Weight Loss & Aging: How To Adjust Your Strategy

As you get older, your body doesn’t respond the same way to weight-loss efforts. This aggravating phenomenon occurs primarily because your metabolism is slowing down and you need fewer calories each day.

Here are some of the contributing factors to your unwanted weight gain:

You’re burning less energy. As you get older, you don’t need as many calories. Part of that is a little bit slower metabolism, but part of it is you’re not rushing around as much. You can’t believe how many calories you don’t need.

Try switching to smaller portions and sharing at restaurants, especially if dining with a spouse who is having his own problems with weight gain.

You’re less active. Many people find they have less energy as they age, but you may also find that life is less demanding than it was in earlier years. Eating a Mediterranean-style diet, with an emphasis on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats, keeps you feeling full and gives you more energy to exercise.

However, there is another significant barrier to exercising for older women. For those who want to exercise or get started exercising, it’s discouraging to go to a gym where there are lots of younger people.

How to Fight Back

A study of weight gain prevention in 284 women showed that women who maintained a healthy weight over a three-year period were more likely to:

• Carefully monitor food intake
• Avoid a loss of control of their diet (binging, for example)
• Not feel hungry

The strategies for combating weight gain as you age are the same you’ve used before:

• Count your calories
• Eat a hunger-busting diet rich in fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats
• Keep fat intake below 30 percent of your calories
• Be physically active, at least 30 minutes a day, five days a week (more if possible)

Aging doesn’t mean you are destined for weight gain — just step up your diet and exercise routine to stay on track!

Make This the Fittest Year of Your Life

It’s time to build a great new body and lose belly fat. There are great ways you can achieve this, season to season. By exercising three to five times a week for at least 30 minutes, you can have the body you want in no time.

Winter: Base-Building and Boredom-Busting

You have to build a solid foundation of strength and cardiovascular health before you can move on to more intense and more fun activities. Start here.

Be Spontaneous – You can do anything you feel like, for 30 minutes to an hour. For cardio, follow the guidelines outlined above. For strength, keep your weights low, or just do one set of each exercise, mixing them as you please without thinking about what’s coming next.

Schedule Breaks – Avoid burnout. Every 4 weeks ease up during the last week. That will give your body time to absorb the work you’ve been doing. Your muscles get time to repair themselves, and you’ll be more ready for the workouts to come.

Spring: High-Intensity Fat-Burning

The party starts when winter is over. Now you can kick your program into gear by increasing your intensity. Here’s how to ramp up your routine.

Climb High – Try pyramid intervals to push your body to new levels of intensity. You can do them as running sprints, on a treadmill, bike, or elliptical. Warm up, then do a short burst of 15 seconds, and slow down your intensity for 30 seconds. Next, sprint for 30 seconds, then jog for 45 seconds, sprint for a minute, then jog for a minute. Then take the time sets back down again. Repeat for 15 to 30 minutes.

Speed-Up Sets – Alternate between cardio and strength training in 5-minute bouts. Use a different cardio machine each time and alternate between two different strength exercises for 5 minutes. For example, do 10 to 15 reps of a bench press and then 10 to 15 squats. Without resting, head back to the bench press for another set. After 5 minutes, get on the elliptical machine for 5 minutes before tackling two more alternating strength exercises.

Summer: Maintenance

This is when you make time for those long, leisurely outdoor workouts by cutting out one or two heavy sweat sessions. It’s fine to cut back on your frequency, but to maintain your fitness level you have to maintain your intensity with at least two high-intensity workouts a week.

Take 10 – Ten minutes may not be enough for staff meetings or back massages, but it’s all you need if you want to jog on the beach, because you can burn twice as many calories working in the sand.

Fall: Preholiday Prep

As the season changes, you’ll want to step up your routine by adding at least another day of exercise, so you’re training 3 to 5 days a week again. You also might want to add some intensity before the holidays eat up all your time.

Pump Out Those Endorphins – Multiple studies show that aerobic exercise helps beat and prevent depression because it causes you to release endorphins. So squeeze in at least three good cardio workouts each week to stay happy.