Suggestions on reducing body fat.

M

marielle

New Member
Hello everyone. I'm brand new to this forum & not really sure how this should work, but here goes.....
I'm 47 & already peri-menopause. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to reduce body fat, while fighting the inevitable hormonal changes I'm dealing with. Sometimes I wonder if I just need to resign myself to the fact that the extra fat I have will always be with me.
Suggestions??????????
 
Outsmarting The Midlife Fat Cell is a great book. After reading it, I stopped beating myself up over all the changes my body has been going through from year to year.

Weight training has really helped me. I'm not my high school weight, but I honestly don't care. I've lost both pounds and inches, and I think I look better than back when I was 115 lbs. with barely adequate muscle mass.

So...a nice mix of weights and cardio may really help you. Later you can gradually adjust your eating habits if necessary.

Welcome to the forum. :)
 
I'm in the same arena as you, don't give up and don't believe that its inevitable. Yes its easier to gain fat now, I found that out when I realized I couldn't fit into my technical gear. I've always been physically fit, not just run around the neighborhood fit. I really believe that hormones play a role in it, making it much harder for us then men to lose weight, but you can decide to eat cleaner now which means looking at everything. Its a trade off, but you cannot expect results if your diet is boardering on average. And I figured I could out-train my diet, but when my normal cycling routine couldn't even get off two pounds, I decided to change-up everything. I sold my bowflex and systematically built my own home gym of barbells, dumbells, a full body heavy weight gym (Body-Solid), a good floor for doing Cathe, stability ball, high step, ankle weights, hand weights for kickboxing, chin up bar, back extension piece. My main cardio is cycling (which is year round, I cycle in the snow also with studded tires) and I have an elliptical cross-trainer with Cardio Coach I use several hours a week. I know it sounds extreme, but nothing was working. I also recommend Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle by Tom Venuto. Every year you loose more muscle mass and I needed a way to grow the muscle and KEEP it despite all the cardio I was doing. Cathe's weight lifting dvd's are unbelievably effective here. You need to match that with proper nutrition and sleep. Protein is very important, along with branched chain amino acids and the right oils (salmon, evening primrose, flax). I hope this isn't too much info, but its how I lost 11 pounds of fat, drastically improved my muscle definition and only have 6 more FAT pounds to go. Its really important not to confuse weight on the scale with body definition and muscle weight. You want that muscle and that will also make you weigh heavier.

The body adapts to anything, change is good. Look at the fat burning rotations on this site. Think about lifting heavier in addtion to changing up your cardio, look at everything you are eating and drinking. I wish you luck!
 
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Hi, Marielle! Like you, I am 47, and within the past 1-2 years I put on a fairly tiresome layer of pure fat around my midsection as well as the outer hips and thighs despite maintaining a fairly intense (for me) program of land cardio, free weights and water training. I have drained off most of that fat within the past 4-6 weeks by, believe it or not, emphasizing cardio workouts that make me sweat as much as they make me puff and pant. I do not use a heart rate monitor (I tend to value breathing rate and rating of perceived exertion more than strict HR), but I know my body well enough to know when I'm working hard in an HR sense. I also do not weigh myself, because I know that maintaining or increasing lean muscle mass will offset fat loss measurements on the bathroom scale; I simply go by how my clothes fit.

It's very weird, though - paying attention to Sweat Rate and emphasizing that has made all the difference. I tend to sweat more when my land cardio workouts include a really good mix of floor plyo work (plyo jacks, plie jacks, plyo lunges, squat jumps; the cardio drills from Drill Max, Boot Camp Original, 4DS-Boot Camp, Kick Max, etc. - clearly more drill-y than dancy), step plyo work (think power drills from Body Max 1, Body Max 2, CTX Power Circuit, HSTA, the I-Maxes, and so on) with some new fangled fast-foot drills, good old fashioned hi/lo, and Cathe kickbox (KPC and 4DS-Kickbox are my faves, with the power drills from Cardio Kicks close behind them) thrown in for good measure. Not to mention cardio drills holding a weight plate (these you have to be very careful selecting, based on your leg power capacity and your shoulder stability).

I come from a long line of fat-storers on both sides of my family tree, so although I try to avoid becoming obsessed with every fat gram I'm ingesting, I do pay attention to fat gram accumulation because of the health risks involved.

The Sweat Rate Strategy has had great dividends, at least for me, but it's a good thing that I'm a home exerciser. When I'm shooting for having the sweat literally pouring off me and flinging droplets Hither And Thither, you practically need a HazMat team to clean up after me - not so great if I were in a studio group-fitness class.

Just my own experience! HTH -

A-Joc
 
Another strategy

Hi all,

Different things work for different people, but what has worked for me is a combination of what the previous two posters suggested. I change things up every few months and I try to set my goals as performance goals and not weight management. (Although weight is always in the back of my mind.) I have found that if I set performance goals, I'm working harder, and not just putting in time. That for me, has made the biggest impact on managing my late 40's bodyfat. Of course, I watch everything I eat.

I just finished X+ and I must admit, it is very different than anything I'd done, but extremely effective for me. Bodyweight exercises work really well for me; pushups, pullups, plyo, etc. I recently changed up my runs and do weekly speed drills on hills plus once a week I do several sets of plyo's into sprints. I found that one in Oxegen. Both strategies have helped build leg strength and power and I can put more energy into my runs and lift heavier, which I'm sure burns more calories. I weight train 3-4 days a week and do cardio 3-4 days a week, plus some yoga.

For me, managing bodyfat requires extreme personal honesty with what I am eating and how I am working out because it is just so darn hard to manage. There is no room for just a maintenance approach.

Tracy
 
I will be turning 49 in a month. I also have been dealing with lots of peri-menopausal systems since age 39. At 40 the weight started getting more difficult to control even though I was upping the intensity of my workouts. After reading an earlier post about eating & diet, I took the recommendation and purchased the Abs Diet for Women by Daid Zinczenko. I am not a dieter, and I do not count calories, but the information in this book has literally changed my body. I have always worked out with Cathe tapes 6 days a week, but by changing my eating habits, and continuing my workouts, my body is better than it has ever been. For me, changing my diet made a remarkable difference, and this book allowed me to make doable changes without becoming obsessed about what I was eating. Don't give up. Even small changes can make a big difference. "Come on 50, we're ready for you"!!!!
 
Hi, Marielle!
It might be helpful to know what you are doing now, so you can get suggestions for tweaking your program.

I'm 51, and I've noticed it's harder to keep weight off the middle! But a combination of weight work (ESSENTIAL!), cardio (including 1-2 interval workouts a week) and watching what goes in my body helps a lot. At our age, with middle-age metabolism and hormones, we can't indulge in 'treats' as much as a 20-something with metabolism on high, so we have to be selective...at least I do!

I don't think merely upping the intensity of workouts is the best idea, as it can add to stress to the body, which can cause the body to retain fat. It has to be supported with adequate rest/recovery and nutrition.

Maca can help with hormonal regulation, adrenal support and exercise recovery (it's a root vegetable from the Andes, usually found in powdered form or in pills--I prefer the powder, which I add to a chocolate smoothie).

HTH!
 
jennifermaria said:
rom what I've read, perimenopause can start around 35

Oh dear, then I'm in trouble ;).
Click to expand...

It's very gradual, and you probably don't notice anything until your 40's. But if you were to have hormonal tests done, they would show a reduction in some hormone levels. "Peri" just means "before."
 
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