Recommended Healthy Meal Plan To Lose Weight For A 60 Year Old Male

A healthy meal plan to lose weight for a 60-year-old male looks much like that of anyone hoping to shed a few extra pounds. Reducing portions and eating healthier foods can cut a significant number of calories from your diet. But as you get older, physical activity becomes increasingly important for weight management and control. If you're 60 or older, get your body moving to trim your waistline.

Caloric Deficit

Regardless of age, it takes a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose 1 lb. of fat. It may become more difficult to reach this deficit as you get older, largely due to the loss of lean muscle, but the deficit still remains the same. For example, reaching a deficit of 250 calories a day causes a weight loss of 1 lb. every two weeks.

Diet

The key to weight loss at any age is diet. You need to eat fewer calories than you use to lose any amount of weight. One of the easiest things you can do to eat fewer calories is reduce the size of your portions. In fact, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases recommends this tactic as a way of cutting calories as you mature. From there, you can incorporate healthier selections into your diet as a way of reducing your overall caloric intake. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are all low in fat, which tends to mean low in calories.

Meal Plan

To help you cut calories from your diet, try eating oatmeal or granola with some yogurt and fresh fruit for breakfast. At lunch, have a salad topped with grilled chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and onions, using your choice of salad dressing. For dinner, make a lean cut of beef with sweet potatoes, green beans and a whole-wheat roll. Snacking between meals should be just as healthy as the meals themselves, so stock the cupboard and fridge with apples, oranges, grapes, graham crackers, pretzels, string cheese and luncheon meat.

Cardio

Diet isn't always enough to lose weight. Many people, particularly as they age, need to increase their level of physical activity to burn the calories their unable to cut in their diet. Sixty-year-old men need to get at least 30 minutes of moderately intense cardio five days a week to maintain their health, according the American College of Sports Medicine. Losing weight, however, may require you to devote more time to fitness, sometimes upward of 60 minutes most days of the week.

Strength Training

Since lean muscle tends to decrease with age, it's important to incorporate strength-training activities into your workout routine. As you lose muscle, it's often replaced with fat, which is far less metabolically active. Lifting weights, working with resistance bands or using your own body weight to keep -- and even build -- lean muscle can help the body burn more calories, making it that much easier to shed excess pounds.