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Be Kind to Yourself When You Pack the Pounds this Holiday Season
Especially if you are nearing menopause
Although I consider myself fairly active, I was shocked when I got on the scale at the beginning of the month. It had been over two months since I weighed myself and I was the heaviest I had ever been.
The weight gain itself doesn’t bother me as much as the speed at which the weight gain happened in two months.
I play tennis three times a week, take my dog on long walks, and have a baseline endurance of running 3K-5K. I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for a few years now, cooking my meals, and making healthy food choices.
Conveniently, I thought I could blame it on the holidays and the onset of the colder months but data from past years don’t lie. How did I exceed my seasonal weight gain range?
It dawned on me that getting close to the half-century milestone means my hormone friends are working hard. The estrogen levels affect our insulin resistance and cortisol levels spike up with increased stress levels. Lack of sleep results in consuming more stimulants the next day to function and it becomes a vicious cycle.
A key indicator is the expanding waistline and the way my clothes fit me.
