Fitness and Dieting for The Middle-Aged Man

I've read several articles that state a push up, done properly, is a great all-around exercise for the upper body and builds muscles of the chest, back, shoulder and arms. The way to do it is to keep place your hands, fingers pointed forward, at shoulder width, and your torso erect.  All the way down and all the way up, elbows flexing out 45 degrees to the side. I've found that my left arm i bulking up, which it didn't do with isolated tricep and bicep curls. By keeping your torso stiff, it also adds a core workout. I only started less than a few months ago and like everyone, had difficulty doing more than 10-12 at first.  Not I do at least 16 in a set, 3 or more during the day, and go up to 18.  Definitely see the definition in my torso.

In my year+ of doing planks, not only do I have a toned torso but one thing I noticed is that my posture is much better and more erect.  That's remarkable given how much slouching I actually do when sitting. This past winter was a cold, wet one where we were staying and I had to shovel snow, sometimes multiple times daily, on a regular basis.  In the past, all this work would have thrown my back out - I do suffer from sciatica.  However, my back was able to handle all the shovelling with just some muscle aches that disappeared quickly.

There is this belief that having muscle and being tone/in shape is an indicator of fitness.  That is not necessary true.  If a person has a muscular and/or toned body, it means they'be been working that part of the body.  It may be from work, or obsessively working out at a gym but that doesn't indicate fitness. The true sign of fitness is one's cardiovascular fitness.  That is, how much the heart, lungs and associated muscles are used to performing a particular exercise for a period of time.  Think of running, swimming, bicycling, and other activities that require a constant level of aerobic activity. Though my body is fairly toned, my fitness level currently comes from walking canines which is not particularly demanding on the heart.  I have a higher level of fitness compared to someone who is sedentary but not particularly much higher.  I should bike, swim or do something more aerobic but...

For women, there is no reason not to weight train. Weight training, done moderately, doesn't result in muscle bulk as the female body doesn't produce enough hormones (testosterone) for this to occur.  I work out and my muscles aren't bulky. The strength you gain from it will be helpful as one ages as it will give you more strength than someone who doesn't.   The best benefit: Toned muscles and leanness are sexy!

One of the many things that happen as you get older, other than your body not being as strong as it used to be, is that when you injure yourself, it takes a lot longer to heal. When working out, more heed should be paid to what your body is telling you.  If what you're doing hurts, it isn't good for you. Lighten up and if it still hurts, stop completely and let it rest.  No heroics necessary. The old adage of "no pain, no gain" is not a good thing to live by.  An injury avoided is more weeks of enjoyment.

At least when it comes to the fitness component, perseverance is required. When my wife and I were on our 5-week road and RV trip, I did not bring an exercise mat and did not have access to a gym.  For the most part, my weight training routine of any sort became non-existent for this period.  I did manage to fit planking when there was a picnic table to use on the RV portion of the trip but that was far and few between.  It was a little easier for strap training. When I got "home" to my equipment 3 weeks ago, I would say I was getting out of shape.  12 press ups was difficult, as was 2 sets.  By persevering on  daily basis, it took over 2 weeks before the 12 pushups were getting easy and I could get up to 14, 15 and for the past couple of days, 16.  In the past week, I've also increased my sets up to 3 then 4 from 2. Advice:  Keep working at it incrementally, it gets easier as your muscles get used to it.  Same with the crunch routine I...

Yes, the pants you wear every day can be used as a weight control tool, not so much to lose weight in my experience but more to prevent gain. I found over the years that fixed-waist pants, particularly jeans or those with broader bands, are the best.  I discovered that if I was eating too much, my waist and stomach would reach its expansion limits of the waistband and be compressed whenever I wore these pants (letting your stomach expand is a sure way to let yourself eat too much and thus gain weight). Another tip  Don't undo the waist button or release your belt when you sit down to eat (this was apparently once common practice by men). I bought and still buy pants infrequently and I always try to get a waist size that is just comfortable.  It'd be too tempting to keep on getting a larger/looser size. By contrast. elastic waist and other adjustable waist pants - let alone stretchy pants - are too dangerous to use.  You'll just release and gain weight. I gu...

It seems there's only a few words to describe most of them: hugely inaccurate. I guess that's why you should stay with one just to show a trend rather than an accurate weight. I'm in a house now where the scale seems to go off, all by itself, more than a few pounds either way.  I've had to recalibrate it before I used it more than a few times.  Stepped on it three times yesterday and my weight varied by about 5% or 7 lbs.  It's also indicating my weight is down a couple of Kg from the beginning of the year.

