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| Midriff at Midlife - It's Harder for Women to lose weight as they get older Alas, you ladies at midlife. You try on that swimsuit in anticipation of summer. You look in the mirror. Something is disturbingly different. Like your waist seems to be disappearing. Brace yourselves because this one's gonna hurt (even though it's what you've always suspected). Once we cross the threshold into middle age, women in general really do have a harder time losing weight. Still think you can retain the same hour-glass bod you had in your 20s and 30s while wending your way into menopause and beyond? Time for some tough love: "Girlfriend, there is no one who's going to avoid this — not a single person," says physician Pamela Peeke, author of "Fight Fat After 40" (Viking Press, $14) and a medical advisor to the National Women's Health Resource Center in Red Bank, New Jersey. "It's normal. N-0-R-M-A-L. Now get over it." Peeke is blunt but merciful. She dangles a carrot by saying you can do some major damage control to keep that waistline from ever expanding. "Optimize your physical fitness and excellent nutrition and stress manage¬ment and you will minimize the weight gain," she says. All right already, it's not the silver bullet you were hoping for. But let's . face it, according to Joann Pinkerton, an ob/gyn and director of the Midlife Health Center at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; "There is no magic cure. There is no magic pill." But it should help to understand why weight is more difficult to keep off at this stage of life so you can figure out how to best minimize the impact. Medical experts say most women gain an average of 10 pounds around menopause but midlife weight gain isn't inevitable for every woman. Joseph Ramieri, chairman of obstetrics, gynecology and women's health for Morristown Memorial and Overlook hospitals, says he has been seeing some patients for 30 years who have been able to maintain the 115 to 120 pound weight range they had when they were 20. There's a natural drop in the metabolic rate of women in their mid-40s. Our metabolic rate dips after age 18 by about 2 percent per decade. What this means is that a woman who continues to have exactly the same food intake and exercise habits at age 45 as she did at age 35 will gain weight. So, she must either decrease her intake or increase her activity to maintain her weight at the same level. |
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