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Everyone knows this inescapable fact - the metabolism slows down as we age. It’s one of the reasons why baby boomer women get fatter as they get older.

Really?

Unless you understand what affects the speed at which you burn fat (metabolism) how can you believe such blanket statements. I know a lot of women who are over 40, some in their 70’s who are leaner now than when they were in their 20’s and 30’s.

So how do they do it? How can you do it too?

Here are some of the major metabolic facts…

Heredity.

You can’t do anything to change your heredity, but you sure as eggs can change the way you approach your lifestyle if you come from a long line of larger women.

It just may take more work by you, or you may find something like an inherited problem (a sluggish thyroid gland can run in families for instance). Whatever the cause of overweight in your family, you can take steps to counteract it by properly investigating why.

Muscle Loss.

This is probably the major cause of a low metabolic rate in everyone to a greater or lesser degree. First muscle is an active tissue - every pound takes 40-60 calories a day just to stay alive.

Thus the more of it you have, the more energy it burns.

And it is a lie that you will look like the muscly body builders - they are dedicated to their art 24 hours a day. Remember muscle is more compact than fat too.

You as a woman can pack on quite a bit before it shows up. So the simple fact is, the more muscle you have, the more fat it burns.

And don’t believe for a minute that we naturally lose muscle as we age. We don’t. It is just because we get more sedentary as we age. Lazier. Means you have to work out.

Hormones.

This is actually a symbiotic partner to more muscle. The more muscle you have, the more growth hormone you will produce. The more of that you get, the more of all the other hormones your body produces, to keep you in balance and burning fat properly.

Hormone imbalances are a primary cause of weight gain, even after menopause.

Note that growth hormone is produced under 2 circumstances… After a heavy duty strength workout and during sleep. Means you have to work out. Which leads us to…

Not enough deep sleep.

Researchers are proving with more and more studies that people who don’t get enough sleep get fattter than those who do (all other things being equal).

It seems that modern women are existing on about 1 hour less a night than previous generations.

Trouble is we are all different. I need eight hours a night. Yet one of my clients is quite happy with three hours and catnaps during the day. You have to figure out what is your ideal amount of sleep. I suspect it is more than you are getting at the moment.

Toxicity in your environment.

There is a growing body of research that shows toxins the body can’t excrete are stored in fat (adipose) tissue.

In fact some scientists are now calling adipose tissue a gland, just like the pituitary or thyroid. So if you are carrying toxins, your body is smart enough to not let them go once stored away.

This may be a reason why some women can’t shift stubborn fat even though they eat correctly, and exercise a lot. Fat also produces certain hormones linked to insulin resistance- a key factor in a lower metabolic rate.

Insulin resistance.

Insulin is the hormone responsible for shoving the blood sugar into your cells so they burn it. If your cells become resistant to insulin doing its job, caused by other hormones over produced from your body fat, the pancreas has to produce more.

It becomes a vicious cycle with the poor pancreas giving up eventually. And then you get Type 2 diabetes.

This has a huge impact on your metabolic rate. It is why overweight women feel so much better when they lose all that body fat. Their cells are burning energy more efficiently, the load on the pancreas is decreased, and the missing fat is not producing an overload of “bad” hormones any more.

So your body balances up.

Eating the wrong foods.

Protein that has 100 calories takes about 30 calories to digest and absorb. Carbohydrate with 100 calories takes about 7 calories to digest and consume. Sugar even less. You might think that the secret is having a protein only diet like Atkins et. al. so you lose even more weight.

Sure that works for a while, but the energy you need for optimal brain activity comes from carbohydrates, not protein (that’s why folks on high protein diets get grouchy and mean). In other words you must eat a balanced diet to sustain and grow.

The secret to keeping your metabolic rate up is eating a lot of small meals during the day. This also keeps your blood suger levels balanced, so you don’t overwork your pancreas, which if overworked for too long can fail giving you Type 2 Diabetes.

As you can see, all your body systems are like a set of dominoes.

Any negative effect on one system is reflected in all the others eventually. Losing fat through diet and exercise is a simple balancing act if you want to get it right and do it for the rest of your life.

It isn’t hard to do, just requires a change in thinking and creation of some better habits.

At Fitness by Phone we teach you how your body really works, so you can make the best lifestyle decisions for you.