Is Dancing Good for Perimenopause Weight Gain?
Dancing burns calories, builds muscle, and helps counteract hormonal weight gain during perimenopause. Find out how to use it effectively.
Why Perimenopause Causes Weight Gain
Weight gain during perimenopause is extremely common and often frustrating because it can happen even when diet and exercise habits have not changed. The primary driver is the decline in estrogen, which shifts where the body stores fat. Before menopause, estrogen encourages fat to be stored in the hips and thighs. As estrogen falls, fat redistribution favours the abdomen. This visceral fat is metabolically active and more difficult to lose than subcutaneous fat. Declining progesterone can also contribute to water retention and bloating, adding to the sense of increased body weight. Muscle mass naturally decreases from the mid-30s onward, and this accelerates during perimenopause. Because muscle burns more calories than fat at rest, less muscle means a lower resting metabolic rate, making weight easier to gain and harder to lose. Poor sleep, which disrupts hunger hormones like ghrelin and leptin, adds another layer to the challenge.
How Much Does Dancing Burn
Dancing is a genuine calorie-burning activity. A 30-minute Zumba or dance fitness class can burn between 200 and 400 calories depending on intensity and body weight, comparable to a moderate jog or cycling session. More vigorous styles like jive, samba, or high-energy aerobics can push toward the upper end of that range. Unlike running or gym cardio, dancing rarely feels like work in the traditional sense, which makes it far easier to sustain. The enjoyment factor means women are more likely to show up consistently, and consistency is the most important variable for weight management. A dancing habit maintained across months and years will outperform an intense gym routine that is abandoned after a few weeks. The social and fun elements of dance classes reduce the psychological barrier to exercise, which is particularly valuable when motivation is low.
Dancing Builds and Maintains Muscle
While dancing is predominantly a cardiovascular activity, it also provides muscular work that helps counteract the age-related muscle loss that accelerates during perimenopause. Dance styles that involve squats, lunges, hip movements, and jumping steps engage the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. Ballet-inspired classes like barre work the smaller stabilising muscles around the hips and core. Latin styles involving hip swings and rotations engage the core and obliques. This muscle-building element is important because maintaining muscle mass helps keep the resting metabolic rate higher, making long-term weight management more sustainable. For greater muscle-building effect, complementing dance sessions with two resistance training sessions per week is highly recommended and produces better outcomes than either approach alone.
The Hormonal and Metabolic Benefits
Regular aerobic exercise like dancing helps improve insulin sensitivity, which is particularly relevant during perimenopause because many women notice reduced insulin sensitivity as estrogen declines. Better insulin sensitivity means the body handles carbohydrates more efficiently and is less likely to store excess glucose as fat. Exercise also reduces cortisol over time when practiced consistently. Chronically elevated cortisol, driven by stress and poor sleep, is a significant contributor to abdominal fat accumulation during perimenopause. By lowering cortisol and improving metabolic function, regular dancing addresses several of the hormonal mechanisms behind perimenopausal weight gain rather than simply burning calories.
What Dance Styles Are Best for Weight Management
Higher-intensity styles produce greater calorie expenditure and metabolic benefit. Zumba, dance fitness, hip hop dance workouts, and African dance all involve sustained vigorous movement that keeps the heart rate elevated. High-low aerobics classes that incorporate dance-style movements are also effective. For women who are new to exercise or managing joint issues, lower-impact styles like ballroom, social foxtrot, or gentle line dancing still provide meaningful metabolic benefits while being gentler on the body. The best choice is the one you will actually do repeatedly, so matching the class to your personality and fitness level matters more than optimising for maximum calorie burn on paper.
How to Structure Your Week
For weight management during perimenopause, aiming for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week is a standard evidence-based recommendation. Three to five 45-minute dance sessions spread through the week will achieve this comfortably. If you are also dealing with fatigue or joint pain, starting with two sessions and building gradually is sensible. On non-dance days, adding a short walk keeps overall activity levels up without adding significant recovery demand. It is worth tracking general movement throughout the day as well, because perimenopausal weight gain is associated with reduced non-exercise activity rather than just formal exercise habits. Dance classes motivate more general movement, which adds up meaningfully over time.
Diet and Dancing Together
Exercise alone rarely produces major weight loss without attention to diet, and this is especially true during perimenopause when metabolic rate is lower. Prioritising protein intake helps preserve muscle mass and supports satiety. Aiming for 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day is a reasonable target that most women find achievable with some planning. Reducing ultra-processed foods and refined carbohydrates, without dramatically restricting calories, generally produces better long-term outcomes than aggressive dieting, which tends to further reduce metabolic rate. Dancing combined with adequate protein intake and a whole-food diet is a sustainable and enjoyable approach that addresses weight gain without the psychological toll of restrictive eating.
Related reading
Get your personalized daily plan
Track symptoms, match workouts to your day type, and build a routine that adapts with you through every phase of perimenopause.