My belly is huge, I feel terrible! Help!”- recent friend’s message
My dearest friend,
I hear you, and I don’t like that you feel that way. This is probably what is happening:
As we reach our mid-forties and our hormones estrogen and progesterone go downhill one of the effects is: our body decrease insulin sensitivity and we become more insulin resistant.
What that means? Every time that we eat refined carbohydrates: bread, crackers, pasta, pizza, cookies, …the body can’t process easily anymore because we don’t have the hormones to help, so the high carb food that you eat instead of going to our cells to be used, it goes to a place around our belly, forming the visceral abdominal fat.
So that means we are f%&*#@ up? Pregnant belly from now on?
No, there are ways to mitigate this effect if you want, but you need to change the way that you eat, including timing, the way that you exercise and prioritizing sleep.
A few strategies that you can do to help with body composition change:
· Change your white bread, pasta etc for whole grains, paleo, low glycaemic type of bread, pasta etc. Get into the habit to read the labels, look for clean natural ingredients, run away from numbers, preservatives, and names that you don’t know what means. The best of the best: make your own.
· Eat your high carb content straight after exercise withing 20 to 30 min that’s the best time for the body to absorb and use that carb. For eg: eggs on toast with avocado after a morning workout.
· Avoid refined carbs the rest of the day, having only carbs from fruits and veggies.
· Eat protein in every meal, increase the amount of protein in your diet, spreading around your meals.
· Let it go of cookies, crackers, cakes, pizzas. They are not your friends. Leave them for extraordinary occasions.
Then there is training….continue on the next post
