I’ve been thinking about it lately in the context of aging and strength training. I know protein needs go up as we age, partly because our bodies are less efficient at using protein. We need more of it.
I also know that for most women, the opposite happens. Protein consumption goes down. That’s part of the story about aging and the loss of muscle mass.
And then I ran across this story in the New York Times.
“Protein recommendations for older adults are currently the same as those for younger adults, but some evidence suggests that those 65 and older may benefit from consuming more — at least 0.45 to 0.54 grams per pound, said Denise K. Houston, a professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
For a 185-pound adult, this higher recommendation translates to 84 to 101 grams of protein per day. You can get about that much if you eat one cup of cottage cheese, a cup of tuna salad on whole wheat bread, and a six-ounce chicken breast in one day. As with younger adults, regularly lifting weights, running or doing other vigorous activities will further increase the protein needs for older adults. You’ll also require more if you’re recovering from an infection, hospitalization, surgery or a period of bed rest, Dr. Phillips said.
Once you reach your 50s and beyond, you start to lose muscle mass, Dr. Phillips said, which can increase your risk of falling, bone fractures, hospitalization and earlier death.
A lack of physical activity is the biggest cause of muscle loss, but studies have also shown that aging muscles are less efficient at using protein to make new muscle fibers, Dr. Phillips said. And among those aged 71 and older, about 50 percent of women and 30 percent of men aren’t meeting even the lower federal recommendations for protein.”
I might start tracking protein consumption again, aiming for 125 grams daily. I’m doing more strength training these days. I want to build muscle.
It’s part of my gearing up for turning 60 (in 244 days–why yes, I’m counting!).
Do you have a strategy or plan for eating enough protein?
This post revisits a FIFI blog post from November 4, 2013.
Ten years ago
On November 4, 2013, Sam blogged about what she described as My New Challenge. At the time, she was doing the Precision Nutrition Lean Eating program to gain muscle strength while maintaining a vegetarian diet. Sam reported that to achieve her goals she needed to build a habit of increasing her daily protein intake.
Taking cues from a Nutrition News post, Sam calculated that she should consume about 144 grams of protein daily, twice the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for her weight. Sam also referenced a post by Tracy about getting enough protein on a vegan diet, who noted that while she eats plenty of protein, tracking intake isn’t great for her.
Image from Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada. Did you know protein can come from plants? Where do vegans get their protein? Pie chart with two sections. Dark green section: Plants. Light green section: Plants, but in light green
I’ve been vegetarian (with minimal dairy) for about 8 years now, and I am sometimes asked, “do you get enough protein?” On one hand, this line of questioning seems more about justifying animal-based diets than supporting my health and nutrition. Plenty of research published since 2013 suggests that a) there are many protein-rich plant-based foods, b) there are benefits and drawbacks to both plant and animal proteins, and c) plant and animal proteins are about equally effective in developing muscle strength (Meng et al., 2021).
On the other hand…do I get enough protein? Looking at Sam calculated ratios and Tracy’s intake tracking, I suspect my protein intake does not meet the DRA, even without strength goals. Never have I tracked my protein intake since becoming vegetarian, as I struggle with maintaining habits of any kind. This includes the habit of learning about food, as I am reluctant to wade through complex nutrition research, salesy fads, and sometimes contradictory advice.
In reading Sam’s post from 2013, I realized that the habits of building muscle strength, eating enough protein, and taking the time to learn about nutrition are all distinct but perhaps important challenge goals for me.
Rather than see upping my protein as a means to and end, I could focus on forming one habit at a time. For example, after forcing myself to read around online for this post it appears that some foods I like (like peas, sundried tomatoes, guava, and nutritional yeast) are “surprising” high-protein plant-based foods I didn’t know about. They don’t exactly sound delicious together…but maybe I can try them in a smoothie sometime.
FIFI readers: How important is protein intake for achieving your nutrition and fitness goals? How do you approach this challenge?
CW: discussion of body weight change in the context of nutrition research.
This week, while skimming the weekly newsletter I get on new nutrition and metabolic research on body weight, the following caught my eye:
No significant changes in body weight, body mass index, % body fat, and neither in visceral adipose tissue in response to intervention was seen in the avocado group compared to the control group.
Catchy, huh? Could avocado have replaced the egg as the center of nutritional controversy? Turns out, people are have many questions about avocados.
