How to Balance Hormones with Exercise During Menopause
One of the best ways to balance hormones for permanent weight loss during menopause is exercise. If you're someone who hates exercise or you feel too busy to exercise, or maybe you've noticed that the types of exercise you did when you were younger is not helping you with permanent weight loss during menopause, stick around because in this video I'll be sharing four key discoveries about hormones. Number one, the best combinations of exercise during menopause that can help you balance hormones, helping you with weight loss. Number two, how to activate the hormone that can increase your metabolic rate and also build lean muscle mass. Both are critical to losing weight permanently and to help you stay healthy in midlife. Number three, the key hormone that helps you look younger. And number four, simple tips to get you restarted on an exercise plan when you don't enjoy exercise or maybe you don't have much time to exercise.
Hi, I’m Kristen Tinker, Food Addiction & Weight Loss Expert
Hi, I'm Kristin Tinker, and as a food addiction expert, I've helped hundreds of corporate successful midlife women lose weight by getting to the bottom of why they overeat instead of going on yet another diet plan. If you want to get my latest videos designed to help you manage those pesky midlife hormones to overcome food addiction and to lose weight permanently, all while you have a busy demanding corporate job, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you can get access to more tools and more help for weight loss. It's what we all want.
The Best Combinations of Exercise During Menopause for Permanent Weight Loss
Now let's dive into the best combinations of exercise during menopause that can help you balance those pesky hormones, helping you with permanent weight loss. The first thing I want you to know about exercising in midlife is that working out directly impacts your hormones and especially those hormones that keep you looking and feeling younger and reaching your permanent weight loss.
You might not think that hormones are affected by exercise because we traditionally think about working out maybe to burn calories or to build muscle, but your workouts support a pretty amazing hormonal process. See, there's a lot that happens behind the scenes in which every part of your body works together to affect how quickly you age, how calm you show up in life, and even whether you can or cannot lose weight in midlife. It's all about those hormones and the workout that you choose can specifically work on different hormones in both your body and your brain.
For example, when you contract your muscle fibers, specifically through weight resistance training, you directly signal your fat cells and the concentration of anabolic muscle building hormones like estrogen, testosterone, insulin, and human growth hormone in your body. And the great news is that this increase in muscle building hormones happens both during exercise and for approximately one hour afterward. This helps signal the body to rebuild and repair body tissue, including those fine tears that happen during strength training in your muscle fibers. Even better, this anabolic hormonal process that repairs those fine tears in your muscle also increases your metabolism.
Now, this is the opposite of cardiovascular catabolic exercise like running, biking, or swimming that uses lots of energy and lots of oxygen that takes larger structures like proteins, fats, or tissues, and then breaks them down into smaller units like cells or fatty acids. This process burns calories but only during the workout. So when you're choosing cardiovascular versus street training workouts, see a combination is best to burn calories and also to increase anabolic hormones that increase muscle density and rev up your metabolism for longer caloric burn. If you notice that you're struggling with balancing those hormones and you want more than this video to help you reach permanent weight loss at midlife, click on the link below to join my Free Crush Your Cravings program.
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How to Activate the Hormone That Can Increase Your Metabolic Rate
Next, let's talk about how to activate the hormone that can increase your metabolic rate, and it also builds lean muscle mass. Both are critical to losing weight permanently and to keep you healthy. In midlife, you can use your cardio workouts to directly target one of the hormones that I already mentioned. It's called your human growth hormone or HGH. You might not have heard of this anabolic hormone before, but it's critical to your growth, your wellbeing, your lean muscle growth, and how your body uses the food you eat for energy and more. Unfortunately, HGH decreases as you age. So in midlife, a decrease in this hormone can contribute to decreased muscle fibers, increased weight gain, and it also ultimately affects your blood sugar levels.
But if you include cardio in your exercise routine, you can actually balance HGH to increase your metabolic rate and also to build lean muscle mass. Both are critical to losing weight permanently and to keep you healthy in midlife. Check this out. Research shows that when you include moderate to high intensity interval training or HIIT cardio workouts in your regular workout program, you naturally activate your brain to increase HGH levels. Now, this could be as simple as a 10 minute workout where you just push yourself a little harder for a short duration of time, like 20 second bursts of running, cycling, or even burpees followed by an equal or slightly longer recovery time. Now you can see that point 2 adds another level of detail for balancing hormones with exercise during midlife. See, you've discovered that strength training boosts anabolic hormones, and now you can see how high intensity interval training can be used both to burn more calories
In a shorter workout time and also hi workouts can be used to balance your anabolic hormones just by increasing your intensity level. I know exercise can be tricky. Some people don't even enjoy exercise at all and others want to exercise, but then get confused about what to do or run out of time in their busy schedule. So please comment below exercise if you've ever started an exercise program, but then you struggle to keep it going, please know that is common for most corporate women who are a balancing life, career and family, and it's happened to me too. Maybe you've joined a gym or taken on a new workout challenge, starting out motivated, but then you got discouraged when work got busy and stress increased, causing you to stop those consistent workouts. It does happen. Just drop the word exercise below if you've been discouraged with maintaining a hormone balancing workout program, and if that's you, I don't want you to feel discouraged if you're not ready to take on a consistent and committed strength training or maybe a HIIT program because in just a few minutes I'm going to share some simple tips to get you restarted on an exercise plan when you don't even enjoy exercise or maybe you don't have much time, there are simple tips for you too.
