I read a great article earlier. We all try to stay young, but I suppose aging is inevitable. It’s how we deal with it that matters.

The pressures of daily life and the fact that there are more pollutants, less nutrients in our food, fast food diets, too little exercise, etc. add to the fact that we experience everything ‘worse’ than years ago.

I’ve spoken to a few women who are or have been going through menopause and the general consensus is that it need not be feared.

What is menopause?

Many women become pre-menopausal 2-10 years before becoming menopausal (Some women as young as 26 become peri-menopausal due to hormone imbalances and other medical conditions but that’s a different topic altogether).

Dr. Luigi talks about Woman’s Choice – a product that supports comfort and well-being for women during monthly hormonal fluctuations and menopause, in just one tablet per day.

At this juncture in life, they experience mood swings, night sweats and hot flushes and even depression. Even worse for many of these women, is that the weight starts to creep up to unacceptable levels and much of this weight ends up around the waist.

Menopausal women have slower metabolisms

This means that it takes longer for them to convert the food into energy during menopause.

• Cut back on your portions and make healthier food choices.
• Instead of eating fats and simple sugars, rather opt for vegetables and fruits.
• Protein and fiber are also good food choices if you want to keep the unwanted weight at bay.
• If you go to a restaurant, order a starter portion or share a main portion with your partner.

Menopause is not too late to start exercising

Running, cycling, walking and swimming are the exercises of choice for women going through menopause. These exercises are geared to build muscle strength, and this will happen even at this age.

You may have to work a bit harder to lose the weight and become fitter while you are menopausal.  Begin with about 30 minutes a day five times per week. As you shed weight and fitter, you can increase the duration of the exercise and the intensity of the exercise. Building muscle will burn more calories than fat.

Keep yourself moving.

Once you sit down, you turn off your fat release enzymes. After forty, these enzymes are less efficient at helping you to shed the pounds.

The best way around this is to keep on the move as much as possible.

• Stand while talking on the phone. you will burn more calories in that fifteen minutes than you will while sitting and chatting on the phone.
• If you have a sedentary job, get up every hour or so and move about.
• Try working out on an exercise bicycle while watching TV as you burn very little calories while slouching on the couch watching reruns of twenty-year-old TV shows.

The mental element of Menopause is equally important

It is an inevitable process of life and we all have to go through it. Millions of women have experienced menopause and millions more will experienced it. Just like pregnancy is a normal process of life, so is menopause.

Here’s a great video on how to deal with the emotional aspects.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8qBTMxNIio