No matter how many salads I ate, no matter how many yoga classes I attended, the numbers on the scale refused to budge," Dhara thought to herself. She blamed her eating habits for her stubborn weight gain until a visit to her doctor revealed the real culprit: hormonal imbalance. Like Dhara, many people struggle with weight issues because of hormonal imbalances rather than their lifestyles. These signs can be identified early, and the real cause could then be diagnosed and remedied.

Weight issues are not the result of diet and exercise. Hormones also affect metabolism and hunger and the rate in which fat is stored. According to this chiropractor and acupuncturist, Dr Pranav Vyas based in Chicago suburbs, took to social platform TikTok and shared five signs that hormones could be ruining the fat-loss game:

1. Difficulty Losing Weight Despite Effort

You have tried all of the fad diets, exercise routines, and counted calories but no movement in scale. It may be hormonal imbalance.

Some of the main hormones that significantly affect weight loss include insulin which is associated with regulation of blood sugar level and cortisol, which is your stress hormone. High cortisol enhances activity of hunger and appetite and keeps metabolism from working effectively. No dieting will be enough to get you off those excess pounds with such a hormonal imbalance.

2. Stubborn Midsection Fat

Well if you happen to have a "beer belly" or "muffin top" that refuses to budge, hormones may be a part of the problem. For men: Decreased testosterone leads to increased fat accumulation around the center of the abdomen. Fat tissue itself makes things worse because the body converts testosterone into estrogen from the fat cells. For women: Menopause typically brings about a decline in estrogen, redistribution of fat to the center of the body.

These hormonal imbalances make it incredibly difficult to lose belly fat through dieting or exercise alone.

3. Weight Gain in Hips, Thighs, or Buttocks

If your weight is piling on the lower body, estrogen might be the cause. For example, it has been noted that as women advance toward menopause, their estrogen levels become low, leading to noticeable changes in the distribution of fats. Weight gain in those areas may also be associated with the other manifestations of menopause like flashes of heat or mood swings.

4. Loss of Muscles and Flabbiness

Are your work out making you flabber rather than strong? To date, while exercising regularly, loss of muscle can be linked with hormonal imbalances. Stress elevates levels of cortisol, which contributes to the degradation of muscle tissue. Low testosterone and estrogen contribute to low muscle mass. This impacts metabolism and helps in weight gain.

Minimal body muscles make your body burn less calories hence gaining weight is hard as well.

5. Increased Appetite

Be to blame ghrelin, the "hunger hormone"

Ghrelin signals your brain to feed, although it can stimulate overeating at high levels. This may cause:

- Calorie restriction

- Poor sleep

- Certain diseases such as metabolic syndrome

Might you regain weight after weight loss even when you have decreased considerably? It is possible due to the reason that even when you have lost substantial weight, increased ghrelin levels will make it difficult to retain the weight lost and lead to cycles of weight regain.

What to Do Next?

If these symptoms ring any bells, it is time to see a doctor. Hormonal imbalance can be controlled by:

• Lifestyle modifications (stress management, good sleep).
• Medical treatment in the form of hormone therapy or medicines.
• Nutrition change harmonized with proper hormonal balance.

4 Effective Exercises to Help Manage Hormonal Weight Gain

Strength Training: Focus on weightlifting or bodyweight exercises like squats, lunges, and push-ups to build muscle. Muscle burns more calories, boosting metabolism and reducing fat storage, especially around the midsection.

HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training): Alternate between short bursts of intense activity and rest to burn fat more efficiently and increase metabolism.

Yoga: Poses like Downward Dog and Warrior help reduce stress, balancing cortisol levels, which can aid in weight management and muscle retention.

Cardio: Activities like brisk walking, running, or cycling can improve overall fat loss, supporting hormonal balance and helping reduce weight.

Ageing changes the body in ways people expect, like weaker hearing or eyesight. Fewer people realize it also quietly eats away at muscle.

Research published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle shows that age-related muscle loss begins well before old age and can eventually affect strength, mobility and independence. This process is known as sarcopenia, and research has documented it as one of the important threats to physical function as people age.

