Fat and your biological age : the connection

If you’re over 40 years old, you’ve probably noticed that fat loss can become harder.

I am going to focusing. alot more on longevity this year. Yes, I am still interested in everythign pro-aging, menopause and beauty. But as I edge closer to 50, longevity is increasingly top of mind.

If you’re over 40 years old, like me, and maybe if you are in peri/post menopause you’ve probably noticed that fat loss is harder.

When we’re younger, in our teens, 20’s and 30’s, we can often (not always) get away with a lot. We can eat more carbs without gaining weight, and keep up our energy and strength levels.

But after 40, things change. And this related to changes in our hormones as we age.

These changes affect our metabolism — how our body regulates the use of energy sources such as carbs and fats.

When we’re younger, our metabolism is faster and energy from carbs is burned fast without adding weight, but as we get older, with hormonal changes, it can slow down, to the point where some people can eat a single muffin and gain weight.

Let’s dive into what’s happening here and what you can do about it. Even more importantly, fat loss at this age can actually “de-age” us.

Yes, I said “de-age”!

ESTROGEN, TESTOSTERONE & WEIGHT GAIN OVER 40

Estrogen is not only an important hormone for reproductive functions, but is also a body fat-promoting hormone.

When it gets too high, it can increase insulin and cortisol levels, which lead to excess body fat, while at the same time lowering thyroid and progesterone, two hormones which help to burn body fat.

So this should be great then when we hit menopause, because our estrogen levels start lowering and we lose body fat, right?

Unfortunately, no.

While too-high estrogen leads to weight gain, estrogen that’s too low… also leads to weight gain.

When estrogen levels get too low, as they do in menopause, this can lead to excess body fat being created, especially around the middle, along with a decrease in muscle and even body density.

And it does this in part by affecting our appetite, increasing cravings for high calorie and sugary foods.

But it also affects men.

Just as estrogen starts lowering in women, testosterone levels start lowering in men around the age of 40.

This testosterone is crucial to keep up one’s metabolism, muscle mass and bone density. And its lack makes it much easier to gain weight, especially around the middle, and much harder to get rid of it once it’s there.

WHAT IS INSULIN RESISTANCE AND HOW DOES IT APPLY TO AGING

When you consume sugar, your body releases a hormone called insulin. This insulin shuttles the sugar to your cells and gets them to open up to let the sugar in so the cell can use it to make energy.

And, if the cells have too much sugar already, the insulin directs that the sugar be connected up to fatty acids and stored as body fat.

When the cell is healthy and functioning correctly, it lets the sugar right in. This is called being “Insulin Sensitive,” where the cell is sensitive to insulin’s request and opens right up.

But, when the cells have been getting too much sugar, for too long, especially processed sugars, the cells can start to resist insulin. And it takes more insulin to get the cells to open up.

And the more the cells resist the insulin, the more the insulin is forced to convert the sugar to body fat.

When we’re overweight to one degree or another, we have some amount of resistance to insulin occurring.

The solution, very simply, is to remove sugars for a period of time, forcing our cells to become accustomed to using fat as an energy source, and our cells become sensitive to insulin again and our body fat levels come down.

Great.

But here’s the thing, while sugar does this when we’re younger… it does it much more when we’re older. And as we age it becomes easier and easier for our cells to build up a resistance to insulin.

This makes it easier and easier to build excess body fat.

And, as insulin is also connected to cortisol, which is connected to our hunger hormones, we can start getting pretty heavy cravings more easily than we would have when younger.

So we need to be more careful here.

This doesn’t mean you can never have carbs or sugar, but we do need to watch how much we’re having as it has a major affect on us as we get older.

This is especially so considering that while testosterone and growth hormone levels (two anti-aging hormones) will naturally decline as we get older, excess sugar and body fat makes these decline much faster.

The more fat we have on our bodies, the less testosterone and growth hormone we’ll have, and the less thyroid we’ll have.

LOSING THE WEIGHT & REVERSING OUR BIOLOGICAL AGE

So, first, we need to cut down on the sugars and cut out the processed sugars.

These increase body fat levels through higher insulin, cortisol and estrogen, while lowering the growth hormone and IGF we need to burn body fat and slow aging.

I would also recommend taking Omega 3 Fatty Acids too.

These help to restore our hunger hormones to there normal levels, while helping to balance our hormones, faster than anything else I know.

However, if you have very significant sugar cravings that are hard to get over, I would first recommendtestign for something like (SIBO) and Candida that brings on most of these cravings (I recommedn finding a good integrative doctor).

These same bacteria also cause bloating adding inches to our waist we assume is body fat, but which isn't. Taking probiotics and digestive enzymes can remove this bloating fast and bring our gut health and overall health up to the point where fat loss becomes quite easy.

Between these things we can address sugar cravings, bloating, caused by harmful gut bacteria and candida, and lose excess body fat we thought we were stuck with and then keep it off.

I hope this helps!

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