Streak Day: 1320
YTD Mileage: 1,297.4
133.02 lbs
19.0 Body fat
Here’s the thing. People (including my doctor) keep telling me that people should just expect to gain weight as they age, as if weight gain after a certain age is axiomatic. As a function of aging, so they say, our metabolism slows down every year. Supposedly. I reject that particular piece of conventional wisdom. If weight gain as one ages is unavoidable, I wonder, why isn’t everyone over a certain age pudgy and cushiony, with a pregnant looking abdomen? Although I do have friends who have put on weight in the past few years, I have others who have not. Dear Hubby, as well as his sisters who are in their late forties to mid-fifties, remain as thin as ever (and hubby Phillip still eats as he did when he was teenager). His sisters’ refusal to gain weight as they age remains a little frustrating to me. Two of his four sisters don’t even work out that much. Phillip at least runs and goes to the gym regularly.
I think the truth is that metabolism, slow or otherwise, is not really that much to blame for middle-age weight gain – maybe not even weight gain at any age. Although I’ve been reading deep and long about factors related to weight gain, even in journals from the library, just a cursory search reveals the contradiction that brings into question the role of metabolism in middle-age weight gain, as well as remedies for this problem. Several articles (such as the ones here, here, and here) posit that since weight gain is caused by a slow metabolism, especially as one ages, speeding up the metabolism can help people lose or maintain their weight. But other articles (such as these: here, here, and here) posit that weight gain is not caused by a slow metabolism.
Then articles such as this one contradict within its own text the idea that a slow metabolism even exists. After listing the ways one’s slow metabolism can actually be healthy for her (an idea supported by research reported in this article), the article ends thus:
Slow metabolisms do exist, but a true slow metabolism is rare and is seldom the cause of being overweight, notes Dr. Donald Hensrud at MayoClinic.com. Your metabolic rate is relative to your size and body composition as well as your activity levels. Metabolism may play a small role in how easily you lose or gain weight, but you have much more control over it and can manage your body weight and calorie burn by eating a balanced diet and increasing your exercise.
But wait! Look at the results of this research! Researchers have found out that our metabolisms DO slow as we age, and they know why! We suffer from “deregulated nutrient sensing,” is our cells inability to appropriately sense nutrients we ingest and correctly respond to them. Now that we know WHY our metabolisms (supposedly or not?) slow down, we can do something to halt the slowing process! Supplementation with coenzyme q10, cardiolipin, and carnitine helps to reverse the degradation of mitochondria efficiency caused by the of the aging body’s inefficient absorption of nutrients (the process that supposedly slows metabolism in aging bodies).
This gal is ignoring her metabolism altogether, and concentrating on changing what can be changed in order to lose a little weight and then maintain it: calorie intake and running (although controversy surrounds these two elements in weight management, as well, but that’s a topic for my next post).
