Staying Fit Over 40

Stay Fit Over 40

A joke? Impossible?

Well, it isn't as difficult as it might seem.

Age alone is no barrier to becoming healthier and fitter than you ever have been. The key to being fabulous after 40 is to develop an exercise and weight-loss plan tailored to your body, your schedule, your goals, and your life.

Coping With Your Body's Changes: Why Knowledge is POWER

While everyone is different, metabolism generally begins to slow between the ages of 40 to 50. In your prime, your body typically burned 10 to 15 calories per pound daily with only moderate activity.

By the age of 50, you're actually using 200 calories per day less.

The other change you need to know about is that the amount of muscle mass your body has after the age of 40 decreases.

This might sound like it's all downhill from here.

The good news is that metabolism and loss of muscle mass can be changed -even increased- after 40.

Weight bearing or weight training exercises, a good diet of consisting of mainly unprocessed foods, and proper sleep can help you regain and increase your fitness over 40.

What is weight bearing exercise?

Any exercise where you use your muscles and bones against gravity. Weightbearing exercises force bone to adapt to the impact of weight and the pull of muscle by building more bone cells.

Consequently, bones become stronger, and lean muscle mass -the good stuff you start to lose by age 40- is created. The obvious benefits are that diseases such as osteporosis can be warded off, but so too can lesser effects such as sagging skin and loss of strength.

In other words, you turn back the clock on your body's aging processes.

This is why weight training -with or without weights- is recommended for people over 40. However, you don't need to go out and starting pumping like a bodybuilder.

The days of meatheads in male-only gyms are long gone!

Here are some options for those who don't want to go to the weights room in the gym:

• Body Pump (or similar) classes
  
• Body weight training at home (such as Turbulence Training)
  
• Resistance bands
  
• Iyengar Yoga
  

All of these options, if done regularly and in conjunction with healthy diet, will build muscle, restore your vitality, and help you to stay fit and healthy over 40.