How to Increase Your Metabolism After 60

Building and preserving muscle through resistance training is the single most effective way to raise your metabolism after 60. Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, is the primary driver of metabolic slowdown in older adults, and it is largely reversible with the right combination of strength exercise, adequate protein, and everyday physical activity. The good news is that some of these interventions work surprisingly fast and deliver benefits beyond just calorie burning.

Why Your Metabolism Slows in the First Place

The metabolic slowdown people feel after 60 is real, but it is not some mysterious switch that flips on a birthday. Most of the decline traces back to a gradual loss of muscle tissue. Muscle is metabolically expensive for your body to maintain, burning calories around the clock even while you sleep. As you lose it, your resting metabolic rate drops. The metabolic effects of sarcopenia include decreased resting metabolic rate tied directly to lower fat-free mass and reduced physical activity, which in turn raises the risk of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic problems.¹

Deeper inside the muscle cells, mitochondria also decline with age. A study of 146 healthy people aged 18 to 89 found that mitochondrial DNA abundance, mitochondrial protein content, and the rate at which mitochondria produce energy all dropped with advancing age. Those declines were directly linked to lower aerobic capacity and worse blood sugar control.² Muscle stem cells, the repair crews that rebuild damaged muscle fibers, also lose function over time as mitochondrial quality in those cells deteriorates.³

Age-related changes in body composition, including increased belly fat and muscle loss, have roots in fundamental aging processes but are further worsened by a sedentary lifestyle and can be partly prevented by staying active.⁴ That last point matters: much of what people blame on “getting old” is actually the result of moving less. And moving less is something you can change.

Resistance Training Is the Biggest Lever You Have

If you could do only one thing to raise your metabolism after 60, lifting weights or doing other forms of resistance exercise would be it. In a study of older adults who took up resistance training, strength increased by about a third and fat-free mass went up by roughly two kilograms. Resting energy expenditure climbed by nearly 7 percent, and total daily energy expenditure rose by 12 percent. That total increase held even after accounting for the calories burned during the workouts themselves, meaning the participants were also moving more outside the gym and burning more calories at rest.⁵

That 12 percent bump in daily energy expenditure is a meaningful shift. To put it in perspective, for someone burning around 2,000 calories a day, that is an extra 240 calories, roughly equivalent to a brisk 45-minute walk, happening automatically because your body composition and activity habits have changed. The study also found that participants shifted toward burning more fat at rest, a sign of improved metabolic flexibility.

You do not need to train like a competitive powerlifter. Research consistently shows that two to three sessions per week focusing on the major muscle groups is enough to build and maintain lean mass. The key is progressive challenge: as a given weight becomes easy, you increase it. Machines, free weights, resistance bands, and bodyweight exercises all work. What matters is that muscles are loaded enough to adapt.

High-Intensity Interval Training and Mitochondrial Repair

While resistance training builds the muscle that drives your resting metabolism, high-intensity interval training addresses a different piece of the puzzle: the mitochondrial decline happening inside those muscles. HIIT, which alternates between short bursts of hard effort and recovery periods, is a potent trigger for your body to build new mitochondria and improve the function of existing ones. A review of studies in older adults found that HIIT preserves mitochondrial quality with age and is a viable, safe, and beneficial exercise option in both healthy older adults and those with existing health conditions.⁶

Research on older men and women who completed a HIIT program showed increases in aerobic capacity, decreases in body fat percentage, and higher activity of key mitochondrial enzymes and protein complexes in both sexes.⁷ Better mitochondrial function translates to more efficient energy production, improved blood sugar handling, and a body that burns fuel more readily throughout the day.

A practical HIIT session for someone over 60 might look like cycling or walking uphill at a hard pace for 30 to 60 seconds, then recovering for one to two minutes, repeated six to ten times. “High intensity” is relative to your fitness level. The point is that the effort feels genuinely hard during the work intervals, even if the activity itself would look gentle to an outside observer. Anyone with heart disease, joint problems, or other conditions should get clearance first, but the research suggests most older adults tolerate HIIT well.

How What You Eat Affects Your Metabolic Rate

Your body spends energy digesting and processing food, a phenomenon called the thermic effect of food. This accounts for roughly 10 percent of the calories you eat in a day. But older adults get less of a metabolic boost from eating than younger people do. A study comparing older and younger adults found that the total thermic effect was significantly lower in the older group, even though both groups ate the same meal size. The peak calorie-burning response after eating was also substantially reduced in the older participants.⁸

You cannot fully reverse this age-related dip, but you can tilt the odds in your favor. Protein has a much higher thermic effect than fat or carbohydrates: your body uses more energy breaking down protein than it does processing other macronutrients. Larger meals also produce a stronger thermic response than frequent small snacks.⁹ This does not mean you should eat enormous portions, but it does suggest that consolidating your calories into a few satisfying meals rather than constant grazing may give you a slight metabolic edge.