Lots of google questions for such a small fruit…
The new avocado study I quoted above is out to settle the matter. But first, a little background about avocados (from the paper):
I think this graphic indicates that avocado is good, but I’m not sure.
Okay, glad that’s settled. Now, what’s the answer? Are avocados good for you or bad for you?
Turns out, they’re likely neither. The researchers were unable to find any significant differences between the avocado-consuming and the control group:
No significant changes in body weight, body mass index, % body fat, and neither in visceral adipose tissue in response to intervention was seen in the avocado group compared to the control group.
Avocado consumption didn’t seem to produce weight loss or weight gain (as they also mentioned in their abstract). They found some potential benefits relative to the type of fat found in avocados, but as they say, “further studies are needed to elucidate this effect.”
So, go forth and eat avocados. Or not, as you please. But I recommend this guacamole recipe from the California guacamole board. Who can resist?
Luscious, tomato-studded chunky guacamole, with cilantro and lime. Yum.
Is there any food item more hotly contested for its potential deadliness to breakfast (and other meal) eaters than the egg? Yes, coffee comes under attack regularly. But, Time magazine went on record to support coffee drinking “in moderation”– a wimpy recommendation, but it puts coffee in the clear. For now…
This coffee mug says “don’t be afraid”– of drinking coffee, I presume.
Uh, where was I? Oh, eggs. Right. There’s a new study out– a large prospective study that has people fill out Food Frequency Questionnaires and then follows them until the study ends (it ran for 16 years). And it found a small increase in relative risk of death (7% on average) for those who reported eating half of a whole egg per day (meaning 3.5 eggs a week on average). The researchers speculate that the ovo-risk is due to increase in dietary cholesterol intake.
In other words, eggs are bad. Again. Or are they?
Even a golden egg is a bad egg, and is surrounded by other bad eggs. Or so it would seem.
Of course, the news folks are all over the latest eggy results. Here’s one headline from this story:
Eating an egg a day could result in an early death, new study suggests– sensational headline mission accomplished.
What are we to make of this latest grim pronouncement about eggs? Is it true? Should we be afraid? Should we fight back? What to think?
First, some perspective is in order. Nutritional studies have been ping-ponging back and forth about eggs for decades now. As an avid egg-news follower, I’ve personally written several posts about the changing fortunes of eggs over the years.
Why do I distrust this new study telling me that eggs are bad? So glad you asked. Here are a few reasons:
Reason one: the study uses food frequency questionnaires, which are notorious for being bogus evidence. Or, as this journal says about them, “the main limitations are systematic errors and biases in estimates.” Ouch.
Reason two: the increased relative mortality risk was 7%, of which it was unclear even to the researchers how much of that was due to egg consumption. They put it this way in the abstract:
Study limitations include… residual confounding despite extensive adjustment for acknowledged dietary and lifestyle risk factors. Ouch.
The conclusions of this study are overblown. Blaming eggs alone for an increased risk of cardiovascular disease is a simplistic and reductionist approach to the concept of diet and disease prevention. (ouch)
Despite many years of research this question about eggs and health has not been answered, with multiple observational studies over the last few decades showing conflicting results… This study, although well conducted, unfortunately only adds more noise to the discussion. (yep, what I said)
The suggestion that the risk from eggs is mostly explained by the cholesterol content of eggs is also problematic as we know that dietary cholesterol does not have a clear link to levels of circulating cholesterol in the blood. (yep, knew this too; you go, egg expert!)
How many eggs’ or ‘how much cholesterol’ was based on a questionnaire, which asked people how often over the past year they ate eggs and other foods and which people only completed once. So it did not look at how peoples food intake changed over the following decade. (Yeah! One questionnaire about a year’s worth of eating and then… nothing…. Seriously?)
In short, studies have been trying to put eggs down, and they’ve kept getting back up (in a manner of speaking). But, you may be wondering, is it okay for me to eat eggs?
According to nutrition science: they have no earthly idea.
According to me: it doesn’t mater what I think about what you eat. Eat what you want; it’s none of my business (unless I’m making breakfast for you, in which case we should confab about it).
According to you: all kinds of decisions and preferences and values and constraints go into what you put on your plate. They are yours. Looking for guidelines is natural, and there are a bunch of nutritional ones out there. But those guidelines also reflect values and preferences and constraints and funding sources and particular agendas and perspectives. You get to choose whether you eat eggs, how often and how many.
