The REAL Reason You’re Gaining Weight After 40 (And What To Do)

The real reason you’re gaining weight after 40 isn’t anything to do with nutrition or exercise. So, you’re doing all the right things, right? The things you’ve been told to do. You’re eating healthy. You’re exercising more and you’re trying to be consistent, but things aren’t working.

And it might even be that this happened all of a sudden. Like one day things were moving along smoothly and then all of a sudden the things you have learned and what you were told to do (and were working) just abruptly ceased to work any longer. 

You might be gaining weight, especially around your middle.  Not sleeping, feeling a bit frustrated, and maybe some mood changes around that. Maybe feeling not motivated and a little bit hopeless. I hear this a lot from the women I talk to. 

And today, what I want to do is bring in a plan for you that has helped so many women and will hopefully help you. A plan for women in menopause and beyond menopause in regards to exercise and nutrition. And I talk about this a lot. This is my wheelhouse. 

This is where I get to watch women transform their lives. 

So, today I’m going to walk you through step by step. I’ve got some insider tips that I’m going to share with you to help you understand why it’s happening, and then what you can do about it. Because if we can understand what’s going on we know what to do next, because you’re not doing anything wrong.

This was working. The fact of the matter is our physiology has changed. Our body has changed. Our brain is changing. Everything’s changing. And if you’re in your 40s or 50s or 60s or beyond and you’re struggling, you’re not alone. And there is hope. 

And the other really important thing is don’t wait. If you’re in your 40s and you’re just beginning this journey and starting to see some shifts and changes, maybe you’re getting night sweats, maybe you’re noticing your mood is a little bit off. You know, you’re quick to respond in a way you might not like to respond. Your clothes aren’t fitting the same. These are some common things I start to hear early on and then we wait and we wait and we wait. 

And we want to live our best lives. So hopefully what I share today is going to give you a platform to start from, a baseline. Some things you can just start to do and be aware of. Maybe you’re already doing some of this. So it’s just a reinforcement. But either way, we have to do things differently and that’s just the way it is if we want to live that long healthy life. 

You don’t have to do anything, right? But we do have a choice. And my job here is to offer you and share with you some things you can do if you want that thriving life. If you want to be the grandma who is running around in the yard versus sitting in the chair watching, you know? If you want to be interactive, if you want to be spending your retirement years traveling and being active, how cool is that, right? 

We finally have this time in our lives. How do we get the real change we want? 

What is the best nutrition and exercise plan if you’re gaining weight after 40? 

We all reach a time in our lives when we no longer have the potential for producing children. That is no longer our body’s main focus. That is what our bodies have been biologically geared to do up until this point. And so doesn’t it make sense if things have come to this point that has been our main function and then that is no longer our main function that we have different needs and that’s what we’re going to talk about today and we’re going to talk about it in a way that we can build strength improve energy and then support our metabolism.

Gaining weight after 40 is a direct result of estrogen decline.

What changes here is that we go into a decline in estrogen. And this is huge because we just think, well, okay, that’s one hormone, right? But there’s so many different forms of estrogen. And we have estrogen receptors all over our body. Which means when estrogen declines, every organ, every working part of our internal insides shifts, changes, slows down. I’ve heard it said and shared by Feliz Gersh, medical doctor in this field that estrogen equals energy. And that was a big part of what gave us our life force. We no longer have estrogen on board. So again, we’ve got to do things differently.

Insulin resistance drives the body into gaining weight after 40 

So we see the decline in estrogen that can lead to increased insulin resistance among other things, right? We know cortisol is a factor there, and blood sugar dysregulation. So, insulin resistance is a biggie. And this is a big reason why women gain weight after menopause. 

Loss of muscle mass is another factor because muscle is a metabolic booster. The more muscle we carry in our body, the more efficient our body works. 

This is again why the GLP1 antagonists can be really unhelpful. Don’t get me wrong, they do have a place. But a big issue with them is that there can be an increase in muscle loss. And as women in menopause and beyond, we’re already struggling with that. So the GLP1s can promote more muscle loss which again is something we really want to preserve muscle at this stage in life for several reasons. You know muscle is the organ of longevity. 

So our brain is important for our metabolism, it protects our bones and when our bones are protected we are less apt to break a bone and so we really want to protect muscle at all costs. There’s so many reasons why changes in fat storage go hand in hand.

