Your best health over 50

Nutrition

To be fit, aerobic and resistance exercise must be supported by your nutrition, and that means eating enough calories to be healthy. Regardless of your goals for fitness level, weight loss or lean muscle increase, you must – absolutely must eat enough to ensure you keep your metabolism active.

Diets don’t work. Starving yourself is definitely not the answer. Most people who ‘go on a diet’ gain back all the weight, and more. This yo-yo syndrome is because insufficient calories in the diet cause the body to breakdown your precious lean muscle. This slows the metabolism, then as soon as calorie intake is brought back to ‘normal’, with a slowed metabolism the regular amount of calories technically becomes more than you need. You get fat again.

You have to feed your body to maintain or to lose weight. To get the best results eat small meals, often. We’re talking four to six small meals a day, and not allowing yourself to get hungry. You store fat if your meals are too big, also, so starving all day and eating one large meal in the evening is a really bad idea. Here’s the trick. When you eat, your metabolism increases to digest the food, then three hours later – when the food is digested – metabolism slows again. This is the point at which your body is prone to store more fat. Eat right, and eat often, and you’ll be in good shape.

Start by making some small changes which are maintainable forever. This is a lifestyle change, not a diet. Drink more water, eat more fruits and get plenty of colourful vegetables on your plate.

Eat your bigger meals and complex carbohydrates earlier in the day. We need complex carbs for energy, so it’s best to eat them when we need them – when we’re active. Eating late at night will not allow you to burn them off before you go to sleep, when your metabolism slows down for the day. Keep all your meals full of colour and lots of variation this will help you stick to your new habits.

Does it work?

My most recent client is a man in his eighties who wanted to be more fluidly mobile and get some muscle strength back. He was barely able to stand up from a chair to begin with, but with resistance training that changed very quickly and he’s more mobile within a few weeks. Last May, I created a program for a 56-year old peri-menopausal woman with low back problems, loss of energy and weight gain. She started eating six 300 calorie meals a day, did resistance training twice a week and got more aerobic exercise into her routine. Losing 8lbs of fat and gaining 5lbs of lean muscle changed her body shape, revved up her metabolism and increased her energy levels.

Time for you to get started? Visit again for more guidance, coming up.

Gareth Nock

Personal Trainer, Group Exercise Instructor & Fitness Presenter

(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)

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