Does nutritional sensationalism in the press bother you? Do you ignore it? I’d love to hear any comments you have. And if you have a good egg salad recipe, I’d be interested in that, too.
CW: this post offers comments and critiques on a research article whose subject matter is methods for weight loss. The focus of this post is not to endorse any method of weight loss (because I don’t). I’m reframing the area of research as metabolism of body weight– how that works. I then point out how difficult it is to get clarity and confidence from scientific articles about this topic when the researchers as a group are in conflict.
Now, to the post:
Right now, the state of coronavirus research is what I would call the Wild Wild West. There’s not much law and order, shootouts among rival factions are common, and the most vulnerable among us are completely unprotected. But that’s understandable– COVID-19 is less than a year old, so researchers are starting from scratch, and many of them are working while at the same time taking care of patients who urgently need effective treatment.
But no researcher who works on human metabolism of body weight has these excuses, as it were. Trying to understand how body weight changes work– fluctuations up and down, how and when bodies maintain stable weights over time– is a well-established set of research questions with a long history of practices and accompanying literature.
So, what’s the deal here? What do we really know? What’s in dispute among researchers, and what’s just pseudoscientific fat-phobic nonsense?
(tl:dr version– I don’t have a good answer to this question. But, neither do the researchers, and there are reasons why they don’t that aren’t scientific ones.)
In a 2013 New England Journal of Medicine article, a research group took on the task of dividing up myths, presumptions and what they called facts about how body weight metabolism works. Some of their cited “myths” (I’m using scare quotes because whether they are myths is contested) included:
how breast feeding affects body weight;
how sex counts as physical activity or exercise;
how physical activity classes affect body weight;
claims about how different eating practices affect long-term body weight stability (see article if you want the details, but they’re not important here).
The researchers considered these to be myths because, according to their analysis, the studies they cite don’t support the above claims.
There’s more to the article (they also talk about what they call “presumptions” and “facts” about body weight, but I’ll leave that to the reader, as they say), but here’s the catch.
Many other researchers and experts didn’t and don’t agree with their conclusions. Why not? There are a lot of issues with their work, but one big one is this:
The primary researchers got a lot-a-lot of funding from Kraft, Jenny Craig, the Knowledge Institute for Beer (no, that’s not a joke), McDonald’s Global Advisory Council (which is also apparently a thing), and yes, Coca-Cola. The list goes on and on, and it’s fascinating reading. Go to the bottom of the article, and enjoy.
Getting serious, though: we know that the money for scientific research has to come from somewhere. Federal funding doesn’t cover all of the needs of all the scientists. Partnering with business and industries is common. And good solid science has been established doing just that.
But: when the connections among scientist, funding source and recommendations to the public get too close, we may be well-advised to take a step back and reconsider. In this case, one of the so-called “facts” cited was that meal-replacement drinks and commercially produced meals were an effective (and safe? not clear) eating practice that could result in lowered body weight (that would be stable? again, not clear). But the funders of this research included companies that would directly benefit from public uptake of this claim.
You might think, hmm. This was seven years ago. Surely this mess has been cleared up by now.
As my friends and I used to say in middle school, “you wish!” Alas, nutrition and human metabolism research (as it relates to body weight) is still in full Game-of-Thrones mode (yes, I switched from a Wild West to the Games of Thrones metaphor in the same article; so sue me…)
Does this mean we don’t know anything? Well, no. We know that there are lots of foods to choose from, that we all have nutritional needs, and there are lots of ways to fill those needs. We know that physical activity has loads of benefits for our well-being.
What about the nitty-gritty details, though? Those, my friends, are most definitely still under construction.
Nutrition and human metabolism research: definitely under construction.
Readers: what are some of your favorite “myths” around this topic? I’d love to hear from you.
“Mice form the basis of all biomedical research. As the quintessential model organism, they are perfect specimens in which to study all sorts of human conditions. But just because a drug performs well in mice, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll have the same result in humans. Science journalists and press releases — as translators of these findings — often fail to clearly demarcate that line.
A new Twitter account hopes to make that line much clearer. Last Friday, tweets from @justsaysinmice started making the rounds on Twitter and they quickly went viral. Every tweet — all 11 of them so far — follows the same pattern: A news story or press release with a sensational headline is tweeted out, with two simple words tacked on top: “IN MICE.””
