Oldie seeks expert advice

[rodrigo]

Hi

I'm new to this forum and I was wondering whether anybody could give me some adivce.

I am a 45-year-old man in relatively good health although I'm about two stones overweight and a bit out of condition. I can still walk very long distances (55 miles in one hit last year) but couldn't run for a bus without risking a serious incident.

Throughout my adult life I have gone through periods during which I have trained with weights fairly intensively, and whilst I've never been at bodybuilder contest level it is probably reasonable to say that during these periods I have been of above-average muscularity, although I have never been particularly athletic in an aerobic sense.

Then something crops up in my life and I abandon the weights for a year or so and revert quickly to blob status as I am rather fond of my food, and the fattier and unhealthier it is the more I seem to enjoy it.

I have now been off the weights for about three years but want to get back into some kind of routine, permanently this time, but presumably due to advancing years I am finding it harder going than before. I have read that people who have trained in the past make faster gains when taking up training again than novices who are doing it for the first time, and this accords with my own past experience, but this time everything seems to have slowed up somewhat.

Is there any advice out there which might be especially applicable to somebody in my position? Or should I just try harder?

All sensible comments gratefully received.

 

[zeroth]

Once you decide to go for it, it's usually pretty easy to get fit.

It's staying there across the span of your life that's the challenge.

I would say that what you have to do is two-fold. First, is what you know already: you have to find a program that'll suit you and that you'll enjoy and will want to sustain.

The second thing is to find healthy motivation, motivation that has potential to be long-lasting. Examine your life and try to figure out why it is that you want to get healthy and why you want to stay there. If that running-for-the-bus incident was a defining moment, a turning point, find a way to focus on that so that it can help to strengthen your commitment if/when it falters.

I've learned that I have to revisit and reshape my reasons/commitments regularly or, like my exercise program itself, those reasons/commitments will become stale and ultimately ineffective. It's a dynamic and approaching it like that has helped me through the years.

 

[deschain]

I agree with Zeroth.

Everyone has to step back and think about what they want for their lives. It's about more than just "I want to be in shape", but about learning what that actually means for you. It could be, "I want to be able to run and jump on the back of the bus if I had to" or as simple as "I don't want to get winded if I have to walk fast to catch the bus" or even "I don't want to make the old-man grunting noise while getting up off the floor".

More than the desire to lose weight/get in shape, think of how that applies to your life and what do you want to be different.

Then, find out what it's going to take to get you there, and get going.

 

[bedfordfitness]

Getting back is harder going because you aren't sticking with it? Or harder going because you do not see the same results you saw in the past?

While 45, in my opinion, is by no means old, you may notice the difference now in the rate of improvement just because hormone levels are different. If you think back, you may recall the difference was probably there before as well, like at 33 or 35, versus 20 something. It is the hormones that help build muscle after all, and all sorts of things like flexibility etc.

You will be fine. Just stick to it.

If it is simply harder to stick to, try to find someone to work out with.

How long have you been back on the training plan?