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When sitting in a coffee shop or on the front porch of your house, you can see people going and others coming. You do not have to look hard to notice that while some are in good physical shape, many others, especially those in midlife tend to have a bigger than average belly. You may also see many at the local gym, working out as hard as they can to lose the excess weight with hopes that they will also shrink their waistline as they do. Unfortunately, their hard work does not always bring the results they are after. What makes it so hard to lose weight and especially belly fat in midlife? I wrote the book, Belly Fat in Midlife: Practical Steps to Revitalize Your Changing Body to shed some light into this question. The book includes steps that I applied, based on various expert recommendations to increase my chances of losing excess weight and shrinking my waistline. These are the steps I followed to lose 27lbs that I had gained mostly in midlife. These are the steps that enabled me to shift my dress size backwards, from 14 to 4. My goal is to provide you with a guide and some tools that you too can apply to reach your healthy weight and to keep it. It is possible, even in midlife
To get there, however, you have to do the work. You need to take action. You need to move past the knowledge I share, and put into practice the same steps I applied and that helped shrink my waistline. While some of the steps are dietary, such as eating good fats regularly, others are related to lifestyle habits. These habits are combined in what I call in the book the "Lifestyle Trio" and they include exercise, stress management and sleep. In each of these areas, there is a right and a wrong way to engage them, just as there is a right and wrong diet to follow if you want to shrink your waistline in midlife. After reading this book, you will also come away understanding better that balancing hormones as best as you can is a major part of the solution. You will also need to come to terms with the fact that some of the hormonal changes we experience in
midlife, such as a sharp drop in estrogen levels are a part of the natural normal process of aging and how we handle ourselves prior to midlife can have an impact on our experiences of midlife. Some of the fluctuations in levels of the various sex hormones are irreversible but this change does not have to be debilitating.
And there is room for improvement when we take necessary action to restore lost balance, particularly that which has nothing to do with midlife changes but rather with our lifestyle choices, diet and overall attitude towards health and wellness even prior to midlife. As you read through the book, you will understand that to lose belly fat requires more than some minor tweaks in your diet or just exercising harder, although both diet and exercise are important parts of the solution. In diet, it's about feeding your body right so as to enable it to get the most out of what you eat. It's about getting to know your body better, and supporting it to the best of your ability to reach a level of balance that is possible. It's about adopting lifestyle habits that impact belly fat in ways you may have ignored up to this point.
As you focus on the "Lifestyle Trio" it's about understanding that each has its own sets of do's and don'ts that dictate whether or not you will lose belly fat in midlife. The book will serve as a guide in making the right choices in each of the three areas. You will learn also that these lifestyle habits interact with each other to affect your weight and your ability to lose belly fat. When done right, we will find that we can reach and maintain a higher level of balance, and that we can lose excess weight as well as an inch or two around the waistline even in midlife. Relief, right?
Stay tuned as I continue to share insights that can help you embark on the journey to a healthier version of yourself, with inches off your waistline. It can be done, even in midlife! Sign-up here and I will keep you posted on what's happening around here at Season of Health that will inspire you to take the best care of yourself and to love yourself better in midlife! Self-care is not selfish.
To your health,
Rose Kadende-Kaiser, Ph. D
Founder, Season of Health
Integrative Nutrition Health Coach