Loss of estrogen, increase in insulin resistance. What that really means is our body is not efficiently using insulin, in a way we’re not properly using insulin. What we want to be is insulin sensitive meaning our body can use it and clear it. Right? 

When there’s a block, what happens is we eat food and our body instead of using it for energy, stores it gets stored as fat. Unfortunately we’re more prone to that at this stage in life if we’re not doing certain things.

Is sleep disruption causing you to be gaining weight after 40?

Then of course there’s sleep and stress disruptors and those are two big issues that I hear a lot about. I’m not sleeping or I’m not getting quality sleep. My HRV is low. I’m not getting any deep sleep. I hear this a lot. And this is the reason it matters. Stress disruptions go hand in hand when our nervous system has become dysregulated. Again, why does that happen? Decline in estrogen.

Can eating less cause you to gain weight after 40?

So, we have to acknowledge this and we have to shift how we do things. It can be really helpful at this stage in life to acknowledge this and then take steps to help ourselves in these areas. That’s the key. So old approach, right? Eating less, right? We’re going to cut calories way back. That doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work because our body shifts with that decline in energy, right? So when we put in less energy, our body’s like, “Oh, less energy. I’m going to slow way down, which I’m already struggling.” 

You know, we already have a hard time because everything slows down anyway, right? And so now we’re not eating as much. So our body is going to slow down with that. And then the problem is you’re going to eventually eat and your body just takes what you’re putting in and stores it. So it’s this flip-flop reversed unfortunately that isn’t working.

Another reason, and this is a biggie, is it puts a stress on our body. And when we aren’t eating enough, our body feels it’s in a stress state, right? It’s like, what? I’m not getting food. What’s happening? And so, when we’re in that stress state, we produce more of the hormone cortisol. And cortisol isn’t all bad, but at certain times, it isn’t great, right? When that is produced, we go into that fight, flight, freeze state when everything is kind of shut down or shut off and that promotes fat storage. And so we have to work with our bodies and fuel our bodies at this stage in life in a way that works.

Can cardio cause weight gain after 40?

Then there’s cardio. We want to cardio, cardio, cardio, high intensity, go more, more, more, you know, hours upon hours in this state that isn’t quite easy enough. and it’s not even that it’s not hard enough. We’re in that middle. I call it the gray zone where we’re just pushing our body through and it isn’t really serving us right. It’s that again that stress state. We’re in that high stress state. 

So not eating, stress, exercising too much for too long creates stress. And then the next day we’re not recovering because our body is on tilt. So we’re not resting because our body is too amped up. We’re not fueling enough. So our body is in that starvation mode and again those high stress hormones are going to come in and so all these things together, and then of course that muscle loss is accelerating, just because once we are age 30 and beyond we start to lose a dramatic amount of muscle mass every decade. So it keeps going down just if we’re in a steady state of doing the same thing.

So things, you know, it’s this it’s putting together these puzzle pieces of, oh my gosh, okay, so eating less doesn’t work, exercising more isn’t working. These are all stressing our body out. And again, when we’re in a stressed state, we will not lose weight. Period. Nothing’s going to change. And so working on recovery and building muscle, these are things we can shift into. Fueling our bodies in a new way, right? Finding cardio that works for our body, right, at this stage in life, cuz they’re all important.

The biggest mistakes if you’re gaining weight after 40

1. Undereating, 
2. Too much cardio, 
3. Not enough protein, 
4. Avoiding strength training. 

And so, what we want to do, nutrition trumps everything, I always say you can’t out exercise a bad diet. You just can’t. It doesn’t work. I don’t always say it. I mean, I’ve heard it said as well. I’m not making that up in my own space, but we have to prioritize protein. Balanced blood sugar. This goes back to what we talked about with insulin. That works together. 

So, balancing your blood sugar can make you more insulin sensitive, right? So that your body isn’t in that traffic jam I mentioned where insulin isn’t working efficiently, right? Things get stopped up. And so if we can balance blood sugar, right, everything kind of starts to move a little bit more efficiently. We’re not in that amped up state where we’re just going to store fat.

Eating enough, I hear this a lot, like, you know, women will come in and they’ll do a food diary and um it’s just too little to support weight loss. And it goes back to that starvation mode that we just talked about. If your body is stuck in this place of scarcity, it’s going to hold on to things. And remember that stress heightening, it’s going to also bring up your stress level. And you may not even realize it. It really will impact you, especially over time where you will start to just, you know, unfortunately it works the opposite way as it used to. It just does.

