Lose weight around middle woman

While you can't necessarily stop or reverse all of the changes that come with aging, there are simple things you can do to reach and maintain a healthy weight in middle age and beyond. Your doctor may calculate your BMI and you might weigh yourself on the scale at home, but there are other numbers that can affect the way you look as you age. Your waistline may get bigger, even though you are not gaining weight. Aging expert Florence Comite, MD, says that hormonal changes don't necessarily cause weight gain, but they can change the way you carry weight on your body.

Comite is a New York City endocrinologist who helps both men and women maintain their vitality as they age. Your body composition is likely to change as you get older. Lower testosterone levels in both men and women cause a decrease in muscle mass as we age.

In her practice, she conducts tests to help her patients target and treat specific issues that affect their appearance and vitality as they age. But simply knowing your family health history is the next best thing. Once you know your health history, connect with your doctor to get personalized advice to improve your health and appearance. For example, if you found out that you have a family history of high blood pressure, find out how changes to your lifestyle can help you avoid medication in the future.

In many cases, maintaining a healthy weight can reduce or prevent disease. Understanding the specific benefits of a healthy weight can serve as motivation to slim down.

You may not need to go on a full-scale diet to lose weight. According to Dr. Comite, you can simply start with the basic stuff.

Stop eating sweets and avoid foods with a high glycemic index. Research supports that approach. A study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that overweight and obese postmenopausal women who ate fewer desserts and less fried food and drank fewer sugar-sweetened beverages were able to lose weight and keep it off.

Dr, Comite recommends eating 1. Have you stopped doing daily chores like carrying groceries, shoveling snow or mowing the lawn? That probably means that you burn fewer calories every day. Even though hormones play a role in the aging process, lifestyle comes into play as well.

You can burn more calories without exercise by increasing your non-exercise activity thermogenesis , or NEAT. Simple daily chores and activities boost your NEAT and contribute to a healthier metabolism. As you near or reach retirement, have your interests shifted to more leisurely activities? Do you spend more time reading, eating in restaurants, cooking indulgent meals, or entertaining friends?

These shifts can cause weight gain. To lose the weight, you don't necessarily need to give up your hobbies. But you may want to make simple adjustments to change your energy balance. For example, if you like to travel, choose an active vacation instead of a food-centered cruise.

If you like to cook, invest in a healthy cooking class. Increased travel, eating in restaurants more often and entertaining with friends might also mean that you drink alcohol more often. Is this change in shape something I am just going to have to get accustomed to, or can I do something about it? Your weight may not have changed over the years, but has your height changed? One of the normal changes associated with aging is some loss of height. This is due to a loss of volume in the intervertebral discs of the spine.

Some women lose height because of osteoporotic fractures of their vertebrae; however, that is not a normal change of aging. You can lose up to several inches in height some women lose even more as you get older. The contents of your abdomen then have less vertical volume to inhabit. That volume has to expand somewhere, so it moves horizontally.

• Help When You're Over 40 and Can't Lose Weight.
• How Women Lose Weight Around the Middle.
• How to Lose Weight the Right Way in Your 50s and 60s.
• how fast can i lose weight on a high protein diet.

The accumulation of fat around your middle also may have to do with hormone-related changes in weight distribution that occur after menopause. It's not just unsightly; abdominal fat called visceral fat has also been linked to an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Dietary Changes

Shedding abdominal fat isn't easy, especially as you get older and your metabolism slows. However, you can take steps to control it. Cut back on simple carbohydrates such as cookies, candy, and sugar-sweetened sodas.