JJ Virgin explains why women gain dangerous belly fat during menopause: hormonal shifts, lower insulin sensitivity, and muscle loss. Visceral fat increases risk of diabetes and heart disease. Her fix: heavy resistance training three times a week to build muscle, which she calls metabolic Spanx because it boosts metabolism and tightens the body.
Let's first talk about why women tend to put on belly fat during menopause. So abdominal fat, also called visceral fat or visceral adipose tissue, is the fat stored within the abdominal cavity, cavity, and surrounding internal organs. This is the most dangerous fat, way more dangerous than subcutaneous fat, and that's that fat stored right below the skin. That's where you can pinch the inch, right? You might hate that subcutaneous fat, but the visceral fat's the problem fat. It's been linked to insulin resistance, diabetes, heart heart disease, and even certain cancers. Now, visceral fat goes up during menopause for a few key reasons. First of all, lower estrogen, because estrogen regulates metabolism and fat storage. And when estrogen levels get lower, it can disrupt the balance of follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, testosterone, and progesterone levels and result in weight gain, and especially that weight gain in the abdominal region. Next one is insulin sensitivity. So As we age, we tend to become more insulin resistant. This happens too because of a variety of things. It can be because we're not sleeping well, our cortisol is going up, we're losing muscle mass, we're not as active. Plus we might be eating ultra-processed foods washed down with a glass of rosé or a Cosmo. All of that, you end up with blood sugar imbalances and insulin resistance. Now I just mentioned stress, and here's the thing. This is the big doozy during this time. Cortisol tends to go up during perimenopause, and when you have higher cortisol, this is going to super contribute to abdominal fat. Plus, it also contributes to other things like cardiovascular disease, hot flashes, night sweats, mood, brain issues, bone loss, and insulin resistance. All right, so we're in perimenopause, our hormones are going sideways, we're gaining belly fat. So So what is the solution? Here's what I want you to do. I want you to take the focus off of your weight here, and I want you instead to focus on improving what your weight is made up of by focus on adding muscle, which will help you lose that vat fat. First thing you're going to want to do is invest in a bioimpedance scale so you can identify what your weight is made up of, because again, we're going to focus on putting on muscle. You're also going to want to get a tape measure because this is the simplest way, the simple at-home way to really see this vat fat. I like to say that if you're losing weight without losing your waist, you're making yourself worse, not better. I want you to focus on holding onto and building muscle as part of your prescription to feeling your best during this crazy transition time and afterwards. Now, I call muscle your metabolic Spanx because it holds everything in tighter and it boosts your metabolism. One study showed that resistance training is a viable long-term way to prevent weight gain and other negative changes in body composition for postmenopausal women. And another showed that doing resistance training during menopause generated muscle-making cells and provided the strength-building stimulus women need as estrogen starts to decline. Plus, it also helps lower your risk of osteoporosis, which is a massive benefit. Besides being metabolic Spanx, muscle is also a sugar sponge. It gives carbs a place to land for where it's stored for future energy rather than beelining to your belly where they're stored as fat fat. All right, so the important question I hope you're asking right now is, okay, so I want to build muscle, what should I be doing? First of all, put the pink weights down. All right, those are paperweights. What you really have to do here is lift heavy things. Now, I don't care what the things are. It could be weights, could be body weight, could be a TRX trainer— love those— could be cables. But the important thing is here that you have to lift heavy things a lot. So I'm going to walk you through how I do this. I divide the body into a couple different segments. Number 1 is your upper body pushing. Upper body pushing is your chest, your shoulders, and your triceps. This would be things like a push-up, a dip, an overhead press, a chest press. Then there's upper body pulling. These are things like a bent-over row, an upright row, a lat pulldown, a pull-up. Then there's lower body, which is hip and thigh hinging, and those are things like squats and step-ups and lunges and deadlifts. And then there's core and rotation. And core and rotation, I'll tell you, a lot of the core that I teach people to do happens in those bigger compound movements, because I want you doing compound functional movements. Again, if you're doing a squat, you're working your core. If you're doing a bent-over row, you're working your core. And then, and I'll explain how else I integrate in the, the core and rotation movements. So first, let's talk about that upper body pushing, upper body pulling, and hips and thighs. So I want you doing each body part 3 times a week. That's best to build muscle. Strength is 1 to 5 repetitions of an exercise. Hypertrophy works more in the 8 to 15 range but can go even higher than that. Here's the important concept: you are going to take an exercise— let's take a squat— and you are going to do what you can do in good form for 10 to 15 repetitions, take a break, and do it again, and ideally do it 3 to 4 times. You want to hold the amount of weight that you can do for 10 to 15 repetitions, but you couldn't actually do another one after that. You want to get to as close to failure as possible on at least one of the sets. That's what really helps you build that hypertrophy. If you're worried about getting injured, this is where you really want to work with a personal trainer or a physical therapist to help design an exercise program with you, because where you really tend to get injured is in everyday life, not doing exercise. You want the exercise to build the muscle to help protect your bones, protect your joints, protect your muscles from the things that could happen in everyday life. So this is going to make it easier for you to get out of that low chair, easier for you to carry the groceries up the stairs, right? So I like to do activities that really resemble everyday life.
