How to stay fit after 40

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By Dr. Sheela Nambiar

As we get older our body changes and we need to adapt accordingly to help us lead quality lives

The changes that come about as we age are mainly hormonal: Falling estrogen levels in women, which leads to the advent of menopause, and falling testosterone in men, which leads to andropause. Mood changes, fl agging enthusiasm for life, weakening of muscles, and failing memory are all common with age unless specifically addressed.

Staying fit is not necessarily about physical fitness alone but includes your emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, creative, and financial well-being. The most important thing is to feel engaged with life and find meaning in what one is doing in the latter phases of our lives.

Here are some tips to staying healthy as we age:

Check your weight

Staying at an ideal weight is important for healthy longevity. Carrying extra weight is detrimental to heart health. Obese individuals are more prone to depression, fatty liver, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, sleep apnea and numerous health problems that decrease quality of life.

However, weight loss (when required) should focus on fat loss and not muscle loss (which will also show up as a lower weight on the scale). The scale therefore needs to be used with caution. Weigh yourself by all means, but keep in mind that you want to preserve muscle and lose fat. Keeping track of your waist circumference is the simplest way to gauge fat loss.

One’s metabolism does slow with age. This is even more prevalent if you don’t make a conscious effort to maintain active muscle tissue through weight training. However, excessive weight gain with age is not inevitable. Preventing this takes a conscious effort of regular exercise and healthy eating.

TIP — Monitor your weight and your waistline. Ideally, an Indian male should have a waistline of 78 cm and certainly not more than 90 cm. An Indian woman must have a waistline between 72 cm and 80 cm.

Exercise, strength and muscle mass

Strength training is an extremely important pillar of fitness, especially as we age. We tend to gain fat and lose muscle as we grow older, especially if we are not actively training to build or even sustain muscle mass. Indians, inherently, have low muscle mass and are therefore at a disadvantage. Muscle is integral for our daily functionality and becomes even more important as we age to prevent injury, aid in effective movement and so on. Weakness and ‘fraility’ results from lack of muscle strength. Building muscle mass with weight training will optimise health, day-to-day functionality and also help you burn fat.

It is necessary for everyone to continue to exercise, irrespective of weight. Include cardio (walking, cycling, swimming, group classes), strength training, and a form of exercise such as yoga for flexibility in your routine.

Regular exercise also –

► Keeps the mood elevated with the release of endorphins that exercise produces

► Maintains and improves memory

► Prevents fat gain

► Improves posture

► Prevents aches and pains

► Improves decision making

► Increases vitality and

► Prevents age and lifestyle related diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, heart disease and so on

While some decline in health and fitness is inevitable with age, you can control how you age by making fitness, food and lifestyle changes. With the right exercise program, you can stay fit and healthy through your later years.

TIP — Don’t start a high impact activity like running without fi rst training to strengthen the muscles around the knees in order to prevent injury. This is especially true after the age of 40.

Your diet

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food”

— Hippocrates.

What you eat can heal you or make you ill. Crash dieting is not the ideal way to ‘lose weight’ in the long term. While you may lose some weight in the short term, this is not sustainable. You should be eating a diet that not only keeps you at an ideal weight but also nourishes you.

Keep your carbs from the bread/cereal/grain group to an absolute minimum (our Indian diet is replete with this group). Consume plenty of vegetables, some fruit and protein from beans, legumes, seeds, and nuts. You should enjoy small quantities of food that are of good quality and thoughtfully sourced.

Fast foods (made with poor quality ingredients), processed food and sugar are best avoided. Food that is cheap, easily available and extensively marketed by large food companies (read packaged food with preservatives) is often the ‘go-to’ food when one is hungry. It is easier to buy a packet of biscuits or instant noodles, for instance. The health benefits of these foods are far from ideal. The food companies don’t exactly have your best interest in mind while marketing these foods. Besides the added sugars, salt and other ingredients make such foods excessively tasty and even addictive.

