Top 5 Belly Hacks for Women Over 40 PROVEN to Work

About to share the top five belly fat burning hacks for women over 50. Because did you know that the average woman loses 5 to 10% of her muscle masses in her 50s? And less muscle, as you know, means slower metabolism, which primes your body to store more fat. And that fat, a lot of it goes to that midsection and fluctuating hormones to the mix. We add that in and you've got a recipe for a major belly fat problem. So we're going to dive into that today because if you don't start addressing that now, it's just going to get worse. It's going to start snowballing, and it's going to make it harder and harder and harder with you each decade to lose belly fat and to keep up with that muscle loss and prevent it. But here's the thing. You don't have to live with this. I've got five simple hacks coming up to fight back and burn that stubborn belly fat for good starting today. Are you ready to dive in? Before we get started, if you are not yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, make sure you hit that subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube so you don't miss another episode. Lots of solo topics here and conversations. If you're listening to this on my podcast, make sure you hit follow along so you don't miss another release show. If you're a listener of the podcast and you haven't yet been watching on YouTube, you might want to start adding some of your video watches there, because I do show diagrams and pictures that go along with what I'm teaching and talking about. All right, so let's dive in. First, let's talk about why we are gaining belly fat and why we're losing this muscle mass which creates this change overall in our 50s. Well, number one, the obvious one is hormonal imbalance. So in menopause and leading up to it, so you think of perimenopause, could be up to those 10 years leading into menopause and then definitely menopause. And post menopause, we are having massive decline in estrogen. And as we're experiencing this in our 50s, approaching menopause or having menopause happen, we're having a decline in estrogen. And with that estrogen decline, you get a sharp decrease of that. So this plays a crucial role in both fat redistribution and muscle loss. We're going to have an increase in muscle loss and we're going to have a redistribution. We start seeing that thickening in that midsection. Another thing that happens is we've got metabolic factors. So you have a slowing metabolism. As we age, our metabolisms are starting to naturally slow down, making it easier to gain weight and much harder to lose. Now, there's a lot of reasons that metabolism slowdown happens and we're going to get into some of that a little bit later in this video. But preserving muscle, adding muscle will help to counter that. Another reason we have this happening is insulin resistance. This goes up as we approach and we get into menopause. And this condition becomes more and more common with age. And this also interferes with muscle maintenance while promoting fat storage. Then we've also got other age related changes. Sarcopenia, the natural age related decline in muscle mass. This accelerates after age 50, with women potentially losing 0.5 to 2% of muscle mass. Per year. Yep, per year. Okay. Then we look at reduced physical activity. So many women, hopefully not you, but we become less active as we age. There's a lot of reasons for this. Maybe it's the motivation, maybe it's the energy, maybe it's the focus, maybe it's aches and pains. But the less active we are, we start to accelerate muscle loss and this contributes to weight gain, especially in that middle section. Now we've got other contributing factors. I know I'm sharing some of the bad news first, but I want you to understand why this is happening. So other contributing factors are changes in our hunger hormones. So when we approach menopause, we can have a decrease in leptin and you can start to see this on your labs. And leptin is a natural appetite suppressant. So, so when we have a decrease in that, we can have an increase in ghrelin, which is a hunger signaling hormone, which leads to increased cravings, increased appetite, feeling like you're not full, and then ultimately some weight gain and a lot of that midlife, midsection thickening. Also sleep disturbances. So we start to have poor sleep. We hear it waking up commonly at 3am this gets really common as we approach and during menopause. And this further disrupts hunger hormones, which contributes to weight gain. When we're not getting enough sleep, we're tossing and turning. We don't have that real deep sleep. Our body's going to try to naturally regulate which is going to crave sugar, it's going to crave carbs, it's going to change our patterns there. So we start to feel hungrier. Also stress. Stress starts to pop up for a number of reasons, but we have more and more chronic stress which elevates cortisol levels and prompting your body to store extra fat, especially around that abdominal area. So cortisol and increasing that, we'll see an increase in belly fat in that area. So. So this is important to address, not just for vanity purposes. I know we all want to look slim and have that tighter midsection, but it's so much more than that. We start to have an increased risk in cardiovascular disease when we don't address this. We have a higher likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes. When we