Getting Healthy After Forty

Actually, it was really after 35 that my body forgot how to lose weight. Up until that point, whenever I made any kind of effort - eating less, exercising more, not eating McDonald's at 3am - I lost weight. Since having Lovebug, and turning 35, though, the whole weight loss thing has gotten much harder.

I started exercising in earnest again 3 years ago. Three. Years. Like, 60 minutes on the elliptical trainer 4 or 5 days a week of exercise. For absolutely no weight loss whatsoever.

Not exercising much. 

Exercising. 

Recently, though, I made the decision to exercise and to eat less. At the same time. When I did that at 28, the weight melted off quickly and I looked AWESOME. In this case, after a month, I'd lost 3 pounds. It was disheartening, to say the least.

Then one day the gym was super crowded and I couldn't spend 60 minutes doing intervals on the elliptical trainer. I got on the stair climber and felt like I was going to die.. . . after 10 minutes. I suddenly had a light bulb moment about maybe I needed to switch things up a bit - even if My Fitness Pal said I burned the most calories doing the elliptical, I knew my old body needed to step out of it's comfort zone.

I spent the next week switching between all the cardio machines at the gym. . .and lost 3 more pounds. In a week. Of course, that level of weight loss hasn't happened every week since (dammit), but it's definitely come off faster than it did at first.

Of course, I am not a trainer or a doctor. I can find plenty of exercise sites and magazines that will back my claim up, but I'm more inclined to trust things I read from actual scientific studies and medical websites - none of which showed up in my admittedly cursory Google search. What do you think? Do you think changing things up in each work out is the path to weight loss? Or is it yoga, as I've read recently? Or running?

I really want to know. I have a strong suspicion that my machine switch up routine is not going to work forever.