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If you are 60 years old and you want to lose
weight, you have to adopt some new strategies. Your metabolism has
slowed down, your body's ratio of fat to muscle has changed and you may
be fighting a lifetime of poor eating habits. However, some basic tweaks
to your diet and exercise regimen can promote quick weight loss and
help you develop approaches to cooking, eating and exercising that will
keep the weight off.
Caloric Intake
A 60-year-old woman requires fewer daily
calories than younger women. If you are of average height and sedentary,
meaning you only do light daily activity, you need 1,600 daily calories
to maintain a healthy weight. If you do about one hour of moderate
daily exercise in addition to normal activities, you can consume 1,800
calories per day. If you exercise vigorously or for extensive periods
every day, you can consume between 2,000 and 2,200 calories a day.
Subtract 500 calories per day from these totals and you can lose up to 5
lbs. in one month.
Dietary Components
Not just any diet serves your nutritional
needs. Select a balanced diet that features ample or unlimited servings
of fresh fruit, leafy greens and other vegetables. Get your calcium from
healthy food sources such as nonfat dairy products and broccoli. Choose
plant-based foods for meals and snacks, including legumes, nuts,
unsweetened whole grains, seeds, herbs, spices, olive oil and flaxseed
oil. Drink plain water instead of sugary juice drinks, flavored coffee
beverages and soda. Eat frequent small meals to balance your energy
throughout the day.
Exercise
One of the results of aging is losing lean
muscle mass to fat mass. You can reverse this process by doing
strengthening activities three times per week. If you do not want to
pump iron, choose exercises that use your own body weight as resistance.
Do pushups, either on the floor or against the wall, to build total
body strength. Doing yoga sun salutations target all your major muscle
groups and burns calories at the same time. As you gain muscle, you
raise your basal metabolism, which means you will burn more calories
even while at rest.
Functional Fitness Training
Doing functional fitness activities promotes
weight loss and builds your strength, endurance and range of motion so
you can conduct daily life tasks with greater ease. Many recreation
centers and senior centers offer these types of classes. A typical class
may have you doing compound exercises such as squatting while doing a
biceps curl or lunging while doing pectoral presses. These moves give
you the strength, balance and flexibility to do daily tasks such as
bending, lifting and carrying.
