Why Does It Seem Harder to Lose Weight as You Age?

In your 20s and 30s when you put on a few pounds, you simply cut out a few snacks and ran a few more laps, and before long, the weight would come back off. No fuss, no muss.

These days, not only are the pounds accumulating far more easily, they’re also a lot harder to get rid of, making it difficult for you to stay within a healthy weight range. Worse still, maybe you’ve joined the more than 73% of Americans who are overweight or have obesity — and you want out of this group.

Age-related weight issues are very common, and that’s something that Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román and the team at No Mercy Sports Medicine in Miami, Florida, routinely help patients address through our weight management services. 

Here, we take a look at reasons why it can be more difficult to lose weight as you age.

Changes in your metabolism

One of the biggest hurdles to losing weight is a natural change in your metabolism as you get older, which affects you regardless of gender. Metabolism is how your body converts the food you eat into cellular energy. 

Both men and women experience hormone changes as they age, namely in their reproductive hormones, and that can affect metabolism. As a result of hormonal changes, your body isn’t converting energy like it used to, so fat can accumulate.

For women, this change can happen quickly around perimenopause and menopause. In fact, visceral fat mass can increase by 44% in women during menopause thanks to a shift in metabolism and a redistribution in fat.

Loss of lean muscle

Another strong contributor to weight loss challenges as you get older is the loss of lean muscle. After age 30, lean muscle can decrease by 3% to 8% each decade, which is known as sarcopenia.

The reason why a loss of lean muscle can make weight loss trickier is that muscle burns more calories than fat. So as you age and lose muscle, you’re not burning calories as efficiently, and your fat-muscle ratio can tip in the wrong direction.

Loss of physical function

Complicating matters even further, the wear and tear can catch up with you as the years pass by, leaving you with achier joints and sorer muscles. Combine that with a natural decline in lean muscle, and you can see that exercising your way to weight loss is more difficult as you age.

Losing weight is still possible as you get older

Despite it being more challenging to lose weight as you age, we assure you that it’s still very much possible. Dr. Irizarry-Román can design a weight loss plan that takes these age-related challenges into account to help you shed unhealthy pounds.

From hormone replacement therapies to medications, we can boost your efforts with some key tools, and we also help with dietary counseling and exercise programs.

If you don’t want age to stand in the way of your weight loss, come and see us so we can tailor an effective weight loss program that will meet your changing needs. To get that ball rolling, contact No Mercy Sports Medicine by calling 305-614-6757. You can also send a message online to request an appointment.