TIP — Keep carbs to a minimum. Eat more fresh foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds and less processed foods with added sugar and other additives.

Stay active

An hour of exercise cannot make up for a sedentary lifestyle; it does not give you the license to stay sedentary the rest of the day. The detrimental effects of siting all day are not negated by an hour of exercise.

Sitting is considered the new smoking. Sitting for hours on end produces everything from poor posture to weight gain to depression, a shorter lifespan, diabetes, high blood pressure, deep vein thrombosis and other health problems. Even some forms of cancer like those of the colon, breast and uterus are commonly found among individuals who lead sedentary lives.

Make a conscious effort to move more.

► If you have a sedentary job, get up and move around every 20-30 minutes

► Do a few exercises like push-ups, squats or tricep dips against your chair

► Walk the stairs instead of taking the elevator or the lift

► Stand while watching TV

► Have a walking meeting

► Invest in a standing desk so you can opt to stand and work from time to time

► Walk around at every commercial break of your favourite TV program

TIP — Move through the day. Stay active physically .

Create some ‘me time’

As we grow older, one luxury we can well afford is time spent on ourselves. With children mostly grown up and much of the angst of our younger years behind us, we can now focus on our own growth. This ‘me-time’ should include practices that enhance our lives. Self-discovery, exploring interests, travel, spending time in nature, exercise and meditation must be a part of your daily routine.

The 40s are a decade when many begin to peak on the work front. Being engaged with work will keep your brain differently absorbed especially, if you enjoy your work and it challenges you. It can, of course, prove stressful when it conflicts with personal life and family. Creating time for yourself becomes even more important for you to be able to deal with added stressors.

TIP — YOU are important. Make sure you spend quality time on yourself doing things you enjoy.

Focus on every aspect of your life

All aspects of your life are important. Intellectual and creative growth can be enhanced by pursuing activities you perhaps had no time for earlier.

Intellectual wellbeing: Take care of your brain. It deteriorates with disuse like any muscle in the body. Improving and even maintaining brain health takes effort. Spending time in nature is a simple way of improving well-being by reducing anxiety, depression and even, anger. Breaking the monotony of day-to-day life and engaging your brain in different ways is important to keep it healthy.

TIP — Set a goal like learning something new every year (a new language, a musical instrument, a physical exercise form)

Social and emotional well-being: This refers to your connections with people. Do you enjoy a few deep, authentic relationships? Do you have connections that you truly enjoy and in which you can be vulnerable if you need to? Relationships in which you feel ‘safe’ and not judged? Research from the Blue Zones like Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy and Loma Linda in California, where the life expectancy is longer than the world average, found that social connections matter. Loneliness kills. Staying connected socially takes time and effort especially in today’s fast-paced world. Perhaps, you have neglected it somewhat while you were busy looking after your family and building your career. Maybe now is a good time to reestablish connections and nurture relationships.

TIP — Set aside quality time each day for an important relationship in your life. Ensure you have a few truly authentic ones.

Manage stress better: While stress is inevitable, and to some extent, even good for you, how you manage it is critical for well-being. Excessive, mismanaged stress can lead to cognitive decline over a period of time. Managing stress better is a matter of learning a skill. Have a repertoire of stress management tools like breathing, meditation, massage, exercise, music and talk therapy available to you so you can access them in times of need.

TIP – Have a few stress relieving techniques handy. Deep breathing, even for a few minutes in the immediate aftermath of a stressful event, calms you down instantly. The stressor may not change but how you deal with it will.

Find a cause, or developing a passion are all-important in the larger scheme of things and for better life satisfaction.

TIP — It could be anything, from giving for a cause, exploring philosophy, spiritual practices etc.

Staying fit after 40 is more than about physical fitness. It has to take into account your life from a more holistic perspective. These are some simple strategies to enhance your life and make it more meaningful as you grow older.