don't address this, we have a greater risk of certain cancers. And then just reduced mobility, reduced strength, which affects all areas of our life. I mean, just even carrying in your groceries, carrying things from a trip, all of that starts to affect our mobility. You know, I noticed recently traveling to Italy, and I was carrying a lot of bags, mostly because I lost a bag on the way there. And then we ended up buying more stuff and they had extra bags. And I was just noticing, walking through the train station, walking through the airport, trying to navigate my luggage, and I started to think about how challenging it was for me doing that and really thinking about women in the decline, getting through life like that. Now, you might not all be traveling to Italy or carrying luggage around, but just the ability to be able to move your body around, carry your groceries, carry stuff. We need to stay mobile and active and functioning for that. So another reason that I. When I think of reduced strength and mobility, it's not just like what's happening in the gym or appearances. It's being able to function through life. Okay, so that's some of the bad news. What do we do about all this? I'm going to go over five very simple things. Now, most of these you've probably heard before, but I want you to start to connect it back and understand why this is so critical and so important. Okay, so number one, we're going to talk about getting our steps in every day, just moving more, being more active. And we've all heard, park your car farther, take more steps. But let's talk about walking for a minute. So why does it work, first of all? Well, when you stay active throughout the day, small bursts of movement, Small bursts, just little, small bursts of movement throughout the day. They make a big difference. You're going to burn overall calories. You're going to keep your body in motion. You keep in functional movement, and then you're not sitting. That's the biggest problem is sitting too much. I'm sitting right now as I'm recording this for you. This is One of the only times throughout the day, this. And when I'm driving, when I'm recording, I sit. And when I drive, I sit. Other than that, I'm really conscious of, am I moving around? Am I pacing while I'm on the phone? Am I. If I'm going to scroll something, can I move while I'm doing it? Can I go for more walks? Can I take my dog out for more walks? Can I move my body more? That comes down to those simple things about parking further. I'm the last person to be looking for a space close up to things. So always looking like, can I park further? Can I get in those extra steps wearing a tracker, whether it's an aura ring or using your Apple watch or something else. But can you track those small movements and do that? Now, walking is not just about burning calories. It improves blood flow, it keeps your fascia healthy, it preserves gluten, leg muscles, it supports your metabolism. Lot of reasons. And the biggest thing is you're not sitting when you're walking. And when we sit, we tend to have tight hip flexors, which then create a pool, which then gives us lower back pain. It's a whole cycle of things. So thinking about small bursts of movement, also think of walking and taking little bursts of movement throughout the day. Think of it as like little sips of movement to keep your body engaged. So the more steps, the more sips. The more sips, the more steps, the better for fat loss, especially for belly fat. Also take breaks to walk around, run errands on foot, or just move in between tasks. It all adds up. When I was in Europe recently and I went twice this summer, one of the big things I noticed was lifestyle there. How people were not in car happy world, they weren't in mini mall happy, happy world things. You know, they would get up each day and go walk to get their groceries. They would walk to the shop, they would walk to do more things. We are not doing this enough. And I understand many of our neighborhoods, maybe our environment is not built as a walking town, but how can we add that in? Like, how can we make it a habit? One example, a lot of people, they're driving home, they stop to get their mail with their car, change that up, go home first, and then go put the shoes on to go walk to get to your mail. So just little steps that start adding up over time. So number one is adding in movement. We can all, can all do that. I love the idea of adding in. What can we add in versus what do we need to take away and not do. And walking and moving more is definitely one of them. Okay, next one. Let's stop eating after dinner and let's start putting more time between meals. Now let's talk about why this works and where this even came from and why we got confused. Many of you, because you're my age, you're listening to this, you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond, you remember a time when we were told eat every few hours. In fact, we were scared to not eat every few hours. We thought, we must eat every two to three hours, otherwise our body's gonna eat our muscle. Do you remember thinking that? Well, where did that come from? That honestly came from the bodybuilding industry, where they were trying to pack on and build muscle. So when you're trying to pack on and build muscle, your body can only process a certain amount at one given time. So if you're actively trying to add muscle and not gain fat and really bulk up that way, you need