Weight Loss After 40!

Weight loss after 40 years of age, often comes with unique challenges that go beyond diet alone. While food choices remain important, there are numerous physiological, hormonal, and lifestyle factors that play a significant role in weight management at this stage of life. Let’s delve into some key insights as to why weight loss can be more challenging after 40, and why food alone isn’t the only consideration we should be making.

Hormonal Changes

From about 40 years of age (sometimes earlier and sometimes later), women experience various changes in their hormones. These hormonal changes will include oestrogen, progesterone, insulin, glucagon, thyroid hormones and stress hormones. Why does this happen generally after 40? It is because of our physiological changes - sex hormone production shifts from the ovaries to the adrenals meaning that are adrenals now have to work twice as hard as they also produce stress hormones (cortisol), resulting in our body becoming more susceptible to stress.

With less oestrogen being produced our muscle mass also decreases and with less metabolically active muscle our metabolism can slow down - this is just one reason why including weight training (building lean muscle) is even more important as we get older.

This natural shift in our metabolism can make it easier to gain weight, even without changes in food intake or physical activity.

Men will also experience changes to their sex hormones as they become lower in testosterone. Both hormonal shifts can lead to increased fat storage which can not be reduced with diet and exercise alone. In fact, reducing calories (having a calorie deficit) may have the opposite effect to what we want!

As we age, we are more susceptible to a reduced insulin sensitivity due to the reduce oestrogen levels, which means the body may struggle more with blood sugar regulation, leading to fat storage rather than fat burning.

In addition, our stress hormone, cortisol also increases to various reasons including due to a reduction in progesterone (which helps to buffer the effects or cortisol), as well as the adrenals working harder. As cortisol increases, this imbalances your sex hormones, again leading to lower oestrogen, lower thyroid hormones, then insulin resistance and increased fat storage.

Excessive cortisol can increase inflammation in the body and will also increase oxidative stress in the body. Inflammation and oxidative stress can hinder weight loss.

There are various things we can do to help our hormones be better balanced:

1. Ensure good gut health - A healthy gut lining is important for absorbing nutrients, which are required to synthesise and regulate hormones. Nutrient deficiencies can affect hormone balance. For example, vitamin D is important for producing steroid hormones, and iodine is important for thyroid hormone synthesis. We should also try to avoid hormone distruptors such as inflammation, toxins, stress, intolerances and deficiencies.

2. Ensure good liver health - the liver is responsible for detoxifying our hormones once we are done with them or if there is an excess. We want our liver to be working efficiently for this to happen.

3. Ensure regular bowel movements as well as good gut bacteria levels to help eliminate detoxified hormones. Imbalances in gut bacteria can lead to hormonal dysregulation.

4. Making sure you include fibre and protein in your diet will help to balance blood sugar levels and control appetite.

To really know what is going on with your hormones, it's a good idea to get some functional medicine testing done - that way help will be personalised to you. Within clinic I like to use specific tests that include highlighting your oxidative stress levels as well as much more. If you'd like help with hormonal or gut health balance, get in touch

Loss of Muscle Mass (Sarcopenia)

As we briefly touched on in the last couple of posts, we start to lose muscle from the age of 35 and particularly when our oestrogen levels start to decline. Muscle is metabolically active and will burn more calories than fat tissue, so the gradual loss of muscle mass with age decreases calorie expenditure.

Sarcopenia, or age-related muscle loss, can reduce metabolic rate and make weight gain more likely, especially if regular strength training is not part of one's routine.

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO START WEIGHT TRAINING!

Regular resistance training, along with adequate protein intake, can counteract muscle loss, supporting both weight management and overall vitality.

It is important to note that when you are building muscle, you need to eat enough, especially protein. Minimising food / calorie intake may not be helpful to achieve what you want to achieve.

Get in touch if you'd like help.

Gut Health and Digestion

Gut health plays a surprising role in weight management. As we age, the variety and numbers of beneficial bacteria in the gut decline.

As you may have realised, weight loss is not as simple as energy / calories in vs energy / calories out. How well our bodies are at regulating our appetite as well as using calories depends on a number of factors, e.g. our genetics or age will make a difference, but, this cannot be changed. Other factors, like our gut bacteria, can be improved.

Research suggests that there is continuous communication between our nervous and digestive systems important for regulating our metabolism and appetite. Gut hormones are super important for this, passing on signals of nutritional status from our gut to the brain, which then interprets our energy needs and responds accordingly.

Our gut releases over 20 different hormones that work with our energy balance. Our gut hormone levels depend on things such as the food we eat, how healthy we are as well as the different compounds that our gut bacteria can produce.

Knowing that gut hormones are important for weight loss, it's interesting to note that low-calorie diets change the levels of our gut hormones making us feel more hungry (and eat more calories), this then produces a less efficient metabolism and explains why so many people yo-yo when dieting!

Knowing that our gut bacteria can help (and hinder) weight loss - how can we ensure we have good gut health and good (and varied) levels of gut bacteria? The short answer is diet / what we eat. Studies have suggested that a Mediterranean diet is the most beneficial diet in terms of weight loss as it tends to be beneficial for the health of our gut bacteria. Testing our gut to know exactly what is going on, the levels of bacteria, whether there is any dysbiosis / inflammation / parasites / overgrowth etc, is very beneficial.

Please get in touch if you have any questions.

Chronic Stress and Cortisol Levels

As i've briefly mentioned this week, as we age, the production of oestrogen shifts from our ovaries to our adrenals, making our adrenals work over time, meaning that we are more susceptible to stress.

One of our stress hormones is cortisol. As cortisol increases it further exacerbates the imbalance of our sex hormones, oestrogen becomes lower (as well as our thyroid hormones) contributing to insulin resistance and therefore increasing fat storage. Diet and exercise can not help this!!

Cortisol Production: Middle age can also bring increased responsibilities, such as career pressures, financial concerns, and family care-giving. Chronic stress elevates cortisol levels itself, promoting weight gain, especially around the midsection.

Sleep Disruptions: Stress can also interfere with sleep, and poor sleep affects hunger-regulating hormones, such as ghrelin and leptin, increasing cravings for high-calorie foods and making it harder to stick to healthy eating habits.

These two NON FOOD FACTORS that affect our weight are important to address. Can you look at reducing stress? If not / and can you implement stress management techniques into your daily life?

Can you create a good sleep routine / better sleep hygiene / look at the underlying causes of your poor sleep?

Get in touch if you'd like help with this.