Menopause Without Weight Gain: The 5 Step Solution to Challenge Your Changing Hormones. Debra Waterhouse

specifically for menopausal women. The Meno-Positive Approach combines education with action by recommending eating and exercise strategies that work with your changing body. With a body-centred and person-centred approach, you make the decisions based on your understanding of the facts, what makes the most sense to you, and what is most important to you.

      From the first two chapters, you have the education, understanding and facts. You know about the effects of changing hormones on your fat cells, muscle mass, body shape and metabolism. You also know the type of fat cells you have and the factors that have influenced your weight-gain experience. Now, it’s time to put that knowledge into action. It’s time to outsmart your midlife fat cells.

Teaching 35- to 55-year-old Fat Cells New Tricks

      Whether you are just entering the transition or just completing it, whether you’ve been exercising for the past 20 years or have exercised only once for 20 minutes, whether you’ve spent your life dieting or have never dieted in your life (a handful of you do exist) – this programme will help you change the physiology of your menopausal fat cells so that you will not gain more weight than is necessary and healthy for you.

      The overall goal is to alter the way your fat cells function – so that they store a bit less and release much more. This is the only way to manage midlife weight gain permanently. Permanently is the operative word. The changes you make as a result of reading this book will still be ingrained 10 years from now. And 20 years down the road, your fat cells will still be storing less and releasing more.

      But let’s focus on today first. At this very moment, you may be doing everything to encourage fat storage. You are not doing this on purpose; years of dieting and society’s restrictive eating rules have caused most of us to be in a perpetual state of fat storage. You may be depriving your body of calories, restricting fat and sugar, skipping meals, overeating when you do eat, consuming the majority of your food intake at night, and avoiding exercise at all costs.

      Through decades of practising these behaviours, your fat cells know only how to store. And through the last few years of also being perimenopausal, their storage power is turned up even more, and these habits are making your fat cells larger than ever.

      With The Meno-Positive Approach, you’ll teach your fat cells that they can function differently by discouraging storage and encouraging the release of fat. Your fat cells expect you to diet; they are anxiously awaiting your next calorie-deprived Monday so that they can activate storage. But when you wake up Monday morning, bypass the bathroom scales and head directly into the kitchen for breakfast, your fat cells start deactivating their fat-storage enzymes. The most effective way to trick your midlife fat cells is never to diet again and eat instead – when you are hungry, frequently, moderately and guilt-free. Oh, and of course, to make exercise a part of your life for ever.

      Don’t diet, eat! Don’t eat less, move more! Don’t eat less frequently, eat more often! And. your fat cells will become smaller over time with The Meno-Positive Approach to a Trimmer Transition.

      I am usually philosophically against before and after photos – diets use them to lure you with the message ‘You, too, can lose 4 stone and have a complete transformation like the woman in these pictures if you make out a cheque today for £119.95 (or three easy installments of £39.95).’ What they don’t tell you is that the woman was told to find the worst ‘before’ snap she could, and prior to the ‘after’ snap, she had a complete body makeover with a new hairstyle, makeup and a crash course on accessorizing.

      But, with the before and after photos of fat cells, it’s impossible to ‘doctor up’ the pictures. Fat cells can’t be made up or camouflaged to look smaller or larger. Real, measurable changes occur. Whether your fat cells get 5 per cent smaller or 50 per cent smaller, they will shrink when you follow the five principles of The Meno-Positive Approach:

       1 Acquiring Meno-Positive Attitudes

       2 Mastering Meno-Positive Fitness

       3 Embracing Meno-Positive Eating Habits

       4 Maximizing Meno-Positive Food Choices

       5 Living a Meno-Positive Lifestyle

      These principles are ordered to help you make stepwise changes for permanent weight control and enhanced well-being. Acquiring positive attitudes comes first because your attitudes set the scene for all the other changes in your exercise, eating and lifestyle habits. For example, if you don’t respect your body (and yourself), view the menopause as a loss of femininity or think exercise is only for mice on a treadmill, it will be difficult for you to take care of your food and fitness needs during this important time in your life.

      Even if you have an exercise attitude like Joan Rivers, who said, ‘If God wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor,’ I’ll help you find your dangling carrot (or carat) to motivate you to move.

      If you already have a positive exercise attitude and have been exercising for quite some time, your programme may have reached its expiry date. It’s no longer working, so you’ll have to make some adjustments for it to work for the menopause. You may have to exercise longer, add a different activity, or add some strength training.

      Whether you’re just starting an exercise programme or are an exercise veteran, strength training will be a vital component because it’s the only way to prevent the half-pound of muscle loss a year. And by preventing muscle loss, you’ll automatically prevent fat gain. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories will go to the muscle cells to be burned and the fewer will go to the fat cells to be stored. This is why incorporating exercise is primary and changing eating habits is secondary – but a close second.