Why do post-menopausal women gain weight?

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Have you wanted to know why women gain weight after menopause? In this post, you will learn about important research on this topic as told to me by Dr. Heidi IglayReger of the University of Michigan.

So far, this is what we know: As you might be aware, estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, significantly decreases as women approach and then go through menopause.

Dr. Heidi IglayReger told me about the following new research documenting that the presence of estrogen in female rodents increases spontaneous activity. Though humans and rodents are clearly quite different, estrogen may also influence spontaneous activity in women. While this has not been proven in humans, if it were to be the case, postmenopausal women might be less active than they were pre-menopause because of decreased estrogen. What may be the key is what is meant by “spontaneous activity”.

Naturally, it includes planned activity, such as attending a group fitness class or going for a walk or run. But more likely it has to do with unplanned, and often unnoticed daily activity, such as standing up longer before sitting down, picking up around the house more frequently, or even fidgeting more - things that women (and men) do without realizing that they are moving”. Individually, these small changes in physical activity may not make a significant difference, but overtime, decreased physical activity without a matching decrease in food intake will cause weight gain.

This research suggests that by mindfully adding more brief periods of spontaneous physical movement to your day you might be able to prevent the weight gain that is associated with menopause. The simple solution to move more may appear to be easy. But while coaching women in midlife I have found that many, if not most, women have difficulty believing that these small amounts of lower intensity movement actually “count”. Intellectually, it makes sense, but when it comes to purposefully doing it and fitting it into your life it’s a different story. I advocate to clients that they LET THEMSELVES override the old outdated notion that only vigorous and lengthy exercise sessions are valid, and accept that fact that intentionally taking a parking space father away from the entrance or and taking the stairs instead of the elevator several times a day, among many other types of spontaneous movement, not only count but are extremely valuable.

In the EssentialSteps program I do with clients, I refer to spontaneous movement as “Opportunities to Move” because embedded in that concept is the value of creating time and space to move. When we move more, we feel better. Moving more accumulates throughout our day. Research suggests that moving more can improve our health.

But I’m more interested in promoting more physical movement as a way to enhance women’s daily sense of well-being. Why? Because my research shows that improving “health” isn’t a very compelling motivator for women in midlife who are, in general healthy. What we mid-life women want is to feel good - about ourselves and about our bodies.

Dr. IglayReger’s bottom line: Even though scientists are still searching for answers, post-menopausal weight gain may not be inevitable and may in fact be preventable through more brief physical movement throughout the day.

My bottom line: Moving more throughout the day will give you more energy, get blood flowing, decrease stiffness, help clear your mind, and will just help you enjoy every day more.

So what’s getting in YOUR way of moving more during your day?

As you know, I’m now blogging for More Magazine. If you want to hear my ideas more frequently than you do through the blog, you can sign up to be alerted when I post weekly on More at my profile:
http://www.more.com/user/profile/1204 . Under my photo just click on “Be notified when member publishes”. (You’ll be prompted to sign up for more.com, and then redirected to click on this option.)

I always welcome your comments, whether you want to share your own experiences or disagree with my perspective. Please tell anyone you think would be interested to check out my blog.

Dr. IglayReger summarized the research above about rodents under the direction of Dr. Peter Bodary when she was a post-doc in the Vascular Biology Laboratory in the School and Kinesiology. She continues research in the area of physical activity and body weight as the the laboratory manager for the Laboratory for Physical Activity and Exercise Intervention Research at the University of Michigan.

Posted in Exercise Intensity, Strategies, Women's Motivation | No Comments »

More Concerns about High Intensity Exercise

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

I seem to continue coming back to the topic of the problems with exercising intensely without meaning to.

Yes, in general, it is thought that the more intensely you exercise, the better health benefits you’ll get. (Although this association is less clear for women.) However, if women (and men for that matter) want to sustain exercise across their life span it is important that high intensity exercise is enjoyable or at least tolerable.

Sure some women do enjoy exercising intensely (Gina Kolata, fitness writer for the New York Times, is a great example of this.) But, in my experience, I’ve found most midlife women do NOT enjoy exercising intensely (including myself to a great extent). I’ve also discovered that a small minority of women exercise intensely and have done it for years even though they really dislike it. What motivates them to keep it up? Many are really concerned about their disease risk factors because of family history. That’s a good motivator for some. But I’ve found not necessarily for most.

Most women are too busy, have too many commitments, and are frankly too tired to make time for intense exercise. If this is what most women consider as being the only, or the most “valid”, type of exercise then they are pretty much doomed to not do it. Why? They dread the idea of doing it and consider it a “chore to accomplish”.

If exercising intensely is something you dread and don’t have energy to do, what’s the point of striving for THAT type of exercise? Doing so pretty much shoots women in the foot motivationally. There is some interesting research that explains why.

A fascinating body of “emotion-exercise intensity” research by Ekkekakis, et al., shows that high intensity exercise tends to decrease pleasure/positive affect among midlife women and others. If intense exercise puts you in a worse mood then you’ll be much less likely to keep it up beyond your initial burst of motivation.

Today I read some more research by another group of investigators (Hutchinson, Tenebaum, 2007) showing that when people exercise at higher intensities, they become very focused on their physiological experiences (examples: high heart rate, exertion, breathing hard, etc.). Clearly, if you didn’t like the experience of intense exercise, and doing it makes you focus on it, a negative experience is likely to result!

After reading this, if you don’t like intense exercise, I hope you find this information helpful and relieving. If you don’t know already, exercise does NOT have to be intense to offer you great physical and mental health benefits, especially if you don’t do much physical activity.

I can’t say this enough. Don’t make high intensity exercise your goal unless you like it or have serious health concerns to avoid. Instead, let yourself do lower level exercise, hopefully, that is convenient and enjoyable. Walking is one of the best ways to exercise. You can do it anywhere, and except for good walking shoes, it won’t cost you anything.

Walking on most days is what I do for the majority of my exercise. In the last year, to add some variety, I added a high intensity workout in the gym (one day a week). The way I get through it is by reading my Oprah and More magazines, and listening to music when I get tired of reading. (Note: the music is high energy “dance music”.) These things distract me from the physiological experiences that I don’t like too much. In addition, this is the only time that I have to read my magazines, so I am more motivated to do this workout. I also vary the amount of time I do, depending upon my energy level and how much time I have. (If I only have 15 minutes - so be it.) I share this with you as an example of how one can approach more vigorous exercise if one doesn’t like it.

What about your experiences with intense exercise?

Posted in Exercise Intensity | 2 Comments »