Muscle: The Driver Of Longevity
If your muscles are strong, you live better. Not only does it make you able to move and look good in and out of clothes, but having increased muscle, compared to fat, has profound implications for your metabolic (how your body creates and uses energy) function. Muscle is the metabolic sink of the body. It determines almost everything about your body composition and overall health, how you regulate your blood sugar, your ability to manage fats, and your fuel during illness. Most health issues confronting adults are not a result of being “overfat” but being under-muscled. It’s more than just looking good naked. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and many other chronic health problems begin with inactive muscles and poor metabolism. Muscles also serve as our amino acid reservoir. In times of stress, your body can draw on muscles to protect other vital organs like the liver, kidney, or brain. There are two ways to stimulate and safeguard muscle; one is through diet, and the other is through resistance training.
Protein builds muscle via protein synthesis, and resistance exercise accelerates the process. Resistance exercise plus protein yields repair, and you get more muscular with more muscle definition. The more active your muscles, the more likely you’ll have lower blood pressure, better cholesterol, and better blood sugar. Not only that, if you make it a habit, you’ll improve your body composition with less body fat and be less likely to regain it. Muscle can help you manage your body composition and weight over a lifetime. Fad dieting, crash dieting, and yo-yo dieting put people in a precarious situation where they may lose massive amounts of weight in a short amount of time. Yes, these diets often reduce body fat, but people usually lose their muscle. It stands to reason that each time you repeat this cycle, more muscle is lost, and it becomes harder and harder to earn back. The result is increasing metabolic dysregulation.
The point here is that muscle longevity is critical. If you aren’t getting enough protein (the minimum requirement is 30 grams per meal) and aren’t strength training, you will not be well-muscled, which will significantly impact how well you live and how long you live.
A substantial limitation of strength training is understanding what to do, how often to do it, and what weights to use. If that is you and you are looking for help with a personalized strength training routine, we are here to help. Both Aleigh and I offer remote programming (programming you do at your gym on your own); where you come in, we evaluate your strengths and your goals, create a custom program for you, teach you how to do the movements in the plan, and then help hold you accountable. If you need help staying well-muscled, drop me a note via the button below, and we can set up some time to chat and see if remote programming can help.
Learn more about remote programming by emailing [email protected].
