counteract it.
When women in midlife notice that they no longer lose weight as easily as before, that they gain a few pounds every year – especially on their stomachs – even though they don’t do anything differently than before, then the changed metabolism is usually behind it. This is partly due to hormonal reasons, but is also due to the natural aging process. But even in this phase of life, you can specifically support your metabolism through certain measures.
How can I stimulate my metabolism during menopause?
There’s a lot you can do about that. This is particularly useful during menopause, because hormonal changes and increasing age have a negative effect on metabolism. It becomes more sluggish, so you’re more likely to accumulate extra pounds that are difficult to get rid of. These are effective measures:
Change the diet
During menopause, nutrient requirements increase while calorie requirements decrease. So make sure to eat as rich in nutrients as possible and at the same time avoid empty calories. How it works? Half of the plate of a meal should be filled with vegetables, a quarter with filling proteins from plant and animal sources, and the rest with long-chain carbohydrates from whole grains. Be sure to include fruit and high-quality fats such as linseed, rapeseed or walnut oil in your diet. Please also read our article about proper nutrition during menopause.
What doesn’t help at all are (crash) diets because they slow down your metabolism even further. If the calorie intake is significantly reduced, the body assumes that there is starvation and reduces the metabolism to a minimum. So always eat enough and avoid energy-dense foods, such as ready meals, fried foods, sweets, white flour products, snacks and sugary drinks. They contain the aforementioned empty calories that end up on your stomach and hips almost immediately.
Try intermittent fasting
Basically are longer meal breaks a good idea because it then gives the body the time to really start burning fat. With intermittent fasting, you eat in a time window of eight hours a day and fast for the remaining 16 hours. However, intermittent fasting can be a stress factor for the body if there are strong hormonal fluctuations during menopause and therefore may not work for some women. But you can definitely try it out to see if you can handle it.
Build muscle with strength training
As already explained, muscle mass decreases over the years. However, muscles require energy (calories) even when at rest, unlike any other tissue. To train against muscle loss and for a better muscle-fat ratio in the body Caring for it stimulates fat burning.
Bring more movement into everyday life
The energy metabolism at rest (basal metabolic rate) is increased by sporting activity. To do this, it is necessary to get out of breath for a short time so that the heart rate increases and blood circulation throughout the body improves. Then oxygen and other important substances get into each cell more quickly, which means the Prerequisite for a smoothly functioning metabolism is. Sport also increases your metabolic rate because you need more energy through physical activity.
BRIGITTE dossier “Menopause”
How to get through the menopause calmly
Do you keep waking up at night? Are you short of breath lately? Are you eating as usual but suddenly gaining weight? Would you like to know what helps against hot flashes?
Then we have exactly the right thing for you. In our dossier we answer the 15 most important questions about menopause.
You can easily read our digital PDF at home on your laptop or on your smartphone and start it straight away.
reduce stress
The body’s response to stress is the release of the hormone cortisol. The increases blood sugar levels and slows down fat burning. Unfortunately, stress cannot always be avoided or avoided. So make sure to specifically reduce possible stress and create a good balance between tension and relaxation. For example, you can learn meditation, try yoga, tai chi or other relaxation techniques. Autogenic training also works well for many people. Try what works best for you.
Get enough sleep
Many metabolic processes take place at night when we sleep. Lack of sleep therefore has a negative impact on metabolism. If you don’t sleep enough, you also suffer from a hormonal imbalance Leptin and ghrelin. The satiety hormone leptin inhibits the appetite-stimulating ghrelin, which also inhibits fat loss. If you don’t sleep enough, not enough leptin is released and the influence of ghrelin is strengthened. There are also long-term sleep disorders Stress factor (see reducing stress).
Sweating and freezing
Alternating showers, sauna visits, even spicy food: Heat and cold stimulate the metabolism, we can feel that immediately. Important: always end with the cold stimulus.
What exactly is metabolism?
Without us consciously noticing it, countless numbers are running non-stop biochemical reactions in the body. They ensure that every single cell in the body can function as it should and that waste products and toxins leave the organism. This is metabolism or metabolism, as it is called in technical jargon (from the Greek word for change).
When we talk about metabolism, we usually mean this utilization of our food. To do this, the three macronutrients fat, carbohydrates and protein must be converted into fuels that can be used to maintain all body functions, such as breathing, digestion or cell repair. There are three main processes in energy metabolism:
- Fat metabolism – converts fats into fatty acids.
- Carbohydrate metabolism – turns the carbs into simple sugars (e.g. glucose).
- Protein metabolism – breaks down proteins into amino acids.
What does slow metabolism mean?
Two other terms are important in this context: Basal metabolic rate and Performance turnover. The body’s calorie needs when at rest (including for breathing, heartbeat, brain) is called basal metabolic rate. The amount of energy that is consumed through physical activity, i.e. muscle work, is the power or work turnover. When your metabolism slows, your basal metabolic rate drops, which means you need fewer calories to keep your body running.
If you take in more energy (calories) than you use, you gain weight because your body stores the unburned calories in the form of fat for rainy days. In order to lose weight, you have to increase your basal metabolic rate (again), your performance metabolic rate, or both.
What makes your metabolism so sluggish during menopause?
Muscle loss plays a major role, and does not begin with menopause, but rather from around the age of 30. Muscle mass is constantly decreasing – if we don’t counteract it with muscle-building strength training. To do this you have to know that Muscle tissue is metabolically activewhich means it burns more energy than fat tissue, especially when resting. The higher the muscle percentage, the more active the metabolism.
However, the hormonal changes during menopause promote fat storage. Background: With menopause, the last menstrual period in a woman’s life, estrogen levels drop suddenly. Because estrogen has a positive effect on fat metabolism, this beneficial effect disappears after menopause and fat metabolism changes. This leads to a different distribution of body fat. This is because the influence of the male sex hormone testosterone, which is also present in small amounts in the female body, is now more pronounced. Therefore, the distribution of fat slides from the hips, thighs and butt towards the stomach. The silhouette then looks more like an apple (typical male fat distribution pattern) than a pear (typical female fat distribution pattern).
A major impact of estrogen deficiency after menopause affects the Bone metabolism. Ideally, there is a balance in the activity of bone-degrading and bone-building cells. This is due, among other things, to estrogen, which inhibits the bone-degrading cells (osteoclasts) and ensures good calcium absorption in the digestive tract. Because bone loss now predominates, this increases with menopause Risk of osteoporosis (bone loss).
How does a sluggish metabolism manifest itself?
Fewer calories are burned. So you would have to consume fewer calories in your diet in order not to gain weight. If you just eat the way you did before, pockets of fat will form that won’t be easy to get rid of.
During menopause, the “invisible” belly fat also grows. This visceral fat surrounds the internal organs in the abdominal cavity and definitely poses a health risk. You can find out more about this in our article Menopause and belly fat.
In addition to the weight problem, there can also be other signs indicate a slowed metabolism:
- Weakness, tiredness
- Lack of motivation
- Headache
- constipation
- Hair loss
- dry skin
Reading tips: Read more here about hair loss and menopause, about the typical weight gain during menopause, how losing weight during menopause works better and about the opportunities and risks of hormone replacement therapy.
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