If you’re over the age of 30, you may have found yourself reminiscing over your younger days. Back then, you probably could have eaten anything and everything you wanted without gaining weight. Now, losing weight feels like an impossible task. Most people would chalk this up as “just part of getting old,” and will give up on trying to lose weight. Although it is harder to lose body fat the older you get, it’s not impossible. In fact, once you understand the two main reasons age makes weight loss harder, you’ll have a much firmer grip on you fat loss journey.
The two main reasons it’s harder to lose weight as you get older is sarcopenia and metabolic adaptation. Sarcopenia is the natural muscle loss that occurs after age 30. Metabolic adaptation is the slowing of the metabolism when people eat less and less. You can combat this problem through strength training, proper nutrition, and daily activity.
Sarcopenia
According to Harvard Health Publishing, Sarcopenia is defined as the natural loss of muscle after the age of 30. Most people see as much as 3% – 5% muscle loss per decade.
What does muscle have to do with weight loss? The most important reason is that the amount of muscle on your body greatly determines how fast your metabolism is. This is why you could eat anything when you were younger without gaining weight. Partly because you were more active back then, but mostly because you had more muscle. That muscle was continuously burning calories every hour of every day, even when you’re resting.
With that said, learning to stop and reverse sarcopenia is vital for weight loss.
What Causes It?
Lack of Physical Activity
This is one of the most impactful and widespread causes of sarcopenia. According to the CDC, only 23% of US adults are engaged in at least the bare minimum cardio and strength activity each week. The bare minimum is at least 150 minutes a week of activity, including 2 days of full body strength training. “Activity” doesn’t have to be something extreme like boot-camp workouts. It can be as simple as going for a walk or stretching.
Having some kind of activity is important because muscle works on a “use it or lose it” principal; if you’re not actively using your muscles, your body will get rid of it. Because of this, strength training will have the best impact on reversing sarcopenia. The whole purpose of strength training is to use weight to challenge target muscles in your body. This challenge gives your body a reason to hold on to muscle, even if it’s not being challenged every single day.
Low Protein
Even if you’re physically active, the body cannot build or maintain muscle without the proper building blocks. Those building blocks come from the protein you eat from meats, fishes, and certain plant sources.
Additional hidden benefits of protein include more satisfaction after meals and burning more calories through digestion. Because protein molecules are so large and complex, it takes more energy for the body to digest it compared to fats and carbs. In fact 20-30% of the calories in protein are burned in digestion as oppose to 0-10% for carbs and fats. For the same reason, most people feel fuller for longer when eating a high protein meal.
Low protein becomes a common problem as adults have less and less time to make their own food. Relying on eating out or quick foods from home makes it almost guaranteed to have less protein than your body needs.
What Can I Do About It?
Start a Strength Training Routine
Despite the myth that weight-training makes you age faster, or that weight training makes you stiff; the CDC recommends a minimum of two strength-training sessions a week. A single session only has to be an hour, and the entire body should have been worked by the end of the session. Here is a sample workout routine for different levels of experience:
Beginner (Bodyweight)
| Exercise | Body Part | Sets | Reps |
| Wall Angels | Upper Back | 3 | 5 |
| Assisted Pushup | Chest and Arms | 3 | 8-12 |
| Split Squat | Legs | 3 | 8-12 |
| McGill Curlup | Core | 3 | 8-12 |
| Bird Dog | Low Back | 3 | 8-12 |
| Glute Bridges | Hips | 3 | 8-12 |
Intermediate (Free weights)
| Exercise | Body Parts | Sets | Reps |
| Goblet Squat | Legs | 3 | 8-12 |
| Dumbbell Shoulder Press | Shoulders | 3 | 8-12 |
| Dumbbell Pullover | Back | 3 | 8-12 |
| Cable Row | Back | 3 | 8-12 |
| Hip Thrusts | Hips | 3 | 8-12 |
| Decline Sit-up | Core | 3 | 8-12 |
Advanced (Barbells)
| Exercise | Body Part | Sets | Reps |
| Barbell Squat | Legs | 3 | 5 |
| Barbell Row | Back | 3 | 8-12 |
| Barbell Bench Press | Chest and Arms | 3 | 8-12 |
| Pullups | Back | 3 | 8-12 |
| Hip Thrusts | Hips | 3 | 8-12 |
| Hanging Leg Raises | Core | 3 | 8-12 |
You can see that some exercises work on the same body parts such as the pullover and cable row in the intermediate workout. At least one exercise will show results, but more exercises can be added to the same body part for further development. Also, the same workout can be performed twice a week to meet the CDC’s guidelines.
For those who don’t know, reps are how many times you perform the exercise without stopping, and sets are basically packages of reps. For example, if you do 10 pushups in a row, then rest for a minute to catch your breath, then do another ten pushups; you just did 2 sets of 10 reps.
To learn how to make effective twice a week programs, check out our article here.
Increasing Protein
The US recommended serving of protein each day is 0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight (or 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight.) This will prevent deathly nutrient deficiency, but if you’re looking to prevent sarcopenia and start strength training, you need much more. Between 0.8 – 1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight is recommended instead. If you’re already fairly lean, you should lean toward 1.2 grams. If you carry a bit more body fat, you should lean towards 0.8 grams. As long as you’re withing that range though, you’ll have plenty of protein for your body.
