10 ways to boost weight loss after 50

If you’re approaching 50 or already there, you have probably asked yourself these questions:

Why can’t you lose weight as easily as you could just a few years ago?

Why won’t the exercise and diet strategies that once worked for you work now?

Can you still get rid of the belly fat, bat wings, or both?

These are questions I’m asked daily at foreverfitandfab.com where my community of women is either approaching 50 or have already turned the corner. The common denominator among almost all of these women is a phase of major hormone change.

During peri-menopause and menopause, a woman goes through a major hormone shift that amplifies everything that was already going on (stress, lack of sleep, crazy schedules) and compounds it with plummeting estrogen and escalating cortisol.

The frustrating realization that what you used to do isn’t working any more can send you looking for extreme exercise and the perfect diet. The bad news is that extreme exercise may send your hormones further in the wrong direction and increase your fat storage. The same is true of slashing calories.

If your body is already stressed, asking it to burn more calories exercising — while at the same time reducing the calories it needs for fuel — is going to result in higher levels of stress and potentially more fat storage.

What you need is not a math equation that consists of calories in and calories out, but a chemistry experiment that brings your hormones back into better balance. What’s that in plain English?

Reduce the total stress on your body. Your body responds to all stress in the same way. It reacts with cortisol. Cortisol increases the likelihood you’ll store fat and makes burning fat more difficult. To reduce stress:

1. Make sure you’re taking in adequate calories.
2. Eat adequate protein. If you supplement your protein to help out in this area, choose your protein powder wisely.
3. Exercise to get better, not exhausted. Shorter workouts can help firm you up and tame hormones.
4. Eat more healthful fat at every meal. See how I add it to breakfast here.
5. Eat plenty of antioxidants in vegetables and sparingly in fruits which have more natural sugars.
6. Include carbohydrates in your diet at the right time.
7. Test whether stress or hormones may have changed your gut health such that dairy, gluten, wheat or other top food triggers could be causing your weight loss resistance.
8. Sleep like it’s your job.
9. Rather than try to “reduce stress” which, with a heart rate is next to impossible, add joy.
10. Look forward to something every day — and get up and do it instead of sitting on the couch. What’s on your schedule today?