Why It Matters More With Age

Charlie Grundas, a certified personal trainer in Chicago, told TIME he asks clients if they ever want to reach a point where they can't get off the toilet. Beyond frailty, strength training also protects bone density, which lowers the risk of fractures from falls. Will Hewitt, a trainer in Massachusetts, told TIME that added muscle can even cushion the body if a fall does happen.

It isn't only trainers making this case. In 1988, researchers at Tufts University's nutrition centre on aging, led by Walter Frontera, found that sedentary men in their sixties significantly increased leg strength and muscle mass after just 12 weeks of training, according to a report by WRAL. Two years later, a study by Dr. Maria Fiatarone at the same center, published in JAMA, found strength gains averaging 174 percent in nursing home residents in their nineties.

Sharon Salomon, who took up weightlifting in her sixties and is now, at 77, the oldest competitive female powerlifter in her state, put it simply in an interview with Next Avenue, "I want to stay healthy and be as strong as I can."

According to the American College of Sports Medicine, even one to three sets of six to fifteen reps, done twice a week, is enough to make a difference. Doctors recommend checking with a physician first, especially for anyone returning to exercise after an injury.

There are five exercises that can help build and maintain the strength needed for everyday movements as you age:

The Goblet Squat

This move mimics the motion of standing up from a chair, something worth protecting for life. It works the thighs, glutes, and core, and holding a weight at chest height, per the National Academy of Sports Medicine, helps keep the torso upright through the movement. Those who find squatting difficult can substitute a step-down instead.

The Sitting-Rising Test

Grundas ends his yoga classes by having students stand up off the floor without using their hands. It's a real fitness marker, too. A 2026 study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that people who could do this without support had a four times lower risk of death over the study period than those who needed help.

The Seated Overhead Press

This keeps the shoulders strong enough for ordinary tasks, like lifting a suitcase into an overhead bin. Sitting on a bench, a dumbbell is pressed overhead from each shoulder, then lowered with control.

The Kickstand Romanian Deadlift

Grundas recommends this version of the deadlift to preserve the ability to pick things up off the floor safely. Standing on one leg with the other foot lightly touching down behind, the hips hinge back while lowering a weight, then return upright.

The Bear Crawl Hold

Core strength does more than protect the back, Hewitt told TIME. It also supports the pelvic floor, which affects bladder control as people age. Holding a hands-and-knees position with the knees hovering off the ground for ten to sixty seconds builds this strength.

Starting small and staying consistent matters more than intensity. Decades of research, point to the same conclusion. It's never too late to begin.

Most people walk into a gym assuming more effort always means more progress. It doesn't. Push past a certain point, and your body stops adapting and starts breaking down instead. Here's how to tell the difference.

Your Urine Turns Dark

If your urine looks like tea or cola after a hard session, that's not dehydration, and it's not something to shrug off. It's often the first visible sign of rhabdomyolysis, a condition where damaged muscle fibres leak their contents into your bloodstream. Doctors have seen this happen even in people doing fairly ordinary workouts.

In one case documented in Case Reports in Emergency Medicine, a healthy 23-year-old woman ended up in hospital after nothing more than a high-rep upper-body session, no underlying condition, no history of it happening before. A wider 2024 review in Apunts Sports Medicine found the same warning sign showing up again and again across dozens of similar cases. Left alone, it can damage your kidneys.

You're Always Catching Something

If you feel like you're sick every few weeks, the gym might be the reason. Long, intense workouts can leave your immune system weaker for a stretch afterward, not stronger. Research in Immunology and Cell Biology traced this to lower activity in several of the body's key infection-fighting cells. And this isn't rare.

According to sports physiologist Roy Stevenson's website, roy-stevenson.com, roughly two out of three elite runners say they've gone through it at some point, and the numbers look similar for swimmers, cyclists and bodybuilders.

You Can't Sleep, Even Though You're Exhausted

This one trips people up because it feels backwards. You'd expect exhaustion to mean better sleep, not worse. But a case documented in Sports Psychiatry showed the opposite.

An athlete's sleep fell apart as training piled up, and it only recovered once the training load came down. It's a pattern researchers see often enough that poor sleep, alongside anxiety and low mood, is now considered one of the clearer signals that someone is overtraining.

