How to Boost Your Metabolism When Over 50

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The 10almonds Team

Dr. Dawn Andalon, a physiotherapist, explains the role of certain kinds of exercise in metabolism; here’s what to keep in mind:

Work with your body

Many people make the mistake of thinking that it is a somehow a battle of wills, and they must simply will their body to pick up the pace. That’s not how it works though, and while that can occasionally get short-term results, at best it’ll quickly result in exhaustion. So, instead:

  • Strength training: engage in weight training 2–3 times per week; build muscle and combat bone loss too. Proper guidance from trainers familiar with older adults is recommended. Pilates (Dr. Andalon is a Pilates instructor) can also complement strength training by enhancing core stability and preventing injuries. The “building muscle” thing is important for metabolism, because muscle increases the body’s metabolic base rate.
  • Protein intake: Dr. Andalon advises to consume 25–30 grams of lean protein per meal to support muscle growth and repair (again, important for the same reason as mentioned above re exercise). Dr. Andalon’s recommendation is more protein per meal than is usually advised, as it is generally held that the body cannot use more than about 20g at once.
  • Sleep quality: prioritize good quality sleep, by practising good sleep hygiene, and also addressing any potential hormonal imbalances affecting sleep. If you do not get good quality sleep, your metabolism will get sluggish in an effort to encourage you to sleep more.
  • Exercise to manage stress: regular walking (such as the popular 10,000 steps daily) helps manage stress and improve metabolism. Zone two cardio (low-intensity movement) also supports joint health, blood flow, and recovery—but the main issue about stress here is that if your body experiences unmanaged stress, it will try to save you from whatever is stressing you by reducing your metabolic base rate so that you can out-survive the bad thing. Which is helpful if the stressful thing is that the fruit trees got stripped by giraffes and hunting did not yield a kill, but not so helpful if the stressful thing is the holiday season.
  • Hydration: your body cannot function properly without adequate hydration; water is needed (directly or indirectly) for all bodily processes, and your metabolism will also “dry up” without it.
  • Antidiabetic & anti-inflammatory diet: minimize sugar intake and reduce processed foods, especially those with inflammatory refined oils (esp. canola & sunflower) and the like. This has very directly to do with your body’s energy metabolism, and as they say in computing, “garbage in; garbage out”.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Burn! How To Boost Your Metabolism

Take care!

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  • Beat Osteoporosis with Exercise – by Dr. Karl Knopf

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    There are a lot of books about beating osteoporosis, and yet when it comes to osteoporosis exercises, it took us some work to find a good one. But, this one’s it!

    A lot of books give general principles and a few sample exercises. This one, in contrast, gives:

    • An overview of osteopenia and osteoporosis, first
    • A brief overview of non-exercise osteoporosis considerations
    • Principles for exercising a) to reduce one’s risk of osteoporosis b) if one has osteoporosis
    • Clear explanations of about 150 exercises that fit both categories

    This last item’s important, because a lot of popular advice is exercises that are only good for one or the other (given that a lot of things that strengthen a healthy person’s bones can break the bones of someone with osteoporosis), so having 150 exercises that are safe and effective in both cases, is a real boon.

    That doesn’t mean you have to do all 150! If you want to, great. But even just picking and choosing and putting together a little program is good.

    Bottom line: if you’d like a comprehensive guide to exercise to keep you strong in the face of osteoporosis, this is a great one.

    Click here to check out Beat Osteoporosis With Exercise, and stay strong!

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  • Gutbliss – by Dr. Robynne Chutkan

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve previously reviewed another of (gastroenterologist) Dr. Chutkan’s books, “The Anti-Viral Gut”, but Gutbliss is her most well-known book, and here’s why:

    This book goes into a lot more detail than most gut health books. You probably already know to eat fiber and enjoy an occasional probiotic, and chances are good you’ve already at least considered screening for food sensitivities/intolerances/allergies, especially common ones like lactose and gluten.

    So, well beyond such, Dr. Chutkan talks about the very many things that affect our gut health, and countless small tweaks we can make to improve things, and the very least not sabotage ourselves. A lot of the advice is of course dietary, but some is other aspects of lifestyle, and a lot of items are things like “do this at this time of day, not that time of day”, or “do this and this, but not together”, and similar such advices that come from a place of deep professional knowledge.

