Does metabolism slow with age? This is a question that has come
often when training with people in their 30's, 40's and 50's in
particular. It seems to be the common thought that, 'it's just one of
those things', and that there's nothing that can be done about it, you
can't fight mother nature right?
You see loads of guys with their
'bought for' beer bellies, and the ladies with those muffin tops blaming
it on the fact that it's a cause of getting older. Let's face it, we
all do it, and we all want something to blame it on.
The problem
arises from having sedentary lifestyles. Now, I'm not for a minute
suggesting we are all lazy. I mean, we all need our downtime from our
busy schedules to relax, and rightly so, I know I do, but unfortunately
modern society and specifically the workplace sort of dictates that we
are.
How often do you have a working lunch, eating at your desk?
We are all busy, busy, busy. On the whole most of us are sat down for
too long.
Metabolism increases when we have more lean tissue in
our body. When I say lean tissue I mean bone and muscle, these
components require a lot of energy for maintenance, meaning you burn
more calories at rest. If we sit down for long periods, we are not
strengthening those areas of our body that helps us burn fat, in fact
the opposite.
We need to increase our exercise and feed the lean
tissue the correct nutrients to thrive, and if we don't, guess what
happens? Yep, lean tissue decreases, adipose (fat) tissue increases,
metabolism slows down.
So does metabolism slow with age?
I
think there is more of a case for our lives get more complicated,
priorities change, (especially if you have kids), and time to do the
right things often go on the back-burner.
It's not that your
metabolism slows with age, it's because we don't keep our metabolic rate
high with certain choices we make. We want ease and convenience with
our food choices, which often end up the wrong ones.
The exercises
we perform are often wrong too. Many of the ones we do may even be
affecting your metabolism in a detrimental manner!
It comes down
to the age old tradition of movement and nutrition, if you get these
right, you'll be a fat burning machine, no matter what your age!
