Do you need a midlife reboot?
Dr Marc Bubbs reveals his exclusive new plan that has been designed to boost fitness and wellbeing in your 40s and beyond
Midlife can be a time when many of us feel stuck in a rut. Lack of sleep, high stress levels, poor diet choices and insufficient exercise can creep into our daily lives, causing weight gain, fatigue and low mood, among other things.
Dr Marc Bubbs is a performance nutritionist who has spent years working with Olympic athletes and professional sports players to help them achieve their best results. Now he has harnessed his expertise to create Peak 40, a new plan designed for anyone 40 and over, which will help them eliminate what may be holding them back.
“See this mid point of your life as a turning point – a good time to re-evaluate, recalibrate and orientate yourself towards what you really want in life. It’s an opportunity for you to reboot your mindset and body to achieve your lifelong goals,” says Marc.
Today we will look at how changing the way you work out, getting a better night’s sleep, and switching to a more positive mindset are key to a healthier, happier you.
And then tomorrow, in part two, we will tackle nutrition, detailing how making some simple changes to your daily diet can make a huge difference to how you feel.
These changes are designed to help you now, while setting you up for the rest of your life.
HEART PUMPING
For a serious health boost and to kick start your midlife fitness, you need aerobic exercise.
Start slowly
Aerobic fitness is any kind of cardiovascular exercise that gets your heart pumping. And it is a powerful tool in midlife for improving your heart health, reducing fat and providing a mental boost. It is also strongly linked to longevity and healthy ageing.
Take a walk
You can start with something as simple as walking.
Walking is a very under-appreciated form of physical activity, but getting your steps in every day raises the heart rate, boosts circulation, strengthens and tones muscles, and gets you out in the open air which is good for mental health. Cycling is another great option as it is low impact on your joints.
Power sprint
If you want to push yourself a little further, sprinting is a phenomenally good fitness boost. But you have to build up to it gradually.
Start off on grass rather than a hard surface to reduce impact on joints.
Build your acceleration with sprints from 20-30 metres. To help get your rhythm, skip to the start of the sprint, before starting to run.
STRENGTH BOOSTING
Strength training will increase fitness levels while future-proofing muscles and bones.
Get stressed
Stressing your muscles and bones is essential for growth, and resistance training like lifting, pushing and pulling provides the stress from which your muscles, ligaments and bones grow stronger. We’re evolved to bend, squat,
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Just 10 sets per body part per week is the minimum training you need to do
lift and carry heavy things. The more you incorporate these movements into your daily life, the better your health will be, and the easier it is to maintain a healthy body composition.
Minimalist workout
Recent research shows that the minimum effective amount of strength training required to build muscle, while preventing joint wear and tear, is just 10 sets per body part per week. Try this mini workout. Do five sets of squats with 10 to 20 repetitions, followed by five sets of a ‘push’ exercise, like a press-up, and five sets of a ‘pull’ exercise like a row movement. For this, you can bend forwards, hold bean cans in your hands, lower them to the floor and then pull them up as if you’re rowing until your hands are by your hips.
Do this twice a week for best results.
SUPER SLEEP
Nothing will derail your health faster than insufficient or poor quality sleep.
Nap if you need to
You should be getting seven to nine hours’ sleep a night. But this may not always be possible. If you can’t lengthen your total nightly sleep, aim to increase it by adding short naps.
Naps are best done in 30 or 90-minute ‘sleep opportunities’, so set your alarm for this amount of time. Next, place a mask over your eyes and lie down. For short power naps, you may not fall asleep and that’s OK. These short rest periods are still highly beneficial for the sleep-deprived midlife brain, and support better cognition.
For longer naps, be sure to wake up no later than 4pm.
Start a sleep routine
In order to drift off, your brain and body need to shift down from fifth gear to first. So one hour before bed, turn off all social media and power down your laptop to give your overtaxed nervous system the chance to unwind.
If you find yourself reaching for your phone, read a book, watch something relaxing on TV, do some light stretching, go for a walk, meditate, take a bath, or jot down some things you are feeling grateful for.
Sleep saboteurs
Caffeine is a potent sleep saboteur. Too much in the afternoon or, worse, the evening, can delay sleep and reduce your total sleep time and quality. Aim to keep your caffeine consumption to before noon or 1pm. Alcohol is another major sleep interrupter. It relaxes your nervous system, hence why you feel that ahhh moment when sipping a wine after a long day.
But alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep, the crucial recovery time when your brain is consolidating new information.
What’s more, it leads to a raised body temperature at night and increases your heart rate, both of which detract from a good night’s sleep.
To improve sleep eliminate alcohol at least four nights a week.
MANAGE YOUR MINDSET
To achieve Peak 40 health and performance, optimism is essential. It’s entwined with motivation. You can do this!
Imagine your best self
New research has found that a daily five-minute session of imagining your best self can improve optimism.
To do this, imagine your goal – be it weight loss, more confidence etc – and write down a detailed description of how you new you feels.
What new emotions or sensations do you experience? What new identity do you take on? What new relationships have you built?
Once you have that picture clearly in your mind, ask yourself a question – how many of those attributes could you apply to yourself today?
What’s stopping you from being that person today? The answer is your mindset – but the good news is that you can change it.
‘‘ Imagine your goal, be it weight loss or confidence, and write down how you feel
Be kind to yourself
Do you remember the bad things that happen in your day more clearly than the good? You’re not alone. In evolutionary terms, we’re hard-wired to default to negative, cautious or fearful thoughts in order to survive.
However, self-talk reverberates deep in your subconscious and negative self-talk is like a heavy backpack weighing you down, bringing your mood, confidence and likelihood of success with it.
The key is to turn these negative thoughts on their head.
You didn’t fail, you allowed yourself to grow. Tomorrow will be a better day.
Write the words “I can” on a Post-it note and stick it somewhere you will see it every day. Once you’ve told yourself you can do something over and over, you’ll start to
believe it.