Exercising habit changes as I get older
This post got too long and feels rambling, so I will summarize it first and then post the full thing afterward for myself and anyone else that might want to dive in deeper.
I recently ran a 5k (5km or 3.1-mile race) and put in almost my best time ever, averaging 7:20 min/mile pace. This is being in my 40s now, without long-distance running training. I thought to myself, how funny that I am in better shape athletically now than how I was in my 20s. Why?
Two things: 1) Find a diet you can follow as your everyday food consumption method that prevents you from gaining weight. 2) find workouts that you can do consistently, 4–5 times per week, with variations in intensity, and you will be in fantastic shape.
90% of it is diet. People start exercising to lose weight, but exercise should come second. First and foremost, get your eating habits under control. Don’t consume more calories than you burn. It’s that annoying thing where it’s so simple but so hard to do. But it is precisely that: find a way to consume the number of calories that is less or equal to what you burn.
Now, on to the long form.
I have been thinking recently about how strange it is that, after reaching my 40s, I am physically in the best shape of my life. It feels good to say it, a sense of pride coming over you. However, I can’t help but feel a pang of dismay as I look back at my years and see how much effort I wasted while trying to achieve the same thing when I was younger.
Work smarter, not harder, they say, but tell that to a young mind that does not know any better…
I want to summarize the key aspects that allowed me to achieve fitness and the mistakes I have made in the past. It could help someone.
Before I dive into this, here are a couple of thoughts to keep in mind for the reader. This is a single person’s account; what applies to me might not apply to you. My situation: I am a male who enjoys an active lifestyle with no disability. I have a busy family lifestyle with three kids. I also had a full-time job up until recently. Nothing changed regarding fitness when I quit working, following the same schedule, but I thought I would mention that.
Diet is the “main thing.”
I paid zero attention to diet when I was younger (I think that’s common) and always thought that having a healthy body meant exercising a lot. But now I believe it’s 90% about your diet.
It’s less about the type of diet you follow. As long as it maintains your healthy body function and provides you with all the nutrients you need, it’s good to go, but calorie intake is critical in any diet you choose. It’s simple but not easy: you have a limited amount of calories you burn. Eat over that limit, and you will gain weight. That’s it. Forget about vegan, keto, meat-only diets, cleanses, etc. At the core: there is a limit to how much you can eat before gaining weight.
When someone decides to lose weight, they fight the calorie surplus by starting to exercise, the idea being that we will burn the calories, fat, etc. And that’s a very inefficient way to go about it. We overestimate how many calories we burn with exercise and underestimate how many calories we eat.
It’s best to focus on what you eat and eat less while maintaining the calories you need to function. You can’t exercise your way out of bad diet habits.
I have changed my diet habits now that I am older. I practice intermittent fasting, but you should be careful about picking a specific diet course and spend time consulting with your physician and researching before adopting a particular diet method. Intermittent fasting especially appears to be quite dangerous. Here is an article that can give you a short overview of the dangers involved:
I only mention it because it has worked so well for me, but I also think it’s a rigid diet to follow with many dangers, so be warned and perhaps consider something else. Heck, most of the time, keep your diet now, throw out junk food or snacking, and reduce portion sizes, and you should be good to go.
Whichever way you go, don’t choose exercising to combat weight gain. There is something off with your diet, either the amount or the type of foods you eat, and you need to explore that area further.
And from everything I have seen, a diet change shouldn’t be short-term. Make sure you can follow whatever you pick as a way of life.
Now to the exercising bits, focus on consistency.
Once you have your diet under control, adding exercise should be the next step. When I was younger, I would have a schedule for exercising, let’s say Monday/Wednesday/Friday, but I would stick to it well for a month, then abandon it completely, then start again, would miss a Wednesday, and then wait until Friday to exercise, etc. There was no consistency.
Now I exercise five times per week, and it only gets interrupted if I take an intentional break, for example, around holidays. And when I do take a break, I am clear with myself that I will feel a bit of a barrier getting back into the schedule, so the first few days back are crucial to getting into the flow and forcing myself to exercise. Once you are back into the groove, it’s easier to maintain and ride along.
How to be consistent
How do you make exercising consistent? First, make it a routine that it’s easy to follow. It should have the same “trigger,” so the more accessible the exercise, the better. Maintaining a consistent schedule will take more effort if you need special equipment or a particular place.
Consistency also means picking activities that won’t injure or break you down. That means you should avoid heavy weights (unless you know exactly what you are doing) and intense sports like basketball.
I changed my exercise schedule to be as dumb as possible. I exercise for two days, then have a day off, and repeat. I don’t think it matters much what you do; as long you get your heart rate up for extended periods during some of the days, you are good to go. I rotate between LesMills BodyPump, LesMills BodyCombat, and LessMills Grit (HIIT). That is just an example. My wife does Zumba classes and rarely does HIIT. I know other people lift weights and run, etc. Whatever it is, the key is to make it consistent.
For instance, let’s pick swimming as your regular exercise method. That’s great. Is that easily accessible to you all the time, with ease? If not, you will not be consistent. You are better off perhaps making it a once-per-week thing for swimming and then doing something else on other days.
Making exercise consistent also means keeping your body available for activity. This means not being injured and not breaking down from overexercising, and doing maintenance activities like stretching.
Stretching
I used to do it, but I don’t think I knew what in the world I was doing. I would go through the motions of stretching before lifting or running. But now that I do stretches differently, I realize how ineffective I was with my stretching techniques. I was doing things backward.
First, I no longer stretch before the exercise. Instead, I do a warm-up exercise. I used to be baffled at people that warm up before running, thinking, “you are wasting your energy! save it for the run!”. But really, it makes so much more sense now. Your body is too cold and stiff to stretch. The best way to get your body to exercise is to warm it up by doing the actual exercises but at a lighter intensity.
All kinds of routines are available to get warmed up, and they should involve doing exercises at a light impact.
And then DO STRETCHES AFTER YOU WORKED OUT. This has been a game changer and allows me to show up consistently the next day.
If you properly stretch at the end of your workouts, you will be much less sore the next day. I want nothing to do with soreness; stretching is the best way to avoid it. All my workouts end with thorough 3–5 minute stretch routines. I do it after the exercises as the body is warm, I can extend more, get that nice stretch going, and the next day soreness is exceptionally mild.
Recap
So to recap, do you want to be fit and lose weight? Please do not start with the exercise. Examine what you eat and how much of it. Calorie intake is the main thing, and there is nothing you can do to eat somehow more than you burn and remain healthy. Diet, and I don’t mean a quick, 30-day cleanse, but a way of life diet is step one in getting your health under control.
Then comes working out. Seek routines that allow you to be consistent and exercise daily with breaks here and there, and you will be in solid shape.