Beyond the thermic effect, protein is critical for holding on to muscle. Older adults develop something called anabolic resistance, meaning their muscles respond less efficiently to dietary protein compared to younger people. To overcome this blunted response, research suggests aiming for higher protein intake. Active older adults may benefit from protein intakes in the range of 1.6 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, which is roughly double what many people over 60 actually consume.¹⁰ Spreading protein intake across meals, with at least 25 to 30 grams per sitting, helps trigger muscle-building signals more effectively than loading it all into dinner.

Habitual exercise also appears to improve the thermic effect of food independently of age. A study comparing exercising and sedentary men across age groups found that regular exercisers burned about 25 percent more energy after eating than their sedentary peers.¹¹ So exercise pays a metabolic dividend at every meal, not just during the workout itself.

Everyday Movement Matters More Than You Think

Formal exercise gets the headlines, but the calories you burn through everyday movement, things like walking to the mailbox, gardening, cooking, climbing stairs, and even fidgeting, add up to a surprisingly large share of your total daily energy expenditure. This is sometimes called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT. For most people, especially those who do not exercise regularly, NEAT represents the largest variable component of daily calorie burning, and it varies enormously from person to person.¹²

The practical implication is straightforward: finding ways to move more throughout the day, beyond your workout, is one of the easiest and most sustainable ways to keep your metabolism humming. Standing instead of sitting when you can, taking short walks after meals, doing housework by hand, parking farther away, and taking stairs all contribute. These activities are low-intensity enough that they rarely cause soreness or injury, and people tend to stick with them because they feel like normal life rather than “exercise.” For someone over 60 who has joint limitations that make intense workouts difficult, maximizing NEAT is an especially valuable strategy.

Sleep and Metabolic Health

Poor sleep does not just leave you tired. It interferes with how your body handles blood sugar and stores energy, both of which affect your metabolic rate over time. In older adults enrolled in the Cardiovascular Health Study, sleep-related problems including observed apnea and excessive daytime sleepiness were linked to higher fasting glucose, lower insulin sensitivity, and a significantly elevated risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Those with observed apnea had nearly double the risk.¹³

Sleep duration also matters. Among older adults, getting five hours or less per night was associated with a higher likelihood of prediabetes compared to sleeping about seven hours.¹⁴ When your blood sugar regulation is impaired, your body tends to store more fat and becomes less efficient at using fuel, which effectively drags down your metabolic rate. Treating sleep apnea, maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, and aiming for around seven hours of sleep per night are practical steps that support metabolic health, even if they do not directly raise your resting metabolic rate the way lifting weights does.

Hormonal Shifts After 60

Hormonal changes play a real but sometimes overstated role in metabolic slowdown. For women, the drop in estrogen during and after menopause promotes a shift in body composition: less muscle, more abdominal fat, and lower overall energy expenditure.¹⁵ For men, a gradual decline in testosterone has a similar though typically slower effect on muscle mass and fat distribution.

What often surprises people is that thyroid hormones, frequently blamed for metabolic slowdown, do not explain the picture as clearly as many assume. A study of late-middle-aged and older adults found no correlation between basal metabolic rate and thyroid hormone levels. The age-related decline in metabolic rate was not fully explained by body composition or thyroid differences.¹⁶ This means that unless you have a diagnosed thyroid disorder, tweaking thyroid function is unlikely to be the metabolic fix you are looking for. The bigger levers remain muscle mass and physical activity.

Brown Fat, Cold Exposure, and Realistic Expectations

You may have heard about brown adipose tissue, a type of fat that burns calories to generate heat. Unlike regular fat, which stores energy, brown fat acts more like a furnace. The problem is that brown fat activity declines substantially with age. A study measuring cold-activated brown fat found that more than half of people in their twenties had detectable brown fat activity, but fewer than one in ten did by their fifties and sixties.¹⁷

Exercise and certain dietary components can promote some “browning” of regular white fat, but this effect also appears blunted in older adults with obesity. Aging and excess body fat reduce both the volume of brown fat and its responsiveness to the stimuli that normally activate it, including cold exposure and exercise.¹⁸ Cold showers and ice baths have become popular in wellness circles, and while they may have other benefits, the evidence does not support them as a reliable metabolism booster for people over 60. The brown fat just is not there in sufficient quantities to make a big caloric difference.

