The Reason It's Hard to Maintain Your Comfortable Weight After Years Of Being Married

Are you one of those women who have a hard time maintaining your weight after years of being married?

I understand exactly how you feel. Because, it seems like only yesterday when I said the 2 magical words that changed my name and life, “I DO”.

What about you?

Do you remember the radiant luminous look that you had on your wedding day?

I’m sure you didn’t have any preconceived ideas about marriage. Like you, I just knew I was marrying the man that I fell in love with. Sadly, it’s rare to hear of longevity nowadays with divorce on the rise. But I was so in love and I still am, like a giddy little school girl.

A friend asked me years ago, “how do you maintain your size after being married for so long”?

After a moment of reflection, my response was, “well my husband married a certain type of woman so I try to always give him that”. But really it’s my own vanity that keeps me conscious of my weight.

Here is where the confidence comes in, and if you don’t feel like the above statement then your journey on self-love must start now.

How do you feel in your skin?

After the life, you’ve lived and the life you see in the future, are you feeling completely dropped in your power?

What if it meant changing your current lifestyle to one that would turn your walkway into your runway?

What would that do for your self-confidence?

It’s was easy to blame it on your hormones or pills. In fact, studies show that women who had been told to lose weight before their wedding gained significantly more weight post-wedding.

Wedding-related weight change may play an important role in your body image.

Good health radiates from on a cellular level not externally. Maintaining your beauty has its challenges, but it is all worth it!

It never hurts to have the most comfy chic robe from Nudewear to drape yourself in.

Until you deal with the #1 thing that is causing your weight gain, nothing will offer a long lasting solution. Plus you can’t concentrate on any other illness in your life until you get to the root cause.

Now, before we do a deep dive into this topic, the 1st thing you should be more concerned about is how to maintain your percentage of body fat instead of the numbers on a scale.

Fat weighs more than muscle so the scale can read one thing and actually mean something else. So, in a healthy woman, body fat can be as high as 25 percent, while 17 percent is healthy for men.

What I have discovered that never lies to me, is the way my dresses fit.

Carbohydrates and the Insulin Connection

When you eat a lot of carbohydrates some of it is used as energy and some of it is stored as fat in your body. Carbohydrates or anything that gives you energy will turn into glucose or blood sugar in your body.

This can be in the form of whole grain rice dishes, pasta or any dessert including chocolate. These foods turn into glucose (blood sugar) once it enters your bloodstream.

Foods that are not whole foods will cause a quick rise in blood sugar and trigger your pancreas to rapidly release insulin.

Here are some interesting facts for you to know and remember.

The insulin hormone controls where blood sugar becomes stored. The main job of this hormone is to convert the glucose to the stored form of sugar, which is usually in your liver.

When you eat carbohydrates in excess some of it is used as energy immediately, and some are used as glycogen the stored form of sugar.

Since only 2,000 calories can be stored in your body as glycogen at a time, the excess is stored as fat.

How to maintain youth as you age?

• pay attention to how or what, and when you eat

• learning what foods agree with your body

• discover healthier food options anywhere

• develop a habit of cooking healthy at home

• consume more fruit and vegetables in your menu

Does getting healthy for your man help?

Yes and no! Having a support system by your side will keep you motivated on days when you feel like giving up.

The downside is, you will experience an urge to compare yourself to your man. Who seems to burn fat and lose weight at a faster rate than you do.

How discouraging this can be.

Men will burn fat faster meaning if you get fit together with your spouse, he will 9 times out of 10 reach his weight loss goals before you do.

Research shows that men have more muscle mass which burns more calories than fat. Women naturally have more fat stores because of the beautiful way that we were created to carry and protect our children.

A woman’s curvaceous body leans itself towards fat cells being more visible. However, if you are serious and want to maintain your weight over the long duration of time.

Nothing will stand in your way of reaching your goal.

On average, women have 6 to 11 percent more body fat than men.

Studies show estrogen reduces a woman’s ability to burn energy after eating, resulting in more fat being stored around the body.

Here’s a typical scenario: 

You wake up early in the morning when it isn’t even light outside.

Start a cup of coffee, take your shower and say to yourself, “I’ll grab something to eat at work or in a drive-through window before starting my day”. Now it’s 2 pm and you’ve forgotten to eat because of the projects, conference calls or clients. Besides, your mornings can get pretty hectic if you are not conscious of it.

Oh, no! It’s 2 pm and you are just now having lunch which consists of a sandwich, some chips and maybe a salad. You don’t want to feel guilty right?

Let’s throw in some green tea for good measures.

Your day is almost over and now your man calls you and replies, “Hey baby, let’s go out to eat today”.

Sounds like a great idea, you don’t enjoy cooking anyway.

Since you didn’t eat much all day, you gorge on everything that comes to the table. Starting with the delicious warm french bread, then a sauced entree and something creamy that sounded divine on the menu.

Let’s not forget that decadent mouse.

Instead of listening to your body when it said, “I am satisfied”.

You ignored it! This is what kick-started the weight gain over the years.

It’s 8:30 pm, you can’t sleep on all of this food. So you stay up until you think 3 hours of the digestion stage has passed.

After you said, “I DO”, somehow you committed yourself unconsciously to do everything your husband does.

You dine out often together, travel staying in luxury hotels, enjoy late night dinners, and entertained more than in your previous lifestyle.

Then you started to drink like him, having 2-3 glasses of wine or a beer perhaps.

Every year your lifestyle experience was the same so the weight gain slowly came on.

Then one day, you can no longer wear the same chic dresses that you wore before.

In disgust, you look at yourself in the mirror and wonder, what happened?

Best ways to maintain your weight to stay slim and youthful

1. Eat light the later it gets. Doing so won’t take a lot of digestive work for your body to try and process during the night. Whatever good progress you make is an accomplishment. No matter how small, maintain consistency and be proud of yourself.

2. Remember that small improvements matter because they can add up to big changes. So keep going!

If you add just 1% to your efforts each day, day after day, in only 70 days you will see progress.

Small improvements are easy to make, and they can make a BIG difference.  The key is to keep making them, to continue improving the improvements.

3. Movement is key to losing weight, a sedentary lifestyle is what got you to where you are today. Light exercise is just as effective as a vigorous movement. You don’t have to get sweaty and wet unless you just want to. Your body is a machine that needs to move.

4. Be conscious of how you are feeling when you eat. If you find that late night eating is behind your weight gain. Aim to eat earlier! When you are dining outlook for healthy options on the menu like protein, carbohydrates in the form of vegetables, and fruit dessert if you must. In terms of how it is prepared: baked, sautéed, poached and roasted are better choices.

5. Omit the bread no matter how good it looks. You didn’t gain weight overnight and neither will you lose it overnight.

Based on how much you need to lose give yourself 3-8 months to see real improvements. Sometimes it may take up to 1 year, it all depends on your lifestyle and health condition.

Maintain the momentum once you start your journey

To be in love and finding someone who appreciates you, I know the feeling all so well, Audrey H. You see, I will have been in love for 20 plus years as of the 29th of August 2017.

Most people don’t believe it. But this year, until August 28 of 2018, I will be reminiscing about how we made it to 25 years of marriage.

Easy? No, but you really do get out of it what you put into it.

It takes a lot of hard work to maintain a certain love that endures when your background and influences in life are different.

However, I won’t change any of it, I have grown and gained experiences that I cherish deeply.

I was a young bride in love and now I’m a woman still in love.

The above quote is the love of my life who still takes my breath away… “je t’aime beaucoup, mon amour ~ I love you so much, my love!”!

Be patient, patient and patient. Allow yourself a 3-6-month window to see visible results.