Are you as tired as I am of the diet-and-lose-fat treadmill? Would you like to get fit once and for all? Most of us really would like to look and feel like we did when we were younger, but somehow we keep finding excuses to make the necessary changes.
My Clothes are So Tight, I Can’t Breath
One Christmas holiday I realized I had run out of excuses. I spent the whole evening standing at a party because the clothes I had ordered just three months before were cutting off my oxygen intake. If I had been able to stay conscious while sitting, there is no doubt my spreading bottom would have split right out of my beautiful new brocade pants.
For my entire life, I have worked out, lifted weights and watched my carbs. Yet I was still gaining weight, a couple of pounds a year. Now that I’m over 50, I had accumulated 10-15 extra pounds. I had the metabolism of a sleeping cat and my energy levels had dropped by half. I had to do something!
It’s Hard to Cheat on Diet When You Have to Report to Someone
A friend said she had found a great personal trainer who was changing her life, and that her workout time and her food intake had really started working for her again. She said, “It is hard to cheat when you know someone is going to weigh you and take a long hard, look at your daily food intake. I know I’m only cheating myself if I do not stay on the program!” That sounded a lot like the small voice in my head that had been saying, “You are kidding yourself?”
So, I called Ryan, a trainer who specializes in personal training to maximize a person’s workout. I explained my situation, that I wanted results … and that I wanted those results yesterday! I wanted weight loss, but more importantly I needed a rational plan: no fad diets, no pills, and none of those extreme workouts that would leave me in pain and falling asleep before I could make it through dinner.
Ryan said, “Let’s get started and make those things happen!” Wow! I felt like I might regain my “fitness confidence,” my sense that I can successfully get fit and look good. I know as a professional that you have to set goals and make a plan for fitness then make it a plan for life. Now, I felt like I was finally doing that for myself.
I am pleased with the results of my new program. I am charting all meals and snacks as well as logging my heart rate during every cardiovascular workout. Here are some of the things I have learned that are helping to boost my confidence.
Getting Older Means You Have to Boost Your Metabolism
As women grow older, we have to accept that things have changed! Any woman who is growing older must learn to work with her biological clock. Our declining hormone levels lower our resting heart rate, which slows our metabolism. Unless we learn how to boost our metabolism rate, we are doomed to work harder and longer and get fewer results.
It is simple yet complicated: in order to lose weight, women need a certain number of calories along with a certain activity level to burn fat. A reasonable and healthy weight loss ranges between 1-2 pounds per week. Lose more than this, and we risk losing muscle and weakening the body or putting the body in a starvation mode. The best part is we do not have to starve ourselves. The new diet regimes really emphasize eating three meals with two snacks each day. The body knows if we are trying to starve it and it will hold on to every calorie it gets.
The starvation mode is the reason crash diets always end when we regain the weight we lost … and more besides. Nature has protected us far longer than any of us has been thinking about fitting into a bathing suit. Nature wants humans to survive, so when the body perceives it is starving, it fights back to sustain life. Feed your body and feed your soul. Make friends with your amazing body.
How Do You Find a Good Personal Trainer?
If you are considering finding a good personal trainer please shop around. Get referrals from happy clients and make sure they have good credentials. Certification in fitness and personal training is important. Try a work out with them to see if you match. He/She should be able to communicate well with you and help you set realistic fitness goals and that includes realistic weight loss goals.
Women of all ages can benefit from this simple plan. Start today and take an honest personal inventory of the good and bad things you are doing to yourself from a health and wellness standpoint. It can be difficult to be honest, but being realistic is the first step to success. Don’t chastise yourself for the bad habits, just take steps toward change.
The three core principles of fitness are
- cardiovascular exercise
- weight training
- food intake
Instead of accepting excellence in one area and inauspicious failure in the other two, try to be pretty good in all three. This not only works better short term, but it is the only possibility for creating a long-term maintenance program for health and wellness.
Core Principle of Fitness #1
Find your cardiovascular specific heart rate zone.
That’s your target heart rate for burning fat. Many people use too high of a heart rate. They burn muscle instead of fat, and as a result become smaller instead of leaner. This contributes to the weight rebound so many people experience. They burned off mostly lean tissue that their body will just rebuild.
Use this formula: 220 minus your age times the percent of heart rate zone you want to work. Women burn fat at 75 to 80 percent.
Example: 220 – 40 years old x 80% = 144 beats of the heart per minute. Buy a heart rate monitor (from Club Nutrition & Fitness or most any sporting goods store). Maintain this heart rate for about 30 minutes in order to initiate a fat-burning metabolic state.
Core Principle of Fitness #2
Include resistance training with free weights, machine weights or resistive bands.
Training with weights will not necessarily make you big. Actually, proper weightlifting is the best way for a woman over 40 to stop losing bone density and gain structural durability.
Use more repetitions (15-20) with moderate weights to work the “slow twitch” or “red fibres” in your body. These fibres develop the long, lean-muscled that most women want.
Weight training will help you compose your body when losing weight has slowed. It keeps you fresh, gives you other goals to work towards (lifting more weight, or more repetitions, getting through more sets with better endurance) rather than just losing weight. (Never compromise your range of motion or your pace in order to lift more weight; go slow; sloppy form hurts.)
Core Principle of Fitness #3
Profile your food needs based on caloric expenditure and your basal metabolic rate.
You’ll need to work with a nutritionist/trainer to get your exact numbers, or you can use trial and error to arrive at the 1-2 pound per week loss rate. Here are some general tips to help you:
- When you were younger, you could work out harder to make up for bad eating habits. Sorry, compensatory exercise won’t get you ahead anymore; it won’t even help you maintain. You have to face up to your food reality.
- Write down everything you eat so you will not “forget” and delude yourself about what you are consuming.
- Plan for descending carbohydrates as the day goes by, and choose your food based on your energy needs for that time of day. Early in the day, have some carbohydrates for energy and protein for building lean tissue. Later in the evening, have protein and fibrous vegetables, but minimize those difficult-to-digest starchy energy sources (potatoes, bread, pasta and even rice). It won’t work to eat potatoes before bed and expect your body to burn them off before you wake. Use sugar free and calorie free candy or Jello® to help curb cravings.
Plan for Success
Any time you consider a change in your life (and this will be a change), you must have a plan if you expect to succeed. You can`t let your instinctive obsessive-compulsive disorder lead you to walk further and faster to compensate for poor eating habits that always seems to follow. Keep records of your exercise routines along with your food intake and you will soon develop fitness habits for your lifetime.
I have been working with my personal trainer for over 4 years and continue to see results even though my workout has changed as the years multiply and my needs change with them. I know that if we love something in our lives it didn’t come without some hard work, sweat and probably some tears. That’s the way I feel about my personal health and fitness.
Taking charge of your own health is one of the most powerful steps you can take to being a happy and fit person. Start today and you will be on your way to health and happiness for years.
By Dr. Nancy D. O’Reilly, Psy.D.