Here we go! You’re Embarking on your fittest and healthiest year! You’ve made the decision that the time to get healthy is now!
You’ve chosen your workout, you’re making healthier decisions such as cutting out sugar or watching your portions and you’re ready to get started.
This year WILL be different because you’re about to embark on a healthy journey you can maintain for the rest of your life.
This isn’t about fast weight loss, it’s about healthy, transformative weight loss.
This isn’t about restriction, it’s about making changes you know you can stick with.
This isn’t about horrible fitness routines that leave you exhausted and sore (bad sore) for days afterwards. This is about adapting a movement plan to make you stronger, healthier and fitter for the second half of your years.
You’re eliminating guilt and embracing a healthy journey. That includes listening to your body and the messages it sends you, and hormones are literally the messages that your body sends.
Menopause begins a cascade of hormone changes that affect almost every woman after 50. Not only does it affect your mood, your sleep and your body (you may have noticed the shift of fat to the midsection or the chest) but it also affects the way you eat and the type of workout you do.
If you’ve noticed that your workouts leave you depleted instead of energized, or they’ve done nothing to help you lose that stubborn belly fat (or worse yet, your workout’s added more pounds), then there’s a good chance your hormones are begging you to switch your workout.
When you shift your workout to suit your hormone needs, that’s when you’ll feel and see total body transformations. You’ll feel more energized you’ll gain strength and finally see an easier drop in stubborn belly fat.
Here are 2 hormones that shift the way you workout. Identifying your hormone needs is the first step to your health and weight loss success!
Click below to download the fitness plan designed to blast stress belly
Estrogen: Fatigue, Hot Flashes and Weight Gain
You’re probably really aware that a drop in estrogen during menopause creates a cascade of transformations throughout the body. Fat is no longer stored in the hips and thighs and instead shifts to the midsection. Not to mention, less estrogen creates less heart protection and the chance of cardiovascular disease rises.
While leisurely walks are relaxing and fun, they may not be powerful enough to strengthen the heart or to burn excess stores of fat.
Faster bursts of fitness have been shown to combat menopause and balance out your hormones once again.
You love to walk, so keep them in your workout mix, but ramp up your workout and get your heart pumping just a few times each week.
Cortisol: High Stress, Increased Belly Fat
Cortisol is an essential hormone that when working right can energize the body and keep you feeling alert. (It’s the body’s natural cup of coffee). Yet, too much cortisol, or an imbalance of your stress system known as the HPA system, will break down lean muscle, increase your risk of type II diabetes and expand your waistline.
During Menopause and early post-menopause, cortisol levels rise. Add daily stressors or years of constant stress (you know, the kind you get from working full time, raising kids and feeling like there’s never enough time in your day) and you’ve taxed and overused the stress system.
On top of it, add the long, vigorous workout to the mix. The workout you thought would make you healthier. The type of workout that at different stages of life you’d push through even when your body felt sore and depleted and your stress system just can’t cope.
Without even realizing it, those long vigorous workouts were taxing an already fatigued stress system, creating insulin resistance, leaving you depleted and packing on the pounds.
When Cortisol is out of whack ditch the long, vigorous workouts. At least until you can get your stress levels back in balance.
Beginning a healthy journey, or a weight loss journey after 50 only feels hard when nothing’s working, when you’re stuck in a plateau and when everything fitness and nutrition seems hard, restricting and exhausting.
By adapting your workout to your unique hormone changes, fitness finally becomes enjoyable and weight loss becomes so much easier to accomplish. Not to mention you’ll feel a new surge of motivation as finally push past those stubborn plateaus.
Important question for busy women over 50 who still aren’t able to fit back into your favourite pair of jeans and still haven’t achieved that relaxed feeling that your supposed to get after a workout.
It’s time to change the way you workout to match your hormones. Click below to download the fitness plan designed to blast stress belly