The best sources of protein include meats and fishes. For the purpose of weight loss, great protein sources have the most protein per hundred calories. This is because eating too many calories each day will cause fat gain regardless of if you’re hitting your protein goal. Here is a list of foods that provide the most protein for the least calories:
| Food | Protein (g) in a 4oz serving | Calories in a 4oz serving | Protein per hundred calories |
| Chicken Breast | 30g | 170 | 17g/cal |
| Chicken Thigh | 27g | 200 | 13.5g/cal |
| Tuna Fish | 32g | 150 | 21.3g/cal |
| Salmon | 23g | 230 | 9.7g/cal |
Generally, white meat and fish make the best protein sources. Red meat, like beef, often has a lot of calories from fat, even in lean cuts. Also, certain vegetables like broccoli have been cited as “high protein. However, you would need to eat a bucket of broccoli to get the same amount of protein as 4oz of chicken breast.
Metabolic Adaptation
Metabolic adaptation describes the body slowing down it’s metabolism in response to long-term calorie restriction. In other words, when you either eat less calories than your body needs or burn more calories than you eat, and you continue this for too long, your body will slowly burn less and less calories each day. This is especially true in people who’ve attempted weight loss unsuccessfully, but simply being unaware of how little you eat everyday can cause this problem as well.
What Causes It
Unsuccessful Weight Loss Efforts
The only way to lose weight is through a calorie deficit – consuming less calories than your body needs or burning more calories than you consume. But isn’t that what causes metabolic adaptation? Yes – metabolic adaptation is inevitable with weight loss. It becomes a problem when the calorie restriction is done far too harshly for far too long.
For example, to lose weight, many people take up intermittent fasting to skip 1-2 meals a day. Since they’re eating less calories than before, they should see weight loss almost immediately. However, after only a few weeks or months, the body will adapt to this new calorie level, so the only way to keep seeing weight loss is by lowering calories even more. This is the point where people give up on their diet and eat like they use to. The problem is, though, since their body has adapted to lower calories, eating like normal will make them gain weight. Even more of a problem is that the body adapts almost exclusively to decreased calories, not increased. So increasing calories in itself will not make your body burn more calories a day.
Below is a table describing the example:
| 1. Before Fasting | 2. After Fasting | 3. After Metabolic Adaptation (2-8 weeks later) | 4. After Giving Up on the Diet* | |
| Metabolism (Calories burned per day) | 2,000 | 2,000 | 1,500 | 1,500 |
| Consumption (Calories eaten per day) | 2,000 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 2,200 |
| Calorie difference (are they eating more or less than they burn?) | +-0 | -500 | 0+- | +700 |
| Weight loss/gain per week. | 0lbs | – 1lbs | 0lbs | + 1.4lbs |
Lack of Awareness
Metabolic adaptation can effect you even if you’ve never attempted serious weight loss. As you move from being a a teenager to an adult, you gain more and more responsibilities. Work, family, bills, etc., occupy much more of your time than in your younger years. Being so busy every day makes eating less and less of a priority. It becomes almost automatic to go from eating 3 meals to 2 meals, and maybe down to 1 or none every day. The meals themselves also get smaller and smaller, decreasing overall calories over time.
Similar to weight loss attempts, this gradual decrease in calories can cause metabolic adaptation. The body will slowly adjust to the lower calorie level, making it harder and harder to lose weight in the future. Even if you enjoy only eating once or twice a day, having such a slow metabolism makes life much less flexible. For example, if you’re adapted to eating only 1,000 calories a day, every time you go out to eat with friends or family (which can easily surpass 1,500 calories), you’ll be eating more calories than you burn. causing you to gain weight. The same can be said for parties, holidays, and many other social event. The only options would be to either accept the weight gain or miss out on time with friends and family. That is unless you work on speeding up your metabolism.
To learn more about how many times a day you should be eating for weight loss, check out our article here.
What Can I Do About It?
Be More Active Throughout the Day
By increasing daily activity, your metabolism consistently burns more calories every day. However, it’s important to choose the right activities.
Many people who try to burn calories use high intensity training like running, HIIT training, bootcamp workouts, etc. The problem with this though is similar to the failed weight loss problem: these methods are unsustainable in the long-run. Low intensity activities such as some weight training, walking, or even doing light housework is much more sustainable despite burning less calories.
The best way to track your daily activity is through steps. Almost all smartphones track your steps as long as you keep it with you all day. Although they track “steps,” they can track all kinds of movement like fidgeting and cleaning. This sounds like a negative for most people since adding “steps” without walking seems like cheating. However, all activity is good activity and should be treated equally.
Most people get about 2,000 steps a day, so a good goal is add 1,000 steps every week or so. A good long-term goal is to hit at least 10,000 steps a day. Easy ways to get there is to park far away whenever you drive somewhere, take a quick walk during your lunch breaks, take the stairs instead of the elevator, or devote an hour for just walking and listening to music.
Reverse Dieting
Reverse dieting means slowly increasing calories every day so the body adapts to a higher calorie level. This is a much more advanced method of speeding the metabolism since it not only requires you to track all of your food, but it also requires extremely accurate eating. Most reverse diets call to add 100 calories a week; anything more can be too much for the body to adapt to and will instead cause weight gain.
This is only recommended for those who are severely undereating everyday. For example, those who maintain there weight by eating only an apple and a chicken breast (about 500 calories total). Since there’s no way this person can eat less, and adding activity is not healthy with this low of calories, the best way to regain their metabolism is reverse dieting.