Okay. You're zoomin' along through life. Boy, oh boy, do you have lots to do. You're always busy. You're juggling work, family, parent care, and who-knows-what-else. You grab food on the fly, usually through the car window. Exercise? Huh. Who has time for that???
Then one day, reality walks right up and smacks you in the face.
That lovely designer suit hanging in your closet . . . you know, the one you dropped $400 on last year . . . ?
It doesn't fit.
It won't close. The skirt is so tight, you feel like its sausage casing. The jacket's a mite tight, too. And the arms . . . when did your arms get so big?
"WHAT HAPPENED???" you scream. "I don't weigh any more than I did last year!!?? This has to be some sort of awful mistake! It was the cleaners -- they shrank my wonderful suit!"
Um, well, no, they didn't. Here is what happened to you. You may weigh the same, but your body composition has changed. You know, the stuff you're composed of.
As we get older, body composition is as important as how much we weigh. We are composed (from a simplified point of view) of fat mass and "lean mass" (muscle, bone, water, skin, internal organs, the pot pie we had for dinner last night). In other words, fat, and everything that's not fat.
Two people can weigh exactly the same, yet one may appear much smaller than the other one, because of a difference in body composition. The smaller person has a higher percentage of lean mass, and a smaller percentage of fat mass.
Why is this? Well, it's because pound for pound, lean mass takes up much less space than fat does. So, if you weigh 130 and are 30% fat, you'll be carrying 39 lbs of blubbery, fluffy fat on your body. On the other hand, if you are 130 and 20% of you equates to fat, you'll have only 26 lbs of fat, lightly and artfully spread across your body.
Big difference, no? About 52 sticks of butter.
If you don't exercise, and especially if you eat a lot of foods that are high on the glycemic index (refined, processed, "white" carbs), you can stay the same weight, but as the years roll by, you'll get fat. That is, "fat" on the body composition scale. Furthermore, that fat will have a disgusting tendency to accumulate around your middle, the older you get. What's up with THAT?
Here's the scoop: after the age of about 40, women lose about .5 lbs of muscle a year (in other words, part of their lean mass). After menopause, that accelerates to about 1 lb a year. Slow, slowly, slowly . . . muscle disappears and is replaced by fat.
In addition, women (and men, too) who are sedentary, and fueled by a lot of that "white carb" food, will develop something called insulin resistance. You may have heard other names for this: Syndrome X, metabolic syndrome. It's all pretty much the same thing, for our purposes.
Now, this syndrome, which puts you at a greatly increased risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, just happens to go hand-in-hand with accumulation of fat in the belly. Not OVER the belly, but INSIDE, around your organs. It's called visceral fat, and it's dangerous. Dr. Pamela Peeke, she of "Fight Fat After Forty" fame, calls it "toxic fat." Now you know why your greater-than-35-inch waist is bad for your health . . . it's a sign that you've loaded up on visceral fat.
So, what can you do about it?
1. Diet -- a healthy, low-glycemic diet. Not a "diet" as in some ridiculously lopsided program, but a healthy, sustainable, balanced food plan.
2. Exercise -- cardio AND (very, very important) weight training.
Wielding diet and exercise as tools, you can, over time, actually change your body composition, even if you don’t lose a single scale pound. You can grow smaller, physically. You can rebuild lost muscle -- yes, you can! -- and lose fat. And, as you become fit, you can reduce or even reverse insulin resistance.
Gang, I'm Exhibit One, so I know this stuff works. I was nearly 220 lbs at my top weight, had insulin resistance in spades. My former hourglass shape looked more Michelin Man. I was a complete slug. And my health was going to hell in a handbasket.
Over time -- several years -- through weight training, getting fit again, and eating properly (not "dieting"), I have returned my body to where it once was. I have an hourglass figure again. My body fat is maybe 26%, as of this writing, and I'm slowly getting it lower. I have about 100 lbs of lean mass (way more than most "short stuffs" have). The extra mass is the result of the "iron" in my diet . . . I've been slingin' weights around since 1999.
Middle-aged spread is not inevitable. It's "normal," but as I hope you see now, it's not "healthy." And it doesn't necessarily have to be at all, if you treat your body right.
You don't have time to do all that diet and exercise stuff? Your choice . . . but my money says you can't afford not to.
Want to know more? These are excellent resources:
Dr. Peeke's "Mind, Mouth, Muscle" Plan
Dr. Miriam Nelson's "Strong Women" Series
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