Your Numbers Keep Dropping

Lifting less, running slower, gassing out earlier, even though you're showing up consistently, does not mean things have reached a standstill. It means they're going backwards. Athletes often assume the fix is to push harder. 'That may end up making the problem even worse,' says Dr. Caitlin Lewis, a sports medicine physician, according to Cleveland Clinic's health website.

Once performance keeps sliding despite steady effort, that's usually the body flagging that it hasn't recovered from the last session.

You're Irritable or Low, and You Don't Know Why

Nobody thinks to blame the gym for a short temper. But hard training raises cortisol and disrupts the hormones that keep your mood steady.

Physician Gabe Mirkin has pointed to research out of Austria that found restlessness and irritability often show up before performance even starts to drop, which makes them one of the earliest clues, if you know to look for them.

Old Injuries Won't Stay Gone

One injury can happen to anyone. But when the same one keeps coming back, or new ones keep appearing, it usually means your body isn't getting the recovery time it needs between sessions.

A 2024 review in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research pointed to exactly this. Overuse and poor recovery, not bad form or bad luck, as the biggest drivers of gym injuries.

None of this means training hard is the problem. It means recovery isn't optional. Skip it long enough, and the gym stops building you up and starts wearing you down.

Physical fitness isn’t the only reason why astronauts exercise in space. Their daily workouts are a medical necessity meant to protect the heart, muscles and bones from the effects of microgravity.

New research based on 13 astronauts suggests that this strategy may be working.

Echocardiograms taken during six-month missions showed that the astronauts experienced mild changes in heart structure and function after entering microgravity, but these changes stabilised during the mission and returned to normal after they came back to Earth. The findings were published in Circulation.

The results are particularly important as space agencies prepare for longer missions, including journeys to Mars.

What Does Zero Gravity Do To The Heart?

On Earth, gravity constantly pulls blood and other body fluids towards the lower half of the body. In microgravity, that pull largely remains absent.

As a result, fluids shift towards the chest and head. The cardiovascular system initially receives more blood than it is accustomed to handling, but over time the body adapts by reducing blood volume. The heart also does not have to work against Earth's gravitational shift in the same way.

NASA says this can reduce cardiovascular function and contribute to problems like low blood pressure and dizziness when astronauts return to Earth.

Longer missions can make these changes more concerning. NASA notes that cardiovascular deconditioning can begin within days of entering a low-gravity environment.

Also read: Obesity Should Not Be Defined Solely By BMI: AIIMS Director Explains Fat Distribution & Metabolic Health

Astronauts Exercise For Around 2 Hours A Day

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station use a treadmill, stationary bicycle and resistance-training equipment.

NASA says crew members currently average around two hours of exercise per day, while another NASA health-care overview schedules astronauts for about 2.5 hours of daily exercise, including time for preparation and recovery.

The goal is not simply to burn calories. Aerobic exercise helps maintain cardiovascular fitness, while resistance training provides mechanical loading that the body no longer receives naturally from Earth's gravity.

NASA describes exercise as a vital practice for maintaining astronaut health and performance in low to zero gravity.

Also read: Are Gaming Chairs Actually Bad For Your Back? Why Cushioning, Posture And Long Sitting Matter

What Did The New Study Find?

The researchers went beyond measuring astronauts' heart rate and blood pressure. The crew members were trained to perform their own echocardiograms, allowing researchers on Earth to remotely guide them through ultrasound imaging of the heart while they were in space.

The scans showed that the heart adapted to microgravity, but the changes did not continue worsening throughout the six-month missions. After returning to Earth, the astronauts' cardiac structure and function returned to their earlier state.

Benjamin Levine, NASA cardiologist, said the findings were “really reassuring” for future Mars missions. He noted that when astronauts were exposed to simulated Martian gravity, equal to three-eighths of Earth's gravity, none showed a cardiovascular response more stressed than standing upright on Earth before the mission.

Essential For Longer Space Missions

A Mars mission would be far longer than a typical six-month stay aboard the ISS.

A planned mission could involve roughly six months travelling to Mars, an extended stay followed by another six-month journey home.

The heart therefore cannot simply rely on the possibility of recovering after returning to Earth.

Levine said future spacecraft will need exercise equipment capable of preserving “the entire spectrum of human adaptation to physical activity”, including the heart, skeletal muscles, bones, and even mental health.