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How to keep weight off in your 40s

Photo credit: Narisa Ladak
Photo credit: Narisa Ladak

Getting older brings way more pros than cons. We feel more comfortable (and confident) in who we are and learn to stop sweating the small stuff, but our bodies can also start to change in marked ways that we haven't experienced before.

Ageing means our metabolic rate (the calories we burn at rest) naturally begins to decline. Whereas for many of us what we ate, and how much we worked out, didn't seem to have a major impact in our 20s and 30s, as we enter our 40s our weight can start to fluctuate for the first time. Hormonal changes, caused by perimenopause and menopause, also have their part to play.

Kerri Major is a registered dietician, sports dietician and qualified personal trainer. She is also the author of The Dietitian Kitchen: Nutrition for a Healthy, Strong, & Happy You (Meyer & Meyer), out now. So, she knows a thing or two about maintaining a healthy weight as we get older.

She says: 'Many factors influence our weight, including our genes, ethnicity, age, gender, and environmental influences. However, there are many other modifiable factors that are within our control which we can focus on that can all play a huge role in how we can maintain a healthy weight.'

Here are Kerri's top tips for warding off weight gain and maintaining a healthy weight in your 40s and beyond...

Healthy weight: Ditch the diets

Extreme calorie restrictions and restrictive or exclusion diets are often based on willpower rather than encouraging sustainable, healthy eating habits that you can incorporate for life. Focusing on making just a few healthy swaps and changes at a time is far more likely to lead to long-term success.

Healthy weight: Plan ahead

Stay ahead of the game by planning your meals/snacks for the day or week ahead. Life can be busy and when we are not prepared, it’s very easy for us to opt for food and drinks which are often considered as the ‘unhealthy’ options.

Why not spend a bit of time every evening, or even at the beginning of every week, to plan out a rough idea of what you would like to eat each day? These means you can make sure you’ve got what you need in your kitchen. You can also put your freezer to good use by batch making healthy lunches and dinners.

Photo credit: Thomas Barwick - Getty Images
Photo credit: Thomas Barwick - Getty Images

Healthy weight: Focus on physical activity

Our lifestyle nowadays tends to favour us sitting more and walking less. We have lifts and escalators that can be more tempting to take rather than taking the stairs, and cars that are often more tempting to use than our own two feet.

Although we might set time aside for exercise, this is often just a small part of our day and, in fact, aiming to stay physically active throughout the day by making simple, yet healthier choices, can play a big role in helping to maintain a healthy weight.

Healthy weight: Keep it interesting

Variety really is the spice of life. Get experimenting in the kitchen with new recipes – buy a new cookbook or even buddy up with a pal at work and take it in turns to make lunch each week.

The same applies to exercise. Not found a form of exercise you love yet? Get out of your comfort zone and try something new or exercise with a friend for that extra bit of accountability and to keep it fun.

Healthy weight: Pack in plenty of protein

Ensuring your diet is rich in protein can be helpful in maintaining a healthy weight, as protein can help to keep you feeling full and promote feelings of satiety. Not only that, but eating protein regularly throughout the day, throughout your meals and snacks, especially if you have an active lifestyle, can also help to support lean muscle mass gain.

Healthy weight: Focus on your fibre intake

Unless otherwise indicated by a health professional, ensuring you have a good fibre intake does not only help support good gut and heart health, it also increases satiety which can help support a healthy weight.

The average adult should be aiming to consume around 30g of fibre per day, as part of a healthy, balanced diet. Why not try choosing a higher fibre breakfast cereal, or swapping to wholegrain bread or even 50:50? Try increasing your fruit and veg intake (and leave the skin on where appropriate) and add pulses like beans, lentils or chickpeas to stews, curries and salads.

Photo credit: Mireya Acierto - Getty Images
Photo credit: Mireya Acierto - Getty Images

Healthy weight: Incorporate weights into your workouts

Lifting weights brings with it an array of health benefits including promoting good bone and joint health, as well as supporting our muscular strength as we age. Not only that, but increasing our muscle mass can also help to increase our basal metabolic rate (BMR), the energy our body needs at rest to keep us alive and our organs functioning normally.

Many factors play a role in the speed of our metabolism, such as body size, age, gender and genes, however, muscle cells are considered more metabolically active as they require more energy to maintain than fat cells. This means individuals with more muscle than fat, tend to have a faster metabolism.

We ideally should be aiming to strength train at least twice per week to help reap all these amazing benefits.

Healthy weight: Get enough sleep

Getting enough sleep can play a significant role in maintaining a healthy weight. Sleep plays a vital role in regulating hormone levels, in particular the hormones known as leptin and ghrelin, which are integral to hunger and appetite.

Ghrelin is closely related to hunger while leptin is tied to feeling full. A lack of sleep has been found to trigger increased levels of ghrelin and decreased levels of leptin, leading to increased hunger and appetite. This makes overeating more likely, especially since more time awake creates increased opportunities to eat.

Focus on developing good sleep hygiene, by creating a calming wind-down bedtime routine, avoiding caffeine later in the day and trying not to eat too close to going to bed as it can be harder to fall asleep if your body is still digesting a big dinner.

Photo credit: Tara Moore - Getty Images
Photo credit: Tara Moore - Getty Images

Healthy weight: Remember this

Our weight can fluctuate as we age and it is known that our metabolic rate does decline as we get older. Metabolic rate is determined by a number of factors, gender being one of them. Women usually have a lower metabolic rate than men, often as a result of women tending to have a lower body weight and less muscle mass than men (i.e. less metabolically active tissue).

We should be aiming to maintain our muscle mass as much as possible. We can achieve this by doing regular weight bearing and resistance based exercise and ensuring we consume adequate amounts of protein. It is also important to be mindful of our appetite as we age too. We tend to need less energy (kcals) as we get older due to this decline in metabolic rate but we also tend to be less active too, with many individuals continuing to eat in a similar pattern as they did when they were a younger adult.

The most important thing to remember is that the number you see on the scales, quite simply demonstrates your relationship with gravity. It is just a number. Focusing on consuming healthy, nourishing foods the majority of the time and exercising often in a way that you enjoy is far more likely to lead to long-term, healthy weight maintenance without the need to focus on the scales.

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