Belly Fat is Different Fat
You’re in your menopausal years and this fat stuck on your waist is annoying the crap out of you!
It feels awful. It looks awful and if you’re super honest with yourself you’re not loving yourself much because of it. You’ve never had a belly before. It’s so not fair!
Just like real estate, location counts when it comes to fat. The deeper and the more centralized in your waist area the fat, the more dangerous. So you’re right to be annoyed.
Why Does Menopause Make it so Hard to Lose Belly Fat?
You’re probably wondering why you can’t shift the weight sticking to your midsection. And why you have lean legs and arms but there’s nothing lean about your tummy? It’s because they’re different.
One kind of fat is visceral – deep in your belly – and the other is subcutaneous – just under your skin.
As you head for your middle years, women tend to gain more fat disproportionately in the trunk region. Even if you don’t gain weight in actual pounds, your waistline can grow and that’s scary. Visceral fat now blankets your deeper organs and pushes out your formerly flat tummy causing a meno-pot.
The fat in your belly is different than the fat anywhere else on your body. It is fed by a circulatory system and produces chemicals that can lead to serious health risks. It won’t respond to weight loss and exercise efforts in the same way as any other.
Dr. Barbara B. Kahn, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, says “One of the most important developments [since the mid-1990s] is the realization that the fat cell is an endocrine organ, secreting hormones and other molecules that have far-reaching effects on other tissues.”
You’ve got to think about belly fat as a totally different fat that needs different approaches to melt it away.
Can I melt the menopause belly fat with exercise?
In the beginning, when I started my wellness transformation, I weighed 204 pounds and that number scared the crap out of me. And then it scared me into action. It was through exercise, particularly weight training and cardiovascular exercise that I learned I could move that mountain of fat and reshape myself and my health entirely.
Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental states. ~Carol Welch
Movement is part of a Clean Living lifestyle. Movement matters.
It’s movement of a particular kind that can reshape your waist circumference.
Movement melts visceral fat and builds muscle mass instead. It’s a powerful alchemy when this change happens because to change it is to cause a cascade of positive alterations not only in your belly but everywhere else in your body.
The Movement Formula, from my 3 E’s of Wellness program, states that you need to engage in 30 minutes of exercise performed at a MHR (Maximum Heart Rate) of 65% or greater, at least 5-6 days per week. This is the gold standard for physical movement. And you need the combination of cardiovascular exercise along with strength training to make it perfect.
That’s why spot training by doing 100’s of crunches won’t cut the fat!
The other cool thing about exercise is that once you start you self-signal that you are a person who exercises. That means that you’re an exerciser which means you’re fit. Your mind loves this kind of message because naming it is doing it is making it so.
What kind of exercise plan can beat the extra menopause belly fat?
You know you can’t beat the belly with plain old crunches. It just doesn’t work.
Here’s a list of pro exercises that are guaranteed to jiggle, melt, burn, torch and banish fat, as long as you keep up your end of the bargain. You can’t just read the list. You’ve got to do them. And you’ve got to follow up with Eating Clean.
All these exercises you can do at home with minimal and inexpensive equipment … I have a list of essential equipment for your easy home gym here.
So here’s that power list … get ready for meno-pot melt …
The Meno-Pot Melt Workout
INSTRUCTIONS
- Perform each exercise for 60 seconds, doing as many reps as you can within that timeframe.
- After your 60 seconds is up, move on to the next exercise without rest.
- Again, work on the following exercise for 60 seconds doing as many reps as you can within that timeframe.
- Once you have completed each exercise, take 1-2 minutes rest.
- Perform 3 – 5 rounds to complete your workout.
THE MENO-POT MELT WORKOUT EXERCISES
- Burpees
- Skip Rope or Rebound
- Med Ball Slams
- Goblet Squat (with weight at the front of your body)
- Glute Hip Raise (with or without weight)
- Kettlebell Swing
- Bear Crawls with mini-band, forward, back & laterally left and right
- Walking Lunge
- Skaters (with or without weight)
I’ll be doing these exercises right along with you because frankly, these are my favorites and also because they work like a charm.
Go ahead now and slay the meno-pot.
Head over to the Clean Living Facebook Community and post me a picture of yourself too.
Don’t worry, I will too.
Wishing you loads of love,
Tosca Reno