Starting a Fitness Career at Age 51

Today we have an interview with Roberta Saum who won the Level 2 of our Open Category in the latest Venus Index Contest.

Check out her pictures:

No need to comment, these pictures speak for themselves.

Roberta is extremely happy with the way she looks and she has every right to be, just look at the photos.

And she is 51, most girls who are in their 20’s or even 30’s would kill for that body!

Roberta ran marathons, lifted weights, did martial arts, and remained physically active for about 23 years. She was always overweight and always felt frustration about being overweight too.

Today she is a walking inspiration to everyone, her family, her friends and everyone in the gym.

Don’t ever be ashamed of your age. All of our Venus’s are older than you would expect and they are proud of that!

Presentation Is Everything

In the first contest Roberta knew nothing about posing and presentation.

She did well though.

However, if you really want to show everyone the hard work you have done, then you need to learn to pose, you need to learn how to present yourself.

The best looking model can look totally average if they’re not posing correctly.

The lights, posing, tan, angle, and some flexing is what makes all the difference, in one word – presentation.

Look up models, go through the magazines, model their poses and photos. Study how they look at the camera, facial expressions, muscle flexing and notice how the lights are set up, the angles of the shot, make up etc.

And practice…practice makes perfect.

This time, Roberta wanted the pictures for herself, not just for the contest. And she wanted to show her body better.

She reached her goals.

And like she said if you want to hit your goals bad enough you will reach them too.

Top quality picture, ready to be featured in a fitness magazine. Who says you can’t have this too?!

How to Shift from Losing Fat into Maintaining Leanness

This is the whole point of the Reverse Taper Diet that Roberta followed.

Throughout the contests we have noticed that there are basically three ways of eating you can have:

1. Eating too much, results in gaining fat
2. Eating less than you burn, results in losing fat
3. Eating at your energy expenditure, results in maintenance of your current body fat level

And we have noticed two other things:

1. The fat loss slows down as you get to lower body fat levels
2. It’s important to learn how to transition from eating for fat loss to eating for maintenance and find your sweet spot.

This is the issue with the traditional taper diets. You start with low calorie intake and end with even lower…a recipe for disaster. If you eat too low while being lean, you risk binging, overeating and rebounding, thus the name yo-yo dieting.

The better way of doing this is by starting with low calorie intake and slowly increasing it as you get closer to your goal.

The danger is that it’s boring and it takes some time until you see the results. But you can be sure the results will last.

At the beginning the fat literally melts away off of your body. Thanks to a lot of water retention you can be losing multiple pounds every week. However, once you get lean, then the frustration starts. You work and diet hard, but you step on a scale and nothing changes.

Like Roberta advises, the only thing you can do is to keep going and ditch the scale and only focus on the mirror and the pictures.

More tips from Roberta:

• Day to day there is nothing exciting about fat loss
• There is no magic pill
• A pound or two of muscle is enough to make it look different in the mirror
• You have to enjoy your food and your workouts in order to stick to your diet and routine in the long term
• If you have to drag yourself to the gym, find a way to like the training
• Don’t wait, waiting forty years for a good looking body is not necessary, why not have it this year?
• Put the scale away
• It’s never too late
• The posing is hard, it will take you hours till you learn some basic ones
• It’s worth it
• Lots of people give up, the process is not crazy or not exciting as they expect
• Surround yourself with people who will support you
• Let other models use Photoshop, be the one who actually looks exactly like on the pictures
• Help other people improve their physique

Links form Roberta’s interview:

• Roberta’s first interview with John – Be in the Best Shape of Your Life at 50
• Reverse Taper Diet – Use the RTD to prevent yourself from rebounding. The RTD style is the best way to lose weight AND keep it off.

Read Roberta’s experience with Venus Index in her own words:

This year has been an amazing year for me so for.  I started it off going on a Caribbean Christmas vacation that my husband promised me three years ago as incentive and a celebration if I reached my goal weight.   This year I learned how to maintain and I learned how to bring my weight back down after a three and a half week vacation.  I learned how to put away the scale and the tape measure and simply trust the process.  I used the…

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