'I'm perimenopausal. How can I maintain a healthy body composition with exercise?
Navigating the perimenopause and its symptoms is overwhelming enough without having to worry about adapting your fitness programme. Here to help advise on how to maintain lean muscle mass and burn fat as your body experiences the hormonal fluctuations that this life phase comes with is Women's Health Collective expert trainer, Amanda Ngonyama.
Many women will experience changes in their body shape during the perimenopause – the years preceding menopause when hormone levels begin to fluctuate and menopausal symptoms begin to emerge. The Study of Women’s Health across the Nation found that lean muscle mass decreases during this life stage, while the rate of fat gain could double in the two years prior to your final period, when you officially reach the menopause. But you’re right to think that exercise could help you control these symptoms.
What happens to your body during perimenopause?
Some context: as you approach the menopause, and perimenopause begins, your oestrogen levels decline. Oestrogen optimises insulin, which moves glucose out of your bloodstream and regulates blood sugar levels.
So with less oestrogen, you’ll have excess insulin, so cells in your pancreas that modulate how much insulin is synthesised and secreted will start to resist the insulin typically used for energy. This insulin resistance is what could cause weight gain. Your muscles may also struggle to recover, since they rely on stem cells called satellite cells, which need oestrogen to function optimally.
How to maintain a healthy body composition during perimenopause
1.Incorporate hybrid training
A hybrid training approach incorporating strength, cardio and yoga is recommended, but how long and how often you do each component matters.
Strength training
Let’s start with weight training. The more muscle you have, the more effective your metabolism will be and the more calories you’ll burn at rest – and muscle growth requires stimulus from heavy lifting. Include bilateral (both sides) and unilateral (single-sided) exercises across twice-weekly sessions to isolate and strengthen individual muscles; this will help protect your joints as the amount of lubricating synovial fluid inside them decreases and cartilage becomes thinner with age.
Cardio
As for your cardio, this should comprise a HIIT session, no longer than 20 minutes, once a week. This will promote an increase in insulin sensitivity, which could reduce the likelihood of weight gain. Overdoing it will exacerbate hormonal imbalances by increasing cortisol levels, so once a week is sufficient, and any longer than 20 minutes won’t be true HIIT as you won’t maintain your max-training effort.
Yoga
Finally, aim for a 45-to-60-minute yoga session once per week. A study in the Journalff Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research found that yoga can soothe hormonal symptoms –including changes in your body composition – in perimenopausal women by stimulating the glands responsible for regulating your hormones.
2. Maximise your NEAT activity
It’s important to stay active outside of your training, too. Maximise your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) – the movement you do when you’re not working out – by walking as much as you can and using a standing desk if you have one. Research shows that two hours of sitting can cancel out the benefits of a 20-minute workout. In short, it’s less about going hard, more about simply getting moving.
Example workout week:
2 x 40-50-minute strength training sessions
1 x max 20-minute HIIT session
1 x 45-60-minute yoga session
Daily walks; give yourself a realistic step goal (and remember that 10,000 isn't necessarily the golden number, if that's not sustainable or attainable)
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