As you grow older, it often becomes more difficult to manage your weight. However, the reasons may be different than you think. A recent study challenges the conventional wisdom about metabolism across the lifespan.
Rather than slowing down in middle age, human metabolism seems to remain stable from 20 to 60. That’s according to a groundbreaking study at Duke University.
That means you could be wasting time and money on expensive supplements and magic foods that claim to help you burn more calories. Try these suggestions, instead, for taking weight off and keeping it off after 40.
Increasing Muscle Mass
While your metabolism may remain strong for decades, your muscle mass starts decreasing sooner. The average adult loses about 3 to 5% every ten years after they turn 30. While some change is inevitable, slowing the process down can help you stay lean.
Try these tips:
Use resistance. The key to building strength is contracting your muscles against external resistance. Experiment with machines, free weights, and body weight exercises to see what works for you.
Train heavy. For faster results, make your workouts more intense. Use a weight that allows you to just barely complete your last repetition.
Consume adequate protein. Current guidelines recommend getting 10 to 35% of your calories from protein, and many experts prefer the upper range. Some studies suggest that eating a protein-rich meal or snack within 2 hours after working out is especially helpful.
Schedule rest days. Your muscles grow while you’re recovering in between workouts. You can take it easy or do easier activities like hiking.
Other Tips for Losing Weight After 40
Aging affects your body weight in other ways too. Increases in insulin resistance lead to excess sugar being stored as fat. Hormonal changes play a role too, especially for women after menopause. On top of that, your lifestyle may become more sedentary.
Using these strategies can help:
Choose whole foods. Satisfy your hunger with natural foods rich in nutrients and fiber and low in added sugar and salt. Smart choices include vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats.
Drink water. It’s easy to confuse thirst with hunger. Staying hydrated will enhance your digestion and help you feel full.
Limit alcohol. Many cocktails contain a lot of empty calories and any alcohol can lower your resistance to junk food. If you drink, practice moderation.
Sleep well. Getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night is important for your overall wellbeing. Stick to a regular bedtime that allows you to wake up naturally feeling refreshed.
Weigh yourself. The average adult gains 1 to 2 pounds each year. Using a scale or tape measure at least once a week gives you a chance to make easy corrections before the doughnuts add up.
Move around. How many hours a day do you spend sitting? In addition to regular exercise, take a break to stretch and walk around each half hour anytime you’re at your desk or watching TV.
Seek support. Changing your habits is easier when you have your family and friends on your side. Invite your loved ones to join you in preparing nutritious meals at home and sticking to a workout program.
See your doctor. If you need more help, talk with your doctor about your personal situation. For example, a thyroid screening can catch issues that cause weight gain, fatigue, and depression in many adults over 35.
Staying slim after 40 takes a little effort, but the benefits are huge. You lower your risk for many serious health conditions and increase your chances for living a long and active life.
Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Every attempt has been made to provide accurate, up to date and reliable complete information. No warranties of any kind are expressed or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice.
By reading this document, the reader agrees that under no circumstances are we responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, which are incurred as a result of the use of information contained within this document, including, but not limited to, —errors, omissions, or inaccuracies.
Why Should You Walk
Walking is perhaps the easiest way to take care of your health. With just 30 minutes of walking on a daily basis, most people can improve cardiovascular fitness, reduce excess body fat, strengthen bones and enhance muscle power.
And for others who may be predispositioned to certain health conditions, walking can reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and even some cancers.
Having said that, ‘easiest’ does not only imply to health benefits catered by walking. Instead it also happens to be a free-of-cost way of improving health. There are no expensive price tags attached to walking, the practice doesn’t demand rigorous training and can be done without the use of any special equipment.
Plus, it is a low impact exercise that is not bound by time constraints. You can go out for a walk whenever you feel like it even though there are some suggestions regarding more suitable timings for walking for weight loss. But that comes later.
For now, know that walking is a highly recommended form of physical activity for people who are overweight, elderly and even those who haven’t worked out in a while. If you fall in any of these categories, please do continue reading to find out what walking can do for you. If you are a healthy individual who works out regularly, you can still find something useful here and fit a walking regimen into your usual workout routine to optimize the benefits.
How to get started?
Nothing technical here, just a few ideas to get you going. Some you might’ve thought of yourself already, others can come in handy as useful suggestions to make the walk a more comfortable experience.
