The most common complaints from people as they get older are – fatigue and weight gain. Once they get past their 30’s and head towards their 40’s and 50’s they become increasingly more intolerant of certain foods and find it easy to gain excess fat weight especially around their waistline.
The causes of weight gain
The main cause of rampant weight gain is insulin resistance caused by eating the wrong foods and too much of them and failing to do the right type of exercise. Intense food cravings, afternoon blahs and sugar crashes are all symptoms of hormones that are out of balance causing disturbances in the metabolism (the body’s engine).
Anyone can become insulin resistance including people who are slim. We are all at risk in our modern world with its abundance of highly processed and refined carbohydrates that include foods like white bread and baked goods, sugary drinks and processed foods that have added sugar. Sometimes in foods that you would not even suspect it.
Has weight gain made your mid-section larger?
If your waistline measures over 35 inches for a woman (40 for a man) it is highly likely you are somewhat resistant to insulin. This condition that causes weight gain is becoming more and more common. It increases with age and we see it all around us in older people who are suffering from ‘middle age spread’.
When you have it, it means there is an inability of the body’s cells to respond to the hormone insulin and the body is not dealing well with sugar. The main role of the release of insulin is to get certain body cells to ‘open up’ to take the glucose and clear it from the bloodstream. It can them be used to fuel the muscle cells so we can move around.
When you are insulin resistant these cells will not open the door when insulin comes knocking. This means that the glucose in the blood together with high levels of insulin keeps circulating in the body with nowhere to go causing damage to organs, tissues and cells. This is what leads to the devastating condition diabetes.
One way to mop up some of this glucose is to get your muscles toned up with proper strength training exercise. Without enough muscle building and maintaining activity which is common in our sedentary world they become weak and flabby and when in this state have low energy requirements so weight gain is inevitable.
Just 2-3 sessions each week of strength training exercise will get your muscles in healthier condition so they can remove much of the excess glucose from the blood-stream This will help your body to function better reducing the load on hormones like insulin, and keeping the metabolism running smoothly so weight gain is not a problem.
Without proper muscle toning exercise you will likely become overweight which leads to further insulin resistance and the problem escalates as we get older. But the problem can be fixed with that proper strength training program and getting rid of the obvious high carbohydrate foods full of sugar and replacing them with more quality protein foods.
Choose from lean meats, fish, and poultry or vegetarian options and have a portion at each meal. This will reduce some of that sugar from entering your system and causing you problems with weight gain.
When we are young we can eat like crazy and stay slim. Our muscles are firm and our bodies are agile… regardless of what we eat. But unfortunately that changes as we get older but, we can keep that youthful body and healthy metabolism with some tweaks to our eating and exercise habits which will counter these changes and keep us on the road to living our best life.
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