5 Common Weight loss Mistakes women over 50 make.
Hi friends – today I’m sharing with you five common weight loss mistakes women over 50 make.
The other day I was have a coffee after a dog walk and I overheard two women (over 50) chatting about their weekend and I thought how long will it take before they start to talk about their weight…. Bingo, 5 minutes in after discussing the food they ate they started to make pledges to each other on which diet they were going to try this week.
In the twenty years that I’ve been coaching women, through the 90’s the 2000’s and 2010’s I have noticed how the way we women view ourselves and our weight is always at the forefront of our minds.
One of those women at the cafe was talking about how she did this detox the other day and how she’s going through menopause and she’s like it just feels like nothing is working. I don’t know what’s going wrong. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking the problem isn’t that nothing is working. The problem is you are crash dieting and you’re in menopause.
During menopause the body just says I’m done with you not paying attention to me, I’m done with you eating too few calories, eating too many calories, chronically dieting and you’re not giving me what I need so I’m not going to release this weight.
So today, I’m here to tell you that if you’re feeling frustrating and feeling desperate to lose weight and considering doing something like a detox, a shake program or a meal replacement program or cutting carbs and sugar drastically because you’re so frustrated and want to lose weight as fast as possible, I want to help you understand that one year from now you’re going to have the same problem. You’re still going to be struggling with the same problem.
And I was thinking about this on the way home from the cafe like I think what happens is we get blinded by our desperation to lose weight. We are so frustrated and unhappy with where we are at, that it leads us down the path of taking drastic measures even though logically in our brain we know we could never do that thing for the rest of our life.
That is the other thing I think women are blindsided by. The way you lose your weight is how you have to maintain your weight so if you lose weight doing shakes then you have to do shakes the rest of your life to maintain your weight.
Taking Ownership
What I commonly see with clients as well as women who come to me who are interested in working with me is that they are not good at challenging themselves and their justifications for why they can’t do things. They also don’t set and adhere to boundaries. What do I mean by these things?
Many times women will say they don’t have time to do something or that they can’t do something for another reason like they’re injured, don’t have money, too tired, etc.
I truly believe where there is a will, there is a way. There is always something we CAN do to move us closer to our goals. I think we get caught up though in thinking if it’s not perfect that it’s not worth doing. Then we don’t do anything.
Caught up in the 90’s diet mentality
Many women are still “going ON a diet” and eating too little, starving their bodies of vital nutrients which nourish our now hormone depleted bodies. They are skipping meals and going to weight loos groups which fat shame you after stepping on the scales. Is this you. This whole mindset needs addressing, reassessing and changing. It’s no longer about just calorie deficit and exercising like crazy, it’s about managing emotional and physical stress.
Eating Low Fat
This is soo last century! We need fat to help us to balance our hormones in to longevity. Eat it and eat it every day. Nuts, seeds, avocados, oily fish, olives. Your body will not lose fat without eating these. Believe it.
Drinking too much Alcohol
Many women use a glass of wine as part of their evening relax routine. I’m here to tell you that Alcohol is a poison, your liver has to detox the poison, the liver is also the organ that metabolises your fat (ie: burns fat). If it is busy getting rid of the wine, it will not do its job of burning fat. Alcohol also raises up your stress hormone Cortisol which can make certain Menopausal symptoms worse.
Obsessed with looking like they did when they were 20
As we get older, our bodies don’t respond the same way to weight loss efforts, and science has some explanations to offer. As we age we naturally tend to gain weight, to the tune of 1 to 2 pounds (lb) per year. So if you are 50 now, you are likely to NATURALLY be 2 stone heavier than you were when you were 20. Your skin will be different due to the decline in collogen. These are normal and natural ageing processes. The one thing you can do though is maintain, or even build more lean muscle. Lets celebrate our new shape and form in this new era of our lives. Stop trying to look 20 again!
