Have you noticed that as you get older, you gain weight easier and it becomes harder to get rid of it? Do you feel frustrated with your efforts and feel like you are going around in circles?

Do you feel that the effort you’re putting in should show you more results than you’re currently getting? If the answer is yes, then this post is for you!

There are scientific reasons why you’re finding it harder to gain weight, and once you know, you’ll be able to tweak your current health plan and start to get results again.

Weight Gain and Age: What is happening?

1. You’re experiencing age-related muscle loss

As you get older, your body loses lean muscle mass, roughly about 3-8% per decade. What does this mean for you?

Lean muscle mass uses more calories than fat, so as you’re losing muscle mass, you’re gaining weight, as your body is burning fewer calories than it used to. So your diet may not have changed, but you’re gaining weight, because your body is burning less calories.

So weight gain likely if you continue to consume the same number of calories as you did when you were younger.

You’re Undergoing Hormonal Changes

Menopause, which occurs in women between then ages of 45-55, cause huge hormonal changes in women. Levels of oestrogen drop a lot, leading to weight gain, particularly around the waistline.  This is the time when your chances of higher blodd pressure, higher cholesterol and Type-2 diabetes significantly increase.

In perimenopause, fluctuations in oestrogen can cause mood swings, making it more difficult to stick to a healthy diet, which can also lead to weight gain.

It’s a tough ti and has a snowball effect. You lose lean muscle, you start accumulating more fat, you burn less calories.

You’re more sedentary

You’re much more likely to be more sedentary at this point in your life than you used to be. This leads to weight gain as you are burning much less calories throughout the day. Chances are you’re sitting so much more than you ever did.

You may also be much busier, meaning grabbing food on the go, longer gaps between meals and over-eating when you do sit down in the evening.

Science-Backed Ways To Lose Weight and Fit Well in Your Clothes At Mid-Life and Beyond

Give your major muscle groups a workout.

Build lean muscle while at the same time strengthen your bones. Body weight exercises and lifting weights will build lean muscle in your body. That will bring your metabolism right back up again, you’ll burn so much more calories at rest, and you’ll fit back into your clothes again.

Focus on Healthy Foods

Get rid of any processed foods you may eat, and focus in instead on a good mix of protein, vegetables, complex carbohydrates, fruit and good fats. Get rid of mid-week junk food and alcohol. Eat the high volume foods that fill you up but are no laden with calories like vegetables, beans, nuts, and fruit. Drink 2 litres of water every day.

Downsize your Portions

Slightly less on your plate can make a huge difference. Not as many carbohydrates at dinner, but filling your plate with more vegetables can really help, while eating dinner as close to 6pm as you can.

Move more

Exercise helps manage your weight so much. You build lean muscle, while burning fat, while it also being great for your mood too.

You’ll find it easier to lose weight when you exercise, and it’ll help counter act the fact that you’re moving less in the day. Brisk 30 minute walks or cycles throughout the week, along with some resistance training workout sessions would be absolutely terrific. You’ll feel much more in control and your weight will feel much more manageable.

I hope you enjoyed this article. You can read here my My Top 5 Tips To Staying Healthy and Feeling Good

To your success,

Jessica Cooke

P.S. You can download my free 30 day Fast-Track to #FEELGOOD Program here

Are you sick and tired of letting your weight consume you every waking thought? Does it consume a lot of your thoughts? Do you feel really uncomfortable in your clothes? Do you spend a lot of your time thinking about what you can and can’t eat?  Do you calorie count, follow diets and feel sick and tired of it all? Do you weigh yourself?

Aren’t you just sick and tired of it? Can I ask you a question?

Do you know when you are eating healthy? Do you know when you feel good? Do you know when you are a healthy weight? I bet you the answer is YES. I bet you know how to eat healthy. I bet you know when you’re over-eating. I bet you know when you’re living healthily, taking care of yourself and feeling good.

It’s hard to admit this. The weight loss industry want you to buy into the idea that weight loss is a complicated thing. That you must study, count, track and weigh yourself to success.

That is a big problem for me and why I HATE THOSE COMPANIES.

Nobody can spend their time counting, weighing and tracking their way to success long term. It’s too boring and unsustainable. There will come a point that you will crack up, and Jeepers, thank God you did. What a horrific way to live your life.

You know what makes me feel ill? Thinking of people sitting in a room, talking about how they are a pound up or a pound down since last week. I could not work with these people. That would drive me up the walls.

