It is no secret if you are a woman over 40 that fat burning can be more challenging than ever. Menopause is a transition of life that should be celebrated as a new chapter of freedom. However, if you are like most women, ages 40 to 55, the extra pounds that pack on during this time of life are anything but freeing, and the weight gain story begins and ends with hormones.
In this article I am going to share 3 breakthrough strategies that you can use to boost fat burning before, during, and after menopause. And, these strategies will surprise you when you learn that the hormone everyone associates with menopause, estrogen, is not the main hormone you need to control to control your weight.
Estrogen is the hormone that most women associate with menopause. It is true that your ovaries produce less and less estrogen as you age and that your body tries to compensate for this reduction in estrogen by looking to other areas of your body for estrogen production, such as fat cells. However, in the grand scheme of weight gain during menopause, estrogen is only part of the story.
There is a bigger picture to consider when looking at fat burning.
Your body values fat and therefore has built in ways to resist weight loss.
Your body cannot determine that you are reducing calories to fit into your bathing suit or get trim for your high school reunion. So, when you go on a diet your body slams on the hormonal brakes and your fat-burning potential plummets.
This has very little to do with estrogen, and everything to do with another hormone called leptin. Leptin can be thought of as the key weight loss hormone because it controls all of the other weight loss hormones in your body.
If you can get leptin working for you, your body will lose weight even if you are a woman reaching menopause who hates to exercise.
The best way to boost fat burning during menopause is to keep your leptin levels high. But, this can be a problem because when you go on a diet your leptin levels drop and they drop fast. In fact, leptin levels can drop in half within the first seven days of your diet. That means after only one week your body's ability to burn fat has been reduced by 50%.
Literally speaking the harder you diet the harder your body fights to keep its stored fat.
Fortunately I have 3 tricks to share that you can use to keep your leptin levels high and boost fat burning:
1. Cheat on Your Diet. I must be kidding, right? You are probably thinking that cheating and eating your favorite foods are what got your weight to climb in the first place, but I can explain why it is important to incorporate a planned Cheat Day into your weight loss plan once a week.
As I mentioned earlier, leptin, the hormone that allows your body to burn fat, decreases when you go on a restricted calorie diet. Therefore, when you go off your diet and eat more food, especially carbohydrates, your leptin levels return to normal and your body instantly becomes more efficient at burning fat.
Of course, there is a point where you eat too much and your body has no choice but to store fat, but by adding an additional 1,000 calories or more on your Cheat Day you will actually accelerate your weight loss.
2. Reverse Carb Tapering. This is a trick developed from 4-time best-selling author and nutritionist, Joel Marion. The idea is to help reduce the loss of leptin by slowly adding carbohydrates to your diet as your dieting week progresses.
Because carbohydrates are the key nutrient that your body needs to keep leptin levels high, what you want to do is slowly add carbohydrates (about 10-20 grams) back into your diet after your Cheat Day.
So if you have a Cheat Day on Saturday, then a few days later slowly start to boost your carbohydrate intake. This prevents your leptin levels from bottoming out and therefore keeps your body in a fat-burning state.
3. Eat One Ingredient Foods. This tips does not directly keep your leptin levels high, but it does an equally important job. By eating foods that consist of only one ingredient (i.e. nuts, whole fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meat, and healthy fats) you significantly increase your body's sensitivity to leptin.
You see years of eating processed foods and being overweight have likely left your body "leptin resistant." This means that you could do tips 1 and 2 above and have maximum levels of leptin in your body, yet because you are leptin resistant, your body would not be able to recognize the leptin and you would go on gaining weight.
If you are at the age of menopause and you are finding it difficult to burn fat, then your job is to get the hormone leptin working for you. To do that follow the three tips: add a weekly Cheat Day to your diet, slowly add more carbohydrates to your diet as you approach your Cheat Day, and eat a diet high in one-ingredient foods.
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