5 Barriers to Fitness Over 40 - and How to Get Your Groove Back!

Believe it or not, good nutrition is that powerful! And you can change your eating (or lack of eating) habits bite by little bite. Aim for at least one healthy choice each day and more supportive than the day before. Go for 2-3 improvements each week. Making these small nutritional changes will quickly add up to amazing results as you gain control over your metabolism.

Barrier 4: Ignoring the Fab 4

There are 4 essential components of fitness. If you want to get fit and avoid injury, you'll need some variations of all of them. Many clients complain about taking the time to stretch or just want to do cardio without weight training or weight training without cardio. You need them ALL.  So what are they?

1.    Balance & Flexibility

2.    Muscular Strength & Endurance

3.    Body Composition

4.    Aerobic Capacity

Your body composition shifts as you age. Weight gain after 40 is very common. The most dangerous type is around the mid-section because of its proximity to your organs, so it's the greatest risk for heart disease. The good news is that the combination of cardio, resistance training and flexibility exercises means that a healthy body composition will take care of itself! We lose an average of 5% of muscle mass every ten years after the age of 35 - if we don't do anything about it. A side effect of this is weight gain.

Cardio exercise increases your metabolism so that you burn energy at a higher rate than if you weren't exercising. It reduces your appetite by turning on your sympathetic nervous system. This activates your "fight or flight" response. What does that mean? Try this:

The next time you feel a twinge to binge, take a quick walk or jog. Notice how you feel after you workout. Your hunger will lessen or disappear altogether. Cardiovascular exercise, resistance training and flexibility exercises will help you lose extra weight that stresses out your joints. You'll strengthen the joints and elongate the muscles which reduce your risk of injury in your day to day activities.

Barrier 5: Leaving Your Goals to Chance

Research shows that writing down your health and fitness goals makes them 95% more achievable. The more specific you are about what you want, the more likely you will do what is necessary to get it.

First, check your expectations. Are your goals reasonable? While it would be nice to lose 20 pounds in 7 days, there is no safe way to make that happen. Unrealistic expectations undermine your efforts and make it difficult to stay on track. Look beyond the obvious. Set goals that can be measured with something other than a bathroom scale - like lowering your blood pressure by 10 points or increasing the distance you can walk or jog.

It's much easier to sit with a glass of wine or a bowl of ice cream than to jog to the corner or do crunches on a stability ball. But you don't have to go to the gym, and you can carve out 30 minutes a day to work out. For years I exercised either first thing in the morning before work or at night after the kids went to bed with nothing except a couple of exercise videos, a few hand weights and a workout bench I bought at Goodwill for 5 bucks.

Start right where you are. If you don't (or can't) make time to do this FOR YOU, perhaps the problem isn't the fact that you're time crunched. Perhaps your life has gotten too out of control and the question now becomes priorities. Your health and well being should be at the top of the list!

The best advice I can give you is JUST GET STARTED. Start moving. The more you move, in very subtle ways, the more calories your body will burn throughout the day. And that will have more than subtle positive effects!

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