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Natural Weight Lose, Part I (exercise)

© Robert M. Oliva

Losing weight doesn't get any easier as we get older. But most of us remain interested in losing unwanted pounds and looking youthful. Especially in the warm weather when we are outdoors a lot, the desire to be thin seems to become a national obsession.

As we age it becomes increasingly more difficult to shed weight. Our metabolism begins to slow down and hormonal changes shifts the proportion of fat to muscle. For this reason, those of us over 50 have to know what we're doing to be successful in our weight lose efforts.

Sarcopenia

Something all of us have to deal with as we get older is Sarcopenia, the age-related loss of skeletal muscle. Because of this, we need to be concerned about our continued ability to perform our daily work, household tasks and maintain a proper body weight. Dealing with Sarcopenia is a task for all of us that wish to be healthy and lean as we age.

What happens to us over the years is that slowly muscle mass is lost. We may even weigh the same as we did twenty or thirty years ago but we have a much higher proportion of fat to muscle on our bodies. Eventually this muscle loss makes everything we do more difficult. This is intensified when we diet and lose weight too rapidly or we don't exercise while we lose.

Simply put, with the loss of muscle everything we do gets harder: driving a car, getting up from a chair, walking around the block, climbing stairs or lifting packages and, of course, losing weight. I'm sure you or others you know have said a dozen times how hard it has become to lose even a pound.

But it's not hopeless. It is possible to maintain a healthy weight regardless of our age. So as we get older it is even more crucial to look at exercise as a way of stay healthy and lose unwanted weight.

What To Do?

Being physically active and exercising is the best way to combat Sarcopenia and lose weight. We don't need to become athletes to stop the loss of muscle mass. But we need to perform different types of exercise to make sure our muscular system is maintained.

So let's get to it.

The Best Way to Lose Weight

There are really only two ways in which we lose weight safely and keep it off: exercise and food. No need for anything extreme just smart eating and physical activity. In this month's article I will explore the role of exercise in weight reduction.