If you’ve experienced some weight loss success then got stuck, try these exercise changes in menopause to overcome a plateau.
Before any of these steps make sense, resolve issues of fatigue. If you’re getting up in the morning feeling hungover, or you do a workout and feel like a nap, you have other business to attend to before you hop in here.
Visit some of the previous podcasts about adrenal insufficiency and stress and start there. This will be here. Some of these things will serve you to know. However, if you don’t base your actions (or inactions: those things you stop) based on the feedback your body is telling you right now, you’ve got to manage it first.
I’m going to give these to you right here all at once. Then I’m going to dive into the why these are true.
Lastly, if you’re active and moving and have a high demand for calories that you’re not consuming? Unless you also are consciously increasing protein, you’re going to lose muscle. Never ever ever after 40 do we want that to happen. Every decade older you are, the difficulty of getting it back increases.
5 Exercise Changes in Menopause to Overcome a Plateau
- Remove HIIT if you’re in perimenopause on a plateau
- Add HIIT if you’re in post menopause on a plateau
- Do Intense Exercise Early in the Day
- Go Hard Short (and then recover)
- Skip “middle zone” madness
And bonus:
- Start walking. Walk after meals, after anything that carries the chance to spike your blood sugar levels. (including….
What is the Skip Middle Zone Madness?
Where should you be? Go by Feel. I don’t care, and no one online knows where your heart rate should be by math on a calculator. An estimated target heart rate zone over or estimates for a large percent of the population. For adults over 40 it significantly under estimates.
So if you have any fitness level at all, you’re aiming for something that does not fit you.
Exercise Changes in Menopause, Boost your energy, improve results, and feel good
You’ve heard the magical “Zone 2” reference and that means something different to too many people. Peter Attia describes it one way, another guru in another way, your trainer another.
What I want you to know is this, for most women, it feels like conscious, on purpose exercise but you can carry on a conversation. You are NOT breathless, you’re able to keep going.
Even a zone 2 workout will get harder if you go for hours, but 30 minutes, 60 and even 2 hours if you’re used to it and you’re in condition for it can be done in zone 2 easily.
None of us live in geography that is completely flat. Going for a walk or hike almost anywhere will involve a hill or gradual increase of altitude. Is that an interval? Not unless it gets you completely breathless, and if you’re going for zone 2 or a recovery walk you will choose a flatter path, or one you’re very used to.
The Non-Exercise Changes in Menopause to Overcome a Plateau
What stalls weight loss is low carbs. It’s often the first thing we do. Yet, the obstacle is often cortisol. To reduce it, we need carbohydrates. Try these changes in post menopause to overcome a plateau.
Resources:
- STRENGTH Training for Women in Midlife: https://www.flippingfifty.com/getstronger
- 5 Day Flip: https://www.flippingfifty.com/5dayflip
Other Episodes You Might Like:
- 3 Menopause Fitness Makeovers: https://www.flippingfifty.com/menopause-fitness-makeovers/
- An Open Apology to Women Pursuing Fitness: https://www.flippingfifty.com/midlife-women/