The Key Hormone That Helps You look Younger
Now, the third thing you need to know is the key hormone that helps you look younger is estrogen. And the good news is that regardless of what exercise program you choose, just being active boosts estrogen production. That's good news. Active people look younger. How great is that? Here's why. Have you ever heard of the word telomeres? See, these are the protective end caps on each side of our chromosomes, kind of like the little caps on the ends of your shoe laces. Now, telomeres get shorter as we age. They also get shorter with decreased levels of the anabolic hormone estrogen. But when scientists examined the telomere length in more than 5,800 adults who are part of the National Health and Nutrition examination survey, they found something really interesting. Active people have longer telomeres than those who weren't as active even after accounting for other factors like their lifestyle and actual age.
That means that at a cellular level, the active people looked younger. That's pretty incredible, right? And what a huge motivator to get and stay active. See, exercise stimulates the release of estrogen, and this helps maintain hormonal balance within your body, influencing everything from mood and energy levels to metabolism, bone health, and even the length of those telomeres that protect your cells for anti-aging benefits. This is great news if you're just getting started with an exercise routine because you will support your hormones when you commit to moving each and every day. Do not let strength training or HIIT workouts deter you from starting an exercise routine, just moving with a daily walk, vacuuming your house or dancing in the backyard. It all counts. You can start balancing hormones during menopause, even without a gym, even without workout clothes, or an intense exercise program. Now, over 2000 years ago, Hippocrates said, walks are a man's best medicine, and it turns out he was right.
Simple Tips to Get You Re-Started on an Exercise Plan If You Don’t Enjoy Exercise
Now let's talk about simple tips to get you restarted on an exercise plan when you don't enjoy exercise or maybe you don't even have much time to exercise. Here are just a few of my best tips. One, start small. Instead of committing to an hour long workout, just try a 10 minute walk. Number two, find what you enjoy. Don't like lifting weights, then don't start there. Try yoga, a hike, a dance. Remember, as long as you're up and moving, it counts. Number three, focus on how you feel if you tend to look for physical results. Immediately after you start a new workout habit, focus instead on the mental and emotional results. Instead, noticing how much better you feel can make it easier to want to stick with it. And if you are ready to commit to an exercise program, here are some of the best types of exercise for that hormonal balance that we've talked about.
Number one, HIIT 12 to 20 minutes three times a week. See, there's no need to do any more than this. HIIT workouts, increase human growth hormone to burn fat and to boost that metabolism. Number two, strength training a general full body routine two to three times a week with lots of functional training like squats and lunges for the lower body. And when high intensity workouts are combined with strength training using compound movements, you also increase testosterone. Okay, next one, stretching five minutes after every session or attend a yoga class, which will help with flexibility and of course, lower your levels of stress hormones. Super important. Next one is brisk walking or speed walking four to five days a week. See, walking is an amazing exercise to add to your existing program since speed walking and running can increase overall dopamine and serotonin for an overall sense of calm, for better night's sleep, and even with just mood elevation. But remember, don't sit still. If you sit at a desk all day, get up every hour and do something for two minutes, maybe three minutes, be it making a tea or walking over to chat with a colleague rather than emailing them. See, that's even an easy, simple way to move every day.
The last thing I want you to know about balancing those hormones during menopause is that when you exercise, your body releases a cocktail of feel-good chemicals like serotonin, that calms dopamine, that creates happiness and endorphins that decrease pain and stress. Once that feel-good cocktail gets going, it has a powerful effect on balancing, suppressing and increasing certain hormones to provide at least five clear benefits. One, decreased anxiety. Two, reduce symptoms of depression. Three, increased feelings of relaxation. Four, a boost to your brain's ability to provide solutions, and five, better clarity and focus. It does not matter if you're kickboxing, dancing, running on the treadmill or lifting weights. Movement is like pressing your brain's refresh button when you need a mental and emotional reboot.
Now, let's pull all this together. The types of exercise that you choose matters. Balancing your hormones for permanent weight loss requires a commitment not only to eating whole real foods, but also to incorporate the right type of daily movement. Different workouts and intensity levels impact different hormones. So structure your workouts by taking into consideration your overall lifestyle so that the right hormones are being balanced correctly.
And if you still need help or more accountability to get moving with exercise and nutrition to balance your hormones and reach your permanent weight loss goals even at midlife, then this is for you. I mentioned my free Crusher cravings program earlier in this video, and I want to tell you about it again in case you missed it. See, the work we do in this free program gives you a simple two-step system that you can add to your busy corporate life in just seconds, minutes, a day, which will help you conquer any urge that you encounter in your day. And it will also help you unpack the reasons why you might struggle to implement a consistent exercise program. See, it's not just about craving food, it's about managing urges and cravings, even about working out or not working out. Click here to learn more about the Free Crush Your Cravings program.
It's going to give you all the information you need. Now, if you've learned something new in this video about my different approach to weight loss, if you're sick of that diving roller coaster or if you just felt inspired by what I'm sharing today, click on the subscribe button and click to like this video so that I can continue sharing my different unique approach to weight loss with other professional corporate women at midlife just like you. And if you're on a mission to balance your hormones even further so that you can reach your permanent weight loss goals during midlife, check out this next video called Foods to Balance Hormones at Midlife for Weight Loss.