to add in protein consistently throughout the day. Protein and carbs. Protein and carbs. So when that works for fitness and bodybuilding, that got sort of translated to diet culture. And we thought, well, if we eat every few, that will be good for fat loss. Well, if you're eating big, large, crazy, unhealthy meals and lots and lots of calories, switching to that initially might help. But what we're doing is we're staying in a chronic state of insulin secretion. And when you're constantly secreting insulin, you are not in fat burning mode and you're constantly hungry, you might notice. So when we're constantly eating every few hours, we stay in this complete, constant insulin secretion mode and we're always hungry and we're always adding in food. We are upping way too many calories, and we are not necessarily bodybuilders or fitness competitors. So we're probably packing on all these extra calories of stored fat and we're always hungry and we're always in insulin secretion mode. So that is no longer the way to do things. We want to give oursel a bigger break between meals. The longer gap you can put between meals, the more your body's in rest mode from digestion and processing, and you're not secreting insulin and you're going to be more in fat burning mode. We do not need to be eating every two to three hours. We don't need to be doing that. Now, if you are truly hypoglycemic, you are a diabetic, there's a Reason you need to be doing that. I'm not giving medical advice here. I'm saying for most of us trying to release weight, trying to stay healthy, we don't need to be eating every few hours. So we start with the idea of what I call modified fasting. You've heard a lot about intermittent fasting, which is when you eat all your food within a short amount of time, like call it four hours, and you fast. The reason this is working is that longer gap. I don't know that we need to be that severe and that strict with that. Just giving yourself longer gaps. If you can get to about a 12 and a half hour mark between your last meal and your breakfast, that's a great place to start. And then longer gaps between meals. But if you can give yourself more space between meals, we're going to be in fat burning mode more times throughout the day and throughout the night. Also, digesting your food during sleep will interrupt your body's natural repair processes. So when we eat this big, huge meal before bed, we are not doing ourselves any favors. We're disrupting our repair process and we're disrupting our sleep. So we don't want to do that. It's just not a good recipe. Also, your metabolism will slow down as your body shifts its focus to digesting food, hindering fat burning processes. So we don't want to do that. So sleeping on a full stomach, it's going to force your body to prioritize digestion over the detox and repair process. And we don't, we want to, we want to be in a place where we're burning fat and we're balancing hormones. So more time before, between meals, longer gap. No eating right before bed, ideally three hours before bed. We want to stop. Okay, next thing. Number three, strength training. Why is this important now? Any area of your body, this is important. Not just your abs, not just your abs. Even though we're talking belly fat here, we want to grow muscle strength train in all areas of our body. So why is this important? Well, number one, building muscle is going to be critical for boosting your metabolism and burning fat, including, including belly fat. So you want to have more muscle mass. As I shared earlier, we're losing muscle mass as we age. So this is really important. So why does this work? Well, muscle tissue burns more calories than fat, even when you are at rest. So the more muscle you have just being at rest, you are going to burn more calories at rest. This is really, really important here. Now, if you lose fat without building muscle or maintaining muscle, your metabolism is going to slow down, which means you're going to still hold on to that stubborn belly fat. Okay, did you hear me there? This is important because a lot of us, a lot of you were just calorie restricting or just really working to lose that overall scale number. But if you lose that weight, you lose that way. First of all, when you just lose weight, a lot of weight, you're going to tap into muscle and fat. Especially when you have a big loss, big jump in fat loss or big jump in scale weight numbers. We're typically losing fat and muscle. So when you do that, when you're losing muscle, your metabolism is going to slow down. We don't want that. So this is critical to preserve muscle and add muscle to keep your metabolism revved up and in fat burning mode. Especially the belly fat that's off the side, often the most hard to lose. You need to gain muscle. Gain it as you shed fat. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism is going to work and it's going to help you to just, at rest, burn off those last few pounds of belly fat more effectively. Okay, so this is important. So just to summarize that the more muscle we have, the more our metabolism works better, more efficiently, the more calories we burn at rest. And then we start to maintain and grow muscle, which is going to help everything overall. Okay. The next thing that's important, protein forward diet. Let's talk about protein for a minute. Protein is absolutely essential and especially as we age. So muscle loss is going to accelerate as we enter our 50s now, without enough protein, muscle breakdown is going to happen a lot faster, a lot faster than it can be built. So we have to preserve and grow. So we need to have more protein now. Shocking stat that I just want you to be aware of is after age 50, people lose 1 to 2% of their muscle mass per year, per year if they're not doing this properly with nutrition and exercise. So that's a lot. Lot. That's a lot. And it puts you at risk for osteoporosis, for weight gain, for injuries, for all types of things. So what do we want? We want Ideally, approximately, ideally, 1 gram of protein per ideal body weight per day. Spread evenly across your meals. So you don't want it all in one sitting. So for example, if you weigh 200 pounds and your ideal body weight is 1 60, I'm just going with this, you want about 160 grams of protein a day. If you are currently 150 and your ideal body weight is 120, 25 pounds. You want 125 grams of protein a day. Now you don't want this in one big sitting. Your body cannot metabolize all that in one big sitting. So you want to spread that throughout your meals. Now protein is going to help support muscle growth, it's going to boost your metabolism, it's going to help prevent the loss of muscle. So this is really important. So what do we do to get this in? So you can get protein from a lot of sources and it all counts and it all adds up, but you want the most bioavailable protein. So I know for me personally I cannot possibly eat enough chicken and eggs and tuna and protein rich meals to get my 120 grams a day, which is what I personally aim for. So what do I do? I do supplement with some whey protein. I do because it is extremely bioavailable. Your body processes way quick, quickly. I use it, it's very fast absorbing. I use it pre and post workout because each scoop, when I do a big scoop of whey protein, I'm adding 30 grams of protein. So two scoops, if I'm supplementing with it, that's 60 additional grams of protein a day that I'm getting in. So highly recommend that. I also am a firm believer that it's not just what we eat, it's what our body is digesting and our digestion changes as we age. So the other critical component when you're consuming protein is to add in digestive enzymes. I'm a huge fan of digestive enzymes because it is truly not what you eat, it's what you digest. So by adding in digestive enzymes, I can actually get away with a little bit less protein because my body's gonna actually utilize all of that. So that's another big step there is to add in digestive enzymes. And I'll, by the way, I'll link up below my personal. There's a lot of great digestive enzymes. I'm gonna share the, my personal favorite in the show notes below, so you can see that. But that is my absolute favorite digestive enzyme. Okay, the next thing is cut down on alcohol. Now I know we don't wanna hear this, a lot of us don't wanna hear it, but let's talk about it for a minute. So how does alcohol impact your liver and fat loss? So when you have alcohol, it adds a strain to your liver. Even one glass, which is already overworked by processing an unprecedented amount of chemicals from water, our plastic that we're consuming things from GMOs, weed spray, cosmetics, leaking implants, hormones, everything. Even if you think you're doing everything clean and right and perfect, we're not. We still are getting a toxic load from places we can't control. Even the clothes we wear. Even the clothes we wear could have forever chemicals. So our liver is doing this really hard job every day for us. It's working very hard to process and take care of us and clean this stuff out. So we want to make things really easy on our liver. And when you add alcohol, you are adding a huge strain to your liver, a huge strain to your liver. So that's another reason your body is not going to be able to eliminate all these excess toxins when we are consuming alcohol. Also, when your liver is overworked, because I know that they are, for a lot of us, it cannot process the belly fat that you're trying to burn off. So here you're doing all this work, all this work to get rid of belly fat and your body's going to hold on to that excess weight because the fat literally can't be processed if we are taxing our livers. So we've got to address that. Okay. Also, midlife hormones, when your hormones fluctuate, as they do in midlife, as they do towards menopause, and in menopause, your liver is already going to be overwhelmed. So when you add alcohol in the mix, we're going to cause more fat storage, particularly around your midsection, more so than when we were younger. So I know you don't want to hear this, but the studies just do not support anymore that alcohol is going to be good for us. It's not going to help us. So what do you do instead? Well, start with really limiting for maybe some sugar free mocktails or find some other ways to unwind. So I know that's not a popular topic, but it does affect our belly fat. It does affect what's going on with us. So cutting down on it, you don't have to cut it all the way out, but cutting down on it will be very, very important. Anyways, those are my top five belly burning hacks for women over 50. And I wanted to share those with you because they don't involve what you're normally used to hearing. They're not just about do these exercises or take this pill. These are simple things that you all can do. Anyways, I hope you found this helpful. Till next time, bye.