This morning, as I was sadly realizing I had dozed through my morning exercise opportunity, two different diet and weight related stories popped up on NPR. Both indicate that weight loss and weight maintenance are going to be hard for me. Very hard. My body is working against me.
aging and muscles
This story tells us that as we age, our muscle cells wear out, don't replace themselves, and thus burn fewer calories. Therefore, eating the same number of calories results in weight gain. The good news is exercise makes the remaining muscle cells bigger and so we are able to counteract this effect some - and have an impact fairly quickly.
The next story explains that as you lose weight, your brain emotionally responds to food differently.
food response
After you have been dieting, visual cues of food give a much more emotional response than if you have not been dieting. The deck is stacked against you - your emotions are telling you to eat up so you don't starve to death! We are programmed to regain.
So I'm getting older, I've got fewer muscle cells to burn calories, and my brain is programmed to act like a three year old around cake. Life is tough. Susan Estrich would say, "so what? It doesn't mean you get a free pass to be a fat blob just because it's getting tougher!" And she's right. Life isn't fair. It is tougher for some people, but that's just the way it is.
And, in the serendipidous way the web works, I stumbled upon another story, this one about how truly beneficial it is for women to walk as they get older:
women and walking
This says, the more and faster you walk in middle age, the better your body and brain will be in your old age. I think my mother is partly an example of how true this is.
So, good news and bad news. And the impact on me from each story is I just have to keep working at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment