How Seniors lose weight

Ok some facts: You weight is more than ten years ago, or even five years ago. The extra pounds didn't arrive all at once but accumulated gradually before you even realized they were climbing on board. Now you're looking at some serious extra weight that does not seem to move.

But that's to be expected as you get older, right? Wrong.

People over 40 may find it much harder to lose weight and easier to gain because, they burn fewer calories the young.

Gaining excess weight is very common for a number of reasons.

If you're determined to succeed at losing weight, simply cutting calories won't guarantee success. Physical activity is as essential to achieving long-term weight loss as a healthful diet, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). By themselves, neither exercise nor diet can get you to your goal as effectively or as fast as the two of them can together. That's especially true for people over age 40.
Not only is physical activity essential for weight-loss success, the NIH says it's an important factor in maintaining your weight once you've lost the extra pounds. Take comfort in the NIH's use of the words "physical activity," not"exercise."
The message is that you can win the weight-loss game with many different kinds of physical activity. You don't have to do killer aerobics and lift heavy weights at a gym to drop pounds and keep them off. But you do have to do something, and you have to do it regularly.

The bottom line is that you burn fewer calories in your 50s, 60s, or 70s doing the same activities, and the same number of them, that you did in your 20s, 30s, or 40s. The key to preventing weight gain is to compensate by adjusting your food intake, exercising, and generally becoming more physically active.

If you need to lose weight, what should you do?

Your body uses food for energy. It stores any excess energy as fat. This means if you eat more food than your body needs for daily activities and cell maintenance, you will gain weight.

To lose weight, you need to get your body to use up these stores of fat.
Researchers have recently learned that regular physical activity can have a powerful effect on age-related declines in metabolism. One study out of Tufts University Center for Physical Fitness found that strength training by itself increased the metabolic rate of postmenopausal women by 15 percent. Not much, you say?

If the boost translates to only 100 calories a day, which is a realistic expectation, you could save yourself from putting on an extra 10 pounds in a year. Regular exercise offers a trifecta of good health: It burns calories, builds muscle, and improves your overall health. Experts on aging say that the body is better able to repair itself and perform efficiently if it is properly conditioned by exercise and good nutrition.

And the calorie-burning rewards of exercise are not limited to your workout time. Some research suggests that your revved up metabolic rate stays elevated for several hours after you stop exercising.

While weight management may be your number one priority now, think fitness not thinness.

Every single time you exercise more than usual, you burn calories and fat.

There are lots of ways to increase the amount of activity you do. Team sports, racket sports, aerobics classes, running, walking, swimming and cycling will all improve your fitness levels.