How we can stop loosing muscle mass should by one of ours main priorities in life when we get older. We loose abbot 5% of muscle mass every decade after year 30. And that’s ultimately what makes us old and fragile. If we can prevent this loss of muscle mass, we can live longer, healthier, bolder life’s. Learning how to stop loss of muscle mass saves life’s. It’s that important.
Muscle mass loss later in life is responsible for injuries, yes life threatening injuries like broken hips included, loss of balance, loss of ability to process sugar and start of pre diabetes – higher blood sugar levels which subsequently leads to heard disease, loss of mobility and many many other conditions.
Muscle mass loss affects every aspect of your life. Every single one of them, your healthy functioning brain included. Than what is really important in your life right now? Are you loosing muscles and gaining fat. Or are you just loosing muscles and getting very frail? I will show you how you can stop loosing muscle mass and gain some extra of it. It’s in everybody’s power to reverse loss of muscle mass. You just need to know how to do it and be disciplined enough to do it.
Fear of muscle
There are people out there and you probably know some, that don’t want to have a lot of muscles on their bodies. They don’t want to look bulky. I understand their worries. Seeing huge musclebound men and women in bodybuilding and fitness magazines will make you run for your lifer. That’s how ugly they look. But the reality is, that you will hardly put such a mass on your body. It is almost impossible to do that. And lots of hours in gym, brutal diets, and certain special chemistry is involved in the process of getting big.
The reality is, that it is very hard to actually gain more muscle. Yes people are afraid of something that is actually hard to accomplish. And if they could accomplish it, it would make a huge positive effect on their overall well being. Take for example 2 football players, one is in defense and one is in offense. The defensemen is huge, he weighs more than 250 pounds. Yes, he has muscles on him, but there is a lot of fat on his body too. His fat percentage is high. He is basically fat. But all this mass, fat included is helping him to stop other players. He needs it for his game. He has to be heavy, even if that means having lots of fat on his body.
Now take an offense player. He is most likely thin and muscular, fast and agile. This guy is probably about 190 pounds of pure muscle. Of course, there is some fat too. We all have some fat, but his fat percentage is low. Around 10% or so.
Now, do you think that this offense skinny muscular player doesn’t want to gain more weight? Of course he does. Every extra pound of muscle would make him faster, tougher, stronger, more agile and generally better player. The problem is, that he probably already reached his muscle potential. And he is not interested in gaining more fat weight that would make him slower.
So if a professional football player cannot gain more muscle mass, why are you afraid of gaining too much of it? There is no reason to do so. You should try to prevent and gain as much muscle as you possibly can. And if you do your maximum, you might end up gaining 10 pounds of muscle and loosing 15 pounds of fat, which would make you look much smaller and better looking and healthier at the same time.
Stop loosing muscle mass and gain some
I am 6 feet 3 inches tall guy, which would put me between the tallest people out there. I am very athletic, strong and very lean. My body fat % is between 7-10%, which is very lean. You can see my abdominal muscle clearly visible. Yes, I have a six pack abs. I weigh 187 lb and I am desperately trying to gain some more muscle. But I am at the point when it is almost impossible to gain more. I work out religiously in weight room several times per week and I am eating very good muscle growth diet. But all I can do now is to maintain my muscle mass. At 35 years old I obviously hit my muscle mass plateau. At this point, I can only work hard at maintaining my muscle mass. And you can be certain that I will. Knowing how important the muscle is doesn’t give me any other option. Stoping the loss of my muscle mass is becoming my main priority in my fitness program. And, if you are over 30 years old, it should be your priority too.
If I stopped doing my weight training now for several months, I can tell with some certainty, that my body weight would go down to around 173 pounds, or somewhere around there. And all that weight loss is going to be a muscle loss. If I persist in this state of inactivity, slowly over time I will gain this weight back, but it will be a bad weight gain. It will be a fat gain.
My point here is that everybody should obsess about preventing muscle mass loss and maybe trying to gain some more of it if possible. Just look at my lifestyle. Being personal trainer, weightlifting regularly, having a great diet and obsessing about muscle preservation actually makes me just a normally looking athletic guy, that has some muscle definition. Nothing enormous or unattractive.
Just remember this for now: preventing muscle loss is incredibly important and gaining few extra pounds of it is incredibly hard to do. So please, please stop bringing those big muscular people out and saying you don’t want to look like them. You will certainly not look like these people. And if you are lucky, persistent and work hard, all you will be able to do is to stop your own muscle mass loss and maybe gain few extra pounds of vital lean muscle mass. That would be a huge success on your part.
2 ways to gain weight
Now, after we cleared that out of our way, and you now realize that building more muscle is not that easy and you are not afraid of becoming bulky ugly individual, we can get to the main point: preserving and building some muscle mass.
The bad way to gain weight is by gaining fat. If you don’t move enough, lead sedentary lifestyle and eat high calorie bad diet, you will eventually gain weight. You will gain fat. And let me just say this to you. And you already know it. You don’t want to gain weight like this. Everybody knows it. We live in America and almost everybody is overweight here and at the same time everybody is trying to loose weight.
First of all, if you stop doing physical exercise, you will grow fragile, weak and more prone to the injury. Second, you will become insulin resistant, there will be too much of sugar in your blood creating a fertile condition for heart disease among many other dangerous conditions.
The good way to gain weight is through building and maintaining a muscle mass. And you can do this only by lifting heavy weights, eating good diet with optimal amount of protein in it and maintaining generally healthy lifestyle with enough sleep, rest and stress reduction.
If you manage to keep and possibly build extra muscle, you will not only gain great vital, active body weight, you will loose lots of fat at the same time. Extra muscle needs extra energy. And fat is the energy, that will be burned by it. So, overall, you will actually loose body weight if you already are overweight. Another great benefit strong, healthy muscle mass can give you.
I will be writing more about these specific actions in more details in coming chapters of how to stop losing muscle mass and build some extra of it. It’s a goal that’s very achievable, and I personally wish more people were interested in these anti aging strategy. Learning and applying how to prevent losing muscle mass is one of the most important things we can do in our life’s. It will make us stronger, healthier, more energized, so we can keep living our life’s to our true potential. Yes, that’s what keeping your muscle can do for you!
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