Saturday, June 15, 2013

3 Step Diet Strategy Shows Women Over 50 How To Lose Those Last 5 Pounds

For women over the age of 50 menopause becomes a factor in the success of a weight loss strategy. Besides puberty and pregnancy, menopause is the next most common time for a woman to gain weight. If you think about it each of these time periods in a woman's life share something in common - hormonal change. These hormonal changes can make losing those final 5 pounds challenging for those women who are close to their goal weight.

Here is a 3 step strategy women over 50 can follow for the next week to reach their weight loss goal.

1. Be Carb Smart. Low carb diets can work, but you have to be smart about your carbohydrate intake. If you have been eating fewer carbohydrates, or even fewer calories, for a number of weeks and you cannot get your weight to budge, then you might be unknowingly making weight loss hard for your body.

On Day One allow yourself to eat a high carb meal. You can aim for about a 1,000 calorie meal and over 150 grams of carbs. This is not hard to do if you are having pasta, bread, or baked goods, and you should feel free to eat these foods.

This high carb meal resets your fat burning hormones that naturally decrease when you follow a low carb or low calorie diet for more than a week or two.

2. Cycle Your Carb Intake. On the two days following your high carb meal you want to drop your carb intake to around 50 carbs per day. Then on the remaining days of the week add an additional 10 to 20 carbs to your diet per day. By doing this you prevent your fat burning hormones from plummeting, which helps keep your body in a fat burning state 24/7.

3. Exercise The Right Way For Your Goal. The day after your high carb meal is the perfect day to use resistance training, which means exercise using either weights or your body weight. This type of exercise uses your large muscles and depletes the stored carbohydrates in your muscles. This prevents fat storage and sets you up for fat loss during the week.

You may want to add one more weight training day early in the week or you can opt to do light aerobic exercise for the remaining days of week. Aim for a minimum of 30 minutes a day.

By the end of the week you should see the results on the scale. If you are not quite at your 5 pound weight loss goal, repeat the 3 step strategy the next week.