Common Fitness Failures, Fixed For 40+ Living
Changing just one small habit a week could put yourself back on track to finally finding fitness
Don’t knock yourself out. Fix one small issue at a time.
THE BRIEF
Time to read: 4 minutes 20 seconds
Time to action: 30 seconds
Mantra: Results will come from the smallest of lifestyle changes
Main message: It’s good not to shoot yourself in the foot
Stat: 30% of people fail to accomplish the fitness goals they set just last year
One. The loneliness number, but did you know it’s also the number that appears on more songs than any other, by a crazy, ludicrous, stupid margin (David Klein wrote a brilliant book on it if you’re interested). As singular as it is, we need to ask ourselves, where would we be without one? It’s where it all starts of course and it’s the perfect place for progression - what doubles more neatly than one? But before we get on to ‘two’, if you change just a singular thing, would it actually have any effect on your physical performance? If it’s the right thing, at the right age, it could make all the difference.
Just to be clear we are not talking about swapping cars for bikes or sugar for carrots. These simple, let’s say ‘adjustments’, ‘tweaks’, and ‘course corrections’ are, laughably simple. Meet five simple ways to gain without adversely affecting the way you live. Here’s what what we need to do to course correct for 40+ fitness.
Failure: Watching everything (but your consumption)
Simply put, we all eat too fast. Even at 40+, we’ve adopted the irritating habit of multi-screening - watching the TV and checking our phones when we should be appreciating, time taste and flavour. The practical upshot for your nutritional intake is an unwelcome uptick. We’re literally not paying attention to what we eat, so we are eating and eating and eating. The trick is to remove the distractions, to ‘force focus’ on a specific sense (taste), not every sense. It works of course - research from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found people who took 30 minutes to eat a cup of ice cream felt full, but people who ate it in 5 minutes were still hungry.
Fix it with… yoga: If you struggle to settle your senses before you eat, try inhaling to the count of 6, holding for 3 seconds then exhaling for another count of six. Repeat that 2-3 times before you dig in. It’s a technique which has been proven to increase mindful eating and results in less weight gain over time, according to the journal Eating Behaviours.
Failure: 5/2 splits
The weekend - hooray! However, 48 hours off from the world means almost 30% of your week is free-form, not fitness-form, which might be a wee bit high at 40+. In Gen X speak that’s grade C, at best. You’re better than that, you deserve a nailed-on A+ where your fitness goals are concerned.
Fix it with… Time and Space: There is a tendency to reward good effort with poor results - workouts that equate to pie uptake, cardio that takes the cake intake higher and higher. We reward ourselves with food, which means at best slower results and at worst, no results at all. So short of expensive shopping or self-gratification, what is a suitable reward for workout gold? The answer is the rarest commodities - time and space. If you stick to your goals, give yourself 30 minutes or an hour to do exactly what you want. And stick to it. Lego builds, YouTube trawling, a coffee in silence. Take the time and space to both appreciate what you've done and enjoy exactly what you’ve won - ‘you time’.
Failure: Sedentary Sofa
Sitting and eating means increased calorie intake, less calorie burning and potentially sabotaging your sleep. A study conducted at the University of Chicago revealed that individuals who experienced a loss of up to three hours of sleep tended to consume approximately 200 additional calories in snacks the following day compared to those who enjoyed a continuous 8-hour sleep. It’s not wrong to sit, but be aware of the over-consumption with it. The sofa/streaming/consumption trifecta can be what ruins your fitness results.
Fix it with…Credit/Debit: There is a balance to be had here. Can you earn that extra indulgence? When you use the pause button to make a cup of tea, can you use a chin-up bar as you enter/exit the room?
Failure: Protein Pushing
The reason everyone in the health and fitness industry talks endlessly about protein is eating it triggers protein synthesis (muscle building). Having muscle is infinitely better for your body than storing fat on numerous levels. This synthesis lasts about 3 hours. The UK still has a tendency for ‘loading’ the last meal of the day (the biggest, the most food, later in the day). So you’re only fueling muscle development for a few hours a day.
Fix it with… A Spread: Spread your protein love. 3 meals a day should ideally mean 30g portions each time. There is no point in overloading on protein as an excess will do nothing for you. Ideally, eat 30g of protein, 30 minutes before training and after to see results more quickly. In the current climate, protein can seem expensive, but if you get it from cottage cheese or beans it’s perfectly doable. At 40 it’s a small change that can result in visible gains more quickly.
PT WOLF
Wolf is a personal trainer who tries and tests every programme we put together. A celebrity trainer, Wolf has been a fitness journalist, practising what he preaches for over 20 years. Now in his 40s, Wolf has added muscle to his frame in every decade of his life and has an annoyingly healthy body fat percentage. He tries it before he says it, but even more importantly, he lives it every day.
ASSOCIATED STUDIES:
YOGA AND EATING SPEED
Body Awareness, Eating Attitudes, and Spiritual Beliefs of Women Practicing Yoga
Authors: K. A. Dittmanna; M. R. Freedmana
TELEVISION AND EATING
Stacy A. Gore, Jill A. Foster, Vicki G. DiLillo, Kathy Kirk and Delia Smith West,
School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA
Accepted 22 July 2003. ; Available online 28 August 2003.
SLEEP AND EATING CALORIES
2009 American Society for Clinical Nutrition
ORIGINAL RESEARCH COMMUNICATION
Sleep curtailment is accompanied by increased intake of calories from snacks1,2,3
Arlet V Nedeltcheva, Jennifer M Kilkus, Jacqueline Imperial, Kristen Kasza, Dale A Schoeller and Plamen D Penev
1 From the Department of Medicine (AVN and PDP), the General Clinical Research Center (JMK and JI), and the Department of Health Studies (KK), The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and Nutritional Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (DAS).
KG OF FAT IS BURNED SOONER IN THE MORNING
Brehm, B.A., and Gutin, B. Recovery energy expenditure for steady state exercise in runners and non-exercisers. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. (1986) 18: 205,
Kansas State University (Wilcox, Harford & Wedel Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise, 17:2, 1985)
