LOSING WEIGHT AFTER 35 NATURALLY (LOOK AND FEEL BETTER)
Over 35 and struggling to lose weight?
Watch this video for my personal plan for weight loss after 35.
Hi, it’s Ivana, helping you get fit, healthy, and strong at any age. If that sounds good to you, please subscribe and hit the bell to be notified when I release a new video every week.
If you’re over 35 and having a hard time losing weight, there are probably a lot of people telling you, oh, it’s just your age. Well, I specialize in helping people 35 and over lose weight and get fit and I’ve been doing so for over 20 years. So, I want to tell you that you can lose weight after 35 and there are some changes that happen, but they’re mostly lifestyle-related and not necessarily physiological. I’m going to share those things with you today so you can lose weight after 35.
Monitor Your Food Intake
The first thing is to monitor your food intake. A lot of people don’t have a very good idea of how much they’re eating on a regular basis. It’s important to find out how many calories you’re eating and how they break down into macros. So, protein, carbs, and fat. We’re often underestimating how much we’re eating. You don’t think you’re eating that much, but you might be having a little bit here, a little bit there and it all adds up.
Counting calories is not a lot of fun long-term and I know most people don’t want to do that and that’s fine, but initially if you want to find out where you’re at, how much you’re eating on a regular basis, then it’s a good idea to get some sort of information about that.
Normally, I start my online coaching clients with an app such as, MyFitnessPal and I’ll include the link for that below.
You can try that out and you just record what you’re eating and you might be surprised by the calories in some things. For instance, a restaurant meal could be from 1,200 to 1,500 calories just for the main part of the meal. That’s not including any drinks you have,, any appetizers or dessert. Things can add up very, very quickly and you may very well be having way more calories than you need to. Start monitoring your food intake and find out what you can do to improve it.
Focus On Weight Training
If you don’t do anything to maintain it, you are going to lose a half to 1% of your muscle mass per year every year after 35. Just to be clear on that, that means if you don’t do anything to maintain it. The best way to maintain your muscle mass, and to build it potentially, is to do weight training. I normally recommend about three to four sessions of 45 minutes and that can be enough for most people. Muscle is slightly more metabolically active than fat, so you’re going to be able to maintain your metabolism as you get older if you maintain and increase your muscle mass.
Get enough protein
Many people think of protein for muscle building and absolutely it’s fabulous for that, but protein also increases your satisfaction with your meal. It keeps you full for longer and you’re less likely to eat as much later on. That’s how we lose weight through a calorie deficit. Protein and high protein diets tend to increase the satisfaction with the meal. They will stabilize your insulin levels, so you’re less likely to have a crash that maybe increases your cravings for certain foods later on.
I generally recommend that people, especially as you get older, when you want to maintain your muscle mass as much as possible, get 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound per day. That’s per pound of body weight.
Let’s say you weigh 160 pounds, then you would eat up to 160 grams of protein, so about 128 to 160 grams of protein per day.
Obviously, if you’re quite outside your goal weight, so if you’ve got 30 or 40 pounds to lose, then you can do your protein goal based on your target weight instead of what your weight is now because that becomes a lot of protein for most people.
But protein can really be the key, not just for building muscle but then providing you with weight loss because you’re able to manage your appetite better and you’re eating consistently and not out of control.
Keep active
It’s really, really important that you move as much as you can throughout the day. I know that can be a challenge, but contrary to what most people think, the traditional form of cardio where you’re just at the gym for like half an hour and you might be just on the cross trainer really slowly or you’re peddling away on the stationary bike, not putting a lot of effort in there, it’s not the best use of your time in the gym.
But, it is a good idea to incorporate as much physical activity into your daily life as possible.
If you can walk to work, walk at lunchtime, anything that can be incorporated into your day, it’s going to improve your posture and the way that you feel throughout the day if you get up regularly and move around anyway. That’s definitely something that you want to be doing.
Also, think about incorporating physical activity into your social life and into your time with your kids, for instance. You can go for walks with colleagues or friends and you might want to go take your kid for a walk or go bike riding. If you’re playing with your kids, play with your kids, and you can run around and burn off a few calories for yourself, as well. You’re going to feel much better doing that.
Manage stress
Stress can affect your weight loss in a couple of ways.
First of all, when you’re stressed, you’re more likely to be eating a lot. You’re eating high calorie, high fat, high carb foods, probably eating a lot more than you think you are because you’re not really being aware of what you’re taking in. You’re consuming a lot of calories, you’re going to be in a calorie surplus and you’re going to start to put on fat.
The other way that stress can affect your weight loss is that when you have stress on an ongoing basis, you are going to raise your cortisol levels and cortisol in the simplest way possible, is considered the stress hormone.
Cortisol tends to lay down body fat, particularly in the midsection where nobody really wants it. You’ve got the combination of overeating and then cortisol levels potentially drawing more fat as well.
We want to be able to deal with our stress in a positive way. Food is not a great way, alcohol is not a great way, definitely smoking or anything like that.
Sleep
The best way to deal with your stress, first of all, is to rely on getting enough sleep. Seven to nine hours is what’s recommended. I know there are certain times if you have a young child or if you have to do shift work or something like that, then you might not be able to get enough sleep for certain periods of time. But try to get to sleep as early as possible.
Take advantage of whatever opportunities you have to sleep and for the most part, try to get to bed earlier because it’s hard to rely on being able to sleep into a certain time, especially if you’ve got a little one jumping into your bed in the morning or something like that. That’s just my experience.
Sleep is really important. It affects everything else, how much energy you have to prepare your food, how much energy you have at the gym, so focus on sleep first. If you sleep more, you’ll be able to bring your stress levels down a little bit.
Exercise
The second thing would be exercise. Now, I can’t tell you how many times I have felt like stressed out and just doing too much. I head to the gym and say, I’m just going to do a quick workout and maybe I get in there for 40 minutes or something like that and afterwards I feel so much better.
Exercise really is a great stress reliever and that’s what you want to rely on as much as possible, if you can squeeze it in.
Meditation
The third thing is something like a meditation practice and it doesn’t have to be anything spiritual or anything like that. It’s just taking a little bit of time to breathe. Maybe five minutes just to recover. I actually, if you head over to my website, I have an article about meditation and it’s just a five minute meditation to get you started, just a simple description of how to do it.
Mindfulness
The other thing that you can also do is just practice mindfulness, which just means being more aware of your environment, being more aware of your emotions, noticing sights, and sounds, and smells.
You can do that particularly anytime of day, but you can pick a certain time of day when maybe you do that for five minutes or you do that while you’re brushing your teeth. These are just exercises to get you a little bit more aware of what’s going on and to bring down those stress levels. Let me know in the comments what you do to relieve stress.
Conclusion
Let’s summarize everything that we learned. Monitor your food intake, focus on weight training, get enough protein, stay active, and manage your stress.
