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Obesity and Age

Obesity and age are directly related to one another. Anyone over the age of 30 knows the havoc aging plays on a person's metabolism. Unless you exercise a great deal and continue to stay in very good shape, you have probably noticed that as you age it is harder to keep the weight off. This is because nature intended that your metabolism slow down with age. Basically, as a person gets older, it takes less calories to maintain the same weight.

Eat Less To Keep Yourself From Aging Faster.

Obesity can age a person faster than normal. Obesity aging can add as many as 9 years to a person's actual age. Then a person also begins to look older. The only other environmental factor that is comparable to this is smoking, which adds 4.6 years.

Researchers have discovered that calorie restriction is one of the few methods that consistently slows aging. Doing this greatly increases one's life span, not to mention lifestyle. Basically, if you eat less you will age less. They also found that 90% of diseases related to aging stem from bad nutrition and failure to exercise. That's really a phenomenal discovery.

But with the current accepted lifestyles in the Western Hemisphere, age-related disease is climbing. A very large portion of this comes from obesity aging. Aging takes its toll on the body, and being obese makes it much worse. For the first time in history, children from this current generation are not expected to live as long as their parents. This is simply because they will be fatter.

Finding What Does Not Work to Control Obesity

In order to avoid falling into an obesity age group, it is important to know what does not work. Low-carb diets, liquid meal replacements, and pharmaceutical medications are ineffective because they are hard to maintain for a long time. Any weight that is lost quickly comes back.

What works to reduce obesity and age is a reduction in food intake. To prevent gaining weight with age, a person needs to find a way of consuming less calories.

One method is to combine a low-fat, low-calorie diet with several small meals per day, rather than three large ones. Avoid eating fats and sugars.

But be careful about eating too few calories. If someone's calorie intake suddenly drops too much, their metabolism can slow down in an unexpected way. When the body detects or assumes it is starving, it goes into self-preservation mode. Not only does the body begin to take energy from fat, it will also take it from the muscles.

Exercise Regularly

The antidote, you might say, is exercise. Exercise is as important as reducing the calorie intake. A strong, healthy person burns calories quicker and easier than someone who is included in one of the obesity age groups. It's a fact that muscles simply by being muscles burn fat.

Doing 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, of exercise is really the minimum for anyone trying to avoid obesity and age. Do any aerobic physical activity that increases the heart rate and is enjoyable as well. Also do weight or strength training at least a couple of times a week with a day of rest between training sessions.

Get Help If You Need It

If you can't seem to control your weight gain, it may be a good idea to consult a doctor who can check for hormone imbalances that may be contributing to obesity aging. Hormonal abnormalities can hinder weight loss and add to the obesity and age problem. Another capable person to consult is a nutritionist.

Staying physically fit is extremely important during the aging process. Avoiding obesity aging improves life spans. It also increases the quality of that life. Obesity and age grind away at the body and increase the chances of disease and death. But knowing this and taking the right steps makes a person wise. It leads not only to a long life but a healthy lifestyle, too.

See our previous article on Skin Care Anti Aging.

Other wiki resources:  cellular aging; obesity and age; aging enzyme; immune system and aging; collagen and skin