I know I shouldn't lecture as I have never been anywhere near being an obese or severely overweight person but I read something about the metabolic effects a severe calorie-restricted diet has on an obese person that those trying to lose a lot of weight quickly should bear in mind. Basically, the study found - using subjects who were past participants of recent TV reality shows where weight loss (even with fitness level increase) was the object such as Biggest Loser - that if an obese person quickly looses a lot of weight, the body thinks that it is in famine mode and reduces body metabolic rates severely.  Even when the subject regains weight loss, metabolic rate is apparently permanently reduced (it was for the duration of the study), making a second round of weight loss even more difficult.  It was a finding that surprised the researchers. I have a friend, obese as a late teen when I met him, who may have fallen into this trap.  In his early 20s, he had a bet going...

Dog walking has its benefits. The most obvious is a gentler cardio vascular workout.  It's probably just as well for the older person. Whenever I use the Stairmaster or an exercise bike, I have to remind myself that it's been over 25 years since I used one intensively and the maximum heart rate I can safely sustain at is that many beats per minute less. One caveat is to dictate the pace and not let the dog.  That means a brisk walk which for me is less than taking 10 minutes to walk a km.  I find that if I let a dog dictate the pace, it can drop well under that. If you have a big, strong dog that pulls, you can also use the dog as a way to get in isotonic workouts for your arm, chest and torso. No dog and don't want one?  Maybe not a problem.  Look in your community or ask your neighbours.  They may have a dog that they're no longer able to walk as much as the dog (and perhaps they) would like.

Do you want to lose weight, or at least maintain your weight? One trick is to develop your large muscles.  Muscle cells burn calories even at rest.  Develop your muscles and your body will start to burn more calories. The stomach muscle is a good one to start with.  Crunches, or planking, helps tremendously.  I started out with the former less than two years ago, starting with less than 10 a day and slowly going on to 100 within a 1/2 hour easily, before moving on to purely planking.  I found that crunches actually overdeveloped my stomach muscle and not the others. There's also the thighs, gluts (mine just don't grow big) to name a few, that with constant workout, will result in a calorie burning even while you rest.

My dieting regime and philosophy is pretty simple:  I don't have much of one.  What I have done is to carefully watch what's in what I eat. Sugar and Carbohydrates These are probably two of the worst things according to the Atkins diet but I eat them.  I just watch what I eat and how much. Sugar For me, this is the big no-no.  My wife followed an Atkins Diet quite a while ago and it worked well for her.  The trouble is staying on it. I think the underlying philosophy is still sound and it forms the basis of many diets.   After reading various health articles, I've come to the belief that sugar consumption is bad, and addictive.  I've managed to minimize sugar intake by learning to drink teas and coffees without sugar as a teen and staying with that.  However, I am partial to sugared sodas and pops and have drunk more than my share of large fountain drinks in my younger days.  I still indulge and prefer the sugared variety whenever I d...

I have been on my current exercise and fitness regime for probably a bit under 2 year now.  It really My current exercise regime is based more on weight and strength training rather than anything particularly cardiovascular. It really began in August 2015 at a housesit in Courtenay (the one where I started to weigh myself regularly) which had a big dog.  The dog liked walks and I was introduced to his daily 2 mile circuit by his owner.  I have to admit that these walks were difficult at first and my feet ached.  Gradually, with increasing exercise, I could take the dog for walks of 5-7 km.  Not sure how the dog felt about that some days before his rear started to drag n the way home.   The house also had a small weight training unit in the garage which was quite nice to use, and totally unused.   I quite liked it but had to watch the amount of leg press weights as my knees were telling me they couldn't take much more. Coupled with that, the house...

I came across this article: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/low_concept/2015/01/turn_down_your_heat_don_t_do_it_for_the_planet_do_it_for_you.html a couple of years ago.   The essence of the article is that by keeping your environment cool enough to make you shiver, your body will start to convert the fat in your body from inert white fat to metabolically-active brown fat. I read the Atkins Diet premise a long time ago and his claim was that it takes a lot fewer calories to keep white fat cells alive than muscle, something in the order of 8x more calories for muscle over fat.  The implication of this is that if you go on a drastic calorie reduction diet, it'll starve (and kill) muscle cells while white fat cells happily live on. Back to brown fat.  It is metabolically active, and thus burns energy to keep you warm. Babies have it but it's quickly lost in the modern environment.   It uses less calories than muscle but reportedly 5x more than white fat. I d...

Welcome This blog is a recap about my personal experience as a man in his early 50s getting into better shape.  It may or may not work for you but give it at least a try. A recap from my "About" page I first thought about writing this blog from reading a some weight loss topic on a travel forum.  I've been quite successful in losing weight and toning, the former unintentionally so.   Writing about my travails and routine may be helpful to you. About me:  I am a 55 year old man of east Asian ethnicity. More specifically Chinese with ancestors from the southeast and eastern coastal areas of China.  I am finer boned so I do not have much bulk, or as it stands these days, much muscle.  I stand just a shade under 5'10" (177 cm) and have weighed 170-180 lbs (77-82 Kg) for most of my life though I did peak at around 182 lbs / 83 kg in my late 20s.  I was never a skinny child but never too fat, though I carried a small paunch on my belly until recently...