As I work with clients and write letters to their doctors for investigations, there has been one common health theme during the pandemic. COVID kilos. Fortunately, I haven’t been seeing too much of a mental health fallout wth clients but everybody has an extra six to ten kilos they are keen to shift.
We all joked about it as we ate and drank our way through the lockdown. Haha! The COVID kilos! We all laughed about wearing elastic waisted pants or about the permanent reliance on having to wear active wear because nothing else fit. Well the jokes over and the struggle is real.
You may recall I mentioned a while ago that I was having trouble fitting into my new jeans. For the last couple of years I would buy the same brand, style and size of jean with no problem. So of course when I saw them go on sale I bought six pairs! Yep. 2 in indigo blue, 2 in black and 2 in light blue. I thought to myself, once this lockdown thing is over I’m not going to have a wardrobe crisis because I have no shortage of jeans.
Well, despite life in Melbourne pretty much getting back to normal, i.e. resuming access to the gym and getting back into a great routine, the kilos have not gone away! You may be able to relate. You are exercising, have reigned in the eating and drinking and still no weight loss.
Now, I refuse to accept that I will weigh an extra five kilos forever more. I will not allow this to become my new normal. But there are some things I do need to accept about this shift in my body and that’s peri-menopause. With this situation, I got curious and became my own patient. I wanted to know what the cause of the inability to shift the weight was. So I did what I always do when I see a health problem with no known cause. I ran a stack of blood tests.
Weight gain can be caused by many things other than too much food. Your thyroid function, stress response, insulin resistance, inflammation, insomnia, gene mutation expression, medication use, even your gut function can all be a cause.
After investigating things thoroughly. I have been able to identify the culprit. For me its low progesterone and a history of high stress living. It’s a common combination for women in their 40’s going through peri-menopause and with it comes a need to accept that you may carry a little extra weight around your tummy and lose some of that waist you once had.
I’m ok with that. It’s a part of middle age for most women. The most important thing is to stay in a healthy weight range and have a healthy percentage of fat to muscle mass with a healthy distribution of fat across the body. Now I just need to focus on raising that progesterone, balancing adrenal function and to keep de-stressing. In the meantime I’m just thankful it’s summer and I can wear flowy dresses that don’t require a waistline!
If you are wanting to find out why you can’t shift your extra kilos get in touch and let’s chat about working together on identifying why and how to sort it out.