Mostly one might feel gaining weight is inevitable, and tend to stop working out at one age. This can be due to hormonal changes, any injuries, or fatigue. To love a healthier lifestyle, exercising and having a balanced diet is vital, especially for women. Exercising boosts bone density, helps in burning calories, enhances memory, and even helps in preventing health conditions like osteoporosis.Also Read - Are You Diabetic? Some Fasting Tips to Keep Your Sugar Levels Under Control During Navratri
Achieving or maintaining simple fitness is a challenge, and for women, after 50 it is even hard to get back in shape and lead a healthy lifestyle. Yoga helps in keeping one’s mind and body at ease, so here are a few yoga postures that could help one in regaining muscle strength. Also Read - Harnaaz Sandhu's Weight Gain is Because of Celiac Disease - Here's All About The Health Condition Miss Universe is Suffering From
Dr Pavan Chebbi, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Apollo Spectra Hospital, Bangalore shares tips to regain muscle strength after the 50s in women: Also Read - Explained: What Happens to Your Body When You Consume Too Much Protein?
To build or strengthen muscle, one requires a proper combination of exercises and diet to get the expected results. The below-mentioned tips are a blend of yoga, modern core exercise, and diet.
- Breathing Exercises: Breathing exercise or Pranayama – derived from the combination of two ancient Sanskrit words, prana i.e, vital life force, and Yama i.e, to gain control. Pranayama is the practice of having control over one’s breath. In context to gaining muscle strength in the early 50, Pranayama allows the body to expand and contrast as much as possible with your deep inhales and exhales.
Ideally, it is suggested to perform 15-20 minutes of Pranayama 2-3 times a day.
- Pelvic Bridge: Pelvic bridge exercise helps one in strengthening the pelvic region of the body. This exercise works by activating the pelvic floor muscles, hamstrings, and glutes. One can perform this exercise by laying the hands either side of the body and bending the legs at the knees; this should be followed by raising the body. One should hold this pose for at least 5 seconds.
- Leg Raise: This exercise helps in reinforcing the pelvis and hips and develops extra strength in this area. One can perform this by laying arms at sides with legs stretched next to each other and then raising them until they point towards the ceiling.
It is recommended to perform this exercise in 2-3 sets with 10 reps in each.
- Plank: Plank is considered one of the best exercises to activate the abdomen. Along with the abdomen it also targets internal and external oblique muscles and the spinal cord. One can start with the beginner plank of placing the arms ahead with the bending knees, once after acquiring strength one can move to different variations within the plank. It is recommended to plank for 5 minutes throughout the day.
- Proper Diet: Apart from exercise, diet plays a vital part in strengthening the core muscles. Hence the above-mentioned exercises should be paired with good food habits. One should add food enriched with vitamin A, calcium, protein, and amino acids to the daily diet, while processed food items and fats should be avoided.
Apart from these, poor lifestyle choices such as smoking and heavy drinking should be neglected. Changing the lifestyle in the 50s and beyond by exercising more and eating healthier can make a huge difference. It will help in lowering the risk of heart problems, cancer, and bone fractures. But before starting any kind of excessive exercise it is recommended to consult a doctor if there is any kind of medical history.
