Hormones are powerhouses that influence almost every aspect of how you feel and function each day. They affect energy levels, metabolism, appetite, mood, body composition, sexual desire, and even how quickly the body appears to age.
While hormonal changes are a natural part of getting older, they do not mean that weight gain, weakness, fatigue, and declining health are inevitable. By understanding what is happening inside your body, you can begin making choices that support healthier hormones that help you remain strong, lean, energetic, and confident as you age.
Hormones are essentially substances in your body that are released by various tissues or organs in order to accomplish some objective. They are extremely powerful; so powerful in fact you might even say that you are controlled by them.
They can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the present situation taking place and what is going on with your body. If you get the wrong mix of hormones at the wrong times, it can be very detrimental to your health, leading you to disease.
As a woman ages for example, her hormonal profile is going to change significantly.
Estrogen and progesterone, the two female sex hormones, are going to shift considerably as menopause sets in, leading to side effects such as hot flashes, high levels of fatigue, or not feeling quite like your current self.
As these hormones shift, you more likely to start putting on body fat if you aren’t taking the right steps to combat this.
The small amount of natural testosterone you have in your body, the male sex hormone, is also going to begin to decline as you get older, causing additional changes to take place.
While no woman will ever have the level of testosterone in her system that a man has, which is what causes men to grow far more muscle mass than women, women do naturally have a small amount.
This level of testosterone plays a role in keeping your body composition under better control by increasing muscle mass tissue while decreasing fat mass tissue. So when testosterone begins to decline, unwanted body composition changes can begin occurring.
Additionally as estrogen and progesterone start changing, this has a serious impact on your libido levels as well.
It’s not abnormal to find women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s who have lost their desire for sexual activity. This causes distant between partners, reducing the social support they provide, while also causing them to lose the feel-good benefits that sexual activity presents.
When you orgasm, you’ll release a flood of dopamine into your system, which is one of the most powerful stress relievers out there.
We spoke earlier about the impact of your body being under high amounts of stress and how this increases the process of aging, so think of regular sexual activity as one way to sidestep this problem.
Low Calorie Diet –
As your body starts to get older, it’s also not going to respond nearly as well to some of the practices that you utilized in your earlier years.
For example, back when you were younger, you may have been able to hop onto a very low calorie diet whenever you wanted to shed a few extra pounds of fat without a problem.
Now, however, that just isn’t quite how the situation goes.
A low calorie diet slows down your metabolism and brings your fat loss progress to a screeching halt. A slow metabolic rate is one of the primary reasons why many women struggle so immensely to lose the fat they desire, and this is often brought about by years and years of yo-yo dieting.
Furthermore, if you’ve been using crash diets or improperly designed diets in the past, this may also mean that your body is not going to be as sensitive to a hormone called leptin.
Leptin –
Leptin is a very real and important hormone that most women know very little about, but it can either help or hinder your fat loss progression.
This important hormone is produced by the body’s fat cells and has the job of monitoring incoming calorie intake as well as your current body fat stores.
If your incoming calorie intake starts to decline, leptin levels will also drop, setting off a sequence of events that can essentially make you want to forgo your diet entirely. You’ll feel incredibly hungry, you may be so fatigued that getting off the couch feels like a challenge, and the last thing you’ll want to do is keep going.
The more often you’ve yo-yo dieted, the less responsive your body may become to any given amount of leptin. These side effects may then set in sooner than they otherwise would have, making it an ongoing battle to keep going with any diet you start.
By correcting the underlying problem and using a diet that works with your body rather than one that is destructive in nature, you can begin restoring healthy leptin function and sidestep many of these negative problems.
Understanding how things are going to change as you get older and continuing with a properly designed diet plan, sets you up for success.
Insulin –
Another hormone that you need to make note of, as it too can really start to influence you, is insulin.
Insulin sensitivity is another factor driving how lean your body is as well as your disease risk.
Women who are very insulin resistant, which is often brought on by a diet filled with processed foods containing simple carbohydrates and unhealthy fats, are going to be more prone to developing type 2 diabetes with age.
