Ronan Oliveira (via a YouTube video uploaded/created by Vishen Lakhiani) explains five main, lifestyle-driven reasons people tend to gain weight after their 20s: muscle mass loss; lower incidental activity; an unhealthy relationship with processed foods; stress and lack of sleep; and hormonal changes. He cites several studies and gives practical solutions for each cause (strength training, increasing daily activity, ditching processed foods, improving sleep and stress management, and lifestyle adjustments during menopause).
Chapters
When people get to the age of 50, no one gets surprised if they get fat, sick and tired. In fact, if they don't, we give them compliments. We have this belief that our bodies reach a peak state by the mid-20s, and after this, they are supposed to slowly decline. Every year, from the age of 25 to 50, the average American puts 1 to 2 pounds of fat. And we allow this to happen for the beliefs that we have. But let me tell you something. All these things are not supposed to happen. They are all results of our lifestyle. Our bodies were designed to be healthy and strong as time passes by. And there are five main reasons why we gain weight as we get older. Let me tell you what they are. Reason number one, muscle mass loss. Now, imagine if you could have a device that you plug into your body and it burns calories without you having to do anything. That would be super cool, right? In fact, this already exists, and it's called muscle. This is exactly what muscle does to you. But it's a very expensive thing for the body. So if you don't show your body, you really need it, you lose it. After the age of 30, the studies show that we lose 3 to 8% of our muscle per decade. Once you lose 5 pounds of muscle every 24 hours, your body will burn 250 calories less than if you had that muscle on. And that means that over the course of 14 days, you get one pound of fat accumulated in your body. And we lose muscle mainly because we either don't use them often or because we do too much cardiovascular activities. But this solution is quite easy. The thing that you need to do here is just lift heavy things, go exercise and do strength training. Going to the gym may be the most helpful thing for you here. Reason number two, lack of activity levels. Now, there's an important distinction here. There's a difference between physical exercise and physical activity. Physical exercise is all the movement that you do for a purpose of improving your fitness levels. When you go for a run, when you go to the gym, physical activity is the unintentional movement, is when you stand up and walk to get a coffee or walk from your car to the office. When we are kids, this is something that doesn't stop. We just want to play and move. And when we are teenagers and university students, this is still fairly high. But as we get a job, we spend the whole day sitting, most of us. And at home we sit to watch TV and we commute in our cars, also sitting. And when we gather our friends, most of our outings is about sitting and talking. Most of the time activity levels are very low. What studies showed is that increasing activities level may be one of the major players in fighting obesity in the world. The difference between someone who has a job sitting the entire day and the other person whose job get them to walk and stand most of the time may be up to 700 calories per day. And this means if these two people ate the same every day, the person who sits throughout the entire day may gain one pound of fat per week. Now the solution for this is pretty easy as well. You just need to get more active. Think about three different environments. A think about work. At work, park your car further from the office and walk. Have meetings while you walk. Also walk when you are on the phone. Try to have a standing desk that you can stand and work at home. Do things like gardening and cleaning. Can spend 100 calories per hour. And when you got gather your friends, do some dancing, bowling or playing video games that get you to physically move. Can also spend more than 100 calories per hour. Reason number three relationship with food. Think when you were a kid. When we were kids, we really didn't care much about food unless it's a sweet. But most of the time we just want to play, just want to come outside. But then parents and people around reward us with food. When we do well, we get food. When we do bad, we get food because we're sad. And when we have birthdays, we have food and we educate ourselves so that when we're adults, our life revolves around food. Life is that thing that happens in between meals, right? And this is one of the worst changes that we go through that makes us gain weight as we age. But the solution for this doesn't need to be complicated. You may think, ah, but there are so many options. I can go low carb, I can go low fat. What is the answer? The main thing that you need to change to give you 80% of all those benefits is just ditching all the processed food and having more natural food. By processed food, I mean anything that is industrialized from sodas to granola bars to refined grains and refined sugar, all the things that comes in cans and packets. If it's not natural, it's industrialized, it's processed. There's a research that they got two groups of people. One group had a low carb diet, the other group had a low fat diet. The main guideline for both group was cut all the processed foods. Over the course of one year, there were people that lost up to £60, 6 0. And after this whole year, the group that was on the Low carb lost 13 pounds on average. And the group that was on low fat lost 100.7 pounds on average. So you see that it's more or less the same. Low carb, low fat, more or less the same, as long as you cut all the processed food. Reason number four, stress and lack of sleep. When you're young, when you're a kid, this is usually something that is not part of your life. Stress and lack of sleep comes as we get jobs and as we start to worry about our families and about our own personal issues. Now, stress does a really interesting thing to you. Higher levels of stress leads people to poor food choices. Usually when stress are high, we tend to choose foods that combine high carbohydrates and high fat at the same time because they are more comforting, but it also slows down your metabolism. One study from the University of Ohio got a group of women and gave them a high calorie, high fat meal. And then they tested their calorie expenditure throughout the rest of the day. For the women who had a stressful event in the previous 24 hours, they spent 104 calories less than the women who had a nice day before. And if that happens every day over the course of one year, the most stressful women would get 11 pounds of fat gain just because of stress. And now, what about sleep? Lack of sleep brings us imbalances in hormones that make us feel feel full and therefore leads us to have choices for food that are high in calories as well. And lack of sleep also leads us to more stress, and that feeds the entire loop. But the solution here also is not complicated. First, one, get adequate sleep. Second, have a mindfulness practice, something like yoga, something like meditation. Both are shown to decrease the stress levels. And third, spend more time with people that you love. Play, have more time with the family that makes you feel relaxed and decrease your stress levels. Reason number five, hormonal imbalances. We know that men after 40 years old get a drop in testosterone levels and women go through menopause. Yet those changes are not supposed to make us gain weight. In fact, there's a study that was published in the Midlife Journal that got a group of women in India throughout their menopause. And they instructed those women to do a couple of lifestyle changes while going through menopause. Things like getting them to do strength training, getting them to become more active at home, taking the stairs, walking a bit more, getting them to ditch processed foods, yoga and meditation was obligatory every day, and these women lost weight during their menopause. If we brought our ancestors from thousands of years ago to live with us, they would be baffled to see the way we drive our bodies today because their bodies were a lot stronger and healthier. But the good thing is that getting our bodies as we age to a better state is just a result of our lifestyle choices. If you want to know more, or if you have a couple of questions, let me know in this comment. And let's keep on having a conversation about health and fitness. Cheers.