Since walking is not exactly rocket science, don’t be too hard on yourself when you first decide to walk. Take baby steps and work your way up. Simple suggestions to get started are discussed below:
Consult a physician
Before starting a walking routine it is better that you see your doctor. Walking is not unhealthy for your body at all. However, sometimes joint pains and cardiovascular diseases get worse with exertion. Even during the walk keep a lookout for danger signs like chest pain, constricted breathing etc.
Buy appropriate gear
Your shoes are the most important factor in a smooth walk. Buy shoes that comfortable, light and relatively flat. The soles of the shoes should be soft and the heels a bit firm. Buy one size larger than your usual shoes as your feet tend to swell after exercise.
Wear clothes that have moisture absorbing qualities to keep you dry and chafe-free. Also, put on some socks to protect the feet from blisters and unnecessary friction.
Assign a specific time
You need to assign a specific time of the day to your workout. This will make sure that you walk daily without interruptions. Try to devise your workout in accordance with your normal routine so that it can be easily incorporated without any inconvenience.
Plan your route
After deciding the time of your workout, plan the route as well. You can have a nearby park where you want to walk daily. You may want to walk back home from the office.
Planning where you will be walking beforehand will ensure that you will finish your workout. Any ambiguities can demotivate you. However, do not stick to only one route. This will make your workout boring and less exciting.
Keep a journal
Keep a journal about your daily exercise. Write about the time and speed of your walk. Describe your feelings during the walk. Keep track of your weekly weight.
Documenting your progress will motivate you. It will also help in developing a habit. Once you reach a week or a fortnight you would want to fill the journal to the end. Looking at how far you have come will give you a feeling of accomplishment.
Have a support system
You can have a walking buddy. This way you will have someone to look forward to when you go for a walk. Even if you feel down your partner will be there to cheer you up and get you going. Your walk will become more pleasant and will feel less like a workout.
If you cannot find someone to walk with, join an online forum. Connecting with other people keeps a person focused and active. Listening to the struggles of your group fellows makes you realize that you are not alone. This keeps you from quitting.
Get fancy
Download a workout app on your phone. It can connect you with your friends. It can also help you keep track of your walk. You can measure the speed of your walk as well.
Buy a pedometer to count the number of steps you take each day. Wear your favorite workout outfit to feel good.
Develop a fun playlist for your walk. Motivating songs and upbeat melodies can make your walk enjoyable and amusing.
Break your walk into intervals
If you find walking for one long spell very challenging you can break your walk into smaller sessions. A 20-minute walk can be broken into two 10-minutes sessions or four 5-minute sessions.
Dividing the sessions will not decrease the effectiveness of your walk. It will also make it easier to fulfill your daily walk goals.
Frequency per week
Walking is not a very intense exercise. Therefore, most people are able to walk daily. However, a beginner should start with 3 days per week and increase the number of days to 5 or 6 later on.
Also, do not underestimate the importance of rest. Give yourself a day or two to recover and rejuvenate.
Walk whenever you can
Apart from your daily workout, add as much walking into your routine as you can. Walk to your grocery shop. Park your car farther than your office. Take stairs instead of lifts.
These simple changes will build your stamina and increase your progress during the walk.
Vary the terrain
Try to add a few uphill walk into your routine as well. Go for a hike or walk on the beach every weekend. Not only will it make your exercise less monotonous but it will also build more endurance.
Treat soreness and pain
Stock up on simple medicines and treatments for small injuries at home before starting your walk.
Apply petroleum jelly or other ointments on parts of the body that are likely to rub against your clothes. These areas include thighs, neck, arms, skin under your bra etc. Treat blisters with ointments as well.
After any workout, a person is bound to feel a bit sore. For ordinary muscle aches that improve with movement, apply ice packs. If the pain hampers your movement and stability in any way it is better to skip the workout for one day.
If the stiffness and ache do not subside even after a few days’ rest, see a doctor.
Simple walking exercises
Choose the easiest way you can incorporate walking into your routine. It can be based on time or distance covered.
10-minute walk:
If you are a complete beginner, start with ten minutes of walking for the first week. When you get used to it, add five more minutes in the next week. This will gradually increase your stamina and decrease the chances of injury.