Creatine As a Supplement Worth Considering

Most metabolism-boosting supplements are oversold. Creatine is a notable exception, particularly for older adults. Decades of research show that creatine supplementation, especially when paired with resistance training, has favorable effects on muscle mass, bone strength, and physical performance in healthy older adults.¹⁹ The mechanism is straightforward: creatine helps muscles produce energy during short bursts of effort, which allows you to train harder and recover faster. The result is more muscle growth than training alone would produce.

The benefit appears to apply to older adults regardless of sex, fitness level, or health status, though research in very old or severely frail individuals remains limited.²⁰ A typical dose is three to five grams per day, and it is one of the most extensively studied supplements in sports nutrition with a strong safety record. It will not raise your resting metabolic rate on its own, but by helping you build and maintain more muscle, it supports the tissue that drives your metabolism.

Time-Restricted Eating

Confining your eating to a set window each day, often eight to ten hours, has gained attention as a potential metabolic tool. A controlled trial of overweight men in their early sixties found that a six-week time-restricted eating program led to a loss of about two kilograms of body weight and a notable reduction in visceral fat and waist circumference compared to a control group. Skeletal muscle mass did not decrease significantly.²¹ The finding that muscle was preserved while visceral fat dropped is encouraging, since losing muscle is exactly what you want to avoid when trying to protect your metabolism.

Time-restricted eating is not magic, and it works partly because people tend to eat fewer total calories when their eating window is shorter. But the visceral fat reduction suggests something more than just calorie reduction may be at play, possibly related to improved insulin signaling and circadian rhythm alignment. If you try it, the priority is still hitting adequate protein within your eating window. Cutting your feeding time short should not mean cutting out the nutrients your muscles need.

Caloric Restriction Without the Metabolic Crash

A common fear among older adults trying to lose weight is that cutting calories will tank their metabolism, creating a rebound effect. This concern has some basis in younger populations, where aggressive dieting can trigger a compensatory drop in energy expenditure. But the picture in older adults is more reassuring than you might expect. A study of older adults following moderate caloric restriction for nine months found that neither total energy expenditure nor resting energy expenditure decreased significantly, and there was little evidence of the metabolic adaptation that plagues younger dieters.²²

Another study comparing caloric restriction plus aerobic exercise to aerobic exercise alone found that individual variability in metabolic adaptation was large, but on average, neither group experienced a significant metabolic slowdown. The degree of adaptation did not correlate with how much weight people lost.²³ The takeaway is that moderate calorie reduction, particularly when combined with exercise and adequate protein, is unlikely to cause the dramatic metabolic crash that people worry about. Extreme or prolonged undereating is a different story, but sensible portion control paired with strength training appears metabolically safe for most older adults.

The Gut Microbiome Connection

An emerging area of research links the composition of gut bacteria to metabolic health in older adults. As people age, the diversity of their gut microbiome tends to shift, and these changes have been associated with increased inflammation and metabolic dysfunction. Certain beneficial bacteria ferment dietary fiber into compounds called short-chain fatty acids, which play a role in regulating weight and reducing inflammation. When the microbiome falls out of balance, it may promote fat storage through disrupted immune signaling and altered energy absorption.²⁴

Physical exercise and dietary changes both appear capable of shifting the gut microbiome toward a healthier profile. A review of the evidence found that both exercise and nutritional interventions can modulate gut composition in aging adults, potentially counteracting the low-grade inflammation that contributes to metabolic disease.²⁵ Eating a variety of high-fiber foods, including vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, feeds the beneficial bacteria that produce those helpful short-chain fatty acids. Fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi, and sauerkraut contribute beneficial microbes directly. While nobody can promise that fixing your gut flora will noticeably speed up your metabolism, maintaining a diverse microbiome supports the metabolic infrastructure that everything else depends on.

Hydration and Metabolic Efficiency

Staying well-hydrated is often overlooked in discussions about metabolism, yet there is evidence it matters more than people realize. Animal research has shown that chronic mild water restriction leads to a stable shift in metabolism characterized by increased energy expenditure and a greater reliance on fat for fuel, along with a decrease in body fat mass over time.²⁶ While that might sound like dehydration could be helpful, the same research found that water restriction also promoted degenerative diseases and shortened lifespan. The body was burning more energy, but it was doing so under stress.

For people over 60, the concern runs in the other direction: older adults tend to have a blunted thirst response and are more likely to be chronically underhydrated without realizing it. Adequate hydration supports every metabolic process, from digestion to temperature regulation to kidney function. Drinking enough water will not dramatically spike your calorie burn, but chronic low-grade dehydration can quietly impair the metabolic machinery you are trying to optimize with everything else.