How to exercise in midlife
Official guidelines for adults are that we should do at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity such as cycling or brisk walking every week, equating to just over 20 minutes a day, or around 2,500 steps. And yet, four in ten adults (in the UK) fail to meet this minimum threshold.
It is thought that humans need so much exercise because we have spent the vast majority of our evolutionary history being active – spending our days gathering food and hunting animals. If the only gathering food is picking up the Amazon pantry box or Ocado delivery from your side door, you are going to be in trouble.
By midlife, it’s more important than ever.
With ageing there’s also a progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, a condition termed sarcopenia. On average, ageing individuals lose muscle mass at a rate of 1-2% per year past the age of 50, but that may be sooner if there’s a lack of physical activity or if energy intake is less that is needed. If you’ve noticed a change in the gym then it could be that you are noticing the earlier decline in muscle strength that may well start to decline before any measurable changes in muscle mass.
Lean body mass is commonly used to describe the muscles in your arms, legs, back, neck and abdomen. But actually it also includes your heart muscle, and the tissues of your other internal organs. This is the part of your body you want to preserve or expand. How much lean body mass you have is the most important factor in determining your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories). The higher the amount of your lean body mass, the higher your metabolic rate and the more calories you will burn when you are sitting or lying down. This higher metabolic rate makes it easier to maintain your weight.
If you've had children, you will have also noticed a difference to your body (no shit!). Pregnancy elicits release of a hormone called relaxin, which (among other effects) causes ligaments to become more stretchy. They can remodel back to normal after the child is born but can also be permanently stretched, increasing the risk of injury.
What the experts say
The recommendation is that you engage in some of the resistance training that focuses on all major muscle groups a minimum of 2 times per week. Moreover, when you do resistance training in the days after your body remodels and heals the tiny tears to muscle tissues, making it stronger or growing it slowly. This helps in two ways - first, the more muscle you build, the more calories you'll burn each day. Second, the rebuilding process itself requires extra energy, boosting your daily calorie burn by up to a further 10%.
For the truly focused, the best time to exercise is first thing in the morning, before you have breakfast. That's when your insulin levels are at their lowest and the hormone glucagon is at its highest. This signals the body to start moving fat from the fat cells to our working muscles meaning the calories you burn will come from fat. However, the truth is that for most people the best time to exercise is the time that will best fit into your schedule so you can do it consistently.
According to The National Academy of Sports Medicine, after the age of 35 you will lose between half and one perfect of your muscle mass annually unless you engage in regular physical activity to prevent it.
Exercise helps gut health too. Both in terms of helping to get bowels going, but boosting levels of butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that is helpful for gut health.
Exercise tips that haven’t changed in midlife
Your muscles can't recover properly after your hard workouts when you’re dehydrated—nor can your body effectively burn fat, which negates all of your hard work. Staying hydrated simply means keeping a bottle of water to hand and sipping on it regularly. Unless you exercise beyond 90mins duration you are unlikely to ever need sports drinks.
What type of exercise should you do?
10,000 steps - build your base fitness
The 10,000-step target pursued by wearable gadget enthusiasts was a marketing ploy dreamed up by a Japanese manufacturer of pedometers in 1965, and it has been supported by more than 300 academic sources since. This is easiest when the goal is broken into bite sized chunks, so, for example:
Walk for 30 minutes before work, at lunch, and after dinner. Add a few, quick 10-minute walks throughout the day (around the office, popping out to post office etc) and you’re done. If you take part in sport or do an exercise class, enjoy rigorous gardening or such like, you can swap out a chunk of those steps.
HIIT (high intensity interval training)
HIIT enhances the metabolic machinery in muscle cells that promotes fat-burning. Research consistently shows that people who perform HIIT have more markers for fat oxidation (fat-burning) than those in the steady-state exercise group. It’s not a must-do however, as many people need to work up their base level of fitness first, so focus initially on that all-important step count.
Pilates & strength exercises, no matter what your current fitness level
We focus a teaching Pilates, Strength and Stretch in the Honest Weight Loss programme as it is where guidance is needed most. If you don’t manage movement well, you risk injury. The great news is that if you do these exercise properly, the evidence suggests that you'll have the same muscle gains with just days of strength training as you'd have with three - leaving us with an extra day of bonus rest!