And we’re going to focus on whole nutrient-dense foods. I always say protein, fat, and fiber. Protein, fat, and fiber. Anti-inflammatory nutrition is really where we want to head right now because our body is also more inflamed due to that drop in estrogen. And inflammation is where you feel that bloat that you just can’t get rid of. Or joint pain, overall body pain, aches and pains. So, we want to really focus here again so that we can make the shift to feeling like ourselves again because it is possible for sure.

Protein forward meals help reduce weight gain

Protein. This is where it’s all at. We have to eat more protein. Well, again, I always say we have to, but it is a great idea to eat more protein to support muscle and metabolism. This is our number one macronutrient focus. So, I’ll say things to clients like protein forward, protein first. 

You know, we want to be protein forward in our meal makeup. It helps reduce fat. Why? Well, it’s going to improve satiety and it’s going to support muscle protein synthesis. This is really important. So, strength training with the protein together optimizes our metabolism, our energy, and our ability to lose fat. So our target is generally .7 to one gram per pound of goal or ideal body weight. Okay? So you can calculate that in and then divide it up through your meals. Like how many meals are you having? Two meals, three meals, four meals, five meals. So divide that up. It doesn’t matter so much as to how you divide it up. It matters more that you get that amount in per day.

So carbs are not the enemy at all. Actually, we definitely need some carbs to support our bodies, our metabolism, and our ability to be insulin sensitive. It helps our sleep too. So they’re not all bad, but the type of carbs does matter. So we want to use whole fiber rich carbs, fiber, fiber, fiber. So important, protein, fiber, and of course healthy fat. But pair your carbohydrates with protein. And when I talk about carbohydrates, I’m talking about your squashes, your fruits, your vegetables. These are all carbohydrates. So, we want to make sure we’re getting the highest fiber sources of carbohydrates that we can. 

Think complex versus simple. Simple carbs are your processed foods, right? Anything that comes in a box, a bag, you know, or has a barcode most likely. Although some fruits have a tag that now has a barcode. I get it. But those are what we want to stay away from the simple carbs.

Complex carbs are your whole grains, your fruits, your vegetables, and most of us at this stage of our life, we also have to be really careful of gluten. Most of us have a sensitivity. So, we want to stay away from gluten and that also helps promote insulin sensitivity, by the way.

So, we’re pairing with protein. Adjust based on your activity. So, if you’re somebody who is a runner, you’re doing some V2 max workouts, meaning high intensity a couple times a week, you’re strength training three times a week, you know, you’re doing it all. You want to definitely adjust your carb ratio up, especially around your workouts. It helps support muscle growth. It helps support energy and metabolism. So, that’s a good thing. 

If you’re somebody who takes a walk every day and does Pilates and that’s your basis, that’s kind of your routine, you probably don’t need as many carbs. But you’re not doing a lot of high heart rate or high aerobic or anaerobic work. You can probably bring it down a little bit. 

And it is very individual like there’s no one-size-fits-all here. So it is important to just acknowledge that. 

All of us just need to avoid snacking because that does us no good and that promotes insulin resistance. Because as I talked about blood sugar, it destabilizes your blood sugar, meaning you’re going to have that constant roller coaster of blood sugar. So you’re going to feel really energized and then really low and then really high then really low. And you’re going to need to keep snacking in order to keep that going, keep bringing your energy back up. Caffeine or sugar is going to have to be on board in order to keep that going. 

So that is a place that a lot of women come in where they’re struggling with that. They just can’t stabilize their blood sugar. They’ve got a lot of inflammation. Definitely insulin resistant. And again those three things are so common behind the reason women are gaining weight and not able to lose it. 

There is a solution and that’s honestly where the main space I work with women is helping to dial in lowering inflammation, getting out of insulin resistance, becoming leveling out your blood sugar so that you can really start to feel amazing and lose weight. 

What’s the best exercise plan postmenopause? 

Strength training. This is ideal, by the way. So, it doesn’t mean if you are a walker, you’re going to start doing all of this right away or you’re a yogi or you’re, you know, doing Pilates. Those are all really good things. But again, we’re talking about the post-menopausal woman. 

What is the best exercise plan? Why? 

To promote longevity and remember being that grandmother that runs around in the yard and you know maybe goes on long hiking trips or cycling trips. I love that. And you know is active in her retirement years. This is the formula and again this is optimal. So we don’t necessarily have to start here but this is where we would build to.

