I just turned 54 three days ago, and the pictures of me were taken on my birthday. I’m feeling good, better than I’ve felt in a long time. Having said this, I’m not at my optimum place yet. My blood pressure is too high, I’d like to tone up a bit more, and I’d like to lose another 1-2% of body fat. But overall, I’m feeling good, and that counts for something.
As of my birthday, I completed my latest round of P90X (the Lean version), and I lost about 12 lbs of fat and gained a couple in muscle. I went for the lean routine intentionally so that, when I transition to the Basic regime next week, I’ll be lighter on my feet.
Two things I’ve learned in this latest round of fitness:
- Once you’re over 50, you can exercise all you want, but unless you exercise smart, you won’t be healthy. Your body can’t do at 50+ what it could do at 30+ — at least not as quickly. You have to be realistic. Your body isn’t producing as much testosterone, so your muscle tone and size won’t increase as quickly as it used to. So exercise vigorously, but know your body. Know when you need to end a particular workout 20 minutes early, or when you need to switch out cardio for muscle training on a particular day. Know your limitations, in other words, and work with them, not against them. You’ll still get THERE (wherever “THERE” is for you), you just won’t get there as quickly or as easily as you used to. Bottom line: regular, smart, vigorous exercise will improve your life immensely. Aches and pains will lessen, mood will lighten, posture will improve, brain will work better, skin clarity and tone will get better, overall disposition towards life will improve… It’s a no-brainer. I worked out six days a week and rested one, and Tony Horton’s P90X Lean Routine was the ticket for me. Always has been. It’s a fabulous workout. Nothing in my opinion can beat it, and I’ve tried many of them.
- You won’t lose the fat around your belly (or your butt) no matter how hard you try if you don’t eat right. And losing fat around your belly doesn’t just look good, it IS good: for your heart, your core, your lower back, your sleep, etc., and the best way I’ve found to lose that last pound or two (or three) around your belly (and trust me, I’ve tried just about everything here, too) is through a low-carb diet. Hands down. There is no other way to lose it as well or as quickly as that. What does that look like in practical terms? For me, it looked something like this:
- Eggs with veggies or a smoothie (banana, blueberries, protein powder, spinach leaves, and almond milk) for breakfast
- Chicken/tuna salad with olive oil and avocado for lunch
- Meat/fish/soy meat and veggies for dinner
There are, of course, a couple of caveats to this. If you really want/need to lose those last 2-3 pounds (sometimes even 4-5) in a week or two without starving yourself, you do the above diet and you don’t snack between meals or eat after dinner and you drink lots of water and white or green tea. This also means that you avoid bread, rice, potatoes, processed foods and so-called “diet” food (like bars, pre-made meals that come in a box, etc.), sugary drinks, desserts, legumes, and anything deep-fried. I know this may sound extreme, but it really isn’t. It’s just intentional. And it isn’t forever.
Look, when I was a week away from completing the P90X Lean routine, in spite of having completed 12 weeks of an incredibly rigorous workout routine, those last few pounds of belly fat just were not coming off! Something had to give. And something did: my old way of eating. On this new, low carb eating routine, I still was able to eat bacon and eggs in the morning, grilled fish or pork chops with a salad at night, and grilled chicken or a big bowl of grass-fed yogurt with almonds and blueberries and honey for lunch. And get this… I did this on the same week that I celebrated Easter with a big brunch and two birthday outings, which included a slice of chocolate cake for dessert one night, a slice of rich butter cake for dessert the other night, and a seemingly endless portion of pork ribs in between (and quite a bit of alcohol). In other words, even on the crucial week, I had to fib a little. I just tried to avoid high-card foods the rest of the days and keep my exercise routine up.
And honestly, I was shocked. It seemed totally counter-intuitive to eat like that on a week I was looking to lose a few pounds. But I did it, and it worked. Because I was working out every day, I couldn’t afford to skimp on my eating, so I loaded up on protein and kept my carbs to 50 grams a day. That way, when I went to work out, I was burning fat, not the carbs I’d just eaten. That had been my problem all this time. I was trying to lose the last few pounds of fat, but I was eating high carb stuff like rice and bread and potatoes, which meant that all I ended up burning during my workouts were the carbs I’d just loaded into my body. But again, even while eating carbs, I still managed to lose 10 pounds in 3 months at the age of 53. But I lost almost 4 pounds the final week by leaving out the carbs. It was honestly as simple as that. And like a little miracle.
Is this the way I’m going to try to eat from now on? Yes, for the most part. Does this mean I’m going to load up on red meat? No. I’ll have red meat every once-in-awhile, but I’ll stick to fish, chicken, and soy meat as much as possible. Does this mean I won’t drink alcohol? Of course it doesn’t mean that. I collect wine, after all, and love a good bottle to share with friends every once in awhile (had a 2004 St. Emillion Bordeaux for my birthday dinner!). But I will limit my intake to a few glasses a week at most. I have zero interest in drinking a lot in any one sitting. (Gave that up after college.) And I will have the occasional dessert — a few times a month. And when I do, I’ll try to splurge on dark chocolate (heart healthier). What I am going to avoid on a regular basis, though, is bread and rice and potatoes. Again, this doesn’t mean I won’t ever eat them, but they are honestly the main culprits for me when it comes to those last few pounds.
There’s one other element in all of this that I’ve left out, but which is perhaps the main motivating factor in how I’m choosing to live and eat and exercise these days. I have congenital heart disease. I almost died in 2015 from bacterial endocarditis. I had major heart surgery when I was 11 years old to repair a coarcted aorta, and it came back to bite me in the ass 40 years later. My cardiologist tells me that in the next ten years, I’ll likely have to have major heart surgery. She’s just hoping that by then, it’ll be a simple outpatient catheter procedure to repair my aorta. Until then, I not only want to feel and look good, I want to be heart healthy. As luck would have it (or maybe this is the way God designed the whole thing), a low carb diet can coexist with a heart healthy diet. They actually work beautifully together. So while I’m keeping that fat off my middle, I’m also being good to my heart.
Bottom line if you want to be healthy and shed some pounds, especially the last few (you’ve heard this a million times): load up on green leafy veggies, limit fruit intake to one or two fruits a day (bananas and berries are especially good), jettison all processed and fast foods as much as possible, keep sugar intake down, drink lots of water, stick to a higher protein diet (especially if you’re working out, and you should be working out), which means meat, preferably chicken and fish like salmon and mackerel and soy meat, and get at least 7 hours of sleep a night. And did I mention that you should be working out almost every day?
We are an integrated system, folks, which means that any road to wellness involves the whole person. Not just what you eat, but how you exercise, how much sleep you get, what kind of healthy relationships you both create and surround yourself with, and what kind of metaphysical commitments you make (that’s perhaps the most important element in the end, but this isn’t the venue to preach).
I’ll keep you posted on my ongoing journey, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the good, the bad, the ugly. I’m not to optimum health yet, but I’m making progress, and at the end of the day, that’s all we can reasonably expect, right?
50s In Shape 