Posts Tagged ‘Outdoors’
Studies of women aged fifty and over reveal that most women in this age group are convinced that their weight increase is connected with the menopause in their judgment. If you take into account the fact that some people might be using this as an excuse and that others may not have made allowances in their diet for decreased levels of activity due to lifestyle alterations, it is still difficult to explain why women in this age group have a tendency to put excess weight on different parts of the body, in particular the abdomen, whereas any weight gained in younger women tends to be on the hips.
In fact, the truth is that hormonal changes do have a part to play in this phenomenon, although the method is not completely understood. At menopause a woman stops ovulating, her monthly menstruation periods end, and her body produces much lower levels of the female hormone estrogen, which is responsible for the ovulation process.
Low estrogen has been shown to cause weight increase in animals and it is almost definitely the reason why women’s bodies change shape. While women of childbearing age accumulate fat in the lower body, after the menopause they store it on the abdomen instead, like men. This leads to a greater risk of heart disease.
At the same time, both men and women tend to find muscle turning to fat as they grow older and the metabolism slows down. This means that if you do not adjust your eating habits, you will most likely find that your weight increases. A person of 60 just does not need as many calories as a person of 40.
Hormonal therapy with estrogen is sometimes prescribed to control menopausal symptoms. Many women will be astonished to hear that studies have shown that hormonal therapy does not result in weight increase. Some women experience bloating and water retention in the early stages of hormonal therapy but this is usually temporary.
Hormonal therapy can reduce the risk of heart disease by preventing the changes in storage of body fat around the abdomen and lowering cholesterol. On the other hand, hormonal therapy has been linked with an increased risk of breast cancer in some studies.
If you find that you are gaining weight around the menopause, there are several things you can do.
Firstly, you should eat a healthy, low fat diet with plenty of fibre and avoid sugar.
Secondly, you need to take regular exercise. As people get older their physical activity levels naturally drop. Work often becomes less physically demanding, there are no kids to run around after, we take less active holidays and do things more slowly. Thirty minutes of moderate physical activity every day will help to balance out the effect of this.
Thirdly. you must maintain your muscle strength and mass. Use weights for arm muscles and walking or cycling for your legs.
Fourthly, try not to get worried about the changes to the shape of your body. If you are not too overweight, but just have a thicker waist and slimmer legs, then don’t worry.
As usual, you should consult your doctor before commencing any exercise routine, if you have any medical conditions or if your fitness levels are low. Your doctor can also help with symptoms of the menopause and weight gain.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?. Free reprint available from: Menopause And Weight Gain.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the most frequent New Year’s resolution in the West is to lose weight. However, it is also the first New Year’s resolution most likely to be broken! Losing weight is not hard in theory, but practice is oh, so different. This is because it involves lifestyle changes.
Our bodies change as we get older and typically our level of activity diminishes too. Maybe, we get an office job with a promotion, whereas we used to work ‘in the field’. But people in general, do not regulate their diet to match their variation in circumstances. We sit behind our desks or in retirement and think we can still eat and drink like we did twenty years ago. Big mistake!
Fortunately, there are dozens of diets available to help us attain our weight loss goals. There are the traditional calorie counting diets, as espoused by Weight Watchers; there are the ‘new era’ diets like Atkins, which have us counting carbohydrates and there are no end of fad diets which are frankly not worth wasting time discussing.
The choice of which diet you want to follow is all yours, of course, but it is well worth examining the main types of diet to see which one will suit you. Then you must determine whether you will require the help and encouragement of a weekly visit to a club or not, or whether you can get that companionship from an online club of slimmers, where you talk to fellow slimmers in the club forum online.
It is also worth fixing in your mind, why you want to diet. Is it to look better? Or to feel more comfortable in yourself? Or is it for health reasons? Or all three? Have a think about your reasons and let them motivate you. Whenever, you feel like packing it all in, remember your motivation. Get a book and journal your progress, but first write your motivation in bold capitals on the front page or cover. Keep it in front of you and read it out loud to yourself every day.