    The “10-day plan” promised by the subtitle is of course delivered, and while it may seem a bold claim, do remember that the life cycle of things in your gut is very very short, so 10 days is more than enough time for a complete reset, if doing things correctly.

    The style is very accessible pop science, making this very easy to implement.

    Bottom line: if you’d like your gut health to be better than it is, this book has a wealth of information to guide you through doing exactly that.

    Click here to check out Gutbliss, and enjoy how much healthier you can feel!

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  • How to Find Happiness In Yourself – by Michelle Mann

    The 10almonds Team

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    A lot of books about happiness tell you what to pursue, generally. What things to focus on, and that’s good, but incomplete. This book does cover those things too (complete with academic sources to back up what really works), but also goes further:

    Michelle Mann gives 25 key habits that will cumulatively build happiness, which is what it’s really about. After all:

    • If you watch your favourite movie, you’ll be happy for 90 minutes (or 9 hours if it’s The Lord of the Rings).
    • If you build daily habits that add happiness to you, your surroundings, and those around you, you’ll be happy for life.

    They do also cover happiness while going through difficult times, such as divorce, job loss, illness, or bereavement.

    Sometimes, knowing what we “should” do in theory is the easy part. Where Mann excels here is in providing explanations of each habit. This means that rather than it being some platitude, the principles underlying it are truly understood… and thus motivate us to actually apply the advice and build the habits into our life.

    While the explanations are therefore the greatest value of the book, we do recommend copying out the 25 habits (which are effectively subchapter headings) and putting them somewhere to read often.

    Bottom line: we recommend getting yourself (and/or your loved ones!) a copy of this book. You (and/or they) will be happy you did!

    Order “How to Find Happiness In Yourself: 25 Habits Guaranteed to Help You Live a Happier Life” on Amazon today!

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  • Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The 10almonds Team

    How old do you want to be?

    We asked you how old you are, and got an interesting spread of answers. This wasn’t too surprising; of course we have a general idea of who our readership is and we write accordingly.

    What’s interesting is the gap for “40s”.

    And, this wasn’t the case of a broken poll button, it’s something that crops up a lot in health-related sociological research. People who are most interested in taking extra care of their body are often:

    • Younger people full of optimism about maintaining this perfectly healthy body forever
    • Older people realizing “if I don’t want to suffer avoidable parts of age-related decline, now is the time to address these things”

    In between, we often have a gap whereby people no longer have the optimism of youth, but do not yet feel the pressure of older age.

    Which is not to say there aren’t 40-somethings who do care! Indeed, we know for a fact we have some subscribers in their 40s (and some in their 90s, too), just, they evidently didn’t vote in this poll.

    Anyway, let’s bust some myths…

    Aging is inevitable: True or False?

    False, probably. That seems like a bold (and fortune-telling) claim, so let’s flip it to deconstruct it more logically:

    Aging is, and always will be, unstoppable: True or False?

    That has to be “False, probably”. To say “true” now sounds like an even bolder claim. Just like “the moon will always be out of reach”.

    • When CPR was first developed, first-aiders were arrested for “interfering with a corpse”.
    • Many diseases used to be death sentences that are now “take one of these in the morning”
      • If you think this is an appeal to distant history, HIV+ status was a death sentence in the 90s. Now it’s “take one of these in the morning”.

    But, this is an appeal to the past, and that’s not always a guarantee of the future. Where does the science stand currently? How is the research and development doing on slowing, halting, reversing aging?

    We can slow aging: True or False?

    True! There’s a difference between chronological age (i.e., how much time has passed while we’ve been alive) and biological age (i.e., what our diverse markers of aging look like).

    Biological age often gets talked about as a simplified number, but it’s more complex than that, as we can age in different ways at different rates, for example:

    • Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)
    • Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)
    • Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)
    • Cellular markers or aging (e.g. telomere length)
    • …and more, but we only have so much room here

    There are things we can do to slow most of those, including:

    In the case of cognitive decline particularly, check out our previous article:

    How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

    It’s too early to worry about… / It’s too late to do anything about… True or False?

    False and False!

