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Weight Loss Exercise

Weight Gain During Menopause

Weight Gain During Menopause

Weight Gain During Menopause

Weight Gain During Menopause is a real issue for most women after a certain age. You reach for that favorite pair of jeans, you try to slide them on but they wont button. You struggle from day to day to keep the weight gain off of your once fabulous body. But the rolls and layers of fat keep coming on that body of yours. You diet and exercise on a daily basis but those 10 to 30 pounds just wont come off. You join a gym or a woman’s work out class but you still jump on the scale and it still reads the same. You just want to scream or jump back in bed and hide under the covers. Is this you?

Weight Gain During Menopause

If you are coming on to that age of reaching that big 40 or you are gaining ground to the 50 age mark then you are more than likely in what is called the menopausal stage of life and this weight issue is one of the common symptoms of the menopausal stage. There are many other symptoms to the menopausal stage of life but in this article weight gain is what we are going to concentrate on. The reason for this article is that in today’s society our looks mean so much to woman. Weight gain during menopause, even if it is 10 or 20 pounds, can mean so much to a woman at this stage in life. Weight gain can bring on depression and anxiety which in turns can bring on the terrible hot flashes.

Weight Gain During Menopause – Why?

What causes weight gain during menopause in these bodies of ours? It can be one thing or a combination of many things. Toxins, stress, exercise, diet, emotions, anxiety, and hormones all can play a major role in weight gain. As the old saying goes, putting the weight on is easy and fun but taking it off is the hardest thing to do. Especially if you are in the stage of life called permenopause or menopause.

If you are in the stage of life of perimenopause or menopause more than likely your hormones are playing a huge factor in your weight. These hormonal imbalances are causing your body to store unwanted fat. The reason for this is that your body is feeling the affect that your hormones are hitting rock bottom and they are looking else where for a replacement of the hormones so the body turns to these fat cells. Studies have shown that woman tend to be insulin resistance do to their diet. When this happens the body converts every calorie it can to fat.

Stress and Menopausal weight gain

Stress plays a large role during this time in life of perimenopause or menopause. Stress hormones can block weight loss in a female. Even if you are dieting long term stress causes the body to go into what is called hoarding. Your body is putting on this fat and then you start to stress out about it and you start what is called yoyo dieting which in turns causes more fat to hoard in your body. It is a no win situation. Stress at this point can not only cause weight gain, but can cause depression, anxiety and make you feel unwanted and insecure about yourself.

You need to break this curse. You need to find yourself a support group and also have open dialogue with your partner at home. Also talk to a qualified physician about what you are going through. I mentioned qualified physician only because there are many physicians that do not understand what women are going through during perimenopause or menopause. Many physicians will say that these symptoms are all in your head and that you need a therapist instead of a medical doctor. Don’t fall for this, ask around and talk to your girl friends to find a positive qualified physician to hear your case. Don’t hold these feelings inside you, this will only cause your stress level to rise and cause other terrible symptoms to occur. Open communication is the key to good health and feeling better about yourself. Give it a try today, you will be glad you did.

Weight Gain During Menopause is an issue that many people deal with and I hope these tips help you out.

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Weight Loss Exercise

The Happiness Project

The Happiness ProjectThe Happiness ProjectWell I started reading this book called The Happiness Project. My wife bought it a while ago and after I stumbled through Eat, Pray, Love I thought it would be great to get another soul.empowering type book under my belt

Gretchen Rubin who wrote this book is a real pro in the writing game and seems to write biographies on famous people like Winston Churchill, and JFK so she seem to come from a completely different spot than most of the people in this genre. She points this fact out early in the book as well as her aims for her own Happiness Project.

What is the Happiness Project About?

The book starts with Gretchen Rubin telling us how she is not unhappy but still since there is not an easy way to benchmark happiness she knew that she could be happier, wanted to avoid a conversation on depression and instead see, through research, how someone could be happier in their life.

The book is divided into 12 months and each month has an overarching idea that Gretchen has built resolutions on, and the idea is that every month she will build on what she had done before this newest month, so constant improvement will happen.

