midlifejourney.com

Guest author and fitness expert, Kathy Ekdahl shares her secrets to loosing that extra weight.

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Q: Why do we gain weight when we age? I exercise and eat the same as I always have, but I am still gaining weight?

There are many factors involved in why we gain weight in our middle age and, in many cases, we can control these factors. What we can not control, is that we all will age. We can slow things down, or accelerate them with our lifestyle choices, but aging is a major factor for weight gain. One primary reason is that, as we age, we lose muscle tissue through a normal (but not optimal) process called sarcopenia. Since muscle tissue drives our metabolism (as we talked about last week), sarcopenia results in a slow down of our metabolism and hence a gain of body fat.  With this loss of muscle tissue, since our metabolisms are slowed, we can eat the same amount of food as when we were younger, but unfortunately now gain weight. This is complicated by the fact that many middle age exercisers rely only on cardiovascular exercise like walking or biking for fitness. Unfortunately, cardiovascular exercise does not add muscle tissue, so this is no longer enough to keep body fat at bay.

Another factor to consider is that aging also causes us to lose other aspects of fitness as well as joint health, so our exercise programs tend to diminish and become less intense out of fear of injury, or fear that “we are too old” to be exercising vigorously. Yet, this is what many of us need to add back lost muscle tissue!

The bottom line is that we need to be doing strength training exercises 2-3 days a week. Strength training is appropriate for almost everybody in some form, and with proper training and progression, all ages can add muscle tissue and resulting strength and power, while reducing risk of injuries. Oh yeah… and lose body fat in the process.

Lastly, take note of what I mentioned above; that we can choose to speed the aging process up, or slow it down, through our lifestyle choices. Exercise, eating well, not smoking, drinking in moderation, taking the proper supplements, will all help you age gracefully.

Kathy Ekdahl, ACE cPT, CSCS, is a nationally certified personal trainer and strength and conditioning coach, who lives in Hudson, Mass. Kathy has  worked for over 20 years in the fitness industry, and is the coach of the Hudson High School Women’s Varsity Lacrosse and Field Hockey teams. She will be answering your fitness questions each week in this column, and welcomes your questions. To send a question, email Kathy at: kathy@personalbestpersonaltraining.com.