Too much belly fat, whether you are a man or a woman, presents increased risk for such health issues as heart disease, stroke, type II diabetes and even some cancers. With that said, what is the best way to lose belly fat after 50?
Most people over 50, when they decide they need to lose some weight, turn to two specific strategies… restrict their calories and/or do a lot of cardio exercise.
This is the exact WRONG approach.
Why?
This is why people end up on the weight loss roller coaster.
When you restrict calories and/or do a bunch of cardio exercise, your metabolism will actually slow down.
The reason for this is that while you are losing that unwanted belly fat and weight, you are losing muscle mass as well.
You will lose some fat, but since you are losing the muscle mass, you’ve lost some of the mechanism that helps you burn more calories, as muscle tissue requires more energy to maintain.
After you’ve lost some weight and the metabolism slows, it becomes more difficult to lose more fat.
And, unfortunately, restricting your calories and doing more cardio exercise will have a similar effect on the body… lost muscle tissue.
This is particularly the case for people over 50.
By the time we’ve reached age 50, we’ve begun to lose muscle mass due to aging. This is known as sarcopenia, which is the term for age-related loss of muscle.
This process accelerates as we get older, and this is why so many people who live past 80 become quite frail, even if they still carry a significant amount of weight.
One of the reasons for this is that our bodies lose the ability to synthesize protein as it once did.
Therefore, even if you are reasonably active, you can still lose muscle mass if you don’t train properly.
The end result of this diet and increased cardio exercise is that when you stop and go back to your previous ways, you gain more body fat.
The best way to lose belly fat after 50
And now for the solution to the question… the best way to lose belly fat after 50.
You need to start a program that incorporates the right diet approach, the right approach to cardio exercise, AND and strength training.
Also, you will want to increase your overall daily activity. Exercise alone will not help you burn enough calories. You’ll need to be more active in your daily life.
The right diet approach
What do we mean by the right diet approach?
Most people when they decide to lose weight will significantly decrease their calorie consumption.
Let’s say you are a 50 year old male and you stand 6 feet tall and weigh 250 pounds.
According to Calculator.net, based upon a light activity level where you do moderate exercise 1 to 3 days per week and not much else, you need about 2,800 calories to maintain your bodyweight.
What many people do is reduce their calorie intake to about 500 to 1,000 calories below the level needed to maintain their bodyweight.
In general, you need to consume 3,500 calories below your weekly calorie needs to lose one pound of body fat.
Many people shoot to for a higher rate of loss, so they restrict their calorie consumption even more.
As a result, they are hungry and miserable all the time, lack energy and their metabolism slows down.
Instead, if you want to lose some body fat, you should only shoot for a daily calorie reduction of 10%.
In the case of the 250 pound male discussed earlier, this would be a reduction of about 280 calories.
This is a far more manageable reduction that won’t leave you starving all day.
Also, this individual will likely need to increase their protein intake.
More protein with each meal will help to keep you more satiated, and it is necessary to consume more to build muscle.
Since our body does not synthesize protein like it did in our 20s and 30s, we have to eat a bit more.
You will want to shoot for about 0.75 to 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.
For the aforementioned 250 pound male, that equates to 188 to 250 grams per day.
To offset the increase protein intake, you will likely need to reduce your fat and carb intake.
Therefore, you will need to really keep track of your diet macros.
One last thought on diet… many people over 50 don’t count their alcohol consumption toward their calories.
You will absolutely struggle to lose belly fat if you consume alcohol regularly.
Not only do the calories add up quickly, but alcohol will slow your metabolism, spike cortisol and increase your craving for food.
The right approach to cardio exercise
Many people when they do cardio go at it too hard.
This is another reason why so many people start a gym membership with good intentions and then fall of the wagon after a few weeks.
They simply burn themselves out because every cardio session they exhaust themselves.
With that said, if you need to lose some body fat, you need to increase your overall activity, and cardio exercise can be a great way to do it.
You just need to have the right approach, which is that most of your cardio sessions should involve Zone 2 workouts.
Zone 2 workouts involve training at a far more relaxed intensity level, but for a longer period of time.
This approach works because it helps to improve your mitochondrial function by making your mitochondria more efficient at using energy and by increasing the number of mitochondria.
In other words, Zone 2 cardio exercise is the best way to burn fat.
Also, because the intensity level is kept low, you don’t run the risk of using muscle tissue as a fuel source during the workout.
This allows you to train longer.
If you train for too long at an intensity level that is too high, you will go into a catabolic state, which tears molecules down to burn energy.
The right kind of strength training
And now we move onto the last major piece of the puzzle for losing weight after 50… muscle building.
If you need to lose considerable body fat, you want to build muscle as quickly as possible.
This is far easier said than done, and there a bazillion approaches to strength training.
However, during our strength training workouts, we want to also be burning some calories.
Unfortunately, a typical strength training workout burns very few calories.
This is because you are training at a low rep range of 3 to 5 reps for only 3 to 5 sets.
The reason for this is that when you are focused on building pure strength, you need to expose yourself to high intensity.
In this regard, high intensity involves heavy weight.
In the early stages of a strength training program where you are focused on learning the movements, the weight is a bit light.
Therefore, you are not training hard enough to burn many calories.
Down the road, the weight gets heavy, and then you need more rest between sets.
Therefore, you are simply not moving enough to burn many calories.
With this in mind, a different approach is needed, where you will generally train with lighter weight and more sets and reps.
A great approach is to use a pyramid approach to your training.
A pyramid approach has you start with a light weight and do quite a few reps… at least twelve.
When you train at a light weight, you don’t need as much rest. So you keep the rest period at 60 seconds or so.
Then you increase the weight a bit, and then do ten reps.
And so on and so forth. You can do this for five or six sets, and then perhaps follow this up with a superset or perhaps a burnoff set.
A good workout will then involve a couple or few compound movements, such as a bench press, lat pulldown and dumbbell press, follows by some exercises that are more targeted, such as barbell curls.
By the end of such a workout you will feel a good pump, and you will have burned more calories than you would in a pure strength training session.
While this is not the optimal approach to building strength, it can absolutely help you build lean muscle.
Increase your overall activity
The last thing you need to do, but just as important as the rest, is increase your overall daily activity.
Find a hobby that keeps you moving.
Perhaps you play golf… consider walking rather than riding a cart.
Go for hikes. Play tennis. Train in a martial art.
If you can simply increase your activity by an additional 30 minutes per day, you will keep your metabolism up and burn more fat.
Final Thoughts – The best way to lose belly fat after 50
After 50, we face increasing headwinds in our pursuit to stay health, fit and strong.
You now have a good general approach for losing belly fat and keeping it off in the long run.
If you need a more detailed template, check out our 12 month fat loss template, which will give you all the info you need to achieve your weight loss goals.
Now, get to work!
Leave A Comment