Sunday November 21st, 2021

Why do we gain weight over the years?

A kilo here, another one there, and suddenly your clothes don’t fit and jokes about your fat stomach are starting to bother you. Getting older goes with gaining weight, even when you are sticking to a healthy diet.
A sedentary lifestyle, social factors, hormonal imbalance, medication and genetic factors can all play a part.

But don’t get frustrated. We can help you to understand why this happens.

Decrease in hormone levels

Oestrogen, progesterone, androgens and the growth hormone are essential for maintaining muscle mass. And over the years the levels of these hormones decrease, and this makes it more difficult to keep in shape.
This process starts at around 30 years of age and continues until the age of 65, when hormone levels are lower than those in a young person. Every decade after the age of 30, we lose 5% of muscle mass.

Lack of energy
Hormones play a significant role in the development of muscle mass, but it is also true that with age, we feel increasingly less motivated to do exercise.

This encourages us to spend most of the day sitting or inactive, which can pave the way for the appearances of degenerative diseases, such as artrosis or osteoporosis.

More stress and insomnia
An increase in responsibilities as we grow older causes higher levels of stress and anxiety, which in turn results in a lack of sleep and digestive problems.
This could lead to us eating badly, not eating enough or eating too much, all of which can stop our bodies from correctly processing the nutrients it needs.

There is no secret formula for avoiding the ageing process and everything that this involves, but the solution lies in common sense. Follow a good diet, get off the sofa, try to get as much sleep as possible and accept that we just aren’t as young as we used to be!