The first month was to improve her health, the second month was to Remember Love and Marriage…

The idea that Gretchen Rubin has is not that you will follow her ideas exactly but that she can give you a framework to build your own Happiness Project. Cool idea!

Full of Research and Ideas to Change Yourself

Anyway Gretchen Rubin has a law degree, is a writer, and decided to do this book with her awesome research skills behind her. So in the intro chapter and first chapter I found that the Happiness Project was so chock full of her research and discoveries that were not just touchy-feely that there was just a lot to get through. I have decided to turn this book into more of a project for me, and maybe you should too?

I am not going to take a year to change my life through the Happiness Project but I am sure that over the next few months as I dive into one month at a time I will make significant changes.

You can check out some reviews of the Happiness Project if you are interested in learning more

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General Weight Loss Tips

Week Five

I’m in week five of the Insanity Workout and have so much that I want to make note of. So much so that I’m thinking about doing a video post. Here are my random, jumbled thoughts (when I really should be in bed) about exercising everyday…

1) It’s okay to exercise everyday. This hurdle has been huge for me and one that took me awhile to get over. In my mind daily exercise was unnecessary. I even got a comment on twitter from someone saying “watch out or you’ll burn out”. I felt defensive over that, a feeling that I often battle with when unsolicited advice comes my way. I feel like I shouldn’t have to defend exercising everyday.

My perspective is changing. What used to seem like a lot of exercise, 45 minutes, now seems like nothing. In fact I’m thinking in a whole day 45 minutes isn’t much. And then to think that I was barely getting that a week, or even three times a week is sort of astounding to me. But that’s what changing your perspective will do. I can exercise every day and not burn out. I think the reason is that I’m not expecting perfection with every workout. Most days I push myself and give it my all, but there have been some days when I’m barely showing up. I’m just going through the motions to get it over with. But I’m showing up and that’s what matters. I think before, just showing up was never good enough for the perfectionist in me, so I wouldn’t show up at all. I was all or nothing,  now I just do my best.

2) I am not losing a ton of weight. Before I started exercising intensely everyday  I used to think that’s all I needed to do to lose weight. Just one hour or so of intense exercise and I could eat what I wanted. I’m not sure why I thought this or where this idea came into play, but it’s simply not true. It is helpful for not gaining weight and that’s it. I’ve lost a little weight and I can tell that my waist is more defined and I’m much stronger. But, that 10-20 lbs. of weight that I thought would fall off effortlessly? not so.

I’m very very slowly getting my eating habits in check. This will be my next hurdle that I need to deal with. Exercise has been the first one and next will be food. And when I have both, well, I’ll be set. I mentally count calories, but sometimes I just want to eat. I still want to eat for comfort. I am eating better in general, cooking more at home and not eating refined sugar. I know that my next step is getting serious about planning ahead and counting calories. I can do it for about four days before I just get so tired of it.

3) Exercise can be mentally uncomfortable. I used to think that I had a hard time exercising because it was physically uncomfortable, it was too hard, I didn’t have enough time, I was lazy, etc. But, the truth is, exercise makes me face the uncomfortable facts about my body. It brings out emotions that are dormant during inactivity. I notice my size more, I notice the space I take up, I notice the effects of excess weight on my body. Stuff that I’ve tried to ignore or hide- suddenly become clear when I move my body like it’s meant to. When I can’t do yoga poses because of fat getting in the way. When my arms and wrists give out when I try to do push-ups. When I can’t grab my ankle for a quad stretch. Basic, human movements that are hard to do when you’re obese. Exercise is like shining a spotlight on everything I can’t do, and it is uncomfortable for me.

I once heard that the body stores emotions. It holds on to whatever we are dealing with (or not dealing with) and when we exercise these emotions can be released. I’ve experienced this. It makes me want to cry, or hide away. It can be intense when what you aren’t dealing with is released even when you’re not ready. And I think this is one reason why I’ve had a hard time sticking to consistent movement- it can unleash pain. For me, not letting it out in the form of exercise has lead to depression. I still suffer from my one hormonal week a month, but I feel like things are becoming clearer mentally.  Like the things I’ve been holding inside are coming out through energy and movement. I’m okay with being uncomfortable.

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