Beat fat in middle age

We all have stories, don’t we, of how good we used to look back in the day? ‘Back in the day’ in this context generally means our college days, when we could choose which lectures to attend and which to miss, when no one really wore watches, and when we had all the time in the world to go to the gym, play our favourite sports, and laugh a lot.
It’s only after real life intervenes and we begin working that our bodies begin to slow. Inch by inch, our waistlines grow rounder, our arms flabbier, our skin looser, until on our fortieth birthday we look in the mirror and refuse to believe it is truly us. Happens to everyone, we think. Natural. Why should we be different?
We should because it’s not just our appearances at stake here. Abdomen fat has been linked to diabetes, heart disease and a variety of cancers. I know that it is not easy to find time to exercise when you have a full time job and a full time family, we must all try. And it’s not just exercise; as we age, our bodies need less and less energy, but typically we consume more. From ages 40 to 45, we need to cut our calorie intake by 200 calories to keep maintaining a healthy diet, and yet how many of us do that?
Even with exercise too, it doesn’t have to be an hour-long sweat-fest at the gym. A quick walk and a fifteen-minute run up and down the stairs can do the trick for most of us. We can squeeze it into our lunchtimes, or for those slow late afternoons at work where nothing seems to move and our eyelids droop.
We need to be at our healthiest during middle age, because that’s when our bodies begin to wear down, and that’s when diseases rear their ugly heads. If we stay fit and commit ourselves to small exercise and diet regimes, we can ensure that all those stories about our past don’t need to be just tales. We can make them part of our present.