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Weight Loss Exercise

How To Lose Weight As You Get Older

middle-aged-guyMSNBC has this article about losing weight as we get older. Thought it would be great info for people that are struggling these days.

While time may adorn you with new lines on your face, a new color hair (gray) and a new waistline, the passing decades are not to blame for all of the changes in your body.

Your eating habits, your attitude and your approach to everyday experiences also play key roles.

As we age, our bodies lose muscle and gain fat. Our nutritional needs change, as well. But you don’t necessarily feel these changes on a daily basis.

Metabolism gradually slows each decade after age 20, so it’s not as if you suddenly wake up 10 pounds heavier. It creeps up slowly. Fortunately, you do have some control over your changing body and slowing metabolism.

Watch this Fat Burning Furnace video for 3 great weight loss tips

Some strategies to help you avoid a midlife diet crisis:

Shave Your Portion Sizes

The average woman needs about 100 fewer daily calories at age 40 than at 20.

While there’s no need to give up your favorite foods, it’s easier to keep calories in check by using “snack-pack” sizes as a guide. To avoid gain it’s important that you eat enough high-quality protein such as lean meat, poultry and fish, but not too much.

For women over age 25, the recommended allowance for protein is 50 grams a day. A piece of chicken the size of a deck of cards is 21 grams of protein. A cup of skim milk has around 8 grams and 1/3 cup of beans is 5 grams.

Give Your Brain A Boost

If you’re forgetting things more than ever, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your brain is deteriorating. You may be overtired or dealing with an overloaded schedule.

As you try to lighten your calorie intake, don’t skip meals, however. Keep your brain sharp by consuming by consuming a bouquet of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables.

kale benefits

Choose deeply colored produce such as sweet potatoes, strawberries and blueberries, as well as, dark green leafy vegetables such as kale.

There are powerful antioxidants in some white foods, too, such as cauliflower, onions and garlic. The bottom line is: Eat more fruits and vegetables for your brain and body.

Do A Balancing Act

A recent published study from Columbia University Medical Center found that increased levels of blood sugar were correlated to decreased mental sharpness.

Keep your blood sugar balanced by combining: almond butter with whole grain crackers; low-fat or part-skim cheese and whole grain bread; hummus and fresh veggies; or whole grain cereal and skim milk.

A container of low-fat, low-sugar yogurt is a good protein-carb combination. These combos will also curb your appetite and help with loss.

Make A Deposit In The Bone Bank

At least 28 million older Americans have osteoporosis and low bone mass. If you haven’t had your Vitamin D level checked, be sure to ask your physician to take this simple blood test at your next exam.

The dynamic duo of vitamin D and calcium helps to strengthen your bones to prevent this crippling disease, so be sure to get 1,500 mg of calcium and 400 IU of vitamin D, preferably from food sources such as skim milk and yogurt or a combination of supplements.

The best bone-boosting foods are low-or non-fat dairy products. There’s also calcium in canned salmon with bones, broccoli and fortified soy milk and orange juice.

Try to choose products that have a high daily value (20 percent) for calcium. You can find calcium values on the nutrition facts panel.

Women aged 65 and older should get a non-invasive bone density test.

Drink From The Fountain Of Youth

One of the simplest things you can do for your body is to drink plenty of water. Water will moisturize your skin and help it stay clear, smooth and younger looking, while also flushing out the body’s toxins.

drink water

Decaffeinated green tea is soothing and high in antioxidants which help boost metabolism. Caffeinated beverages stimulate your metabolic system, but can have a dehydrating effect on your skin.

Other skin pleasers include salmon, berries, oranges, skim milk, sweet potatoes and carrots and lots of sleep.

Have A Birthday Party

‘Life begins at 40,’ my mother said as she entered her fourth decade. I was only 8-years-old at that time, but I remember exactly how I felt: ‘Wow, she’s old.’

Now, as I’m about to turn 54, I naturally hold a completely different opinion when it comes to the inevitable process of aging.

Although the years are increasing, they’re just numbers. If you are able to stay healthy, physically and emotionally, you’ll have good reason to celebrate, no matter how many candles you have to blow out.

Bonnie Taub-Dix, R.D., is a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and control expert in New York City.

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Weight Loss Exercise

The Value of METs in Weight Loss Workouts

Here is an article from The Salt Lake City Daily Herald. I am including it as it does show the way that METs which are a calculation of workout based on oxygen consumption.

Disheartened by a failed marriage and years of gain, Ellen Bowden decided to turn to a personal trainer to help reshape her body and lifestyle.

Since January, the 47-year-old Salt Lake City court mediator has lost 11 percent body fat, shed about 25 pounds, improved her diet, quit smoking and toned up under the guidance of Michael Streeter at the 24 Hour Fitness center in Sugar House.

Streeter designed an exercise program for Bowden using the Karvonen formula, which calculates a person’s target heart rate by a person’s age and pulse. Three or four days a week, Bowden hits her rate of 144 on the elliptical machine.

According to new research on women and fitness, she also should be able to reach about 8.5 METs — but that means little to her.

What are METs?

MET stands for metabolic equivalents. It is displayed on most elliptical trainers, treadmills, and other cardiovascular exercise machines, and is a measure of a capacity for exercise based on the level of oxygen a person is consuming. A Chicago study published in The New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month — which provides the first fitness guidelines based on research on women — used METS as its measure.

