If you’re stuck in this 10 (or more) pound weight gain, you exercise to the point of exhaustion, you’re awake with hot flashes, and baffled about what to put in your mouth right now, this is for you.

If any one of those resonated with you or you’re experiencing belly fat and cellulite you’ve never had before… or it’s libido tanking… then keep listening.

But if you are sailing smoothly through with no real complaints, I encourage you to stay tuned too.

Whether it’s to support other women around you who inevitably will have problems, or that there may be a bumpy road ahead for you no matter where you are in the menopause or post menopause journey you are, you can arm yourself with the tools to exercise smarter, better, and feel your best.

These Cool Exercise Answers to menopause Symptoms I cover in this episode:

Menopause Symptoms #1 Belly fat 

The exercise answers to this are on both ends of an intensity continuum. You’ll have to answer some questions for yourself. Are you exhausted, waking up either without energy OR waking up with energy but an hour later feel as you could take a nap? In that case the answer is to seriously back off of your intense exercise. This is a “restore before more” situation.

Once you’re better and you’ve got energy all day, wake up feeling refreshed, then the best belly fat blast is High Intensity Interval Training.

Menopause Symptoms #2 Hot Flashes 

Intense exercise… don’t fool yourself into thinking a jog or a walk or barre classes, even weight training you do that doesn’t reach muscular fatigue will help. Too many women are quick to say, “It hasn’t helped me at all,” when the real issue is that their exercise is not of adequate intensity. It’s all over the literature in dozens of studies. Light to moderate exercise you’ve been fooled into thinking will get you results, will not.

Menopause Symptoms #3 Low Energy/Fatigue – If you are sluggish, slow starting, slow in the afternoon, ready for bed early, never wake rested, the exercise answer is not to try to generate energy. Not yet anyway. I’ve said it for years and you’ve heard it: energy creates energy.

That’s true but not potentially for you during menopause until you restore. So short and frequent low intensity exercise daily – as in a few times a day is best to start. You can begin to do more intense short sessions – I’m talking 10 minutes as you begin to feel stronger.

This one -as most do – requires additional work on your nutrition – in this case if its adrenals you want to also have small snacks through the day – which is opposite of the no-snacking rule  you want to follow if you want to lose weight and fat.

My TEDx talk makes this so very clear as I share my own story and that of two clients. Watch here: https://www.flippingfifty.com/TEDx

Which brings me to…

Menopause Symptoms #4 Weight & fat loss resistance  

You’ve gained it and you can’t get rid of it. Of all menopause symptoms this one is probably most common. It’s moved in, taken up residence, and you can’t move it. What you used to do doesn’t work anymore. I’m going to repeat myself a little here. Because if you’re exhausted, you have to take care of that first. If what you’re doing isn’t helping even a little bit, that’s your body messaging that more is definitely not going to work. It’s crazy in fact to think that no results when you do a little will suddenly start giving results if you do more.

You may need to back off, reduce your overall stress load first. You may need to get less overall volume of exercise and get the intensity up.

How do you know which it is? It becomes very clear based on what’s happening for you and what have you been doing, consistently, during the last 4-8 weeks. 

It’s something that for private clients we identify in minutes.

You’ve got to be strength training. If you’ve believed for decades cardio burns more fat, you’ve been duped. It does not. As you lose muscle during aging unless you’re resistance training, you allow your metabolism to slow. That’s not a natural adaptation of aging that has to occur. It just will if you don’t do anything about it. Your muscles are going to age. But they don’t have to atrophy.

Menopause Symptoms # 5 Sleep loss – Sleep loss of all menopause symptoms is most detrimental because it will lead to weight gain or low energy. It may be due to hot flashes or night sweats but often it’s not as easy as that. It’s a monkey mind that won’t shut off after you wake in the middle of the night to pee. It’s waking too early.

Number one on the checklist for improving sleep with exercise is making sure you’re doing any exercise! Ten minutes a day improved self-reports of sleep quality by 33% in one poll by the National Sleep Foundation.

Then make sure you’re following the “intense early and light late” tenant of Flipping 50. It has to do with cortisol levels early in the day up and late in the day down. The right exercise at the right time will help you do that. Late day exercise that’s too intense disrupts that lower cortisol level you want so that you can get to sleep.

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Show notes: Flippingfifty.com/menopause-symptoms