Gains and Losses

For years, women have been warned that their metabolism will inevitably slow as they get older. Does a groundbreaking new study change the equation?

- AMY SYNNOTT

It is a blistering Thursday afternoon in August and I am sitting at my desk on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, glistening in sweat as I wait for David Borenstein, MD, with my Zoom camera on. “Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with me today,” I say when he appears. I’ve been gently fanning my face with a Gucci Lovelight floral-print fan that was gifted to me for my 50th birthday a few months ago—an omen of hot flashes to come.

For the last year, I’d been a hot mess, literally: anxious, moody, prone to waking at 4.32am swathed in a damp tangle of sheets. My hair was thinning, my ‘elevens’ (vertical glabellar lines Manhattan dermatologist Dendy Engelman had been zapping with Botox since my early forties) now resembled twelves, and perhaps most unnervingly, my waist seemed to be expanding.

Like countless other women swan diving into their fifties, I was entering the twilight zone that is menopause. I could deal with the hot flashes (thank you, Pause Well-Aging Cooling Mist). But the weight gain around my midsection—the motivation for today’s consultation with Borenstein—troubled me. “I feel like I’m eating and exercising the same way I always have,” I tell him. “But I’m still gaining weight, especially here,” I continue, motioning toward a small bulge under my cream-coloured Chloé blouse. Borenstein nods as he peers through his screen. “There’s very good data associating menopause with a decreased metabolic rate.”