Losing or maintaining weight in middle age

DR SYLVESTER IKHISEMOJIE FROM PUNCH

To maintain a moderate weight gets harder as people get older and this challenge gets a lot more difficult after 50 years of age. However, there are many lifestyle changes that can help people cope with the tendency to add weight after the age of 50. Some of these efforts will surround deliberate acts to get more exercise; eat fewer fast foods and sugary foods and imbibe a culture of cooking meals at home. Other tips in this effort involve getting enough sleep especially at night, taking regular short breaks at work and getting a doctor to test you for the existence of any condition in the body that could contribute to weight gain.

For a number of reasons, many people find it a lot more difficult to shed weight after they turn 50 and it is the ways in which such goals can be achieved that this week’s essay is about. One of the most important means by which this can be achieved is for people to move around more. Several months ago, we examined the pitfalls of prolonged sitting in our homes and offices, among other places, and the benefits of more movement were discussed in detail.

Today, we reiterate these facts and posit that it is far more beneficial to move about more than it is to sit around all day at meals, in our cars, in the office and during leisure as we watch television or play games on our electronic devices. It is the appreciation of these realities that ultimately helps many people to maintain their weight.

Many studies have determined that there is a link between the absence of good quality sleep and obesity. To be more specific, there is the finding in these studies that indicates that there is a relationship between short duration of sleep, poor quality of sleep and an increased tendency of becoming obese. As a result, there are warnings in place today that it is important to ensure that the quality of sleep one has is good enough both in terms of duration and depth. These are considered as being absolutely important to the maintenance of good health and the avoidance of obesity. In addition to that, it is important to participate in physical exercises and learn to enjoy them. Therefore, the important thing here is to find an exercise you can actually enjoy and proceed to undergo them. That is the best guarantee, in the end, to ensure that participation in such exercises can be sustained over a long term. Therefore, whether such an exercise is swimming, weightlifting, yoga or playing tennis or squash, it is important to seek to enjoy it so that participating in it can seem to be more like leisure than work or even some kind of punishment. When participation is in a group, the benefits could even be better as you all get to compare notes and experiences in real time. With this, it can actually seem like fun. With such an attitude, it is easier to sustain the tempo of the engagement and help in maintaining a healthy weight.

It is wrong to assume that weight loss can be accomplished by skipping meals. Sometimes, this has even been found to be detrimental to one’s overall health. As a result, there are studies which show that obesity is more likely when an individual skips an important meal like breakfast. Some people say breakfast is the best and most cherished meal of the day and that all efforts must be made to get it rather than skipping it. Related to this situation is the advice that snacks should be tuned to the consumption of nuts rather than the typical fast foods like doughnuts, meat pies and other pastries. Snacking on the latter kinds of foods is more likely to lead to weight gain whereas the consumption of nuts will not do likewise. Common nuts in our environment include groundnuts, cashew nuts, walnuts and tigernut. These can be taken in multiple handfuls followed by the intake of a healthy amount of water. Then there is fullness of the stomach and satisfaction. When this kind of habit is pursued over several months, it soon becomes a routine and there is not likely to be any associated weight gain. If in contrast, somebody else takes pastries and soft drinks as a form of snack on a regular basis, weight gain is all but guaranteed. In the end, if weight loss is the goal, it is important that it is not accomplished too quickly as this could push individuals to work harder than might be safe for them.