In addition to this, it can become a self-fulfilling cycle because the more insulin resistant you are, the more likely you are to begin gaining body fat. The more body fat you gain, the more insulin resistant you may become.
If you don’t do something to break the cycle, you could be on a one-way track toward developing diabetes, a condition that can then have a serious impact on the rest of your life.
Those who are insulin resistant may also go on to develop what is referred to as metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by being overweight along with showing signs of high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and high blood glucose.
This is one of the most dangerous conditions to have because it can put you at risk for stroke, heart attack, heart disease, and diabetes.
Muscle Is Muscle –
Another thing to take into account as you grow older, is the greater risk you now have of losing lean muscle mass tissue.
The reality is, unless you are active in a strength training program, your body is likely breaking down its lean muscle mass stores because it sees no reason to keep this metabolically active tissue if it isn’t being used.
Muscle mass is very demanding to maintain, so to your body, it’s a lot of extra metabolic work.
This is exactly what you want, though.
The number one reason why many women gain body fat as they get older is not due to a hereditary factor or just aging. Instead, it’s often due to the fact that they haven’t been stressing their muscles enough for the body to maintain its lean muscle mass, so they’ve gradually lost it.
As muscle mass is lost, resting metabolism starts to decline because muscle is metabolically active.
As your resting metabolism goes down, if you aren’t cutting back on your food intake in a corresponding manner, which most women don’t, the body is now in an energy surplus on a day-to-day basis.
As a result, body fat gain occurs.
As this chain of events is allowed to continue, you may find yourself losing muscle mass while gaining body fat, creating a complete change in your overall body composition.
Bear in mind that muscle mass is very dense tissue that takes up very little room on your body, while fat mass requires far more space.
You may then have a body that is the same weight but appears much larger.
Clearly, this is not the path you want to go down, and much of it can be prevented by using proper exercise strategies.
Fat is fat and muscle is muscle. You never convert muscle to fat, just like you can’t convert fat to muscle.
This is a very large misconception that some women still have.
However the two tissues are completely separate entities.
Saying that if you build more muscle it will simply convert to body fat one day if you stop exercising is like saying that as you get older, there’s a chance your heart might turn into a set of lungs.
This is no different than saying that muscle converts to fat. It’s the exact same idea.
You will never convert your muscle mass to body fat, so never fear building more muscle.
It is one of the best things that you can do to prevent many of the signs of aging and keep your hormonal profile under better control.
In addition to that, keep in mind that the foods you eat on a day-to-day basis have a significantwill have an influence on your hormonal profile.
For instance, insulin is going to be directly affected by the type and amount of carbohydrates you consume. By eating the right foods, you can keep this hormone under better control.
Leptin is also influenced by diet. As we noted above, the lower your calories go, the lower leptin may fall.
If you eat foods that are nutrient dense, slow digesting, and full of antioxidants, you will be setting yourself up for greater hormonal success.
The right diet can have a dramatic influence on your ability to burn off fat versus storing it.
How you set up your daily meals can either train your body to conserve fuel because it fears starvation, or it can show your body that it will have a steady supply of fuel available, so there is no need to slow your metabolic rate down.
Getting Back on Track
Hopefully, you can now see that there are very definite ways that you can influence your future.
If you choose to do nothing about your health but instead continue on as you are going, you are likely to see more rapid signs of aging, and your health may begin going downhill from there.
It’s unfortunate but the truth that women who take no action lose muscle very quickly once they reach the age of 50 and beyond. Once that process starts, fat gain becomes likely, functional strength is reduced, mental well-being likely declines, while disease risk begins to increase.
Some of this decline may be connected to unwanted changes in appearance, while some may come from changes in your ability to perform normal daily tasks.
A woman who takes action, however, and starts the cycle of better health at any place along this series of events, is one who can begin reversing the trend.
You do not need to change everything at once in order to improve your hormonal health.
Begin by making one better choice, such as eating more nourishing foods, avoiding crash diets, becoming more physically active, or adding strength training to your weekly routine. Each positive action tells your body that you intend to remain strong and healthy. When you consistently give your body the movement, nutrition, rest, and support it needs, you can improve how you feel today while protecting your health, independence, and quality of life for many years to come.
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