Danny Davis
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one-third of Americans aged 65 and older were considered obese between 2007 and 2010. By 2017, the same organization determined that approximately 42.8% of those aged 60 years and older fit the criteria for obesity.
Given the ever-increasing obesity rates in America and a wide array of additional health issues associated with obesity in older adults, it’s more important than ever to focus on weight loss, specifically burning body fat.
To fully understand the best methods of burning body fat after 50, we’re first going to go over bodily changes that occur in your senior years. Then, we’ll review some proven methods of burning body fat that work well in your senior years.
How Body Fat Changes After 50
As the decades continue to pass, you might begin to notice physical changes in your physique. You’re no longer able to eat as much as you used to without packing on some extra pounds.
No matter how much physical activity you do, you just can’t seem to shed that body fat. There are plenty of reasons for these changes, specifically having to do with the aging process.
The first has to do with metabolism, meaning your body doesn’t burn calories as quickly or as efficiently as it once did. The second is a lack of physical activity among those 50 and older, which means fewer calories burned during the day. Then, there’s also an increased risk of obesity because of these factors.
Metabolism Changes
The most significant reason for your weight gain with age has to do with changes in your metabolism. In fact, your metabolism might slow as much as 10% every decade of your adult life. That means your body doesn’t burn calories as efficiently as it once did.
To understand the complete impact, you need to have a general understanding of the concept of basal metabolic rate, also known as BMR. This number represents the number of calories that your body burns at complete rest over the course of a day.
If your BMR at age 20 is about 1,500 calories, that means you can get away with eating 1,500 calories a day without any physical activity and still maintain your current body weight. If we consider the fact that your metabolism slows about 10% per decade, then you’ll only be burning about 1,350 calories a day by age 30.
Considering this data, eating the same exact diet as you did when you were 20 years old would pack on an extra 150 calories a day due to your now lowered BMR. If you keep up this dietary intake for a whole year, you’ll be putting on over 15 pounds.
The Role of Exercise
Exercise obviously plays a pivotal role in body weight and metabolism. When you consider your BMR, this is just taking into account the calories you’re burning at complete rest. Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure, also known as your TDEE, is much more valuable.
That’s because this calculation considers the amount of exercise you’re getting on a daily basis. Using your age, weight, sex, and activity level, you can determine how many calories you’re really burning over the course of the day and, thus, how many calories you can afford to eat on a daily basis.
The issue isn’t the rate of calorie burning as it is the amount of exercise that older adults are actually getting. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, a maximum of 44% of older adults are considered physically active.
Combine a low activity level with a slower metabolism and you’ve got an explanation for why older adults are much more likely to gain weight with age, specifically body fat.
An Increased Risk of Obesity
Since your metabolism is now slower and your energy levels might not be as great as they once were, you’re now at an increased risk of developing obesity. When you consider the fact that obesity can make other pre-existing conditions even worse, there are significant dangers of being obese over the age of 50.
When you’re 50 years or older and obese, here are some possible effects:
- Worsened arthritis or joint pain due to excess body weight and strain on the body
- Increased risk of developing diabetes, cancer, or heart disease
- Increased blood pressure, cholesterol, and resting heart rate
- Reduced ability to lose weight since exercise is more difficult
- Increased risk for mortality
Though these effects are quite significant in the body and your overall health, you can prevent obesity and work to lose body fat through a combination of diet and exercise.
The Link Between Diet and Body Fat
Obviously, your diet plays a huge role in how many extra calories you’re consuming per day. If you’re eating more calories than you’re burning over the course of the average day, you’re going to be gaining weight.
Though you might think that simply limiting your fat intake will decrease your overall body fat, that’s not exactly the case in all situations. There are plenty of unique ways to burn body fat and improve your metabolism, strictly by changing your diet.
Limiting Fat Intake
The greatest issue when it comes to consuming a large amount of dietary fat is the number of calories in every gram. A single gram of dietary fat has 9 calories while protein and carbohydrates each have 4 calories per gram. That means fat is much more calorie-dense than carbohydrates and proteins.
Now, that’s not to say that you should completely cut fats out of your diet. In fact, your body requires fats to maintain body temperature, allow for nutrient absorption, and even create some hormones. The best thing you can do is to limit your fat intake during the day.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, you should be consuming anywhere between 44 and 77 grams of fat on a daily basis. However, eating purely unhealthy fats (i.e. Trans fats and saturated fats) won’t help your health. Make sure that a majority of your fat intake is coming from unsaturated fats.