    Many things that affect our health later in life are based on early-life choices and events. So it’s important for young people to take advantage of that. The earlier one adopts a healthy lifestyle, the better, because, and hold onto your hats for the shocker here: aging is cumulative.

    However, that doesn’t mean that taking up healthy practices (or dropping unhealthy ones) is pointless later in life, even in one’s 70s and beyond!

    Read about this and more from the National Institute of Aging:

    What Do We Know About Healthy Aging?

    We can halt aging: True or False?

    False, for now at least. Our bodies are not statues; they are living organisms, constantly rebuilding themselves, constantly changing, every second of every day, for better or for worse. Every healthy or unhealthy choice you make, every beneficial or adverse experience you encounter, affects your body on a cellular level.

    Your body never, ever, stops changing for as long as you live.

    But…

    We can reverse aging: True or False?

    True! Contingently and with limitations, for now at least.

    Remember what we said about your body constantly rebuilding itself? That goes for making itself better as well as making itself worse.

    But those aren’t really being younger, we’ll still die when our time is up: True or False?

    False and True, respectively.

    Those kinds of things are really being younger, biologically. What else do you think being biologically younger is?

    We may indeed die when our time is up, but (unless we suffer fatal accident or incident first) “when our time is up” is something that is decided mostly by the above factors.

    Genetics—the closest thing we have to biological “fate”—accounts for only about 25% of our longevity-related health*.

    Genes predispose, but they don’t predetermine.

    *Read more: Human longevity: Genetics or Lifestyle? It takes two to tango

    (from the Journal of Immunity and Ageing)

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Kumquat vs Persimmon – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The 10almonds Team

    Our Verdict

    When comparing kumquat to persimmon, we picked the kumquat.

    Why?

    In terms of macros, kumquats have more protein, though like most fruits, it’s unlike anybody’s eating them for the protein content. More importantly, they have a lot more fiber, for less than half the carbs. It bears mentioning though that (again, like most fruits) persimmon isn’t bad for this either, and both fruits are low glycemic index foods.

    When it comes to vitamins, it’s not close: kumquats have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, E, and choline, while persimmon has more vitamin C. It’s worth noting that kumquats are already a very good source of vitamin C though; persimmon just has more.

    In the category of minerals, kumquats again lead with more calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, while persimmon has more iron, phosphorus, and potassium.

    In short, enjoy both, and/or whatever fruit you enjoy the most, but if looking for nutritional density, kumquats are bringing it.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)

    Take care!

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Healthy Harissa Falafel Patties

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The 10almonds Team

    You can make these as regular falafel balls if you prefer, but patties are quicker and easier to cook, and are great for popping in a pitta.

    You will need

    For the falafels:

    • 1 can chickpeas, drained, keep the chickpea water (aquafaba)
    • 1 red onion, roughly chopped
    • 2 tbsp chickpea flour (also called gram flour or garbanzo bean flour)
    • 1 bunch parsley
    • 1 tbsp harissa paste
    • Extra virgin olive oil for frying

    For the harissa sauce:

    • ½ cup crème fraîche or plant-based equivalent (you can use our Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese recipe and add the juice of 1 lemon)*
    • 1 tbsp harissa paste (or adjust this quantity per your heat preference)

    *if doing this, rather than waste the zest of the lemon, you can add the zest to the falafels if you like, but it’s by no means necessary, just an option

    For serving:

    • Wholegrain pitta or other flatbread (you can use our Healthy Homemade Flatbreads recipe)
    • Salad (your preference; we recommend some salad leaves, sliced tomato, sliced cucumber, maybe some sliced onion, that sort of thing)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Blend the chickpeas, 1 oz of the aquafaba, the onion, the parsley, and the harissa paste, until smooth. Then add in the chickpea flour until you get a thick batter. If you overdo it with the chickpea flour, add a little more of the aquafaba to equalize. Refrigerate the mixture for at least 30 minutes.

    2) Heat some oil in a skillet, and spoon the falafel mixture into the pan to make the patties, cooking on both sides (you can use a spatula to gently turn them), and set them aside.

    3) Mix the harissa sauce ingredients in a small bowl.

    4) Assemble; best served warm, but enjoy it however you like!

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in more of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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