#21: Q&A: Why I Keep Gaining Weight As I Get Older?

Lifestyle has a lot to do with the level of difficulty of losing weight and how early it starts. What I mean with lifestyle is their nutrition, exercise, quality sleep, stress levels, and exposure to toxicity. Lifestyle can have a positive or negative impact on our metabolism and several hormones such as insulin, leptin, cortisol, thyroid, adiponectin, estrogen, testosterone, and more. All these hormones impact our ability to maintain a good weight.

A natural fluctuation and change of reproductive hormones like estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone will impact the body’s ability to keep weight stable. For example, as we age, estrogen levels start to drop. If your level of estrogen to progesterone is high, you will tend to gain weight and store more fat.

Genetics play another role as well, including how our bodies interact with hormones and where we store them. Isn’t it crazy?  The news about the genetics is that it’s rarely the one to blame. For the most part, these bad genes need to be expressed – poked, in order to rebel. How do we poke them? Poor habits and lifestyle choices do the job. The good news is that we can change things around and get these bad genes to quiet down.

Helping my clients to figure this out through the genetic testing and interpretation service I offer is awesome. I was my own guinea pig years ago. I have loads of bad genes. Being aware is great. Using the information to adjust lifestyle choices is fabulous though.

Finally, I’d like to share one more concept that although is not discussed much, it is super important when it comes to fat storage. It’s about how lipid turnover regulates adipose tissue mass or fat. That is the subcutaneous (under the skin) or visceral (around organs).

What is Lipid Turnover? It is the body’s capacity to store and remove lipids.

Studies have shown that excess body fat is associated with decreased lipid turnover or decreased rate that fat is removed.

I have bad and good news. I will start with bad news.

A study found that lipid removal rate decreases during aging while the uptake rate doesn’t at the same rate, resulting in weight gain. This process is independent of other factors. One of the conclusions is that “substantial weight loss is not driven by changes in lipid removal but by the rate of lipid uptake in fat tissue.”

Sounds complicated, I know.

The bottom line is that we WANT to SPEED UP the lipid turnover in the fat tissue.

Can we?

Good news, here it comes. YES, you and I can speed up the lipid turnover rate in the fat tissue. How?

Don’t I say often that exercise is the BEST FREE PILL in the market?

We cannot control our age but we can control our fitness level and the higher the muscle mass we have, the higher the fat breakdown. If you are asking what kinds of exercise will help the most?

With prolonged exercise, energy from fat becomes the main source. Resistance training will build muscles and they keep burning fat after a workout. Exercise intensity at 65% of VO2max seems to result in a slight decrease in free fatty acids uptake.

The bottom line, Move your fanny 4-6x a week. Do weight training 2-3x week and aerobic 2-3x week and pick one to be a longer route, whether you are brisk walking, biking, and jogging.