Focus on getting your fats from unsaturated fats, not trans fats or saturated fats. Unsaturated fats are found in natural plant products, such as nuts, beans, and seeds. They’re also found in oils and avocado.
Focusing on Other Nutrients
As much as reducing your fat intake might cause weight loss, focusing on specific nutrients can help you to burn fat and lose weight at an even quicker rate. The most important nutrients to focus on are protein and fiber.
Protein, most commonly found in meats, nuts, and beans, is important for building muscle mass and strength. Protein also triggers an increased metabolism, meaning you’ll be burning calories more efficiently. By packing on a few pounds of muscle mass, you can stimulate extra calorie burning too. About 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is fine.
Fiber, found commonly in fruits, grains, and vegetables, plays a pivotal role in the functioning of the digestive system. When you consume a proper amount of fiber, usually around 25 grams per day, you can reduce your appetite, prevent constipation, and feel fuller throughout the day.
Overall, your goal should be to focus mostly on carbohydrates and proteins while limiting your fat intake. This will successfully lower your daily caloric intake and also provide you with a greater amount of energy and enhanced body composition.
Boosting Your Metabolism Through Diet
Not surprisingly, there are specific foods out there that can help to boost your metabolism, meaning you’ll be burning more calories during the day, even when you’re not exercising. Here are some foods that improve your metabolism without packing on extra bodyweight.
- Coffee or Green Tea: Both coffee and green tea have between 50 and 100 milligrams of caffeine per serving. Since caffeine is known for improving metabolism and fat burning mechanisms, even one cup of coffee or green tea a day can prove beneficial in weight or fat loss.
- Spicy Foods: This might sound like a myth, but spicy foods are known for increasing your metabolism while also reducing your appetite. By simply adding chili peppers to your soup, chili, or other dishes, you can work toward your fat burning goal.
- Almonds and Other Nuts: Almonds and other nuts are filling, meaning they’re more likely to reduce your appetite and force you to consume fewer calories during the day. However, you’ll want to limit how many you eat per day, as they do have a lot of fat.
- Water: Water is proven to increase your metabolism and the number of calories you’re burning over the course of the day. Yet, you can also reduce your daily caloric intake by replacing all other beverages in your diet with zero-calories water.
Unfortunately, there are no magic cures when it comes to weight loss. Though changing your diet will definitely help to achieve this goal, you’ll need to target fat burning through exercise to optimize your health.
Using Exercise to Burn Body Fat
Though you might not be up for a 5-mile run or an hour on the bike at the gym just yet, that doesn’t mean that you can’t burn calories through exercise in your senior years. In fact, just about any physical activity you do will enhance your metabolism and encourage fat loss.
To get the best results and burn the greatest number of calories, you want to make sure that you’re adhering to the guidelines for fat burning. After all, walking at a slow pace won’t burn as many calories as swimming intensely for 30 minutes.
The best way to burn calories through exercise is by choosing an activity that you genuinely enjoy doing. Forcing yourself to run when you already have aching joints or low endurance won’t help your endeavors all that much.
Exercising in Your Target Heart Rate Zone
To get the most out of any type of exercise, you want to make sure that you’re exercising in your Target Heart Rate Zone, sometimes referred to as the THRZ. This is a range describing the number of times your heart should beat per minute while engaged in exercise.
When you’re exercising in this zone, you’re better able to target cardiovascular and respiratory health while also encouraging a greater number of calories lost during exercise. Let’s go over how to calculate your THRZ.
The first thing you want to do is subtract your current age from 220. This number is considered your “maximum heart rate,” meaning it would be dangerous to exercise at anything above this heart rate for an extended period of time.
To get your THRZ, you have to multiply the number you just got by 0.50 and 0.85. This would be your THRZ and where you’d like your heart rate to be during all types of exercise. The higher your heart rate during exercise, the more intense the exercise will be and the shorter your session might last.
It might be a little difficult to stay exactly in this zone for the entirety of your workout. As long as you’re somewhere near this goal in some way, you should be seeing positive health benefits in both the short and the long-term.
Exercise Recommendations
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all adults should be getting about 150 minutes of exercise on a weekly basis. If you’re working out more vigorously, only 75 minutes a week would be just as beneficial. You should also be getting about two days of strength training per week to maintain muscle, joint, and bone health.
It might be a little much to jump right into 150 minutes of exercise per week, especially if you’re not exercising at all currently. You might want to work out once or twice for a few weeks and then add an additional work out for the next few weeks. Work up to the five 30-minute sessions per week.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
High-intensity interval training, also known as HIIT, is perhaps the most efficient method for burning fat and calories in a short period of time. In fact, you might be able to burn about 10 or more calories per minute with HIIT.
