Surprisingly, not all exercise is created equal. Believe it or not, some exercises are not only a bad choice but could very well be counter-productive. In fact, recent studies have discovered that exercises once considered being an effective way to get lean, fit and healthy while helping keep you looking younger have now been shown to accelerate middle-age belly fat, loss of lean muscle tissue and inflammation that causes you to age faster.
Did you know that, on average, after the age of 35 (for women) and 40 (for men) your body “hormonally” changes and you start to gain weight easier, especially around the stomach region? Equally, you also begin to lose lean muscle tissue, creating an automatic metabolic slow-down making you less energetic, weaker, and flabbier.
And while trying to combat this by picking up the duration of your workouts, making them longer, more frequent, and more intense may seem like a logical solution it may only aid in making things worse. By that, what I mean is exercising more than you are now and being even stricter with your diet will not only be counterproductive, it will also add to your frustrations.
So, what’s actually happening? The simple explanation is this can be blamed mainly on the diminishing levels of youth-enhancing hormones our body naturally produces, particularly “growth hormone.”
Gradually this progressive hormonal decline usually begins around middle age and continues “linearly” by small percentages, for the rest of our natural life. This phenomenon is generally referred to as the “middle-age spread”.
Some of the most common symptoms associated with the “middle-age spread” are an increase in belly-fat and the loss of lean muscle tone that results in a dumpy, shapeless middle-age body. This may also explain why a majority of people over the age of 40 stop wearing form fitting clothes.
The good news is, research has discovered that your body has the ability to re-stimulate lagging youth-enhancing hormones naturally. And although you may not be able to stop the aging process, you can certainly slow its pace and actually reverse some of the effects it’s had on you thus far without reverting to anti-aging pills, potions, or hormone supplements.
However, before going any further, I need to warn you, what you’re about to read is probably going to sound counterintuitive in respects to all of the exercise and diet advice you’ve been told, but that’s because very few people actually know how to effectively re-activate the hormones responsible for slowing and reversing the effects of the “middle-age spread.”
These are the 3 things you “must avoid” if you want to burn off unwanted age-related body-fat, regain lost muscle tone and get your lean, fit and youthful body back.
1. Chronic Cardio
Too many people think that cardio is the answer to everything related to weight-loss and fat-loss. But current studies prove that doing conventional super long bouts of cardio overtaxes your body and increases the production of the stress hormone “cortisol”, which causes you to actually stop burning body-fat and in fact horde body-fat.
Studies have also found that doing long, frequent, cardio sessions break down your lean muscles and increase the production of free radicals. Free radicals are nasty little molecules that create cell damage through oxidation, creating chronic inflammation that accelerate aging and can lead to serious metabolic and chronic health issues by damaging healthy cells.
So if you’ve been pounding away on a treadmill, cranking away on a stationary bike or slaving away on some other cardio machine you need to understand that some cardio is good but chronic cardio is highly counterproductive.
2. Lack of Sleep
Although not considered an exercise, keeping yourself from being sleep deprived is an important exercise protocol you need to execute and master. Speaking from experience, -as I am now in my mid 50ties- as you get older, getting enough sleep becomes a major issue. Although your body is resilient and can handle a lot of stress, there’s one thing it cannot cope well without, and that’s getting enough sleep.
In fact, when you’re sleep deprived your body becomes overwhelmed with the stress hormone “cortisol”, which loves to deposit fat in and around your belly area.
And unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to exercise or diet your way to being lean, if cortisol levels are continuously evaluated. So, you need to get quality sleep consistently PERIOD.
Here are 2 simple steps you can take to get better sleep starting tonight.
- Get some room-darkening shades or put a dark blanket up over your windows—especially if you live in the city! This will ensure that you maximize melatonin (sleep hormone) production to improve the quality of sleep.
- Try to get on a fairly rigid schedule so your body adjusts to its awake/sleep time automatically. Your melatonin (sleep hormone) levels peak during a fairly small window of time. What this means is, by creating healthy patterns open the opportunity of falling asleep much faster. It’s also the most effective way to get into deep REM sleep, giving you a much better quality of sleep.
Try these simple effective tips to help you get better sleep so you can restore normal cortisol levels in your body.
3. Excessive Ab Exercises
If you want to rid your body of belly-fat, you have to get to the source of the problem.
Unfortunately, even though most of us fall prey to doing tons of Ab exercises in the hopes of creating a sexy “six pack” doing Ab-targeted exercises like sit ups, crunches and side bends will do absolutely nothing to help you get rid of your Ab flab.
In fact, doing excessive Ab-targeted moves can injure your lower back by causing unnecessary stress on your spine. This may come as a surprise but the purpose of your ab muscles is to actually prevent excessive bending and twisting taking added pressure off your back.
Bottom line – don’t waste your valuable time doing multiple, typical Ab exercises thinking you’re going to strip away unwanted belly fat.
The cause of fat accumulation in and around your stomach region is due to hormonal imbalances created by unhealthy eating habits coupled with changes in your age related body chemistry. That means you have to stimulate the right biochemical processes in your body to trigger the youth-enhancing hormones that enable you to burn off your stubborn body-fat.
WHAT TO DO…?
The KEY to this scientifically-proven method to slowing this aging process and activating the hormones necessary to undo some of the damage that has been created by the 3 outlined NO NO’s above is based on doing specific exercises performed at HIGH INTENSITY for a very short duration.
These essential factors combined together elicit a powerful physiological response that floods your body with anti-aging and fat-burning hormones – so you can burn off that stubborn middle-age body-fat and get a lean toned body in the quickest way possible.
Your results will be completely reflective upon your intensity while exercising AND NOT the amount of time you spend exercising. So you’ve got to be willing to give it your best effort while training. If you do, you will reap the rewards of a leaner, fitter, and more youthful body in a fairly short period of time.
Most people are simply unaware that your body has the amazing potential to slow down the aging process and stop the “middle-age spread” on its own. And your body is already equipped with the essential hormones, enzymes, and neurons to make it happen.
