The Six Blockers To Blame When It Comes To Not Shedding The Pounds After 40

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You were thinking of starting a diet even before the madness of Christmas intervened. Now, with 2023 on the horizon, you’re all set, ready to go.

But if you’re a woman over 40, you might want to hear what Gabrielle OHare has to say. Author of the new book Why Women Over 40 Can’t Lose Weight, she’s quick to say that most diets fail.

The 51-year-old, who converted to a personal trainer during Covid, says it’s because the majority of diets give us a list of do’s and don’ts, while ignoring the reasons that push us to give up before obtaining results.

Why Women Over 40 Can’t Lose Weight by Gabrielle O’Hare

It’s a lot of telling you what to do, but never acknowledging why dieting is so hard! My book aims to help women understand why they find it so difficult.

Over the years, O’Hare herself struggled with weight and heavy cravings and, in her 40s, suffered regular injuries that kept her from progressing in her fitness. Becoming a personal trainer when a longtime ambition was also to get answers about why losing weight is so difficult for middle-aged women.

When gyms finally reopened after the lockdown, OHare had customers heading to its backyard gym, most of them women unhappy with their weight but unable to diet.

Many were embarrassed to go to a regular gym. They didn’t want to train with a fit young man. They were going through menopause, they didn’t have the same energy. They didn’t want to be forced to pump and be out of breath.

They were smart women, says OHare, who knew about calories, exercise and what they should eat, but she spotted a common theme.

They blamed themselves. They said oh, I’m lazy, I have no will, no motivation. They thought they were failures. Listening to the women, OHare noticed another common pattern, the same six blockers bothered all of its clients.

The first was self-neglect.

Women’s roles become very complicated as they get older. Their lives become so busy, she says, pointing out that very often women are not just mothers and wives, they are also the daughters of aging parents, workers, maybe bosses and maybe community workers. /volunteers.

Women like to feel busy and needed, being able to say that they are multitasking. It is part of our identity.

The result is that women put themselves on hold.

Gabrielle O’Hare author of Why Women Over 40 Can’t Lose Weight

They take shortcuts with their diet. They catch food on the go. They take their children to after-school clubs and are too tired to do their own training.

Another key blocker is stress. OHare says it’s not just the sheer volume of tasks that’s the problem, it’s also the constant pressure to have those tasks on our minds. Stress impacts weight because elevated stress hormones affect how we store fat.

Most people think body fat is related to the amount of food we eat, but it’s not that simple. Stress releases a hormone called cortisol. Constant stress elevates cortisol levels known to increase belly fat, says OHare, who says her book is backed by science.

Another problem with chronic stress is its link to poor sleep.

If we engage in cortisol-boosting activities by scrolling on our phones, working late, we don’t relax and can’t fall. Even after a bad night, they were more likely to overeat, make poor food choices, and rely on sugar and caffeine to keep us alive.

It’s no surprise to learn that menopause is also a major hurdle. OHare highlights two reasons.

The ovaries stop producing estrogen, but we still need it. One thing that can give us estrogen is fat, so the body creates more fat, so there’s this new little source of estrogen.

The adrenal glands also begin to produce estrogen, although their primary role is to produce stress hormones.

Chronic stress wreaks havoc on this process, says OHare.

It forces the adrenal glands to perform their primary function of producing stress hormones, thereby ceasing the production of estrogen. To make up for the shortfall, we drop even more belly fat.

Menopause is a major obstacle to weight loss

Also working against us is that starting around age 30, we lose five percent of muscle mass every decade. But, OHare points out, muscle activates calorie-burning tissue the more muscle we have, the more calories it burns.

For several years after menopause, we lose muscle at a faster rate than at any other time in life, she warns, adding that if we let muscle wasting happen but eat the same amount, or don’t muscle protection exercise, middle age inevitable spread.

The fourth blocker that OHare notices is: an unhealthy and complicated relationship with food.

No one eats anymore because they are hungry, but because they are tired, stressed or have had a bad day. There is a habit of eating emotionally because they feel lonely, bored, unhappy.

Then they go on a diet and try to cut out certain things. But they still have the same hectic lifestyle, the same addiction to food to sustain them.

“So they’ll run to the kitchen, have a cup of tea and more cookies than they should.

Sabotage, which O’Hare defines as pressure and resistance from others when we try to eat better, is another major obstacle.

The people in your life interfere with the way you eat and make you eat the way they do.

Cue the kids wanting pizza for dinner (you give in), your significant other pulls out packets of chips while you watch Netflix (oh, why not?) and your mom’s homemade cake (how could I say no ?).

And finally, there’s the daily bombardment of commercials for ultra-processed foods, a significant portion of which comes from fast food outlets, food delivery services, soft drinks, confectioneries, and processed food manufacturers. .

Have been exposed to far more ads for ultra-processed foods than natural foods like fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat, fish, says OHare, who has worked at ad agencies for more than 25 years.

So what can we do? How to beat blockers? A change in mentality must first occur, says OHare.

Many of the women she meets, whose children are growing up, find that they have a little more time to devote to them or that they have had health problems.

They suddenly realize that their health is really important. The penny drops and they see that they have to make themselves a priority.

Many women spend much of their lives dieting, says OHare, which sees society almost telling us we need to lose weight, showing images of women who look like they’re 40 as they have 60.

But the key is to find a bigger goal than just losing weight.

Something that really means something to you and will motivate you.

She’s seen clients realize that they don’t just want to not be overweight, they don’t want killer physiques.

They just want to regain control of their body, to feel confident in their skin, to have more energy. They begin to realize that these things change their lives more than dropping a dress size.

Is it his own goal? To stay active and strong so she can go on adventures with her partner when her 15-year-old daughter grows up.

At the moment she spends the weekends paddling or training on her bike, for a cycling adventure in the Alps next summer.

Why Women Over 40 Can’t Lose Weight, Kindle Edition (3.99 or free via Kindle Unlimited) at Amazon.

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