Death and taxes, as is so often lamented, are life’s only certainties. A close cousin of these regrettable fixtures in the human experience is that of slowing metabolisms as months give way to years and thrust many an unsuspecting soul into the cold, remorseless grip of middle age.
Of course, it is not merely a sluggish metabolic rate which lays waste to many a middle-aged abdomen, but also mounting professional and personal responsibilities which so often combine to yield poor dietary decisions while crowding out hours which might otherwise have been set aside for physical exercise. Sadly, health and vitality are often sacrificed upon the altar of career prosperity and family maintenance. But the struggle need not be forfeited, provided it is recognized as ongoing and deserving of ferocious commitment. Herein lies a look at weight gain after 40: how you can practice a healthy lifestyle.
There is much to consider under the heading of weight gain after 40: how you can practice a healthy lifestyle. The operative term therein is, naturally, lifestyle. Too often physical fitness and the recovering of one’s health and vitality is treated as a terminal endeavor rather than a daily process of staving off excess weight, weakened musculature, diminished energy reserves, and an overall descent into bodily disrepair.
The waves of even a moderately health conscious lifestyle can ripple across the years, reducing the risk of arthritis, diabetes, sexual impotence, osteoporosis, et cetera. And, where this article’s heading is concerned, a health conscious way of life will also go a very long way towards minimizing (or entirely preventing) added pounds on waistlines, in the facial/neck complex, and elsewhere. Take seriously weight gain after 40: how you can practice a healthy lifestyle, and reap residual rewards throughout the years ahead.
Healthy Lifestyle Guidelines and Philosophies
1. Eat Well, Period: The French lawyer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin is quoted as having once said, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” This string of words has, in the common parlance, been boiled down to the less artful “You are what you eat.” Regardless of the notion’s verbal packaging, it carries with it irrefutable truth—the human organism cannot construct/reconstruct itself from anything other than the material it is fed.
Regardless of one’s weight loss aims, the composition of one’s bodily tissues hinges entirely upon one’s diet. Ensure yours are meals replete with varied vegetables (cruciferous are best), fruits/berries, dense protein sources, and plenty of vitamins and minerals. With respect to the last of these, calcium is particularly important for an aging organism, as bone loss has found victims in many amongst the middle-aged and the elderly.
2. Be Mindful of Covert Sugars: Fatty foods have been unfairly savaged by a diet/fitness elite who regard animal fat itself as the chief culprit in what is rightly regarded as an American weight gain epidemic. In truth, fats are necessary for the effective processing and absorption of essential vitamins; in their absence, much of the nutrition inhabiting a given meal might go largely untapped. Refined sugars, on the other hand, are of minimal value to the human organism and are very much complicit in the nationwide widening of waists.
Many sodas, sports beverages, energy drinks, and coffee-related menu items are sweetened to the point of excess by quantities of sugar which often amount to the recommended daily allowance of 40 grams. The taste sensation benefits greatly and renders many such fluids borderline addictive, but sugar is readily converted to and stored as adipose tissue if not exhausted as fuel shortly after being consumed. If your metabolism has suffered under the yoke of middle-age, avoid sugary beverages early and often.
3. Rigorous Exercise: Consuming healthy meals and avoiding dubious carbohydrate-rich beverages will combine to safeguard the vitality of any who adhere closely to those guidelines. However, of equal importance to either is the embracing of a hard and fast physical fitness regimen. Everything from muscle tone and bone density to heart health and lung capacity will endure well into and beyond middle age in a body which has been subjected to intensive and routine exercise.
Whether weightlifting, swimming, hiking, or rock climbing, be sure that you are engaging in your fitness endeavors with vigor, focus, and proper form, the last of these in order that you avoid detour-inducing injury of one sort or another. No need a supply oneself with an excuse to undermine this lifestyle cornerstone.
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