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Flab appearing above your knicker line – almost overnight? A middle with six extra uninvited inches? Say hello to the ‘meno belly’, says Rachel Johnson who, far from happy with her expanded silhouette, reveals how far she went to try to fight it
Like my friend Alexandra Shulman of this parish, I suffer (if that’s the right word) from a rare syndrome that we have decided is called ‘body eumorphia’. A rich and strange condition among us women, this condition means when we look in the full-length mirror in a state of undress we don’t feel like crying. We – more or less – like what we see.
Well, I did – until, that is, I hit the menopause and, about five years ago, a mysterious wodge of flab appeared almost overnight above my knicker line.
I ignored it, as I do my baby blonde tache – for me every month is Movember – and pale leg hair, which I like to pretend are both invisible to the naked eye.
But then I was playing tennis one Saturday and a skinny friend with washboard abs on the adjoining court shouted over as one of their balls had bounced into our court. She knows who she is. And now you do, too.
‘Hey, Fatty!’ Bella Pollen yelled.
‘Ball, please!’
Fatty? Me? I went home and looked at my side silhouette in the mirror. There was no doubt at all that there was a bit of a balcony over the shop. Nothing like a distended male beer belly, but a distinct protrusion that probably precluded bikini-wearing next summer unless
I got to grips with it – and fast.
My aim was not to lose weight; the Americans have a wise saying that after the age of 40 or so you have to choose between your ‘face’ and your ‘fanny’ (an Americanism for bottom). Well, my bum is already on its last legs (geddit?) and ideally I would relocate the excess fat on my tummy to prop it up, but I don’t believe in such extreme Brazilian-type measures.
So I resolved to embark on a strict diet and exercise regime. I’d only try old-school tried-and-trusted sit-ups and starvation-style therapies and so on to address the ‘meno belly’ and gave myself until Christmas to
regain the svelter shape of my child-bearing years. Surely, I told myself, a bit more plank and a bit less sauvignon come wine o’clock would sort it out?
Hah! Maybe when I was 30. But not, it appears, when you’re 57…
My first port of call was the gym, where my trainer David Wiener measured me with callipers and wrote me an extensive circuit plan – exercises and repetitions – to do home alone with weights/dumbbells and a mat. He also told me to have carbs at only one meal a day if I could (more of which later).
‘All the exercises will work to build, tighten and define key areas including legs, shoulders, arms, abdomen and glutes, while also building strength and stamina that will improve future training performance,’ he said, all of which I am sure is true – if only I did all the exercises as often as I was supposed to, which of course I didn’t.
I did, however, try to do the most important thing, which was the cardio/ fat-burning on the stairs/treadmill once a week after he told me that, ‘Stairs are designed to reduce fat levels, bringing out definition in key areas, and increase muscular endurance levels and condition of your body.’
(He also told me that I had to do it for one hour three times a week, which was never gonna happen, even after him showing me before-and-after pictures of his clients.
‘SURELY MORE PLANK AND LESS PLONK WOULD SORT ME OUT. HAH. MAYBE IF YOU ARE 30 BUT NOT OVER 50’
Before: dad bods and mum tums; after: ripped six-packs.)
I also carried on playing tennis at least twice a week, and trained in the gym once a week. I cut down on carbs – or tried to. Reader, nothing seemed to happen very fast so I threw the kitchen sink at the problem and added a tech intervention to speed up the benefits of this reduced diet and additional exercise.
I went to a medi-spa salon, where I booked in for a four-session treatment called EMsculpt, a high-tech contouring procedure that uses electromagnetic energy to make muscles contract.
If it’s good enough for Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian and Drew Barrymore…
The first thing Sarah, my therapist, did was whip out a tape measure to encircle my waist. When she told me how big it was I screamed out loud. The meno belly is
real. Since menopause mine is six inches bigger (I’m not giving you the diameter) and I no longer have the bikini body I had ten years ago.
For the treatment, I lay down on a massage table and – a bit like being brought to life by a crash team – the lovely Sarah bound my waist with a contraption containing paddles with electrodes that shock your tummy into doing the equivalent of 20,000 crunches in half an hour while the heat, in theory, melts your fat. ‘On average clients see a 30 per cent reduction in fat and a
25 per cent gain in muscle mass following a course of four EMsculpt NEO treatments,’ she promised.
So, Reader: how did I get on? Did
I see results? Before the reveal, bear this in mind: I was more careful about what I ate. I trained twice as hard. I did have four sessions of EMsculpt on my midsection. At one stage in November, I even spent a few days at a delicious hotel spa in the South of France where I was put on a reduced-calorie regime and had a massage de fermeture, ie, firming massage, that included a spell with a cryotherapy (fat-freezing) wand.
As for the data – well, the numbers are in. I’m comfortably back in my 28-inch skinny jeans, and as for my meno belly... When I started my regime my abdominal fat was at 26 per cent (!). After my pre-Christmas training for the New Year
New Start, it had dropped to around
24.5 per cent.
‘Nearly 1.5 per cent down, which is great,’ said my trainer. ‘Remember, women have essential fat of 14 per cent.’ If I turn sideways my stomach also looks sleeker, and the pocket of adipose tissue over my C-section scar has melted down a bit.
So what did the trick? Look – I’m not a scientist. I have no idea whether the diet, the exercise or the electric shocks did the heavy lifting but I can certainly tell you which was the toughest to endure.
Not the training, and certainly not the electrode-induced tummy muscle convulsions (although EMsculpt is expensive). It’s the dietary changes that are killer. For fellow cakeists (I like to have my cake and eat it) that is pretty penitential. My last meal on earth would be a whole freshly baked, stillwarm French baguette with cold unsalted French butter.
Conclusion: when it comes to tackling the meno belly, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
EMsculpt costs €1,800 for four sessions, available nationwide