Don’t worry about your speed in the beginning. Once you get used to walking regularly, your pace will increase automatically. For weight loss, a person should walk for at least 60 minutes five days a week at a brisk pace (you get breathless and are unable to talk while walking). Slowly increase your walk up to this level.
1-mile walk:
For the more adventurous, you can start off with a 1-mile walk as well. Walk for a mile anywhere you want three to four times a week. Once you build enough endurance, add half a mile to your walk in the successive week. You can gradually increase the distance walked based on your strength and ease of walking.
As mentioned earlier, the pace of your walk does not matter in the beginning. Once your body gets accustomed to the daily walk you can try to complete the same distance in a shorter amount of time.
Want to lose 15lb – or more – in only 6 weeks? Dr Joel Fuhrman’s book, Eat to Live, can help you do exactly that. You should be losing at least 2 pounds a week. Now, most people who start this program are dropping over 15lb the first month.
I know if they come back have only dropped 10lb they haven’t been following this 100%. Cause they’re going to lose 15lb if they follow it 100%. In this video, I’m going to break down his dietary tips for successfully adopting the Eat to Live program, and making it a lifestyle – so you can rapidly reach and maintain your ideal weight, in the healthiest, disease-preventative way possible.
These are Dr Fuhrman’s Top 10 Eat To Live Tips for Aggressive Weight Loss. And it’s the reason diets fail, 95% of the time. People can’t lose weight because they don’t like the way they feel when they’re not eating. So how do you feel good when you’re not eating? You have to improve the quality of what you’re eating! 1.
Salad is the main dish One is a salad everyday because there are hundreds of studies showing that the amount of vegetables that the person consumes correlates with their lower rates of cancer and longevity in general. In Eat to Live Dr Fuhrman writes that: as the amount of raw fruits and vegetables are increased, weight loss becomes more effortless.
That’s the secret to starting point, is to eat larger quantities of these very low calorie foods that promote weight loss, and we’re talking about green vegetables. The more green vegetables you eat, the more weight you will lose. You look at almost any disease, green vegetables show the most power to reverse them, especially raw green vegetables or lightly cooked, we don’t overcook them.
2. Sweeten with Fruit On the plan, refined sugar and fruit juice is out. But, you can satisfy your sweet tooth with fruit. You’re encouraged to eat at least 4 fresh fruits a day. And remember, the sugar in fruit isn’t a problem, since it’s packaged in fiber. Most fruits run between 5 and 8 on the glycemic index, whereas something like white potato and white flour run around 25-30.
Fruits have a much lower glycemic effect and the fiber and bioflavinoids and polyphenols block the intake of glucose and the speed at which it enters the bloodstream. In other words, even berries which are relatively low in sugar and probably the most anti-cancer foods you can eat, they have such a high level of polyphenols and anthocyanidins that they actually promote the growth of bacteria in the gut that slow the absorption of glucose, not only from the berries themselves, but other foods that have a higher glycemic effect in the same meal.
3. Fill up on fiber. When you digest fiber, from plants like mushrooms and beans, you produce short-chain fatty acids, predominately butyrate. In other words, the bacteria in the gut that eat up those fibers and the indigestible materials in those foods produce butyrate, and butyrate signals the hypothalamus, the base part of your brain, the appestat controller, to ratchet down and have you desire less calories.
Without those nutrients, without those fibers, you’re left with no appetite control. The stomach is only a litre, the size of a little over a quart. If you’re eating natural foods, like fruits and vegetables, and nuts and things, you can’t put that many calories in your stomach. It gets filled up with fiber and you get full too fast! 4.
Be Starch Smart Meaning, in the program we’re prioritising fiber-rich starchy vegetables, and removing refined carbohydrates, since they can increase the body weight set point. Every time you have white rice, and bagels, and chips and vegan junk food, you’re shortening your life! Because there’s no nutrients in there, especially when they’re high glycemic carbohydrates.
There’s not significant difference between white bread and marshmallows. It’s the same thing. Sugar rushes into the bloodstream very rapidly, and when the sugar rushes in rapidly, the body registers that flux of calories like a bolus, a bolus is when the doctor injects the medications in a needle or a drip that goes all in one time, as opposed to hanging in a bag and having the medication drip in at a little drop taking like 8 hours to go into, it goes in all at once.
When the calories enter in all at once they have a stimulating effect on dopamine in the brain like you’ve snorted cocaine or taken an opioid, and the brain doesn’t recognise what the cause of stimulation is, it just registers a stimulatory effect. And over time, you become more dopamine insensitive and you desire more ice-cream, and more pizza, and more food.
So, refined flours are out and starchy vegetables and whole grains are in. Still to speed up weight loss, we should limit these to 1 cup a day, since they can be the culprit for those who have difficulty losing weight. However, note that Dr Fuhrman emphasises that very low-carb diets are a bad idea.
Taking the fruit out of your diet, making your diet low-carbohydrate to stay in ketosis, is lifespan shortening. Low carbohydrate diets are dangerous longterm. You don’t get a free ride. You don’t get something for nothing. We need the full orchestra of micronutrients playing from all the colourful plants and the full symphony.
5. Beans are your BFF. All the Blue Zones, those areas of the world with the longest lived people, always eat beans as a major source of calories. Beans are associated with longer life, they are the carbohydrate source with the most slowly digestible carbohydrates, and they have the most resistant starch.
Now, the slowly digestible carbohydrates mean their glycemic load is very low. Their glucose that comes into the bloodstream, the carbohydrates that are broken down, come in so slowly, that they don’t require a lot of insulin to digest them. When your insulin needs are less, you have less of that fat-promoting hormone circulating.
The beans also contain what’s known as resistant starch – more than any other food! Which means that the calories in beans don’t all enter the body, they’re resistant to enzymatic degradation, so the calories pass through you, undigested. So since you had those calories, it ratchets down your appetite by that amount of calories, but those calories never came into your body.
So they’re a great weight loss food. No wonder the program recommends eating at least 1 cup of beans a day! 6. Eliminate Animal Products The World Health Organization has declared processed meats, barbecue, fried foods, as a Class 1 carcinogen. Class 1 carcinogen is the same category as asbestos and cigaret smoking.
These aren’t suspected carcinogens, they are definitive carcinogens. To eat them you have to be insane. You have to be insane to eat these foods they’re so dangerous. That even moderate use can cause cancer. But the problem is, is that when you do eat them, it makes you insane. It makes you addicted and you lose your intelligence.
These carcinogenic foods don’t just create cancer and heart disease, they also destroy brain cells. In doing so, they make people less intelligent, less able to concentrate, increase risk of depression and mental illness. So we’re talking here about the sweets, the ice-cream, the sugar, the fried foods, the grilled and processed meats, all form this umbrella of damage in the body.
And it doesn’t just damage you peripherally, it doesn’t just damage your heart and your lungs and your kidney, your blood vessels, it damages your brain. Animal protein, because it enters the bloodstream in excess protein that is already biologically complete, and we don’t store the extra proteins well, or turn them into fat as efficiently as fat or carbohydrate, so we turn that, extra protein you eat is turned into IGF-1, which is a growth promoting hormone, which promotes muscle growth, promotes growth in general in general.
But in an adult that’s fully grown, is promoting cancer. And right now, we have the world’s nutritional researchers all in agreement that higher levels of IGF-1 is definitively linked to breast and prostate cancer. And the high amount of animal protein is definitively linked to higher levels of IGF-1.
In the book reminds us of the mighty mushroom, since they they make a great chewy replacement for meat, so use them to spice up your diet. Have them everyday! 7. Nuts and Seeds, NOT Oil. Get most of your fat from whole plant foods, the whole plant, because that’s the way nature designed it. When you eat the whole sesame seed, the whole almond, the whole walnut, then you get the lignans, the stanols, the anthocyanidins, the phytochemicals, the flavonoids that protect human health.
And, all those calories, and all those fat calories don’t come into the body, because those fibers and sterols and stanols bind them and carry them out into the stool. So all the calories in nuts and seeds are not biologically available. On the other hand, when we refine those foods into an oil, they come into the body, those calories come into the body so quickly, and all those calories are biologically available.
And because they flood the bloodstream with so much fat calories at once, the body can’t burn it for energy. Instead, it has to store it as fat. People who regularly consume nuts and seeds, are more likely to be slim. The same cannot be said for oil. All oil is 120 calories a tablespoon, and most Americans consume between 250 and 700 calories of oil a day.
Unless you’re a professional athlete or physical labourer, that’s gonna cause you to become overweight. And being overweight is going to shorten your lifespan. 100 calories of ingested fat can be converted to 97 calories of body fat by burning a measly 3 calories. Chronic use of oil in diet inhibits the loss of body weight, so constantly pouring olive oil over your food makes it almost impossible to get your extra weight off.
