Researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that when postmenopausal women lost weight, virtually all of their 30 billion fat cells got smaller. The fat cells in their stomachs, abdomens, thighs and buttocks all gave up their stubborn nature and all surrendered fat.
When you were premenopausal, the fat in your buttocks, hips and thighs was the most stubborn because it was needed for fertility and pregnancy. When you were a perimenopausal woman, the fat in your waist was the most resistant because it was needed to start producing oestrogen. Now that you are postmenopausal, the fat in all areas of your body becomes a bit more amenable to giving up fat. One client asked, ‘You mean I have to wait until my 55th birthday to lose weight?’ Absolutely not. The programme offered in this book is designed to encourage weight loss during the menopausal transition. It’s simply an added bonus that fat cells will shrink on their own after the transition.
There’s more good news: You’ll start noticing more cravings for protein and vegetables instead of sugar and fat. Your body is more interested in amino acids to maintain muscle mass, and nutrients to keep you healthy, than in fat and sugar to keep your fat cells storing.
Let’s summarize the entire transition: Somewhere around age 35, an alarm went off in your fat cells. A slightly lower oestrogen reading was detected, and your fat cells entered the transition to the menopause. They knew your body’s geography like the back of their hand and knew where they were needed the most. On cue, the fat cells surrounding your liver and adrenal glands were activated, because this was the exact geographic location where all the necessary factors were present to produce oestrogen. Then, for the rest of your transition, a convergence of factors guaranteed that you gained some extra body fat, especially in your waist.
Through checks and balances and back-up plans, your fat cells made sure that they accomplished their goals of oestrogen production and survival. Your health, vitality and longevity depended on it.
Fat Cells Are Your Menopausal Helper
With their amazing ability to produce oestrogen, your fat cells provide some protection against skin and hair changes, mood swings, memory loss, fatigue, osteoporosis and hot flushes. Every single cell in your body has receptors for oestrogen. They all are affected by the decline in oestrogen during the perimenopause, and they all benefit from the release of oestrogen once your fat cells get big enough to manufacture it. With over 300 different functions, oestrogen is not just for fertility and menstruation in your premenopausal years – it’s also for your brain, bones, skin, heart and all other organs throughout all your years.
Fat cells are your bone strengthener. Larger women have one-half the risk of osteoporosis that thinner women do. The US National Institute on Aging has found that midlife weight gain protects against hip fractures. With the extra oestrogen produced and the extra weight their skeleton had to carry around, women’s hip bones became stronger and more dense. As you gain some weight during midlife, all of your bones will become stronger because simply moving your body around every day becomes weight-bearing exercise.
Fat cells are your sleep enhancer. Those who gain the most body fat during the menopause have the least difficulty falling asleep. One study found that leaner women take an average of 24 minutes to enter the first stage of sleep, while heavier women take only 11 minutes.
Fat cells are your air-conditioning. Leaner women report 50 per cent more hot flushes than those who carry some additional fat. The oestrogen produced by your fat cells will cool your hot flushes and night sweats.
Fat cells are your skin softener. Women who gain weight during midlife are more likely to maintain their skin collagen and natural oil production. With more fat underneath the skin, they also retain more moisture and have diminished lines and wrinkles. The anti-ageing result: Larger fat cells help to slow down the skin deterioration that occurs with ageing.
Fat cells really are looking out for your mental and physical well-being. But after hearing about the compelling benefits of larger fat cells, a particular question may be haunting you: ‘If menopausal weight gain is so healthy for me, then why is everyone saying that it’s so unhealthy for me to gain weight?’
‘Everyone’ is not saying that, and those who do are re-evaluating their positions. Midlife weight gain is not the grim reaper once thought, and thinness is not the fountain of youth once imagined.
On the contrary, fitness, not thinness, is the number one indicator of longevity. Research at The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Texas has shown that thin people who are out of shape are three times more likely to die prematurely than heavier people who are in shape.
So, being thin appears to offer little protection against early death. But what about other past studies finding that thinner people have a lower disease risk and live longer? None of them factored in fitness. And except for one highly publicized study, all others have demonstrated that the health risks for carrying extra weight are much lower for women than for men.
The highly publicized study I’m referring to was conducted at Harvard University a few years back, and received a great deal of attention. It reported that a 35-year-old woman who is 5 feet 5 inches tall should weigh in at 8½ stone. If she weighed between 8 stone 8 and 10 stone 9, her chances of an early death rose by 20 per cent. If she weighed more than 10 stone 10, her chances rose to 30 per cent.
All of a sudden, I found myself in an earlier death category. And, all of a sudden, I was flooded with phone calls. Women who were just starting to feel good about themselves at 10 or 11 stone were once again weight-and food-preoccupied – and thinking about dieting.
Before you let that negative thought enter your mind, let’s do a reality check. This Harvard study was done on nurses, who represent one of the most stressed professions (and stress affects our health and our weight); it didn’t control for body fat; and it didn’t factor in fitness. Even without these pitfalls, the most important reality is, for most of us, that the only chance of seeing 8½ stone again is by flipping through old photo albums.
Here is some additional proof that thin may not be better:
• Cornell University researchers analysed 60 studies from around the world involving 357,000 men and 249,000 women, and found that being moderately overweight did not increase mortality. Actually, what they did find is that both extremes of underweight and overweight increased mortality, but for everyone in between, weight was not a risk factor.
• Researchers at Stanford University found that the larger a woman’s thighs, the lower her risk of heart disease – especially if she also has a larger waist. Fat cells in the waist can deliver fat to the liver where it’s packaged with cholesterol and released into the bloodstream. But the fat cells in the thighs just store fat; they take fat out of our system and keep it there, saving it for that pending famine. So, thin thighs don’t offer the protection against heart disease that thicker thighs do – and thigh fat is only detrimental to our egos.
• Even if a woman is apple-shaped and carries a great deal of weight in her upper body, her risk of heart disease is not as high as a man’s because her abdominal fat cells aren’t as active. Research has found that a woman’s abdominal fat cells are so busy producing oestrogen that they don’t release as many fatty acids to the liver to form cholesterol.
• The US National Institute on Aging found that those people who lived the longest gained a moderate amount of weight in midlife. Those who gained a lot of weight or lost a lot of weight died younger.
Some midlife