Is it increase of appetite, being more immobile…?
How much the metabolism slows down?
Is the weight gain inevitable?
My mother have always been skinny but menopause hit her too, but it also coincided with my father’s death, whom we always followed a strict diet together due to his illness. It’s been years after his death but the weight stayed, so I don’t know how much additional effect it has on top of menopause
We are also relatively immobile big city residents.
I remember my grandma being very petty and very active in her little town and big garden.
In: Biology
Weight gain/loss isn’t some complicated situation, you cannot magically beat the laws of thermodynamics. You cannot create nor destroy energy, and calories are our way of measuring energy in food/drink.
It’s always calories in vs out. You consume fewer cals than your body spends, you lose weight. If you consume more calories than you spend, you gain weight.
Menopause mostly happens to people as they exit mid-life and enter older adulthood or the elderly stage. Like in the 50s. Some people earlier, some later. So this coincides with someone aging more broadly, and most people as they age their metabolism slows way down and they also get older and weaker and so they do less physical activity. This is why exercise is so damn important as you age, keeping your fitness up and propping up that metabolism and other bodily functions a bit.
Weight gain is not inevitable. I’ve known people who have lost weight during menopause, i’ve known people who have maintained.
However, if you are already sedentary, maybe already a bit overweight. And your metabolism decreases further, and you have mood swings that you self-medicate with food? Well now you have a double whammy of your activity level and metabolism meaning your “calories out” drops, meanwhile your bad eating habits increase the “calories in” and boom! Weight gain.
If you accurately calculate your RMR and budget your calories to fit your expenditure, you’ll maintain.
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