Keeping up with the latest health advice can be frustrating. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on how to stay healthy, the recommendations change. Not long ago, those of us who were older than 50 were assured that if we moderately cut back on food portions, decreasing calories and exercising for half an hour four to five times a week, we could keep away the extra body fat that often creeps in after menopause.
Weight-Loss Wisdom
Weight-loss wisdom and guidance have now shifted with respect to women past the age when our estrogen is dramatically lower than it is before menopause. Estrogen, as almost every woman knows, is that amazing hormone that is a metabolic calorie burner as well as a reproductive hormone. It keeps the heart and skin healthy, and it produces pheromones for attraction, among other amazing and important body functions.
But no longer is half an hour of exercise deemed adequate to stoke the metabolic furnace slowed by the loss of estrogen and evidenced by creeping weight gain around the middle. We are now told to exercise a minimum of one hour per day and really restrict everything we put in our mouths, especially carbohydrates, which we want more than ever for the serotonin surge they offer. This new information comes from the simple fact that women who are older than 50 generally do not lose the weight they want with just half an hour of exercise.
Body Typing
What is important regarding losing weight and keeping it off after 50 is what your body tells you is right for your metabolism and body type. Ask yourself what you know about yourself and your own weight-loss and weight-gain pattern. That self-knowledge should be more important than a weight-loss expert’s advice.
The big questions remain: Now that you are past the age of reproduction and your body no longer is protecting itself against many of the maladies that come with getting older, what are you willing to make the priority in your life? What do you know about your own metabolic profile and how food and exercise affect body weight? What also happens past 50 that can liberate you from this body syndrome, and how can you harness it for health and well-being?
Weighty Questions
Important questions to ask about your own weight include:
- What do I know about how I gain weight?
- What do I know about how I lose weight?
- Do I eat when I’m stressed?
- Do I lose weight when I’m stressed?
- Do I use food for emotional soothing?
- Does eating play a dominant role in my daily routine?
- Is losing weight more important than eating what I like when I want it?
- What am I willing to give up to get the body weight I want?
- Do I think my food choices need to improve?
- What is my personal experience with exercise?
- What works best for me? What kind of exercise do I enjoy?
- What do I know about how my body responds to exercise?
- Am I willing to make the time to take care of myself?
- What are my health priorities?
- What are my ego priorities?
- What keeps me from being the weight I really want to be?
Issues And Answers
The issue of weight loss is intimately connected with our relationship with mental, emotional and physical energy. Rarely do we see energetic, productive, active and organized individuals (men or women) who struggle with weight issues (even after 50) because they are often focused on their external interests and passions. Ironically, these folks often suffer from not taking the time to eat as often or as much as they should.
One of the weight-loss secrets I have learned over the years from my patients is that when they are excited, creative, interested and passionate about work, relationships, learning, doing or being, the issue of body weight solves itself. We are often overly focused on the sensory experience and pleasure of food as a mainstay for satisfaction and fulfillment.
However, when something else captures our attention and energy, the issue of fulfillment and gratification can come from a totally unexpected and different source. Something to consider: Find your passion and joyfully burn those calories. For a free download on making behavior change visit http://www.changingbehavior.org./