It’s strength training three to four times a week getting in zone 2 cardio right because that does help with fat loss. We know that, but true zone two, not where we’re working too hard in that gray zone space. Zone three, we want to really make sure we’re in that lower intensity zone 2 training. And I would say, you know, we want to get that in again probably anywhere from three to four times a week and aiming for anywhere from 30 minutes a time would be for 3 to four. Or you can, you know, you can make it, you can do one or two for a little longer. So just and and it can be any form. It doesn’t have to be, you know, running or cycling or swimming. If you can get it while walking, do it. You know, wear a rucksack. Those can work great. 

And then daily movement. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, whenever. Right? Just move your body. Most of us sit for long periods during the day. But if we can get out and maybe even just 10 minutes after meals is a great way to start getting movement in. I love yoga, I know Pilates works really well for some women. So that’s another form, right? That’s mobility. That is definitely getting in some core strength, balance, right? But I really want to be clear. Pilates and yoga is not strength training. They are two very different modalities. You know the other thing yoga and pilates is great for is your nervous system, right? It is much more if you can use it correctly, right? If we use those workouts in the right way, it can really help regulate our nervous system which is again that goes back to that recovery which we need to build into our day.

Strength training honestly is non-negotiable for myself and the women I work with. It preserves lean muscle, supports bone density. I’ve kind of been saying this, right? It improves insulin sensitivity, right? So, how about that? So, strength training actually helps your insulin build insulin sensitivity. So, that’s a biggie, right? Because again, we know that is the number one reason women tend to gain weight and struggle to lose it after menopause. And we can do this. We can help you here. And it boosts metabolism, strength training very, very much. So really big positives there.

And then, you know, as far as regulating our nervous system, recovery is huge and our body needs more recovery than we used to. And this is another reason a lot of women really struggle. They’re on their same routine maybe, they’re going to Orange Theory or, you know, whatever that high intensity workout day after day and not recovering. This is where I see a lot of women that we just have to revamp this. We have to manage these things differently because that’s the way our body is today and it’s instead of fighting our body I’m a big proponent of learning how to work with your body.

Stress management is a biggie and that is something that again we have to just continually be aware of and preempt in a way. So I think that it’s so important or I believe it’s important not just to you know kind of do it when we feel stressed but to make it a part of our daily routine morning routine midday evening you know like I think those three times a day to really check in self assess how am I doing you know maybe go for a short walk sit and do a few breathing exercises I like to pair it along before and after meals can be super helpful because we’re already going to do that. So, can we really calm our nervous system before we go into a meal, you know, or after we go for a light walk? Those are just some examples.

Really supporting your nervous system is a big piece of what and how. Well, it’s what’s going on, why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, why things aren’t moving. And supporting your nervous system is truly the magic sauce, the secret sauce in how we really work with our body now to create change to get control back so we don’t feel like we can’t do anything to shift or move the needle. You can. It truly is more about recovery.

Overtraining. Yeah, been there, done that. It does not work. It sets us back. So avoid overtraining, focus on recovery.

So the real goal it’s just a matter of really doing things a little bit differently. That’s all. Not overhauling, but just shifting some pieces around a little bit, you know, on the chessboard or whatever, right? 

It’s really not just about weight loss because I think longevity is energy. Wanting to live life to its fullest. It’s about strength, it’s about energy right, it’s about confidence and saying, “I feel amazing in my body”.

We have to take the steps but longevity to me is living life to its fullest until my last breath. That’s for me. And really having that quality of life.

These are the years where we don’t have those responsibilities that we did with small kids and maybe even parents. But it is your time. It is my time. It is our time. So step into it. Don’t wait. Like things get in the way. And then we don’t want to find ourselves in a place where we are sick. Start now. I encourage you. It’s about doing what works for your body. Not everybody but your body.

If you find this information resonates for you and you find it helpful, this is how I help women step by step, piece by piece, working with each woman where they are and road mapping where they want to be. And then we do it together through our menopause coaching. And so if this is something that you’re struggling with, you know, as a woman in menopause or postmenopause, you’re struggling with weight gain, weight loss resistance, meaning you just try everything and it’s not nothing’s moving, or you want to build a strength training program postmenopause. You know, that is a place to start.

So wherever you are, take a step. I encourage you to take a step to make this the best next chapter of your life. It is possible. Thanks for being here today and I hope you found this helpful.