Middle-Aged Women and Overweight

If you are a middle-aged woman between your 40s and 60s, you probably experienced that it’s not easy to keep your weight stable or worse to get rid of some extra pounds. The main reason for this: you don’t have the same metabolism any more you had as a 20 year old girl, when it was easy keeping your ideal weight just by skipping a few meals.

You've probably heard people blame their weight gain on a slow metabolism and of different diet plans claiming a faster weight loss by accelerating the fat burning process.

Well, there is no doubt that metabolism is linked to weight, but this relation is not that straightforward you may expect. Metabolism is the process by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy and weight gain is most commonly the result of eating more calories than you burn. As a consequence, to lose weight you can consume fewer calories in order to create an energy deficit, increase physical activity to burn more calories, or both.

There are several hormonal disorders that can affect your metabolism, for instance as result of an underactive thyroid gland (hypothyroidism) or an exposure to high levels of the hormone cortisol for a long time, resulting in the so-called Cushing's syndrome. The most common cause of Cushing's syndrome, sometimes called hypercortisolism, is the use of oral corticosteroid medication. The condition can also occur when your body makes too much cortisol. In particular when reaching menopausal period, hormonal imbalances are frequently causing overweight in middle-aged women and the mentioned difficulties when trying to lose this overweight again.

If you are experiencing a constant weight gain or also weight loss, it is important to rule out physiological disorders like the mentioned hormonal disorders, consulting your doctor.

Why is metabolism changing in middle-aged women? Already starting at an age of 35 years approximately, the amount of muscle mass tends to decrease and fat accounts for more of your weight. This slows down calorie burning as less carbs as primary fuel is available in the muscles. The carbohydrate metabolism undergoes changes as well. Thus, one can observe in many cases a decrease of glucose tolerance caused by a slow down of their decomposition.

Now you understand why you really don't have too much control over the speed of your metabolism. What you do can control is the quantity of calories you consume and burn through your level of physical activity.

And there is one additional factor that has been proven in many studies: Men usually have less body fat and more muscle than do women of the same age and weight (thus burning more calories). As a consequence, middle-aged women even more than their even-aged partners from the opposite sex need to control their calorie intake and level of physical activities to control their weight. As a rule of thumb: the more active you are, the more calories you burn. In fact, some people who are said to have a fast metabolism are probably just more active - and maybe more indefatigable - than are others.