Revolution GrayGoing through menopause and having a hard time losing weight?
You may have noticed that you’re not losing weight like you used to. You’ve been working out and eating healthy, but the scale just isn’t budging. Weight loss resistance during menopause is a common problem for women going through this change in their lives and unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
What’s the best way to lose 30 pounds?
Well, we’re all looking for that magic bullet – the one trick that helps us lose weight. We’ve put together a list of some methods and explored how effective they might be at helping you achieve your ideal body weight!
Calorie counting/ Reduction. Nearly always works, but it can be slow and laborious. Often calorie counting is the first method dieters try, and for good reason – if nothing else, just restricting calories will help you lose weight at a fairly consistent rate of about 1lbs per week. However, the speed at which you lose weight can vary wildly depending on what you eat. You do have to be prepared for a bit of starvation mode at first, as your body adapts.
Intense exercise. Definitely works but hard and painful. For every pound of muscle you build, you burn an extra 35 calories a day just sleeping – so if you were to start working out intensely and build a good amount of muscle, you’d burn an extra 700 calories a day without even trying. This is definitely the best way to lose weight if you have lots of free time and enjoy exercising. However, exercise does slow down your metabolic rate (the rate you burn calories) for about 24 hours after you’ve finished, so be prepared to eat less on those days. Don’t worry too much though – unless you go totally overboard and do nothing but exercise, the effect is quite small and you’ll still lose weight effectively.
Reduce carbs. Definitely works but might be hard for some people. If you reduce your carbohydrate intake quite drastically, you force your body to burn fat and lose weight – the reduction in carbs also reduces your liver’s glycogen stores which means that cravings for sugary snacks are reduced as well.
Protein-sparing modified fast. This is very similar to the small calorie deficit – except instead of cutting down your caloric intake, you greatly increase the amount of protein you eat and keep everything else relatively low. This gives you a very small calorie deficit and has the same effects as reducing calories, but on top of that, it also reduces your appetite because protein is by far the most filling nutrient.
Protein-sparing modified fasts usually involve eating lean meat such as fish and chicken, along with lots of low fat dairy products like milk and low fat cheese.
Exercise combined with small calorie deficit. This is basically the same as intense exercise to lose weight, but you also cut your calories and do a small fast combined to further speed up the process. If you were to combine intense weight training and reduce your calorie intake by 300-500 calories along with doing a protein-sparing modified fast all at once, you would probably lose 1 pound of fat every day or even more.
Exercise combined with small calorie deficit combined with carb cycling: This is the same as the exercise, small calorie deficit, and combined method except that you also add in carbohydrate cycling to make things more interesting. Carbohydrate cycling lets you eat high-carb some days, low-carb on not so high-carb days, and absolutely no carbs on the other days. Carb cycling isn’t that effective compared to doing it on its own, but if you do it with everything else, you might get great results. This is because carbohydrate cycling also makes your calorie deficit more advanced – instead of eating less every day, you’ll alternate between high carb and no-carb days which will make your body burn fat faster. This is because on low-carb days, your body has to rely on its own energy stores which are filled with fat – this means that it’ll burn through them really quickly which will increase the speed at which you lose weight.
Combining carbohydrate cycling with the small calorie deficit is definitely one of the best ways to lose weight quickly, but it’s also very hard to stick to. If you wanted to really lose weight, you’d have to put in almost 10 hours of exercise every day along with following a small calorie deficit. Not many people are willing to do that much effort every day for months on end just so they can look good at the beach once summer comes around.
Intermittent Fasting. Intermittent fasting has been shown to have a number of benefits including weight loss, lower risk for heart disease and type II diabetes, increased insulin sensitivity as well as better blood sugar control after meals (which reduces cravings). There are several versions of this diet that you can follow. The 16/eight method involves eating for eight hours during the day and fasting for 16 hours a day i.e., only eating from 12 pm-12 am each night or 11:30 am – about an hour before the evening meal.
There are so many ways to lose weight. What has worked for you as you’ve become older? What have been your most effective strategies or habits? Let us know in the comments below!