WHERE’S MY WAIST?

After menopause, oestrogen stops being made in the ovaries and instead comes from the conversion of androgens (produced in the adrenal glands) and in fat cells. It’s a weaker form of oestrogen called oestrone.

In response to declining estrogen levels from the ovaries, the body starts to produce more fat to help compensate for the lower levels of estrogen. As fat cells don’t burn energy the way muscle cells do, additional weight may accumulate during menopause slightly more easily than at other times.

The fewer fat cells you have the lower your oestrogen so being too thin with a low body fat percentage is not ideal. Similarly, having too much body fat means too much oestrogen which is also not ideal and why there’s a link with breast and womb cancers. The answer is a happy medium.

2008 research published in the International Journal of Obesity links sleeping less than five hours per night to abdominal fat gain. Subsequent research has identified that poor sleep can increase levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which increases the tendency to store fat around the waist. Poor sleep can also increase appetite, cravings for high-calorie and high-fat foods and the tendency to overeat.

Our metabolic rate can decline partly due to loss of muscle (sarcopenia) as muscles burn up calories far better than fat.

We may never regain the waist we had in our 20s but we can improve muscle tone with resistance exercises along with a healthy diet.

Crash diets may work in the short term but you also risk losing muscle as well as fat and going into starvation mode which causes metabolism to slow down.

Different diets work for different people and measurements don’t’ always tell the whole story. Choose which is most suitable for you as a measurement and then work towards reducing your total.

Rather than just focusing on weight loss, aim to reduce your waist measurement instead. Make sure you measure in the same place each time by measuring at your natural waistline just above your belly button and below your rib cage. If you bend to the side, the crease that forms is your natural waistline.

Measure every month and keep track of how you’re progressing. The ideal waist measurement for good health is under 32”; 32-35” is overweight and over 35” is classed as obese.