For the two million American women who enter menopause each year, life can look very different. From hot flashes and night sweats to bone loss and vaginal pain, the reach of menopause can extend very far.
Included in the wide range of menopause side effects is weight gain, which affects 60 to 70% of postmenopausal women. Women gain, on average, 1.5 pounds each year between the ages of 50 and 60, but fat distribution can change, leaving you with lumps and bumps in new places.
As specialists in all things menopause, Dr. Chetanna Okasi and the team at Women’s Wellness MD understand the effects that menopausal weight gain can have, and we’re here to help rebalance the scales with comprehensive weight loss services.
There are several reasons why women gain weight during and after menopause, including:
With the loss of reproductive hormones that comes with menopause, your body changes how it stores fat, and women can start to accumulate fat around their bellies. This change isn’t ideal because fat around the midsection places you at higher risk for cardiovascular disease.
Menopause coincides with aging, and aging can affect muscle mass. In fact, after age 30, women lose about 3 to 8% of their muscle mass with each decade. Muscle metabolizes fat, and muscle loss leads to more fat buildup.
Menopause can affect your joints and your energy levels, leaving you less able (and enthusiastic) about exercise. As a result, you can gain weight quite rapidly.
While gaining a few pounds as you grow older shouldn’t be cause for alarm, if you’ve gained a good deal of weight that’s impacting your health and your lifestyle, losing weight is a great idea.
At our practice, we take a holistic approach to helping women lose weight after menopause. To start, we look at the hormonal piece of the puzzle, and we often recommend hormone therapies that can rebalance your hormonal environment. We offer a range of hormone replacement therapies, including convenient pellets.
Once we re-establish a healthier balance of hormones, we can look at other great weight loss tools, such as:
We’ve found that women enjoy the best chances of success in losing weight and keeping it off by using a combination of the tools we have outlined. For example, GLP-1s provide an advantage in the battle to lose weight, but you can gain the weight back once you stop taking them.
That’s why we also emphasize diet and exercise habits that can help you maintain your weight results long term.
If you’d like a more personalized postmenopausal weight loss program, contact us by calling one of our offices in Columbia or Greenbelt, Maryland, or by using our online booking feature today.