The story that caught my eye was on orange juice, partly because of a playful ongoing argument with a friend who is quick to remind me and others that OJ is the nutritional equivalent of coke. Not evil, but not exactly health food.
“A new study from London’s Western University suggests drinking two-and-a-half glasses of orange juice a day could help prevent heart disease and diabetes. Researchers have found a molecule, called nobiletin, in sweet oranges and tangerines that significantly reduces obesity and can reverse its negative side-effects.“Obesity and its resulting metabolic syndromes are a huge burden to our health care system, and we have very few interventions that have been shown to work effectively,” said Murray Huff, PhD professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in a statement.”
Hmm. But read on and the results were only shown in mice.
So I tweeted.
Maybe orange juice isn't the equivalent of coke after all! @jeff_zolo But wait, #InMice
Medical researcher and occasional guest blogger Dr. Savita weighed in.
This is such an irresponsible take on this research. First, the study was done in mice. Second, a glass of OJ contains over 20g of sugar. Want nobiletin? Eat the pulp and the peel.
Sounds like unless you want 20g of sugar and you just want the health benefits, if the results work out in humans and not just #inmice, there are better ways to get it.
Continuing with the discussion of make-ahead meal preparations, today I thought I’d tackle lunch. Christine nudged me this way during my previous post on oatmeal, and I admit, I started with oatmeal because it was easier to describe and to write about! The trouble with lunch is all the pieces you need to have ready in advance in order to make the prep painless. Over the years, I’ve developed routines to make this pretty easy for me, but it took a while, and many Sundays spent too long in the kitchen, to develop the routine. However, I kept plugging away until it became habitual, and now I spend less than an hour prepping lunches for the week (sometimes a lot less), which works out to under 10 minutes per meal.
So, I am going to write this post with two parts, “Saturday” is going to be the prep that needs to happen before you want to make your meals for the week. This doesn’t have to be Saturday, of course, but at least a day before you need those ingredients. Judicious use of your freezer space can allow you to do this part weeks in advance, and as you develop a meal-prep routine, I strongly suggest you do it that way. “Sunday” is your meal-prep day. I always make enough to eat one of them that day, so then lunch planning is done.
A final note before I get to the recipes–you are going to have to experiment with how much variety you need in the week and from week to week. I do not require much variety to be satisfied with my breakfast and lunches. When I was single, I also ate the same dinner for four or five nights in a row. However, I know many people would be very disappointed in their meals to have so much sameness day to day. You will have to adjust these plans to meet your meal-variety needs, but be aware that the more variety you decide to require, the more time the preparations will take. Easy switches like a different serving of fruit or vegetable may be enough to give you a hit of variation without throwing off the whole week of preparations.
Saturday Prep your protein. My go-to is boneless skinless chicken breasts and/or thighs cooked in the slow-cooker on low heat for many hours. You can also do these in a low oven 20-30 minutes on a baking pan. I usually fill my slow-cooker to the top and leave it on medium for the day. This gives me enough chicken to last a month or so. Whatever I don’t need this week will be chopped up, placed on a cookie sheet and frozen individually. Then, once it’s frozen, I put it in plastic zipper bags to be pulled out as needed for the next month. You could sub in cooked ground or roasted turkey easily enough. I do not eat red meat, but I’d guess you could do something similar with beef. If you want fish or seafoods, I would recommend you keep them frozen until a day before you want to eat them to avoid spoilage.
Photo description: A cookie sheet with diced, cooked chicken breasts. They have been frozen and are ready to use or store in the freezer.
Prep your grains/beans. Whenever I cook rice, barley, dried beans, lentils, quinoa, etc. for dinner, I make extra. Then I freeze the leftovers in convenient amounts (3 cups, if I’m going to add them to lunches.) Thaw just before you do your prep for the week. I often use canned beans to save time. Just drain and rinse in a colander before using. You can also find cooked grains and beans in the freezer section of the grocery store, and they work well, too.
Consider prepping vegetables. I “cheat” and buy frozen veggies these days, but when I had fewer financial resources and more time, I would buy fresh vegetables, chop and steam them to have ready for lunches all week.
Sunday Basic “boxed” lunch This is my go-to lunch. To make it interesting week in and week out, I change which variation of flavorings I use. This is the starting place.
Put out 6 reusable 4 cup containers with good lids.
