How to Gain Weight and Muscle: When Weight Loss isn’t Your Best Option.

You can spend your life watching what you eat.

You can go without food you would perhaps have preferred to eat, skipping meals or going for the ‘healthy’ option. Taking small portions, cutting out fat and most stuff that tastes good; all proven methods that work if you’re trying to maintain your weight and keep from getting fat.

But it’s a miserable way to live.

And you’re storing up health problems for your old age.

Osteoporosis. Exhaustion. Malnutrition. The consequences of not eating enough include decreased bone mass, immune dysfunction, anaemia, reduced cognitive function and poor wound healing. It’s also associated with loss of muscle mass, which can affect respiratory function and increase susceptibility to chest infection. Cardiac function can be reduced, and immune function impaired.

Along with the physical consequences come the psychological effects; depression, anxiety, irritability, apathy, poor sleep pattern and difficulty concentrating. Adequate nutrition is vital for
effective brain functioning, and optimal nutrition promotes both functional health status and mental well-being.

This site is all about healthy weight loss – but not everyone should be trying to lose weight. Even if they’re overweight.

My best advice? Eat regularly, and work out twice a week.

Have a professional fitness instructor work out a weight training regime for you. Work on building your muscle mass, and you’ll never have to diet again. Plus the knock on health benefits are great; everything is easier when you’re strong and healthy. And if you’re heading into old age, it’s even more important to make sure you’re going there fully prepared – that means making sure you’ve packed on enough muscle to deal with everyday life.

We all start to lose muscle mass as we age, through a process known as sarcopenia.

This is is the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength associated with ageing. The word comes from the Greek, and roughly translates as ‘poverty of flesh’. We start to lose muscle mass at the rate of 0.5% – 1% per year after the age of 25, and this brings problems in its wake. Falls become more likely because our legs can’t hold us up. Everyday tasks around the house can lead to accidents or sprains and strains because we lose the strength necessary to cope with unexpected demands on our muscles and joints. Making sure you stay strong by doing resistance exercise to maintain muscle mass can help with this. Even among the very old, regular exercise can increase muscle mass and to some extent reverse the trend. Lack of exercise, on the other hand, is thought to be a significant risk factor.

Due to decreased physical activity and increased longevity, sarcopenia is emerging as a major health concern. Sarcopenia can progress to the extent that the sufferer may lose the ability to live independently. It’s a predictor of disability in population-based studies, linked to poor balance and slow gait speed, which can lead to falls and fractures. Sarcopenia can be thought of as a muscular analogue of osteoporosis, the loss of bone, which is also caused by inactivity and counteracted by exercise. The combination of osteoporosis and sarcopenia causes the frailty often seen in the elderly.

What can you do? Eat right and work out. It’s that easy. No one knows exactly what lies in wait, but it only makes sense to lessen the odds against us by taking what steps we can to ensure our continued health and fitness. Eating well and working out are two of the easiest steps you can take for the sake of your future health.

Filed under: Exercise by admin