Reaching 40+ has it’s ups and downs.

Most of us have a better understanding of ourselves and we have better self esteem.

I, for one, would never trade my head or ‘wisdom’ (if you could call it that) for my head when I was 30 years old.

But, with age comes some physical issues that we all deal with.

In this interview, I talk about the three things that women our age especially need to take care of before we can look and feel our best.

First off, we need to add resistance training to increase our lean muscle tone and increase our metabolism. Many people don’t realize that it’s the muscle on our bodies that keeps the metabolism going. As we age, we trade muscle for fat so that, even if we’re the same weight as when we were in our 30’s, we aren’t as metabolically active. Fat doesn’t burn calories, muscle does. So not only does muscle create a more pleasing (read: sexy!) shape, it helps keep us lean.

Secondly, we need to get rid of the long slow boring cardio and trade it in for interval training. Our cardio sessions need to be short and sweet and get us huffing and puffing. In fact, we can even throw in our cardio with our resistance training.

Here’s a brilliant little 15 minute circuit that you can do that will build a little muscle tone and give you the cardio bursts that you need:

• 20 seconds of push ups/10 seconds of rest
• 20 seconds of squat jumps/ 10 seconds of rest
• repeat these sets 5 times for a total of 5 min of fat burning, muscle toning

• 20 seconds of mountain climbers/10 seconds of rest
• 20 seconds of bicycle crunch/ 10 seconds of rest
• repeat these sets 5 times for a total of 5 min of fat burning, muscle toning

• 20 seconds of burpees/10 seconds of rest
• 20 seconds of front plank/ 10 seconds of rest
• repeat these sets 5 times for a total of 5 min of fat burning, muscle toning

The last component or secret to beating the menopausal bulge is to eat nutritionally dense food and cut out the junk. ‘Abs are made in the kitchen’. Don’t think that you can do this 15 minute workout and then go eat the kitchen sink. As we age we need to pay more attention to our diets. We need not starve ourselves, but we need to follow the 80/20 rule (or even the 90/10 rule) where by 80% of the time we eat a clean diet and goof off 20% of the time.

It’s not rocket science to looking and feeling great over 40, but it does take a concentrated effort.

For more support, done for you meals, workouts, and more, check out my program to see if it’s right for you.

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This entry was posted on May 29, 2012 at 5:27 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in Healthy Eating by Shawna 2 Comments