Weight Gain & Age

For many of us, weight gain as we age is inevitable, but highly preventable. It is not unusual for people to become less physically active as we age, which does cause weight gain. The truth is, while age itself does not cause weight gain, age does make it harder to lose weight. It can be frustrating for a 45 year old mother of 3 to spend hours in the gym with a trainer per week and see slow results, while that perky little 22 year old spends an hour on the stemill and seems to drop weight like a potato fresh out of the saucepan.  The secret to weight loss as we age is to never put yourself in a situation where you would need to lose weight. In other words, do not gain the weight in the first place.

When we are younger, we are active. We are stronger. We are just more spirited in general. We play ball, we stay up later at night dancing. We go shopping. We BBQ. We go hiking in the mountains. We are up and around being physically active. It’s expected, and we enjoy it. But as we get older, there is a part of us that says “grow up and start taking on some responsibilities and quit playing”. As we get older, we start having families, we stay in, we de-prioritize the gym and feel guilty for being vain when we dream of being thinner. We just quit being physical and we start being more mental.  We “act” older and become older. This lack of activity starts to eat away at lean muscle because we simply do not need it anymore. Unfortunately,  we also do not change our diets accordingly; we either eat more, or not change at all. This is a double whammy for weight gain.

Think about this for a second. As we age, we become less active. Less activity requires less muscle…

• Muscles use energy when they contract, whether it be through daily activity or exercise.

• The more intense muscle contractions become, the more energy they require to perform a  particular movement.

• Your body requires more nutrients as it requires more oxygen deficit to feed working muscles.

• To build or maintain muscle, you need to be taking in more energy.

• Metabolic rates fall as we age due to lack of muscle due to lack of movement.

The secret to to preventing age related fat gain is to prevent muscle loss over time by NOT becoming inactive.

By keeping am active lifestyle as we age, we preserve the muscle we had as youngsters, and fat has no way of ac**ulating.  This very secret will make it possible for you to maintain a beautiful body shape at any age. Which is quite contrary to the popular belief that weight gain is inevitable as we age. Not at all; we are 100% in control of our weight gain and loss at all times (asuming you have no other health issues that cause weight gain). Society in general, just doesn’t want to take responsibility for their cir**stances. It’s so much easier to remain comfortable with what they are already doing, and blame everything else for problems or perceived issues, and never step up and change.

Years of research has shown that metabolism declines with each decade over the age of 25.  Muscle mass also declines between the ages of 25 and 65. And since muscle uses energy to contract, we can safely assume the two are related; the drop in your metabolism as we age is the direct result of a loss of muscle mass caused by lack of use caused by inactivity.

The only way to  maintain a higher metabolism is through regular exercise, and the best way to retain muscle via exercise is through resistance training.  If you remain active, using muscles,  your body should remain healthy, fit, and youthful for years and years to come. Maintenance is much easier than building. So don’t lose it in the first place.