In each container begin with: 1 ½ cups chopped, cooked vegetables (I like broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, summer squash, and/or green beans, it’s ok if they’re still frozen) 4 oz chopped chicken, turkey, or protein of your choice (also fine if frozen) ½ cup beans and/or brown rice, quinoa, or other cooked grain (more if you’re vegetarian)
Teriyaki boxed lunch variation Add the following to each container of the the basic boxed lunch: Use black beans or small, mild-flavored beans like azuki or black-eyed peas ⅓ 8oz can of sliced water chestnuts, drained (about ¼ cup) 2 Tbs prepared teriyaki sauce (I use Kikkoman Takumi collection original) 1 tsp toasted sesame oil 2-3 tbs cashews Suggested fruit pairing: tangerines, oranges and/or pineapple
Tex-Mex boxed lunch variation Use pinto and/or black beans and rice. Either use a prepared salsa or make a spicy tomato sauce by stirring together: 2-3 cups tomato sauce 2 tsp cumin 2 tsp chili powder hot pepper flakes to taste
Put ¼ to ½ cup sauce/salsa over the veggies. Sprinkle with 1 tbs. pumpkin seeds. Add 1 oz grated monterey jack or pepper jack cheese on top. Suggested fruit pairing: diced melon and/or papaya (with a squeeze of lime!)
Italian boxed lunch variation Use garbanzo or white beans. Either use a prepared marinara sauce or make one by stirring together: 2-3 cups tomato sauce 2 tsp dried basil and oregano 1 tsp dried thyme 1 minced garlic clove
Put ¼ to ½ cup sauce over the veggies. Sprinkle with 1 oz grated mozzarella cheese and 1-2 tbs. parmesan. Suggested fruit pairing: grapes or an orange
For each of these, when you’re ready to eat, simply remove the lid and heat them up until hot, 3-4 minutes in the microwave. This is what I’m eating these days, although I’ve gone through periods when I was eating soups, stews or big salads instead. I’d be happy to share some of those recipes and ideas in future posts if folks are interested, so let me know and keep an eye out for them!
Do you have a go-to lunch that you like to make ahead for the week? Please comment below, and do let me know if you try any of these and what you think!
Marjorie Hundtoft is a middle school science and health teacher. She can be found eating out of reusable containers, picking up heavy things, and putting them back down again in Portland, Oregon. You can now read her at Progressive-Strength.com .
Photo description: What you can see in my refrigerator right now–containers of “teriyaki boxed lunch,” scrambled eggs, tangerines, and portions of greek yogurt with chopped apples.
Catherine recently mentioned her desire to do more meal prep. I love to prep ahead my meals for the week. I have a Sunday routine in which I make enough breakfasts and lunches to last me through Friday. These little containers give me peace of mind–reassurance that I will be well-fed without a hassle all week. If dinner has to be on the fly, that’s somehow more manageable than breakfast or lunch. For me, the hardest part of making meal prep a routine was consistently coming up with the plan before I went to the grocery store on Saturday. If I forgot to think about the entire meal–forgot a serving of fruit, or didn’t think to check if I had enough eggs–then the meal prep would be off for a whole week. So, in the spirit of helping others prep, I thought I’d share some of my recipes and shortcuts.
Today, Oatmeal.
I eat oatmeal at least 6 days a week, sometimes twice a day. Here are some of my favorite ways to prepare it in advance. I make it a complete meal with coffee, a couple eggs, some plain Greek yogurt and fruit, if there isn’t some added to the oats already.
Easiest Apple Oats. This is my go-to oatmeal. It is endlessly variable, depending on what sounds good to me and what fruit is seasonal at the time. Apples are the easiest, since they stay pleasant all week, whereas pears, bananas, peaches and such can eventually become brown and soggy. Canned or dried fruit are options as well, of course.
1. Set out as many reusable containers with tight lids* as meals you are preparing ahead (I make 6 at a time, eating one the morning I prep). In each container, place the following: ½ cup old-fashioned oats ¾ cup water a sprinkle of cinnamon 1 tbs coarsely chopped nuts 1 tbs raisins, dried cranberries, or cherries ½ a chopped tart apple
2. Store covered in the refrigerator. When you are ready to serve the oats, remove the lid and cook in the microwave 2 minutes, or until the oats have soaked up the liquid.
