When midsection weight creeps in despite effort and discipline, the cause may not be your habits; it could be your hormones. Understanding what’s happening internally is the first step toward taking control again.
Testosterone: The Key to Lean Muscle and Metabolism
The main cause of such weight gain is a steady decline of the dominant male hormone testosterone, which begins in your early 30s.
Testosterone is what physiologically allows men to accrue more muscle mass than women, creating the perfect mechanism for maintaining a metabolism that is highly efficient in burning calories. With less production of this key male hormone, muscle mass decreases, in turn lowering your metabolic rate, so that fewer calories are burned even when performing the same activities as you did in your 20s.