Menopause – Weight Gain – Anxiety – Stress – Depression? Exercise Is The Answer

September 23, 2011 Jean Morgan Weight Gain, 14

Menopause – Weight Gain – Anxiety – Stress – Depression? Exercise Is The Answer

Exercise. Every weight loss pill; drink or plan touts the benefits of their program. But, each one tells you in fine print that the program must be combined with exercise. Duh!. Of course, the only real way to lose weight is to take in less calories and burn more. This is true. It has always been true. It will always be true.

Whether you are menopausal or not. Really, the advice is the same. But, menopausal women have a lot more to gain from exercise than just weight loss. It’s strange, but the one thing that helps us all, in so many ways, is the hardest thing to get in the habit of doing. Exercise. Once in the habit, it is so easy to slip back out. Exercise is really a mental and discipline challenge, more, or as much as, a physical challenge. It just doesn’t work to plan on starting tomorrow. Today. That’s the battle cry. “I am going to start today”. Right Now.

We know it’s important, but is it especially important for women going through the stages of menopause? Absolutely.

Due to hormonal changes causing mood swings. Menopausal women are coping often with stress, anxiety and depression. Just as in men and younger women, exercise itself is a stress release, a mood enhancer and an anxiety suppressor. Think of what our bodies were asked to do up to the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th century. The days of the human life were filled with physical activity. Walking, lifting, carrying and more. When we are stressed, anxious or afraid our body dumps adrenalin, the natural stimulant, into our system to help us fight or run away from what is threatening us.

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If menopause symptoms cause you to be artificially anxious or afraid, whether the feeling is real or just hormonal, your body is going to give you a dose of adrenalin. Now you are stressed; anxious, depressed, and stimulated. So, the way you are feeling is magnified.

If adrenalin was meant to help you with physical challenges, then the only way to “use it up” is to do something physical. I don’t mean run a marathon or climb a mountain. But, do something. Get some kind of exercise.

It’s best to find something that you like, or at least that you don’t dread. The least difficult activity to plan is to take a walk. It is waiting for you just outside the door. Do it often. Many Physical Trainers recommend 15 to 90 minutes 5 days a week. That will do many things. You will burn a lot of calories. You will burn up a lot of adrenalin. You will speed up your metabolism to burn even more calories. Your body will create more endorphins. These are the natural relaxation and mood elevator hormones of your body. You will just feel happier. On your real bad days you may not feel happy, but you will feel better, than you would have felt with no exercise.

As you get older you need exercise, especially with some weight or resistance exercise to fight osteoporosis, which is the bone loss that takes place as we get older. Exercise can slow down and even reverse bone loss.

Exercise can help lessen the pain and stiffness of arthritis. Twenty minutes of greater pain can give you 24 hours of relief and give you greater mobility.

Research and look for other ways exercise can benefit you. Remember when everyone talked about kegeling? This was the pelvic exercise designed to help with incontinence and sexual function that was presented by Dr. Arnold Kegel. It was the exercise where women tighten up all of the pubic area muscles and then relax them and then tighten again. Even doing this 10 times in a row 5 times a day can help lesson or eliminate these troublesome symptoms.

So, if you want to feel better, live longer, lose weight, look better and see more of life through a happier lens, go exercise. Find an exercise that you are most likely to do and do it. As always, it would be best to discuss this with you physician before starting a new exercise program.

 

Check out these sites for more menopause information

Weight
Weight
menopause.html
Menopause - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
Menopause and Depression - U-M Depression Center

Recommended Reading

• what is the menopause
• Don’t You Just Hate Your Menopause Belly Fat
• Lose Menopause Belly Fat Now
• Menopausal Fat Makes Me Angry
• Lose the Menopause Belly Fat in 3 Simple Steps

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