HIIT involves short periods of high-intensity exercise, usually about 30 to 60 seconds, followed by a shorter period of rest, usually between 15 and 60 seconds. The goal is to experience drastic changes in your heart rate between the rest and exercise periods.
The best part about HIIT is that you can get a full workout in as little as four minutes, specifically through Tabata training. With this training method, you’ll exercise intensely for about 20 seconds (running, biking, swimming, bodyweight exercises, etc.) followed by 10 seconds of rest. Complete this cycle 8 times and your workout is complete.
Since HIIT also improves your metabolism, your body will continue to burn calories, well after your HIIT session has completed. That means you’ll be burning about 10 calories per minute plus a few extra hundred calories after the fact.
Just be careful when approaching HIIT, especially if you have pre-existing health conditions or concerns. Consult with your doctor to determine whether this would be a safe exercise routine for you.
Long-Duration Aerobic Activity
If you’re lacking in intensity, you can still burn a large number of calories and fat by engaging in long-duration aerobic activities. This can be any type of physical activity, as long as it’s getting your heart rate up and lasting for a longer period of time.
Just how intensely and how long you exercise will determine how many calories you burn during exercise. Here’s a brief overview of how many calories you can burn in an hour with different types of aerobic activity.
- Swimming: Between 200 and 900 calories
- Running: Between 600 and 1,000 calories
- Walking: Between 200 and 350 calories
- Biking: Between 450 and 750 calories
Better yet, you can work out in the comfort of your own living room. You can try bodyweight exercises like push-ups, burpees, sit-ups, planks, or just about anything else to work on building strength while also burning some calories.
Remember, your goal is to exercise within your THRZ as much as possible. Though you shouldn’t be attempting to set your own or world records during your activities, you should be exercising at an intensity where it’s not necessarily “easy.”
If you want to lose about a pound of body fat every single week, you’ll need to burn about 500 calories every single day (as long as you’re maintaining your current diet), which totals out to 3,500 calories burned per week.
Resistance Training
You might be wary about resistance training if your goal is to lose weight, as you definitely will put on a few pounds of muscle with some form of strength training. The good news is strength training can increase your metabolism too.
When you work on resistance training, whether you’re lifting dumbbells at the gym or just using a set of resistance bands in your living room, you’re helping to build muscular, bone, and joint strength. This is beneficial for preventing arthritis and osteoporosis in your senior years.
Yet, the weight that you’re gaining as a result of resistance training also enhances the number of calories you’re burning at rest. The more muscle mass your body has, the more efficiently your body burns calories. Plus, stronger muscles with greater endurance means you’ll be able to better power through more intense workouts.
Though the calories you’re burning during strength training isn’t all that impressive, it definitely has the potential to improve your body composition and physique. By building more muscle mass, you’ll look more muscular and appear as if you’ve lost weight.
Jumping Rope
Jumping rope is one of the best ways to lose calories, especially because you can burn calories much more efficiently than you can while running. In fact, there appears to be evidence that jumping rope for a mere 10 minutes can provide the same health benefits as going for a 30-minute run.
Jumping rope is great because it’s considered a low-impact activity. That means that you won’t be putting as much strain and stress on your knees, ankles, and hips as you would if you were running or jogging.
Better yet, jumping rope can help you to burn about 10 or more calories for every minute you jump rope. In just a 10-minute jump rope session, you can burn 100 calories. Increase your session time to 30 minutes and you’re burning about 300 calories.
What makes jumping rope so unique is that you don’t have to do it for 30 minutes at a time. Just like running, you can do interval training with jumping rope, which can further enhance the number of calories that you’re burning in a workout.
Plus, you don’t need to go to the gym or even leave the comfort of your own home when you’re jumping rope. This activity is very much portable, so you can jump rope in your garage, your basement, or your living room, so long as the ceilings permit it.
Final Thoughts
Burning body fat after the age of 50 is a little more complicated than it is when you’re younger. However, that doesn’t mean that this goal is impossible. The best thing you can do is target both diet and exercise to improve fat loss.
There are plenty of different ways to do this. You might want to decrease your daily caloric intake as well as how much fat you’re consuming, but also focus on fiber and protein intake most of all.
Exercise can help you to reach this goal in just about every way, specifically through more efficient calorie-burning methods like high-intensity interval training or jumping rope.
Just remember that it takes a decent amount of time to see noticeable results. Don’t give up if you haven’t lost visible body fat after a week, so give yourself a little time.
