If you are a guy who is in their 50s and wants to lose weight – the important thing you should know is that the things that worked in your 20s, 30s, or even 40s will no longer be effective. You need a simple and specific approach that is actually going to work for you in the long term. If you are overly busy right now, it probably means that you are working too much, eating unhealthy, and missing out, which is causing you to gain weight.
Read on to learn more about what it takes for a busy man like you to lose weight efficiently.
Fix Your Sleep Pattern
Naturally, you might think that the right way to start losing weight is to get on a diet and start doing exercise right away. This belief is absolutely wrong. The first right step is to focus on fixing your sleep patterns. Yes – you read this right. Most people don’t realize that sleep is essential for controlling the master clock of our metabolism and fat-burning hormones.
What this means is that when you aren’t sleeping well, you do not process carbs well, and you do not burn carbs well. This also means that anything that you do regarding diet and exercise will just prove to be far less effective.
What Happens If You Don’t Sleep Right?
If you are over 50, you want to maintain your muscles and ensure that your hormones are working properly. Also, when it comes to the decline in testosterone levels that happens in your 50s when you are missing sleep, it is also one of the fastest ways to plummet your testosterone levels. So, you will be doing yourself a great favor by getting seven hours of sleep every night. If you aren’t hitting your target and you know that your sleep could be better, start from there.
Fix Your Meal Time
In your 50s, you shouldn’t be focusing on a diet or the kind of food you should eat and avoid – but you will be focusing on your meal timing. It is also important to mention here that in your 50s, the best diet for you is the one that you can actually stick to in the long term. Naturally, you will think that the best diet for you will be different from someone who is in their 20s.
The best thing you can do is to choose a meal schedule that meets your needs. If you wake up early in the morning and leave for work early, you can benefit from a four-by-four diet, which is essentially four meals per day that are spaced four hours apart. It can look like breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner, with each meal spaced for roughly four hours.
How Can Structure Help?
The best part about fixing your meal timings is that you will more likely stick to good foods. If you don’t have structure in place, everything is pretty much going to be haphazard. The best thing you can do is to be proactive instead of reactive with your meals if you want to lose weight in your 50s. So, a little bit of planning when it comes to weight loss goes a long way, and you will immensely benefit from well-spaced meals.
Increase Your Water Intake
The next thing that you will do is to increase your water intake. You already know that the human body is at least 70% water, which is why increasing your water intake will help you in many different ways. Water is involved in nearly every metabolic reaction, helping your body burn fat. Moreover, water will increase your energy levels and help you feel full.
Most men in their 50s are chronically dehydrated as most of them don’t drink water throughout the day because they are too busy.
Combine Water Intake with Meals and Sleep to Feel Better Instantly
The first thing you do in the morning is to consume at least one big glass of water. If you want to get supercharged, add some pink Himalayan sea salt to your water, and you will rehydrate. If you aren’t drinking loads of water first thing in the morning, and if this is the one thing that you integrate into your life along with fixing your sleep and meal timing – you are going to start feeling better within the first week.
Get Some Daily Activity
One of the big myths that you might believe is that if you spend hours in the gym, you will lose weight faster. Of course, there are great metabolism workouts, and if you work closely with a team of professional experts, they might recommend you opt for ozempic weight loss instead of being overly reliant on heavy workout sessions.
In case you are wondering what ozempic is about, it is a weekly injection that keeps your insulin level in check while keeping your blood sugar low. This aspect also connects with the importance of getting your foundations right, which is sleep, meal, and water intake.
How Much Activity Are We Talking About?
Again, if you get the foundations right, thirty minutes of daily physical activity will suffice to help you initiate your weight loss journey in your 50s the right way. Now, what we actually mean by daily activity is taking a walk in the nearby park or around the block. You should be getting five to ten thousand steps per day.
The point is to get your body moving. If you don’t move your body enough, it means that your brain’s hunger and appetite circuits get heavier, and you get hungrier. You might be driving your car for hours and then sitting at your desk for hours a day, which means that you aren’t getting enough physical activity.
If you just get your body up, you increase your water intake, and you get your meals in order – your body will be burning fat automatically. These are the things that you can do over the long haul to see results.