Some of the reasons you haven’t been able to lose weight despite your best efforts have to do with the changes you’ve made to your lifestyle as you’ve entered your 50s and beyond.
That’s good news since it suggests that losing weight beyond 50 isn’t always an uphill fight. It’s possible that making some adjustments to your routine can help you achieve your weight loss goals. Looking inside may help you determine what kind of adjustments might be most beneficial.
Is there anything specific that occurs to you in your 50s that might be preventing you from losing weight? Your body may be responding differently now that you are in your 40s due to several factors, including a different lifestyle from what you had in your 20s and 30s (few pickup basketball games, less time on your own, and maybe even more time sitting down at work). Professor of nutritional epidemiology and director of the Center for Population Health at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell Katherine L. Tucker, Ph.D. says, “As you age, your metabolism starts to slow down, and a lot of your metabolism functions and organs and absorption—everything just gets a little less efficient.” Now more than ever, maintaining your current weight is all you need to do to keep your weight down. In the gym, there are charts to convert 62 kg to lbs.
Also, according to Stephen Anton, Ph.D., associate professor and chief of the Division of Clinical Research in the Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida College of Medicine, the quality of muscle begins to change as one age, from being predominantly muscle fibers to a combination of fat and muscle within the muscle fiber. The infiltration of fat cells into muscle tissue speeds up after age 50, he explains. In what way? There’s a chance you’ll tire out more quickly than usual. Loss of muscle and a slowed metabolism makes it more difficult to maintain a healthy weight. Indeed, Dr. Steven Heymsfield of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center estimates that a 50-year-old man needs around 100 fewer calories per day than a 20-year-old man of the same weight. “If you don’t correct for it, your weight will go higher,” he warns. Well, I know that’s not what you were hoping to hear, but here’s something to think about: One hundred calories isn’t that much. Swap out a snack of energy bars for an orange, and you may have already cut off 100 calories a day (depending on the energy bars and oranges, of course). Even if it’s depressing to consider cutting down on food intake, getting to your goal weight may be accomplished by shifting to a more healthful diet. Sometimes when lifting weight one may want to convert 62 kg to lbs so you can directly multiply it by 2.20.
You can still lose weight beyond age 50 (and beyond), but it will take more work. Definitely on purpose. Immensely challenging? Not. If you want to lose weight, try these easy methods.
- Increase your intake of produce.
Reduce your caloric intake and increase your energy expenditure to achieve weight loss. Let’s not dwell on the things you should cut out of your diet, but rather on the foods you should include. Produce is first on the agenda. According to Harvard research, those who ate more fruits and vegetables, notably berries, apples, pears, soy, and cauliflower, had significant reductions in their body mass index. Even though they are low in calories, fruits and vegetables are a great way to receive the vitamins, minerals, and fiber your body needs as you grow older, and may help you feel full in between meals, as advocated by Tucker.
- Put all those beans to good use.
Tucker claims that the roughage and resistant starch found in beans helps to feed the healthy bacteria already present in the digestive tract as the beans make their way through the body. The short-chain fatty acids produced by these bacteria are protective of your metabolism. An analysis of Canadian researchers found that patients who included a daily portion of beans in their weight reduction diet were able to shed an extra couple of pounds in a matter of weeks.
- Meet and get to know your bathroom scale
Check your weight first thing in the morning to see whether it has been increasing instead of decreasing. “If you acquire weight, and if you concentrate on it early and it’s only a few pounds, you can lose it fast. But if you let it remain, essentially it reprograms your body at a higher weight, and it makes it hard to reduce because you become hungry,” Tucker explains. It’s important to address any weight gain quickly, especially if you’re over the age of 50 and trying to reduce weight. Discover what you may gain by making regular weight checks a habit.
- Eat mindfully
You may not be paying your meals the attention they deserve since you are too busy with your 15 conference calls, your accountant’s appointment, and everything else that comes with being a contemporary guy in his 50s. Bettina Mittendorfer, Ph.D., a research associate professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that “people on the move tend to overeat,” but eating slowly and deliberately may aid in weight reduction. Instead of rushing through lunch between appointments, take some time to sit down, dish your meal, and savor every mouthful. You may slow down your eating by including crunchy ingredients, such as sliced jicama or cabbage, in your dish.
- Drop the sugary beverages
Men over the age of 50 probably already know that sugary meals and beverages contain a lot of calories (around 150 for a can of Pepsi) yet don’t do much to curb hunger. The quickest way to get rid of a headache, according to Mittendorfer, is with a drink. If you eat the same amount of salad, you’ll feel fuller for much longer. (To get 150 calories from kale, you’d have to eat more than you can handle.) An Australian assessment of studies found that those who gave up soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks gained much less weight over time than those who continued consuming them. You will be able to convert the 62 kg to lbs easily with help of a calculator.
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I’m Rajat, I love to read and write articles. I love to write content on different topics on behalf of different companies. I have written on technology & informational content for different niches.
