i'm not finding it harder as i get older...

zebasschick

i see a lot of threads - and not just here - talking about how much harder it is to get fit or lose weight as people get older. i'm surprised to tell you that i haven't found that to be the case. i'm 62, and i started over 28 days ago with 3 goals in mind.

1. get healthy and feel better.
2. lose weight.
3. get stronger.

so far, i've lost 6 pounds, and i'm getting stronger. because i'm starting over from sedentary lifestyle, i'm able to put a little muscle on quick, and i wasn't expecting it. i'm a little stronger, and it shows when i get up out off a chair or couch. i'm stoked!

what's harder for me is working around injuries, but most of these aren't new injuries - they're just injuries i am not expected to come all the way back from. but i'm finding ways to work around them, and that's pretty exciting because after feeling hopeless about them, it turns out there are options. i love having more options!

i've been walking, working out, and i just realized that chair dancing - if it gets and keeps your heart rate up there - is a great aerobic exercise that doesn't have to involve the knees or ankles at all. how cool is that?

i'm losing fat and gaining strength at the same speed i would have when i lost weight in my early twenties. am i lucky or gifted? i doubt it, but maybe. i suspect that most of us can cut calories and reach our goals with the same speed that doing the same calorie cutting and exercise would have worked when we were younger. if society didn't tell us older people naturally weigh more and can't get as strong.

but hey, what do i know?

Phirrgus

I do think age obviously plays a role, but I also believe most of those "You can't do it " type articles are bunk/sales pitch material.

I'm 60 and feeling great. So congratz on the weight loss, and the muscle gain, and the awesome attitude Keep on dancing!

LyndaBSS

Well done! I'm 61. I understand where you're coming from regarding hearing how much more difficult it's supposed to be.

I guess a healthier lifestyle is going to be less attainable if have the mindset that it should be. That logic also gives people an easy way out.

hixa30

Something that I discovered recently, you probably know that fat cells release leptin, a hormone which travels to the brain and suppresses appetite. Unfortunately the leptin receptors in the brain lose effectiveness as people get older. There is a medicine which is used to treat this problem but it's rather expensive.

LyndaBSS

hixa30 wrote: »

Something that I discovered recently, you probably know that fat cells release leptin, a hormone which travels to the brain and suppresses appetite. Unfortunately the leptin receptors in the brain lose effectiveness as people get older. There is a medicine which is used to treat this problem but it's rather expensive.

I was leptin resistant until recently. My endocrinologist had me take injections for years but I stopped because they didn't work.

For some reason, recently my leptin kicked in. I finally know what being satiated means.

zebasschick

hixa30 wrote: »

Something that I discovered recently, you probably know that fat cells release leptin, a hormone which travels to the brain and suppresses appetite. Unfortunately the leptin receptors in the brain lose effectiveness as people get older. There is a medicine which is used to treat this problem but it's rather expensive.

does that mean that some people eat because they feel actually hungry when they wouldn't ordinarily?

i never ate because i was hungry - i either ate because i love the tastes of what i was eating or from stress. and when i was bodybuilding or losing weight, i ate on a schedule. hunger rarely came into it.

lgfrie

Yep. 56 here. For all the talk about how much harder it is when you get older, I'm finding about the same rate of fat burn as I got in my 20s from a given # of calories and exercise. Maybe a bit slower, but not huge orders of magnitude slower. The part that is harder is the frequent aches and pains from working out - bad hip day, hurt ankle day, blah blah blah. It can be hard to keep up a decent work-out regimen, and I can never really push it with the exercise like I used to or I could end up out of commission for a long time, but that's just life. CICO seems to be working just fine.

LyndaBSS

zebasschick wrote: »

hixa30 wrote: »

Something that I discovered recently, you probably know that fat cells release leptin, a hormone which travels to the brain and suppresses appetite. Unfortunately the leptin receptors in the brain lose effectiveness as people get older. There is a medicine which is used to treat this problem but it's rather expensive.

does that mean that some people eat because they feel actually hungry when they wouldn't ordinarily?

i never ate because i was hungry - i either ate because i love the tastes of what i was eating or from stress. and when i was bodybuilding or losing weight, i ate on a schedule. hunger rarely came into it.

For me, I was always hungry, even right after a meal. It was ridiculous. I could and did literally eat an entire pizza in one sitting by myself. Only common sense kept me from eating more after that.

It's great to no longer be a member of the clean pizza box club.

nighthawk584

Same here. I'm 54 and was 100 lbs overweight (just under morbidly obese). I hadn't worked out since I was 38 years old! I just took it slow and easy first couple of weeks and built it from there. Now after 65 lbs down, I push myself harder and harder each time I exercise. I have the strength of when I was 30ish again! If you have it in your mind that it will defeat you, it will.

AnnPT77

I didn't find it crazy-difficult either, at age 59-60, especially after I experimentally worked out the right timing and composition of my eating so I'd feel more satiated.

I think it can be hard for people of any age, for varied reasons (physical, psychological, social . . . ). I don't think it's always or necessarily harder because of age.

ETA: In some ways, it was easier for me as an older person. I know myself well, at this point: I have a pretty good handle on how to game my own faults and preferences in order to achieve goals.

lgfrie

LyndaBSS wrote: »

zebasschick wrote: »

hixa30 wrote: »

Something that I discovered recently, you probably know that fat cells release leptin, a hormone which travels to the brain and suppresses appetite. Unfortunately the leptin receptors in the brain lose effectiveness as people get older. There is a medicine which is used to treat this problem but it's rather expensive.

does that mean that some people eat because they feel actually hungry when they wouldn't ordinarily?

i never ate because i was hungry - i either ate because i love the tastes of what i was eating or from stress. and when i was bodybuilding or losing weight, i ate on a schedule. hunger rarely came into it.

For me, I was always hungry, even right after a meal. It was ridiculous. I could and did literally eat an entire pizza in one sitting by myself. Only common sense kept me from eating more after that.

It's great to no longer be a member of the clean pizza box club.

I thought I was the only one who did that LOL I remember going to the local pizza joint a year ago and ordering an extra large pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni, and a big box of garlic knots, and in the humiliation only an out of control obese person could understand, asking the cashier if he thought it'd be enough to feed me and three friends. He said yeah, more than enough to feed 4.

There were no friends. I ate all of it. Clean pizza box, and garlic knot box scraped clean.

Later that night I went to Chick Fil A, of course. And then got some Combos.

This is what the "intuitive eating" evangelists don't understand about obesity. They say "learn to listen to your body" but my body was screaming "GIVE ME FOOD" twenty four hours a day. The key for me has been not to listen to my body but to ignore it. I have a rigid eating schedule and calorie allotment, and if my body doesn't like it and starts growling or whatever, I just ignore it. It can whine all it wants, because the schedule is the schedule. Funnily enough it pretty much stopped whining after a few weeks of ignoring it.

LyndaBSS

@lgfrie

I'll be your friend. We can share a pizza. 😘

lgfrie

^ I'm in.