You don’t need to worry about little waist fluctuations

You check your weight every morning. Then there is this day, when the weight is 2-4 lb up over night. No, you had regular stool. You wonder why your weight fluctuates. Read to learn why you have these waist fluctuation, why you don’t have to panic as long as the weight is back to normal the next day or two and how to deal with them when dressing.

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Weight Swings, Waist Changes Come over Night

Does it annoy you when your skirt, dress or jeans won’t zip because it seems like your waist is an inch wider than yesterday? Do you remember the 2 kg (4.41 lb) weight changes associated with PMS? When you couldn’t zip your jeans, even when laying down flat on the bed? When your breast was so big that it hurt? When you felt that your size B cup should be upgraded to a C? And then, magically you lost the weight again like over night.

Menopause Is Not the End of Too Tight Jeans

While you can predict when it will happen when PMS is the cause, in (pre)menopause the waist’s playing yo-yo seems to be out of the blue – unpredictable. At least, I have not found a time increment yet.

It’s Not Fat, but Water and Salts

Have you ever bought 4.41 lbs (2 kg) of lard? It takes a huge volume! It also holds a lot of chemical and potential energy! This means a lot of calories. If you ever have watched your calories, and/or dieted, you know that you can’t loose this much body fat from one day to the other. You also don’t gain such an amount of fat over night.

The cause of your waist playing yo-yo is that your body holds water and/or you are constipated. Thus, it is the same as it was with PMS.Recall when you go to the sauna you loose about that amount of weight by sweating. However, after you drink your water, your weight goes back where it was before you visited the sauna.

Staying hydrated and being careful with eating salts helps to avoid holding excess water, but it seems that the hormones keep up to play with your waist in a similar way even when you come into menopause.

The Good News

A good thing is that we get rid of the mess and the pain, but it is in exchange of hot flashes and unpredictable times of holding water. A friend of mine who turned 60 last year, told me that she still gets hot flashes every day and her waist still plays yo-yo once in a while. This means the side effects change, but the yo-yo stays with us. We better embrace it and wear our jeans another day as we did before. Thus, nothing new beyond your 40s waist-line wise.

Dressing Suggestions for Weight Fluctuations

On these days, the high-waisted trendy pants or high-waisted pencil skirts are just a pain in the … . Instead wear a loose shirt dress with a belt and use the next whole. Another comfortable option is a shift dress if this style looks good on you. When you wear your boyfriend jeans with the intended “it is slightly too big around the waist because it is from the boy” then they are are a great option too to stay in style, even when you feel “fat” because of the extra weight or better water.

Fun Fact

Another point, when you are a size S, the extra weight makes up a higher percentage of your body weight than when you are a size M, L, or XL.

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Photos of me: G. Kramm

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