The three age-related weight gain challenges

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Mark Osborne

Whether you are eating healthy food or unhealthy food you need to balance your energy input with your energy expenditure. If you are consuming more calories than you are burning, then you are going to struggle with weight gain and get a little more overweight every year.

Unfortunately as you get older multiple factors typically combine to create an imbalance:

  1. Your metabolism slows down
  2. You become less active
  3. You eat more

Your metabolism

Your metabolism starts slowing down after age thirty and levels off in your seventies. There is a 40% to 50% decline in muscle mass over this period which leads to a corresponding slowing of your metabolism. Scientists refer to this as sarcopenia and whilst they don’t all agree on the causes this decline is well established. This means that you will burn less calories.

Activity level

If you’re anything like me, you take things a little easier as the years go by. When I was younger I walked frequently and drove rarely; I played sports and rode my bike. But things change. Maybe you live too far away from your job to walk and there is a cafeteria in your office. You become too busy building a career or looking after your kids to find time for sports. And you watch TV to relax at the end of the day. You’re just not as active as you used to be.

Eating more

And its easy to end up eating more. Now you can afford to eat out more and the portion sizes are larger than they used to be. Eating out is your primary way to socialize with friends. You eat snacks in front of the TV. It seems like there’s a kids party every other week and there is always cake. Your daily routine involves one or more trips to Starbucks for a hand crafted beverage and a snack from the pastry case. You’re just eating more than you used to.

Quantifying the gap

So if you want to manage your weight you need to understand your calorie intake and calorie expenditure. Armed with that information you can make informed choices – splitting that desert with a friend just may not be enough to make a real difference.

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2 Responses to The three age-related weight gain challenges

  1. Pingback: Estimating your daily calorie expenditure | Vegan Health and Fitness

  2. L A says:
    April 11, 2011 at 4:18 pm

    The biggest change for becoming vegan, to us, as a family, has been how concious we become towards the food we eat. I thought we were relatively healthy eaters, but now, I realized (as the cook of the family) how much I have been missing out, in nutritents and in information. Vegan, forces you hard to look at the food you put in your mouth.

    Yes, we still indulge, coconut milk ice cream here and there, but we are ten times more diligent in looking at the ingredients panel verse just the nutritional facts. To see and hear our 4 year old saying, I LOVE brusell sprouts and he was eating it like the end of the world is coming, was very rewarding.

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