A Chicago study published in The New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month — which provides the first fitness guidelines based on research on women — used METS as its measure.

Mets values

Cardiologist Martha Gulati and a team of researchers at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center studied nearly 6,000 women during 10 years beginning in 1992 to gather their data. Gulati said cardiologists have used MET levels as part of cardiac treadmill tests for years, and she believes METs will become mainstream.

“I don’t think it’s at all complicated,” she said. “A lot of people work out on the treadmill, and most of the cardio machines have on (them) how many METs you are going. It’s a question of understanding what that means.”

Moderate walking burns 3 to 6 METs per minute. According to Gulati’s research, a fit 40-year-old woman should be able to reach 9.5 METs while exercising, while an 80-year-old woman should be able to hit 5.

Experts Like Using METs to Rate Fitness

Frank Yanowitz, medical director of The Fitness Institute at LDS Hospital, said METs can help people understand how fit — or unfit — they are.

“Where METs are a little more useful is in the testing environment, when we’re trying to assess one’s fitness level on a treadmill,” he said. “If we can define a low-fit subgroup of people, that information is useful in motivating a person to start an exercise program, and it shows that they may be more prone to diseases.”

Bowden and Streeter are skeptical.

“When I first came in, if Michael had sat here and calculated my target MET level, I would have been completely overwhelmed,” Bowden said. “It would have been very discouraging.”

Streeter adds: “I’ve been doing this for four years, and I didn’t even know what a MET was. I don’t want to invest the time in learning about it because I know what works.”

Ashley Jensen, an aerobics instructor and personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness, agrees the MET standard is hard to convey to clients. They more easily understand heart rates and calories burned.

“If you’re talking about women, we are moms, we work and we are so busy we don’t have time for a confusing chart,” Jensen said.

Melissa Walred, manager of Ladies Workout Express in Sandy, pushes her clients to work out for at least 30 minutes at the highest exertion level they can handle.

“People like stuff simple,” she said. “We have a lot of clients with diabetes and high blood pressure, and they’re not interested in something so complicated.”

But Mike Young, the personal training director at XCel Spa and Fitness in Holladay, finds the MET system useful.

“For clients who want a high intensity workout, I will tell them they want to reach 10 to 12 METs,” he said. “It’s not that hard if you understand it, but most members and even a lot of trainers may not know about it.”

METs can be Very Visual

Working out on an elliptical trainer, Marci King could see that she was hitting 14.6 METs, well above her target fitness rate. The active 31-year-old was the rare exception, however, in understanding METs, which she learned about at the University of Utah while studying exercise and sports science.

“Sometimes it’s easier to gauge how hard you are working by looking at MET than heart rate,” she said. “And I think it’s good for interval training.”

Across the gym walking briskly on a treadmill, Stephanie Christian, 27, said she never looks at her MET level.

“I think most people look at minutes or calories burned,” she said. “I knew MET had something to do with oxygen, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.”

Carey Hamilton is a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. This story first appeared in the Tribune on Aug. 23, 2005.

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Building Strong Knees

Your knees are the pivot point for any kind of exercise be it running, biking or just about any team sport as well. Being critical to exercise it is important to keep your knees strong. There are a few things that you can do to protect your knees and care for them so that you can avoid the debilitating knee surgeries that so many people in even their 30s and 40s need to get.

How knees are built

You knees are made up of cartilage at the join on both the top and bottom bones and ligaments and tendons around the sides and through the middle. Over time it is the cartlage that wears and sometimes chips off, I can tell this myself as sometimes I will get a bit of a locking in my knees for a few hours until the bits of cartilage floating around become unstuck in the joint.

How To Heal Knee injuries

heal knee injuries

heal knee injuries

First of all there is a difference between protecting your knees and how to heal knee injuries. As you no doubt have noticed your knees only going in one direction and either hyerextending (stretching to far) or having your knee go sideways can create an injury that will take anywhere from a few days to a few months to heal.

If you do have a basic injury to your knee it is incredibly important to heal knee injuries for as long as it takes. An injury that does not heal fully will be very susceptible to re injury afterwards as we have seen in many pro athletes.

If you injure you knee it will swell up very quickly as there is quite a bit of blood flow in your lower body so besides the obvious of going to the doctor to have you knee tested you also want to take down the swelling of your injured knee. Start to heal knee injuries with ice on your knee for a half hour once an hour so 30 minutes on and 30 minutes off for the first day. On the second day and after alternate heat and ice for 20 minutes each as often as you can.

The ice will keep the swelling down and the heat will help you speed up the healing. In this early healing time even though you may have a bit of strength in your knee always wrap your knee and be very careful not to push it at all you definitely do not want your knee to get hurt again this soon after.

Healing my Knee injuries

I had a lot of problems with my knees over the years especially my left knee because I always did come back too quickly from injury. Now my knees seem to be pretty good because my main lower body exercise is low impact. I bike as much as I can and this has strengthened all of the muscles around my knee so that I am now quite strong. One problem that still persists though is running, I can not seem to do any consistent running for more than a few weeks without my knees hurting and having to give it up.

Another thing that will help your knees is to not lock out your knee during workouts. When doing squats or leg presses it is important to not lock out your knees as this is another way that you can cause harm to your knee cartilage.

In the end it is very important to take care of your knees and heal knee injuries very carefully to be sure that they do not become chronic.

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