Consult some of the slimming sites online and work out a few key metrics like the average weight people are for your height, sex and body type and your BMI or body mass index. Write these figures on the first page of your book too and use them as the ultimate goals.
You could produce a graph and plot your weekly weight to see how you are doing. Set realistic goals and targets. You can get heaps of free information from the Weight Watchers and Atkins websites or / and go to see your doctor for advice and leaflets.
Aim to lose something like 10-20 pounds in the first month and eight to ten per month after that. Go slowly and aim to go slowly, because then you will hit your targets and you won’t feel like giving up. When you get within five to ten pounds of your target weight, assuming that you have lost a lot of weight, rein back a little and allow yourself a little more freedom. Drop your target to one pound a week, so that you will get a feel for ‘eating normally’.
The dreaded exercise; you have to face it, you will have to do more exercise, but two times thirty minute walks a day is ordinarily enough. You could swim once a week too or get an exercise machine, if you are tied to the house by family.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?. This article, How To Stick To Your Resolution To Lose Weight. has free reprint rights.
Besides physical appearance, weight affects a person in many ways. This could be the overall standard of life, self-esteem, depression, health problems, and physical incapabilities. There are a lot of plus-points to losing weight, which is why a lot of people are searching for a weight loss program that will trim down those excess pounds and get a beautiful, eye-popping body.
First of all, an overweight person should do is seek a health care expert to provide the best weight loss plan for you. This will only be done after a complete physical examination, which leads to the determination of a proprietary weight loss plan. To lose excess pounds fast and efficiently, four aspects of one’s life should be altered: what to eat, how to eat, behaviour and amount of exercise.
Below are some fast recommendations that can change an over-weight person’s life:
1: Quick weight loss consists of a multi-faceted plan that comprises mindset, exercise, and, in some cases, dietary supplements. Start by following a diet plan that can be effortlessly incorporated into your current lifestyle. Start an exercise plan that includes at least fifteen minutes a day lively walking, running, swimming and/or dancing.
2: Set realistic targets. The ability to focus and have a proper mindset enables a person on a diet to rapidly shed those extra pounds. With discipline and a proper outlook, a dieter will never be discouraged and lose focus.
3: Listen to your body. Every person’s metabolism behaves in a different way to the various fast weight loss plans. Substitute one plan for another to gauge the body’s reaction. An exercise program must be suited to one’s body, as some can not exercise as strenuously as others. If walking is all that you can do, then walk, for this is one of the best exercises. Don’t forget that muscles burn calories, so try to put on a little more muscle – it looks sexy too.
4: Eat more fibre since it makes you feel fuller sooner and takes longer to digest, making it longer before you will be hungry again. For example, a few slices of whole grain bread will stay in the body longer and put off hunger longer than white bread, which turns in to glucose more quickly. giving you a quick, sugar spike, which soon dissipates, leaving you hungry again.
5: Keep away from fried food especially deep-fried, since it contains a large amount of fat. But remember, although fish and chicken are considered to be far leaner than beef, these white meats can retain even more fat than beef when it is fried. It is advisable those on a strict diet choose grilled food, as it does not contain much fat after the food has been cooked.
6: Drink lots of fluid. Drinking at least six to eight glasses of water a day keeps the body ‘flushing’ and since weight loss depends on how the body gets rid of bodily waste, the body must stay hydrated.
So, all in all, discipline and consistent application is still the way to quick weight loss. Light dieting, workout, and the right amount of nutritional supplements performed in regularly everyday will result in a quicker weight loss than having a massive, but short-lived campaign that is followed by a return to your bad old habits, since this only leads to adding more weight than before the weight loss plan was started.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with our blog why can’t I lose weight? If you have an interest in losing weight, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? This article, Rapid Weight Loss has free reprint rights.