3. Serve with a little brown sugar, milk/nondairy milk, or Greek yogurt on top.
Slow-cooker Steel-cut oats These are just as easy as the last recipe, you just cook them ahead. Using the slow-cooker allows you to avoid the regular stirring and management that cooking steel-cut oats on the stove-top requires. These cook in about 30 minutes on the stove, if you want them faster, but be aware that they can stick and burn if not regularly stirred.
1. In your slow-cooker, place the following: 1 ½ cups steel-cut oats 6 cups water Tsp or so of cinnamon and/or anise seeds
2. Cook on low heat overnight, or at least 8 hours, until most of the liquid is absorbed and the oats are chewy.
3. If you want to add fruit, add it now after it has cooked. Otherwise, it breaks down over the long cooking time and becomes unpleasant. Optional add-ins to stir in now: 6 Tbs raisins or other dried fruit, chopped if appropriate 6 Tbs chopped walnuts or other unsalted nuts 3 chopped apples
4. Divide into 6 containers, cover and refrigerate until needed.
5. Serve warm by reheating in the microwave when you’re ready to enjoy it. This will thicken up considerably when it cools, so I like to serve it with milk (or actually soymilk, since I’m lactose intolerant) and a bit of butter and brown sugar.
Muesli I like this variation in the warmer months or when I need to pack breakfast somewhere where the extra liquid would be unwelcome. (Note that TSA might give you a side eye on this one, so I don’t recommend it for breakfast on a morning flight in the US.) Multiply the basic recipe by as many servings as you want in advance.
1. Using a wide rubber spatula, stir together in a large bowl: ½ cup old-fashioned or quick oats ¾ cup plain Greek yogurt ½ tsp vanilla (cheap fake vanilla is fine for this) ½ coarsely chopped apple 1 tbs chopped nuts dash cinnamon optional but recommended: ½ chopped orange or a whole tangerine some grated citrus zest
2. Press the mixture into a container that seals well and store up to 5 days. Optional but delicious–drizzle with a little honey before enjoying!
Your turn: do you have a favorite way to prep oatmeal in advance? I’d love to hear about it! And do let me know if you give any of these a try and how it goes!
*Oh, as a side note, any reusable container with a good lid will do for these. We have switched over nearly entirely to a set of Pyrex storage bowls in the last year. The lids are pretty tight (sometimes there’s a little liquid loss in transit, if I’m packing it to work in the morning), and the bowls are nice to reuse since they don’t take on flavors like plastic can. I caution you to not heat the lids, if you have these, though. They do not hold up well in the heat.
Marjorie Hundtoft is a middle school science and health teacher. She can be found eating oatmeal, picking up heavy things and putting them back down again in Portland, Oregon.You can now read her at Progressive-Strength.com .
There’s a story we tell here on the blog. Do the things you love, whatever movement fits into your day is good movement, eat what your body feels like eating.
Regular readers, you know our drill. It’s a relaxed, forgiving tune we sing around here most of the time.
Regular readers know too that I’ve been struggling a bit with that tune. These things are all true, I still sing that song, but at the same time things are getting more complicated with age and with injury. I’ve written before about doing things that aren’t fun (so much painful knee physio!) and about rest. Tl;dr: It’s complicated and sometimes I get frustrated.
Bitmoji Sam pointing at the word “lies”
It’s especially more complicated as we age. It’s especially more complicated for those of us with performance oriented fitness goals. Martha and Marjorie Rose are serious about their lifting. Kim and I have cycling goals. Others run and race. Cate is often preparing for her next big solo adventure. Christine is training for her next martial arts test.
As a group we’ve got a lot going on. We all do some strength work, some aerobic activity for endurance, some aerobic activity for intensity, and some activities for flexibility and mobility. For me, right now, it’s physio, weights, cycling and yoga.
I don’t mean to sound whiney. I’m not really complaining. It is what it is. But what it is is not simple or easy.
Sam’s bitmoji lifting weights.
So we’re busy but what do I mean by “more complicated”?
Do you remember when if you had a big project due for work or school you could just stay up all night, maybe even for a couple of nights, and push through? If you were working late you could skip meals, no problem. Aging takes away that ability for most of us. We need to be more organized and scheduled with our work and with our lives.
There are new rules for everyday eating too. For example, there’s a whole list of foods I don’t eat late in the day not because I’m concerned about my weight but because of heartburn. Oh, midlife. Lots of my friends are pretty scientific about their caffeine consumption. Luckily, I can still drink regular coffee after dinner but I think I’m the last in my friend group who is able.
