If you talk to many elder women, 50-something or older, it will take a short while for you to realize that menopause and weight gain seem to go hand in hand for most of them. They often complain about that.

they often don’t understand why they are now gaining weight in other parts of the body, usually in the stomach area, even though they did not have a problem with that when they were younger.

Hormonal changes have a lot to do with it, although it’s still a mystery in some areas. When a woman reaches menopause and stops ovulation, the body produces significantly lower levels of estrogen.

Low estrogen has been found to cause weight gain in laboratory animals, so it can be concluded that this is why the female body changes shape. During your childbearing years, fat is kept in the lower body. After menopause, fat is kept in the abdomen, just like men. The risk of abdominal fat is you increase your chance of getting heart disease.

In addition, muscle mass is lost as you get older unless you maintain regular exercise that includes strength training, and the metabolism slows down. If you continue to consume the same amount of food as you did when you were younger, weight gain is inevitable. You just don’t need the same amount of calories at 50 or 60 as you did at 30 or 40.

Hormonal therapy is one solution to control some of the side effects of menopause. It does not cause weight gain, contrary to what you may have heard. Water retention and subsequent bloating may occur, but this is normally a temporary condition, and it does not mean added fat. But a debate still rages around hormone therapy, because some studies show an increased risk of breast cancer linked to the use of hormone therapy.

So does this mean that you just have to accept being fat at fifty? Definitely not! There are things that you can do to minimize the effects of menopause and weight gain that don’t include hormones.

1. Don’t stop eating. Just make better choices. Eat the foods you know are good for you as part of a low fat diet. Get plenty of fiber and stay away from sugar and refined flour products.

2. Exercise regularly. Your metabolism is not the only thing that slows down as you age. Work is often less demanding physically, you’re not running around chasing kids, your vacations are probably not as active as when you were younger, and in general you just do things a bit more slowly than before. You’d be amazed at what just 30 minutes of moderate activity every day will do for you.

3. Maintain your muscle mass by lifting hand weights or adding ankle weights when you walk. Of course, you should check with your doctor first before starting any exercise program if you’re currently being treated for any medical conditions.

4. Love yourself. Even if you’ve put on a few pounds and your waist is thicker than it used to be, try to be okay with that. Like Mammy told Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, “You ain’t never gonna have an 18 inch waist again!”. Accept that and appreciate your life.

Another alternative is to follow my Weight Loss Breeze plan. The exercises are simple and takes only a few minutes a day to do, and it makes losing weight at any age easy and almost effortless.