Don’t you just love to see the scale drop in numbers and that great feeling when your clothes fit just right? How about when everything screeches to a halt? Crickets chirp, nothing budges. That moment when you realize hitting a certain age and suddenly no matter how hard we exercise or watch our nutrition, we just aren’t seeing the workout results that inspire us to keep going.
Getting older and slowing metabolism is not fun. But luckily, even as we age and things slow down, there may be other reasons the scale is not budging. By tweaking a few elements of your exercise routine and nutrition plan, you’ll start to see results soon enough. See if any of the following reasons might be holding you back and what you can do to get on the right track with workout results that motivate.
Reason #1: Not Varying Your Workouts
By simply modifying one (or all) elements of your fitness plan, you can stoke the fat-burning fires and get them working for you again.
- Elevate the intensity. Take it up a notch, push yourself a little harder. Get your heart rate higher than usual. Rev up the speed, increase the incline or tension.
- Lengthen the duration. Longer workouts every so often will shock the body. A very good thing!
- Increase frequency. Add another day to your workout schedule. Or hey, try a mini workout in the morning and again in the evening. The more often you get your body moving, the better.
Reason #2: You’re Not Challenging Yourself
Muscles need to be challenged in order to grow, strengthen, and tone. If you’ve been doing the same strength routine every week, it’s time to change it up a bit and work the muscles differently:
- Try new exercises. Learning new moves will stimulate the muscles. If you always do chest presses, try push-ups or use bands for chest flies. Here are over 250 exercises for you to try in this exercise library.
- Take your moves to the next level. If you usually do bicep curls standing or sitting, try them standing on one leg or Bosu ball/balance pad. The extra core work needed will help challenge the body.
- Play with your weights. To shock the body, try heavier weights and lower reps one day or lighter weights and higher reps another to up your workout results.
Reason #3: Working Out At The Wrong Time of Day
Simply changing the time of day you exercise can spark the metabolism: Your body can get used to the time of day you workout. If you usually get moving first thing in the morning, try working out in the evening. The variation may be harder for the body and therefore requires extra energy. On the other hand, you may find you work out better the new time of day and can then go longer and harder.
Reason #4: Not Monitoring Your Sugar Intake
Even though you have a healthy diet, many foods are surprisingly high in sugar and can cause lethargy, foggy thinking, muscle soreness, and disrupted sleep. Salad dressings, yogurt, granolas, condiments are just a few that have hidden sugars. Sugar stalls your metabolism, making it much harder to lose weight. Really learn to read labels. Some food companies are getting sneaky, disguising sugar under other names. A great read to fully understand the effects of sugar on the body can be found in a telling book called Sweet Poison by David Gillespie.
Reason #5: You’re Not Hydrated
Studies show that by drinking more water (aim for ½ your body weight in ounces. For example, a 150 lb woman should drink about 75 ounces a day) weight loss is increased by 30% for both men and women. They note that up to 40% of the increase in calorie burning is caused by the body’s attempt to heat the ingested water. So, the colder the better! The best test to know you are well hydrated is to check your urine. Dark yellow means you need to drink up. Clear or light yellow means you’re well hydrated. And a well-hydrated body speeds up the metabolism!
Getting older does not have to mean throwing in the towel on diet and exercise and giving in to a slowing metabolism. It just means we have to be a little more pro-active and outsmart the aging process, which luckily, can be done! Follow the tips above and you’ll be seeing better workout results before you know it.
Searching for more exercises to keep your mind sharp? These are the best workouts to prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia!
