hi guys dr. Christie Anna's physical
therapist personal trainer and
nutritionist and today I am gonna tell
you guys how you can beat belly fat gain
in menopause as a women's health
specialist that's a question I get all
the time actually two questions why does
it happen and how can I stop it so there
are actually really two main reasons why
this tends to happen number one is
hormone yeh for hormones those affect us
all our life as we start to go through
menopause though estrogen decreases and
because of that a hormone called
follicle stimulating hormone which is a
mouthful starts to increase and they
have linked that specific hormone to
actual belly fat gain they're doing
research on that now to see if there's
medications that can kind of combat that
but that's very new the other option for
that is Chinese medicine there are some
and minimal Studies on it but some
herbal medication or herbal I should say
supplement and acupuncture at least have
some key studies around them that show
that that helps to decrease that level a
little bit so the other hormone that
tends to decrease is progesterone and
with a decrease in progesterone you get
an increase in cortisol which is the
stress hormone and that actually causes
insulin resistance which then causes all
that weight to be gained right in the
belly so not good
so you can help to control those
cortisol levels number one is try to
reduce your stress in any way shape or
form that you can and everybody is
different on what works for them whether
it's meditation or acupuncture or
exercise but find something that's gonna
help reduce that stress level making
sure that you get believe it or not 7 to
8 hours of sleep which sounds like a lot
to some people I'm sure but again that
helps to keep those cortisol levels
level decreasing the amount of sugar in
your diet too and actually especially
even fructose that way you don't have an
increase in that insulin either so
that's
so very helpful you want to increase the
protein in your diet a little bit and
also increase the healthy fats I know
that sounds kind of crazy eat fat to not
have fat but that really helps to keep
things level and your hormones need that
believe it or not we all need fat for
lots of things lastly there are some
studies showing that green tea might be
helpful in that too again research is a
little minimal on that but green tea
tastes pretty good
and there aren't a whole lot of harmful
side effects so it's certainly
worthwhile trying the second cause for
that weight gain in the middle is a
decrease in our metabolism now every
decade that actually gets worse yay
but you can actually work on that and
that's the cool thing so there are a
couple ways to exercise that really make
a difference number one is strength
training and that strength training for
the whole body
you can't just spot target number two is
interval exercise so you may have heard
of something called high-intensity
interval training you can get interval
work in your daily exercise and it
doesn't have to be jumping or bouncing
around you just really want to get your
heart rate up and then it kind of drops
back down now that being said if you're
not doing any exercise at all that's
probably step one you've been just
starting with a nice walk is a great
start now I know I said you can't spot
target any fat but if you don't have
great strength in those abdominal
muscles everything is gonna look worse
so I'm going to go ahead and show you
three different easy hopefully exercises
that you can do at home to work on that
abdominal strength step lying down for
the first one on your back legs are
going to come up hands down and it's a
tiny little push up towards the ceiling
notice my legs aren't going backwards
I'm using those lower abdominal and
pelvic muscles to really lift up bring
my feet back down to the mat keeping
that neutral spine that happy position
for your back hands behind the head keep
that chin tucked really focus in
leading with the abdominal muscles and
then it's a tiny lift the other thing
you want to be very careful of is that
you're not flexing into the spine so you
don't want to lift too high and you want
to make sure that you're not pressing
your abdominal muscles out or as I call
it pooching okay you want to avoid that
and then the last one that you can do is
a plank preferably on the forearms
because that's going to target the
abdominal muscles more so than up on the
hands so pushing up so the back is flat
and go ahead and try to hold 30 seconds
a minute and does it okay if you can
only start with ten even and if that's
too much you go ahead and drop your
knees down onto the mat and if that's
too much start off on like a counter or
even the bed and that will be a little
bit easier so those are the main reasons
why we tend to gain a little bit more
weight in through that belly but there's
definitely stuff that can be done so
thank you so much for tuning in today if
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