Major factors that affect weight loss!

So most people know losing weight when you were younger is a lot easier than when you are older, but what a lot of people don't know are the reasons for this.

One of the main reasons for this is to do with our MUSCLE, how much we have and how metabolically active they are. Our main energy usage throughout the day comes from our RESTING METABOLIC RATE (RMR) which is all the energy we use at rest for the day. There are a few things that influence the outcome of this and they are - Age, Weight, Sex, and Fat-free mass (muscle).

There's a saying that goes muscle is expensive to carry, which is true. The more muscle we carry on our body the harder it has to work to fuel it. The energy used from RMR can be between 50%-70% of all the energy we use all day, and from this most of it, comes from muscle usage.

The older we get we start to lose muscle, this isn't a process you really notice which is why we don't understand why weight loss can be so hard. From the age of 30 every decade we can lose up to 10% muscle of our body which will impact our energy needs. So if you think that at the age of 50 we can potentially have lost up to 20% of muscle. Now we know that most off our energy needs come from muscle usage you can understand why we will find it harder to lose weight. But that doesn't have to be an issue we can overcome this with some form of weight training. This doesn't have to be going down the gym and doing a bodybuilding type program which requires you training 5 times a week, it could be some circuit training 3 times a week.

Ladies will find it slightly harder than men as men carry a bit more muscle than ladies so have a slight advantage. People that are overweight or obese will find it harder as fat mass only contributes between 5%-7% of energy use whereas muscle uses between 60%-70%.

TO SUMMERISE

As we get older we tend to lose some muscle which means over the day we burn fewer calories. Muscle is our biggest component to help lose weight so try and get some form off weights into your training. Resting metabolic rate can be affected by Weight, Age, Sex, Muscle mass.