What’s a “menopot?” Why is your midline thickening? in your 40s and 50s is your weight creeping up?

Ah. The joys of aging.

Two of the common complaints I see from women who are in their mid to late 40s are

1. Loss of a waistline (or a growing waistline)

2. Slow creeping increase in weight.

Why does this happen? I was reading More magazine once, and saw an article on the “menopot.” I can’t take credit for the term, though it is quite catchy.  It is the pot around your midline, the thickening of your waist you see as you near menopause.  So why do we see it?

As with most things, there is no one thing which causes it.  The likely culprits:

• metabolic slowdown.  Your metabolic rate is a fancy way of saying how many calories your body burns.  The change in your rate happens slowly over years.  They estimate it goes down 2-4% a decade starting in your 20s.  This metabolic slowdown is due to a change in your muscle to fat ratio. Every decade we lose 5-7 pounds of muscle which is replaced by fat.
  • Muscle burns 14 calories an hour, fat burns 3
  • Using real numbers, if you exercise the same, what burns 2000 calories at age 25 only burns 1800 calories at age 45
  • This is likely why “what has worked for me for my whole life (same diet, same exercise) is no longer working!”
• estrogen and progesterone levels are changing
  • Metabolic rats are highest when estrogen and progesterone are at their peak
  • When the hormones are lower they estimate you need 70 fewer calories a day
• after baby midline thickening.  Many women notice their waist is not as defined after babies.  A lot of this is due to loosening of your abdominal muscles, a separation called “diastasis.”  You may be able to improve this with core exercises, but some of the separation may not be fixable with exercise.  This is a key part of what I do as a plastic surgeon when I do an abdominoplasty “tummy tuck.”  A tummy tuck isn’t all to make the belly pretty again.  It is actually reconstructive and involves suturing the internal rectus muscles (your six pack) back together again.  When you feel you can’t “suck it in” like you could pre babies, this is that separation.  Not all women have a bad separation.  It varies from person to person, but tends to get worse with the more pregnancies you have, the more weight gain you have, if you are a petite person (no where for the baby to grow but out), twin pregnancies, and other factors.

So what can you do about this menopot?

Ah, the stuff for another blog.