Most women over 50 struggle to lose weight because naturally, with age, the metabolism slows down. Also, your activity levels may decrease, which can burn fewer calories.
Luckily, you can lose the extra pounds by incorporating a keto diet that dramatically reduces your caloric intake.
Below, we’ll dive into keto for women over 50, why it’s good for you, and how you can integrate it into your daily routine.
Table of Contents
- Overview of the Keto Diet
- Why Losing Weight After 50 Is Challenging
- How to Integrate a Keto Diet
- Things to Avoid While On Keto
- Benefits of Keto for Women Over 50
- Contradictions
- Conclusion
Overview of the Keto Diet
Keto, also known as ketogenic, is a diet containing low amounts of carbohydrates, moderate proteins, and lots of fat. It provides your body with calories from fat or proteins from animals instead of carbohydrates or glucose.
The keto diet promotes weight reduction in multiple ways, including reducing appetite and enhancing metabolism.
This means that when you consume a keto diet, you’ll fill up quickly, reducing hunger-stimulating agents in the body.
Besides cutting some pounds, such a diet helps in controlling your blood sugar.
Why Losing Weight After 50 Is Challenging
When you reach 50 years of age, your body cannot build muscle as quickly as when you were in your younger years.
As well, estrogen production sharply declines, and staying fit can be a challenge.
When all this happens, your body starts to encounter muscle degeneration which starts in your mid-40s. Worse still, the muscles lose volume due to age.
Even though building your muscles beyond 50 can be an uphill task, losing weight is all but possible.
The challenge in losing weight is due to slower metabolism and not because of hormonal changes. Metabolism declines from the ’30s and plummets after menopause.
How to Integrate a Keto Diet
As you know, a keto diet comprises a low-carb, moderate-protein, and high-fat diet.
You can choose a protein filled meal such as eggs, fish, and meat.
Likewise, you can have a small serving of fruit daily and vegetables and supplement the diet with oils, nuts, seeds, and nut butter.
A ratio of 4:1 is recommended for a keto diet whereby 4 grams of fat are combined with 1 gram of proteins and carbs.
Alternatively, a typical 2000 calorie diet should contain approximately 40 grams of carbs, 75 grams of protein, and 165 grams of fat.
Typically, after consuming carbohydrates, the blood sugar levels shoot up.
When you deny your body carbs, the liver starts to use the stored fat for fueling the body through a process known as ketosis.
If you follow this diet without fail, your body will enter into ketosis.
With ketosis, your body muscles are denied glucose, a major supply of energy.
Subsequently, a ketogenic diet forces your body to break down stored fat.
Things to Avoid While On Keto
First off, you should limit your intake of processed food items such as breakfast cereals, cheese, bread, cakes, biscuits, and canned vegetables.
Stick to a low-carb diet consisting of whole foods as much as possible.
Secondly, avoid whole-grain foods such as bread, rice, starchy veggies, barley, and potatoes.
Your diet should not contain beans, cowpeas, and other legumes. In addition, avoid large portions of fruits.
Benefits of Keto for Women Over 50
Traditionally, experts have recommended low-fat diets for anyone willing to shed some weight.
However, keto is a superior option that can work well for women over 50.
Even though there are still a lot of studies to establish the effectiveness of the keto diet for women above 50 years, circumstantial evidence suggests that it can drastically help in weight reduction.
Other than shedding the extra pounds, there are a wide variety of benefits when it comes to keto for women over 50.
- Keto can help prevent conditions associated with high blood sugar, such as diabetes, vision problems, stroke, kidney problem, and heart disease.
- A keto diet can improve the cholesterol levels in your heart, which can reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke.
- Because the keto diet promotes healthy eating, you will feel much leaner (body mass) during the process.
Contradictions
Despite the overwhelming benefits of keto, it can pose serious health risks and complications for some people so it’s always recommended to contact your doctor before starting any diet.
In particular, experts do not recommend keto if you have liver disease, a history of eating disorders, pancreatic disease, gallbladder disease, and thyroid problems.
On the same note, some side effects are a normal reaction of the body, and these include; fever, insomnia, soreness, dizzy spells, headache, sugar cravings, soreness, stomach upsets, and muscle cramping. However, these should clear after a few days of being in ketosis.
If the symptoms persist, you can consult your doctor or nutritionist for more information.
Conclusion
As you can see, women over 50 can benefit immeasurably by incorporating keto into their daily routine.
Without a doubt, the benefits of keto for women over 50 far outweigh the handful of cons that come along with it.
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