All of these changes are present as we age as athletes too.
Here’s Abigail Barronian talking about the aging athlete, “It’s no secret that our bodies change as we age. Muscle mass and strength decline, it takes longer to recover from hard efforts, and our capacity to handle high training volumes can diminish. On top of that, mobility decreases and we become more prone to certain injuries. When an older athlete stops training, their fitness deteriorates significantly quicker than it did when they were young—and building it back is much harder.”
So given all the constraints it’s hard to be relaxed about things. Fitness in midlife and beyond requires more structure and thoughtful planning. If it used to be the fun, intuitive, freewheeling part of your life, that’s a tough psychological change too. Mostly it’s still a lot of fun for me but these days I’m finding the planning and organizing a bit stressful.
First, as we age rest becomes more important and it’s harder scheduling workouts and scheduling rest days, not to mention getting enough sleep. Aging athletes need more rest between tough workouts. I love rest but even for me sometimes the recommended amount of rest feels like too much. In recent years we’ve discovered that aging athletes can still work out hard. There’s no need to dial back workout intensity but there is a real need to rest more between workouts. We don’t recover and bounce back the way we used to.
A colleague of mine, and former bicycle racer, who is now 59 years old, put it something like this: “In my twenties I recall being able to do five or six hard workouts a week and race back-to-back days without any trouble.
In my thirties this changed to three or four hard workouts a week and it was more difficult to race back-to-back days. In my forties, two or three hard workouts a week were more than enough, and racing back-to-back days was a bit of a challenge. In my fifties, one or two hard workouts a week were enough and recovering from a race took me about a week. Now, approaching 60…don’t even ask.”
The rest and recovery time of a 20 year old athlete is significantly different than that of a 45 year old athlete. It’s different again at 55 and so on. But this means that taking training plans off the internet won’t work. Often they don’t allow enough rest.
From Here’s how to get stronger after fifty: “As you age, your body bounces back more slowly from intense exercise. Successful older athletes should take their recovery as seriously as their training. “Younger athletes can get away with a poor lifestyle and still perform, but older athletes cannot,” Swift says.”
When I was younger it was just a matter of juggling, fitting in the activities I wanted to fit in, amid kids and a busy work schedule. But as we age there’s also the matter of resting between workouts which becomes more and more important. I’ve long been a fan of deliberate rest days and every coach I’ve had has talked about their importance. Except now they’re more important and I don’t have a coach to make sure I take them.
Likewise for lifting, as we age there’s more need for rest. I read a study recently that claimed for midlife women lifters the right ratio for strength training is two hard workouts followed by one easier workout with lighter weights. I’m not sure if that’s right or not but the main point stands, it’s complicated.
I’ve read too that after 50 you should move to two rest days a week of which one can be active recovery, gentle cardio or yoga maybe.
What am I trying to fit in? The big and important thing is knee physio and strength training. Say three days a week. Next up is cycling, also three days a week. I would like to do hot yoga twice a week. And I also want to take a complete rest day. Oh and also I have to be flexible and fit things in around a very demanding work schedule.
Bitmoji Sam is holding a pillow. The text reads “rest up.”
Second, food is more complicated too. For me, there’s some planning involved. I have medication I have to take each morning on an empty stomach and then wait an hour before breakfast. That’s tricky. I also have medicine I have to take after breakfast because it can’t be taken on an empty stomach. Oh, and I need to get to work sometime.
There’s also this whole thing about aging athletes and muscle loss. Our bodies use protein less effectively so we are supposed to eat more of it, some with each meal. I also need fewer calories to get through the day–thanks also to aging– so protein takes up a good chunk of the calories. Add vegetables. Where’s the room for other food? That’s not easy to organize either.
Thirdly, for pretty much all of us there are complications related to injury. My knee is an ongoing thing and recently Tracy injured her Achilles. When that happens you’re doing workouts but also physio and in my case massage therapy too. It can feel like a lot to manage.
Now maybe you might think that one doesn’t need to take it all so seriously. You can walk to work, stretch once in awhile, and do work around the house. And that’s true. You can. But if your goals are more about maintaining fitness as you age and not losing muscle, it’s complicated. Mostly I’m good with that. But I confess that some days I just want to not think about what I’m eating or when I’m next riding or lifting and curl up on the sofa with a mug of hot tea and a book.
Bitmoji Sam on a purple bean bag chair with a red book and a mug.
