Why do I gain weight as I get older?

Unfortunately, most people do gain weight as they get older. There are several reasons. As you get older, your activity level changes to less strenuous exercise. For example, in the 20- to 30-year-old age-group, many people jog, play tennis, work out at health clubs, etc. In later years, people change activities to include golf, bowling, and watching television.

As your activities change, you burn fewer calories. If you're still eating the same amount of food that you always have, weight gain will follow. In addition, recent studies have suggested that older people are actually more efficient at storing food as fat. This means that for the same amount of food eaten, more exercise is needed to use it up. You should gradually decrease the amount of food that you eat as you get older to keep your body weight normal. In general, the leaner you are, the longer you will live.

Because a person's metabolic rate naturally declines with age, older adults need fewer calories. The decline in metabolism is a combination of natural loss of muscle mass (muscle requires more energy to be maintained than fat mass) and the tendency toward less daily physical activity.

This decline amounts to approximately 10 calories a year for men and 7 calories yearly for women. In other words, a man at age 60 needs 300 fewer daily calories - about the amount in a turkey sandwich - than he needed at age 30. Some research has even suggested that at 80 years of age, calorie intake may be reduced by as much as 1,000 calories daily in some men and by 600 calories daily in some women compared to when they were in their 20's.

Though calorie needs may be reduced, the need for many nutrients and phytochemicals isn't. In fact, the requirement for some nutrients actually increases in older adults, making nutrient-dense food selections even more important. Because phytochemicals, especially antioxidants, have possible roles in helping to reduce the risk of certain cancers, heart disease, cataracts, and age-related macular degeneration, foods should be both nutrient dense and phytochemical dense.