How to beat creeping midlife weight gain
Stress. Muscle loss. Complacency. No wonder it’s so hard to lose the pounds after the age of 50. But don’t give up… Boudicca Fox-Leonard has some solutions
If you’ve ever felt the shock of standing in front of the mirror and not recognising the body staring back at you, you already know that doing battle with middle-age spread is as much psychological as physical.
Changes to our bodies in our middle years can trigger a real bereavement process for the loss of youth. Once upon a time, realising that you had put on a few pounds was a catalyst for getting fit and healthy, but later in life, when the weight gain feels inevitable regardless of what you do, doing nothing becomes all too easy.
Dee Johnson, a psychotherapist at the Priory Hospital Chelmsford, explains that so-called “psychological blocks” to weight loss in midlife can involve – consciously or unconsciously – giving up on ourselves.
“A common response to that fear and anxiety is to avoid what is happening and so the self-neglect slips in,” she says. “Motivation goes, and often at this time of life the pressures of looking after others mean we fall to the bottom of the list.”
So it can become “normal” not to pay attention to our own welfare. This can then lead to a misconception that it is simply “too late for self-care”.
Johnson believes that we need to ditch the negative notion that reaching your 50s means giving up caring for your appearance and health – and most importantly, staying active. “Weight loss – or maintaining a healthy weight for you – should always go hand in hand with our emotional wellbeing,” she says. “Whatever our age.”
Yet, there are unavoidable physiological changes that need to be considered with middle-age. But forewarned is forearmed.
In our 40s the levels of hormones that maintain muscle mass tend to decrease. Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, is a natural part of ageing, with most men losing about 30 per cent of their muscle mass during their lifetime.
Since muscle is highly active tissue that burns a lot of energy (even when we are just lying around), losing muscle as we age makes it much more likely that we will gain weight. As Dr Michael Mosley explains: “Unless we do resistance exercises we typically lose 3-5 per cent of our muscles every decade after the age of 30.”
Mosley – who has presented healthrelated TV programmes and is credited with popularising the 5:2 diet, which involves intermittent fasting – says these changes are most obvious in women, where going through the menopause leads to a fall in oestrogen levels and a build-up of fat, particularly around the tummy.
Estradiol is the form of oestrogen that regulates metabolism and weight. A decrease can change how fat is distributed around the body, causing a woman to gain more in the belly as opposed to the hips, thighs and buttocks – though Mosley adds: “Men also see hormonal changes, with a fall in testosterone levels leading to more belly fat.”
Some of us are blessed with genes that make us less likely to succumb to middleage spread. But consume more energy than you burn and you’re likely to see increased belly fat, no matter what.
Your first reaction might be to put on your trainers and head out to pound off the pounds, but, says Mosley: “It will be a lot easier if most of the heavy lifting is done through dieting. You would have to do a huge amount of exercise to burn through enough calories to lose that much weight.” Yes, you can tone up – you will look better and feel good – but you probably won’t drop a significant amount of weight.
This is something that he attempted to demonstrate in his 2020 Channel 4 series Lose a Stone in 21 Days with Michael Mosley. His conclusion was that it really is possible to lose a lot of weight in a short period of time with a rapid weight-loss keto diet – not that a keto diet, with its emphasis on low carbs and high fat, will be to everyone’s taste.
BANISH CARBS
Mosley says that the most effective approach, at least in the short term, is to significantly cut back on carbs. “If you reduce the carbs you eat to less than 50g a day then you will go into a state of ketosis, where you start burning through your fat stores,” says Mosley. “One of the big advantages of ketosis is that it suppresses production of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, so you don’t feel ravenous.” “If you reduce the carbs you eat to less than 50g a day then you will go into a state of ketosis, where you start burning through your fat stores”
This includes all carbs, including the healthy fibrous ones such as vegetables, legumes – chickpeas and lentils – and wholegrains, such as barley, oats, buckwheat, and rye.
Such a strict approach won’t suit everyone but if you’re determined to lose a stone, Mosley says research shows that the best way to do so, and keep it off, is to start with a low-calorie, low-carb diet, and then gradually increase the carbs and calories until you are no longer losing weight.
And while extremely restrictive diets will help you to lose weight quickly, the risks to wider health cannot be ignored. The cricketer Shane Warne recently died from a suspected heart attack, days after completing a strict detox diet.
TAKE A MEDITERRANEAN APPROACH
“After you have lost the weight, I recommend sticking to a lowish carb Mediterranean-style diet, rich in oily fish, nuts, vegetables and legumes, and with occasional treats, as this has been shown to be the best diet for long-term mental and physical health,” says Mosley.
For nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert, a Mediterranean diet has an added effect that can get lost in the conversation about weight loss. How happy you are.
Sitting down to a regular Sunday roast with family, where you enjoy social interaction – the kind that goes hand in hand with a Mediterranean lifestyle – could be more effective than staying at home on the gruel. “We have good research that says more social interaction around meal times is healthy for you as well.”
In contrast to Mosley’s exacting approach, Lambert favours a holistic one that looks at sleep, gut health and how you eat. When it comes to weight loss, she prefers slow and steady, without affecting your set point weight – the level at which your body decides whether to hang on to or burn fat.
“Remember you’re an individual. Have you lost a lot of weight to get to this point? Have you put on a stone? What is your job? What is your relationship with food like?”
Lambert’s concern is that if you’re not in a good place with food, then how can you lose the weight and keep it off?
Sometimes it’s about being realistic regarding your goals.
“It can be easy to pick the number that’s the lowest you’ve been in your life and then aspire to that. The problem is that you were younger then and now have less muscle mass. Then there are hormonal fluctuations. Your body is meant to change.”
Maintaining a calorie deficit is one of the most ubiquitous pieces of advice when it comes to weight loss. However, Lambert says that the calorie content of food labelling is about 30 per cent inaccurate. “And based on a calculator that’s 120 years old.”
We don’t all absorb calories in the same way. “We’re unique human beings, so someone might absorb all 100 calories of a pack of crisps. Someone else might absorb 70 per cent.”
COUNT CALORIE QUALITY
In her book The Science of Nutrition, she explains that it’s about the quality of the food, not just the amount of energy it contains. “Avocado toast is more nutritious than a cheese sandwich, but it has more calories,” she says as an example. So make sure the calories you take in come in the form of healthy whole foods.
Try changing the carbs you eat from white to brown. “Try bulgur wheat and quinoa, or different rices.” Lambert recommends incorporating more pulses and legumes, which contain iron, fibre and protein. “Aim for 30g a day, the recommended amount. In the UK we’re only hitting around 17 grams.”
A higher fibre intake has been linked to a lower risk of belly fat. Although it’s not understood why entirely, studies