As you enter your sixth decade, hormonal changes related to menopause change the composition of your body. Coupled with the natural slowdown in metabolism and your body's tendency to store more fat than muscle, you can find yourself with unwanted changes, such as extra pounds around the middle. As with any other stage in life, you require a healthy diet and exercise. As you get older, losing weight can require more diligence and patience.
Reducing Caloric Intake
As you get older, your body requires less energy to carry out its normal functions. Combined with a slower metabolism, eating well beyond your daily calorie needs can result in unwanted weight gain much more quickly than in your younger days. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's dietary guidelines for Americans include recommendations for daily caloric intake based on sex, age and activity level. Women over 50 who lead a relatively sedentary lifestyle only require about 1,600 calories a day. More active women need about 1,800 to 2,200, depending on intensity of activity.
Fighting Insulin Resistance
When your body cannot efficiently use insulin, the hormone that helps move the sugar glucose into your cells for energy, it can increase the amount of calories your body stores as fat. This problem tends to manifest later in life and can contribute to weight gain in your 50s. Promoting healthy blood-sugar levels can combat this problem. This means avoiding foods that produce a lot of glucose and lead to rapid spikes in blood sugar, such as white-flour foods and sugar-rich items like soda, cookies, cake and candy. While this is sound advice for any age, making these dietary changes are particularly important at this stage of your life.
Healthy Weight Loss
Avoid the urge to crash diet and severely restrict calories. While this might result in short-term weight loss, it will slow your metabolism even more and lead to weight gain later on. Aim to lose 1 to 2 lbs. a week.
Exercise Tips
At this point in life, fat tends to settle around the mid-section. In addition to being unsightly, fat around this area of the body can also increase your risk for serious health problems. Moderately intense exercise performed daily offers your best bet for losing fat around the middle. Moderately intense exercise breaks a sweat and raises your heart and breathing rates but is not so strenuous that you cannot carry on a conversation.
Exercise for at least 30 minutes; if you cannot get in this time all at once, break it up into chunks that last at least 10 minutes. Strength-training twice a week also can help reduce fat around the stomach in women.
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