So often we blame our age for the reason we’re seeing that middle age spread happen.
But honestly, your age isn’t an excuse to gain fat or not feel and move your best.
You’re using it as an excuse because it’s…well…easier than taking ownership.
Harsh…YUP.
But it’s the reality.
It’s hard to take that look at ourselves and assess the changes we need to make.
It’s much easier to blame something we aren’t in control of.
Now I’m not saying changes don’t happen with age…
But the changes we see with our body and even our lifestyle can be addressed so we can see results.
The key is controlling what we can control and being open to evolving and changing our dieting and training practices.
Too often instead of being open to changes, we push back.
We say things like, “Well this used to work!”
“I could just get away with this in the past!”
Well guess what?
You can’t now.
And some of those things you did that you got away with are now the reasons you’re struggling more and seeing that weight creep on when you just look at a cookie.
I’ve had this hard conversation with many clients over the years, but we have to let go of what used to work.
You have to step back and ask yourself…
“Is it working NOW?”
Because that is all that matters.
Are those dieting and training practices truly helping you move forward?
Are they truly meeting you where you are at?
Because if they aren’t, it doesn’t matter how much they used to work…
They don’t match your body needs and goals now.
And that’s really the first “secret” to avoiding gaining fat as you get older…
Stop clinging to what once worked.
You CAN feel your most fabulous at any and every age.
But we have to recognize the changes that have happened, even down to shifts in our activity level and priorities as our lifestyles have evolved as we’ve gotten older.
Because so often what we blame on AGE is simply an accumulation of improper dieting and training practices or even lifestyle shifts over the years…
Not just the number of years we’ve been on this planet.
We just start to notice the accumulation more over time.
It’s like a leak in our ceiling we never addressed….for a long time the ceiling may have been fine…
But at some point, it’s going to collapse.
This is exactly what happens when we often blame our age for our aches and pains and weight gain now…
But it’s the under eating to lose weight faster in the past that led to us losing muscle and negatively impacted our metabolic health…
It’s the overtraining and skipped warm ups that led to overuse, overload and injuries…injuries we never really rehabbed or addressed…
It’s the 1% deviations and lack of consistency over the years that made us slowly slip further and further from our goals…
It’s these leaks that have finally added up.
That weight gain we see with age is just the ceiling finally collapsing.
And we can’t just paint over the ceiling expecting it to be fixed even though that may have covered it up in the past.
We actually have to go in and correct the problem.
We have to let go of what once worked. And we have to be open to approaching our training and fueling in a new way.
You may have to step back in your workouts at first to correct those movement and recruitment patterns.
You may have to first address metabolic adaptations, eat more, focus on macros and GAIN weight before you can lose because you need to increase your muscle.
You may have to accept that you can’t just do what you want and stay in your comfort zone.
Because your body has changed.
Hormone levels aren’t the same. Recovery isn’t the same. Our ability to utilize protein isn’t the same.
But these aren’t excuses. They can be addressed through lifestyle changes…
We can increase our protein portions per meal to create the same stimulus for muscle growth.
We can do different training splits and include more prehab work to help with recovery.
The key is stepping back to assess what we need NOW, not clinging to what worked at a different stage.
Because forcing yourself into your younger self mold is why you’re gaining weight.
Stop. Embrace the new.
And don’t stop challenging yourself.
We get old because we stop doing the things that kept us young.
We get old because we ACT old.
We tell ourselves we can’t achieve certain goals, so we let ourselves off the hook for making uncomfortable changes.
We stop pushing our comfort zone and challenging ourselves.
We say we can’t lift heavy.
We can’t jump.
We can’t make certain changes.
And this mindset that all of the sudden we “can’t do” something because of our age is what instantly makes us old and often leads to weight gain.
We stop trying to make changes and meet ourselves where we are at and just ACCEPT weight gain and decline.
But don’t.
Instead keep pushing that progression in your workouts.
Keep looking to learn about how to adjust your nutrition to better fuel.
Keep seeking to embrace the discomfort of change over getting set in your ways.
Remember you can DEFINE HOW YOU AGE.
Stop just giving away your power and agency.
Take OWNERSHIP of your results.
And with taking ownership and not just defaulting back into what you’ve always done…
Embrace a perspective shift.
Want to avoid gaining fat?
Don’t focus on fat loss. Focus on building muscle.
You heard that right…
Even if your goal is fat loss, you can’t just focus on fat loss to see results.
As you get older, you need to focus on gaining muscle.
This shift in focus is key because so often a loss of muscle mass and the metabolic adaptations that occur with that, is why we struggle to lose fat.
And the dieting and training practices that help us build muscle are often also what we’ve let slide.
It’s a bad cycle we get stuck in.
We stop challenging and pushing ourselves in our training, we implement improper dieting practices that create metabolic adaptations in an attempt to lose weight faster…So we lose muscle.
Then because we’ve lost muscle, we ultimately end up seeing the weight creep back on.
Not to mention we often see a negative impact on our strength, making us feel older, feel less like pushing ourselves and see ourselves gain weight while feeling completely demotivated to do anything about it.
When we do finally muster the motivation, we just end up eating less and trying to do more cardio only to be frustrated by the slow progress on the scale…
And the cycle just repeats…over and over and over again…
STOP DEFAULTING BACK INTO THIS CHANGE LOOP!
Shift your focus to building muscle and you’ll see far better results.
But this won’t be easy. It does get harder to build and retain lean muscle as we get older.
So the best time to start focusing on building was probably a few decades ago.
But since we can’t go back…
The second best time is RIGHT NOW.
SO STOP WAITING!
It becomes harder to build and retain lean muscle because we simply don’t have the same hormonal environment or muscle building response to protein that we once did.
And on top of that, with being more advanced, having trained for longer, we’ve adapted to a great training stimulus.
This means we have to work harder to create that challenge for muscle growth.
On top of the changes with age, this slows the rate at which we can often see muscle gains.
It also means we need to eat MORE to fuel those gains. And especially focus on protein.
We simply don’t use protein as efficiently as we get older.
It’s why with getting older, increasing your portion per meal by even 10 grams may be what you need to create that same muscle building response you saw from your training when you were younger.
And…as much as you may love fasting?
It may not be serving you well.
It may make it harder to eat enough, get in enough protein and even have full energy stores to push hard in your training.
Again, what worked for a goal in the past, may not match your body now.
You’ve recognized you’re getting older. Recognize you also need a new approach.
And part of that approach is still CHALLENGING YOURSELF.
And not just with weights, although heavy loads and lower rep work for more advanced lifters is ESPECIALLY key as we get older, but also with different tools, tempos and moves that make you just feel…well awkward and uncomfortable!
We’ve got to embrace being uncomfortable and this is something we so often shy away from more and more as we get older.
But if you want to avoid gaining fat and feel your most fabulous, stop clinging to what used to work, embrace a new challenge and focus on building that lean mean muscle!
Why just accept that getting older has to mean feeling old?!
Define how you age and embrace the changes to address them!
Ready to dial in your diet and your workouts to feel your most fabulous at any and EVERY age?
Learn more about my 1:1 Online Coaching!