In fact, Fuhrman says that, if we looked under a microscope we could actually see where the fat came from. It would be stored as pig fat, dairy fat, olive oil fat. So, Oil it Out. Instead, aim for 1 ounce of nuts and seeds a day, plus a tablespoon of flaxeeds for your omega-3s. 8. Tame Toxic Hunger When you’re chronically eating all the time and putting food in your mouth 24 hours a day, you’re shortening your lifespan because you need a period of time without food coming in for your body to maximise its repair mechanisms, and to remove build-up of excesses and waste products.
But most Americans can’t stop eating because they hit the catabolic phase and they feel shaky and weak and hypoglycaemic because their body is so toxic, and they think the answer to their hypoglycaemic more tuna fish, more egg whites, more cheese and more meat. Because more cocaine and more snorting and more cigarettes makes you feel better, but feeling better isn’t getting better, feeling better is getting worse.
Feeling worse is getting better! To burn fat, you need to eat to true hunger. You’re mostly burning more fat towards the last third of the catabolic phase, when your glycogen reserves start to go down, so if you’re constantly eating food and constantly putting stuff in your mouth, you’re not going to get to that fat burning.
And a person who’s healthy and they’re a regular person who eats beans and greens and vegetables and seeds and nuts, and they eat a lot of healthy natural foods, they’re not going to feel any hunger in the catabolic phase, they’re gonna feel nothing! You do not have to carry around a calculator and a scale to figure out how much to eat.
A healthy body will give you the correct signals. Hunger is a precise computer directing you to the exact amount of calories to maintain your lean body mass. Hunger doesn’t exist to cause you to gain weight. You can’t put fat on your body from responding to hunger. In order to have become fat, you have to have eaten outside of the demands of true hunger.
You’re eating because of toxic hunger, because you’re emotionally eating, because you’re recreationally eating, but it wasn’t hunger that drives fat on the body. True hunger signals do not drive fat, only false or toxic hunger signals drive fat. Tastes change. Not right away, it takes months.
But your taste gets stronger, your smell gets stronger, so many people even their eyesight improves and they start to enjoy the flavours of natural foods. They don’t need the sugary junk anymore, now lettuce and a cashew nut, an avocado and a strawberry has flavour – plenty of flavour! 9. Understand the process Increasing fiber and nutrients may result in various withdrawal symptoms.
These are temporary and rarely last longer than a week. I know its tough in the beginning, I know food addictions and, and I call it toxic hunger, could make you feel bad when you’re kind of like breaking those addictions. You could feel fatigue, you could feel weak and headachy, you could feel like you’re emotionally attached to those foods and having almost a feeling of anxiety of giving up the foods you’ve come to love.
It’s tough for people to make changes. But those people that do so, after enough time goes by, realise that they like their new diet as much as they like their old ones. It’s not about needing willpower of iron to do this. Sure, you need some commitment, you need some motivation, you need a person who intelligently wants to learn the information, but once they learn the information and they apply it, with time their tastes change and they realise what they get is so much greater than what they gave up.
And most people doing this stick to it longterm, when they lose that 60 pounds or that 80 pounds, they’re not going to gain it back, it’s going to stay off forever, because they realise it’s not just about weight and how you look – it’s not a cosmetic issue – they love the way they feel.
10. Micronutrient excellence I know all the fad diets and all the gimmicks out there are trying to give people some substance or some trick or fad that’s gonna have them speed up their metabolic rate so they can eat more and not get fat. But the reality is, that the only proven interventions to radically extend human lifespan, is to eat less calories, in an environment of micronutrient excellence.
When your diet has a poor nutritional quality, it’s trying to breathe less air, you always want more food than you really should be having because your diet is low in nutrients. You’re eating as much as you want, you just don’t want as much when you’re exposed to a very high micronutrient exposure.
This is what it all comes down to. For longevity, as well as achieving and maintaining your ideal weight. You have to apply yourself here, you have to learn. You have to know the why. You have to become the nutritional expert, and you have to be able to articulate why you’re doing this to other people.
And then you’re going to be able to stick with it, only when you become the expert and you can adequately articulate it to other people. Hope you enjoyed these tips. I’ll be making more videos like this.
