Derek Burnett
Derek Burnett is a Contributing Writer at Bottom Line Personal, where he writes frequently on health and wellness. He is also a contributing editor with Reader’s Digest magazine.
Potbellies. Saddlebags. Love handles. Back fat. Matronly arms. Such are the stereotypes of the aging body. Once you enter your 50s, the common thinking goes, the game is up and you’re stuck with the fat you’re carrying. But that’s simply not true. While certain aspects of aging do present special challenges when it comes to losing weight, achieving and maintaining a healthy body mass is possible at any age.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to weight loss after 50 is attitude. To you, is life all downhill from here? Is trying to lose weight just a pointless attempt to look like a young person? Are your peers all overweight, signaling that losing pounds must be impossible? Were your parents already declining at your age? Is it too late to change a lifetime of habits?
The expectations we set for ourselves are absolutely critical to our ability to succeed. You’re almost guaranteed to fail if, deep down, you don’t really believe it’s possible to lose weight.
Try looking around for counterexamples to the cliches about getting old and fat. Do you know someone who’s managed to lose a lot of weight later in life? If you know them well enough, ask how they did it.
And, while it’s not always healthy to compare ourselves to celebrities, take a look at some of them who are still in great shape well after 50, or those who have publicly lost weight. People often counter this perspective by saying, “Sure, but those people are rich. They have nutritionists and personal chefs and trainers and doctors.” That’s all true, but the fact that they look like they do undermines the argument that there’s something about the over-50 body that makes it impossible to maintain a healthy weight. You can be your own nutritionist, your own chef, your own trainer, and you likely already have a doctor. You might not end up looking like Brad Pitt or Selma Hayek (who were genetic-lottery winners from the get-go), but you can certainly achieve more modest, yet significant, results.
To be fair, there are some legitimate reasons why you might need to work harder to lose weight in your 50s. Unfortunately, the old cliché about a slowed metabolism has some truth in it. During middle age, most of us begin to burn calories more slowly than when we were younger. One factor in our metabolism is the percentage of our body weight consisting of muscle mass, which declines as we age. For men, a key reason for that decline is the drop-off in testosterone levels that usually happens during the fifth decade. Women’s primary sex hormone, estrogen, also declines, which is associated with an increased tendency to store energy as fat.
Once health issues begin to pile up, maintaining an appropriate body weight becomes even more difficult. Some conditions, such as liver disease, kidney problems, and heart failure, cause weight gain. Even if you don’t have a condition that directly causes you to gain weight, you may have one that requires a medication with weight gain as a common side effect. For example, some blood pressure medications, antidepressants, anti-psychotics, antihistamines, and sleep aids can cause you to put on pounds.
Physical activity is a key weight-loss tool for people of any age, but it’s particularly important as we get older. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, movement begets movement. The more fit you are, the less likely that you’ll succumb to the siren song of the recliner.
Second, as noted above, one of the main physiological challenges to weight loss after 50 is the decline of muscle mass, which causes us to burn fewer calories. To burn excess calories, of course you need aerobic exercise (“cardio”), whether that means running on a treadmill, playing pickleball, going for brisk walks, dancing, or swimming. But strength training (pushing and pulling weight, including your own bodyweight) is critical for maintaining the muscle mass that keeps your metabolism humming along. Your major muscles produce a substance called irisin, which converts some fat cells from energy-storage units to energy-burning units. Combining aerobic and strength training increases irisin levels, and higher levels of irisin are associated with greater muscle mass.
At a minimum, strive for 150-250 minutes of aerobic exercise each week, with two strength-training sessions that hit all your major muscle groups. Because older muscles and joints need recovery time, be sure to stagger your strength sessions with sufficient rest days.
Research shows that the people with the best eating habits at age 50 go on to have the healthiest old age, with significantly lower incidence of diabetes, heart disease and stroke than less health-conscious people. In fact, eating right after 50 can lower your “epigenetic age;” that is, whether or not your body switches on aging-related genes. To reap these benefits and drop weight, follow an eating pattern rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fish, nuts, and olive oil.
As the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. Getting older brings with it certain blessings, even when it comes to weight loss:
Self-mastery. Most of us, by the time we’re in our 50s, have come to know ourselves pretty well. We know our own strengths and weaknesses. We’ve stopped falling for the excuses we make to ourselves. We know what works and what doesn’t. We’ve learned restraint. And, perhaps most importantly, we’ve learned that life isn’t always easy; that usually you have to work hard to achieve your goals. We’ve learned that consistency of effort is the real secret to success. We’ve learned that motivation is exciting but can wane, and that self‑discipline and the creation of new habits is much more sustainable. For all of those reasons, you just might be surprised at how much better at weight loss you are as an over-50 person than you were as a 20- or 30-something.
A changed palate. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but after a certain age, many people find themselves decidedly more interested in healthier food and less thrilled about a bag of candy than would be an eight-year-old. Lean into the fact that a big slice of cake doesn’t do it for you the way that it once did. Why pile on those calories just because everyone else is having some? This shift toward healthier fare can be a boon to your weight-loss efforts if you let it.
More time, less stress. Some of you may have retired, and for others, your kids have grown and moved out of the home. For many, this can mean less stress (stress can cause you to retain weight) and it can mean a lot more time for focusing on yourself, doing things like preparing healthy meals and exercising. Instead of settling into a life of immobility, seize your new freedom as an opportunity for a new era of good choices that will extend the healthy years ahead of you.