My life long  passion as a coach is to help women all over the world, feel good, get fit and healthy, enjoy the process and live their life! And it’s so easily done! You follow some simple guidelines, you get into the exercise, and voila, you are winning at health! You’re feeling good in your clothes! You’re focused on simple action steps and NOT RESULTS. It doesn’t matter anymore what you weigh. You workout, you eat healthy food, you relax at weekends and you fit great in your clothes! Simple!

Throw out the weighing scales and get rid of your food tracker. The time has passed for all that. You are NOT what you weigh. You’re a result of the actions you take. Your actions that you take every day.

Move away from the half starts, the yo-yo, the non-committal. Do you want to be healthy? Do you want to be fit?

If the answer is yes, then workout, eat healthy and start to focus on why you find that a struggle, rather than searching for the next thing that keeps it complicated for you.

Download my free 30 day FAST-Track to #FEELGOOD Program here

To your success,

Jessica Cooke

I hear a lot, at the consultation phase from many women, that they feel they have the ‘middle age spread’, and they often ponder out loud, whether this is just a fact of getting older they need to deal with. I love this for many reasons. It makes me excited at the thought of them in the not too distant future, absolutely loving how they fit in their clothes, having thought it wasn’t that possible at their age. I also love being able to help them realise it’s what they’re doing, not their age, that is leading them to gain weight. Because that’s when the revelation happens, and I love a good revelation, having had so many myself with my past mentors and in all the occasions that I went to a Tony Robbins seminar.

It definitely takes longer to lose weight as you get older, but you just need to do the right things and be patient, and it’ll come. The good news is that all the ‘right things’ that you need to do to lose weight and feel good in your clothes, all leave you feeling really good, happy and relaxed.

If you’re currently doing something now or following a weight loss program that is making you miserable and it’s about deprivation, counting, weighing and leaving out food groups, you can give that up now. There’s another way, and it’s called healthy eating. Yes you may need support and accountability around that, and that’s great! But what you don’t need is a diet plan.

You don’t need to be told what to eat and when. What you really need is a good solid health plan that covers all angles. Fitness, nutrition, mental health etc.

Work out the right way and you wont find it hard to lose weight. It’ll take a bit of time to come off, but once it’s off, it’s much easier to maintain. Interval training, resistance training, and core work are the three best things you can do if you’re a woman over 35 year of age. Why?

High metabolism, you’ll burn loads of calories at rest, you’ll gain lean muscle, you’ll turn into a calorie burning machine. You’ll get fit, you’ll feel amazing.

You’ll feel so, so good. You get such a huge endorphin hit when you do 30 minutes of interval training. Me and my clients laugh so much at the difference between pre and post workout feelings. It’s like night and day. Me pre-session ‘I’m tired, cranky and not in the mood’. Me post session ‘I love everything about life and I’m excited for the day.’ Too funny and it happens to all of us.

Ditch the mid-week wine and crap food if you want to feel good and fit well in your clothes. Don’t let that stuff control you. If it has a grip on you, you might want to do something about it. When I struggled with this stuff, I listened to a lot of Podcasts about it and followed people on Instagram who had reduced or given up their alcohol intake/sugar intake. Anyway, that’s only if you struggle. If you don’t struggle with cutting it out during the week, great. Keep boundaries in your life, or it can be a slippery slope. Leave alcohol to the weekends and your waistline and mental health will thank you for it.

Drink lots of water, eat healthy, get a good solid health plan. Enjoy your life and get on with it then. No need for the endless food tracking, or calorie counting. A 300 calorie bar of chocolate every day will make you fat. A 300 calorie plate of raw vegetables will not. Calorie counting is a load of BS. Healthy, wholesome food and work on your cravings, addictions, and WHY you over-eat or eat bad food. Honest to God in all my years of doing this, it is NEVER about giving someone a food plan. People don’t need  food plans. You don’t need another boring, awful food plan, the internet is heaving with them. You also don’t need to know what someone else is eating in a day. You just need to eat healthy, and figure out WHY you are not. And then address those feelings, rather than the food.

I hope this helps, sorry for the rant, I just feel so passionate about it and it annoys me such much when I see people promote high fats, high proteins, low carbs etc.

Like always, I hope this helps. I love to help women feel really good from the inside out. It is my life’s mission. Comment below if you’ve any questions or just want to say hi. Go to the free tools section of my website to grab lots of free stuff by clicking here.