Strength Training and Increased Protein Intake is Key to Good Health as You Age

Research is now revealing what life-long weight lifters have always known, and that is maintaining your muscle mass is key to staying healthy and strong as you age. The importance of muscle mass, strength, and metabolic function in the performance of exercise, as well as the activities of daily living has never been questioned. However, the role your muscles play in whole-body protein metabolism is less recognized.

Your muscle plays a central role in your whole-body protein metabolism by serving as the principle reservoir for amino acids to maintain protein synthesis (growth and regeneration) in vital tissues and organs in the absence of consuming enough protein in your diet. In other words, if you don't get enough protein in your diet, your body breaks down your muscle mass in order to make the necessary amino acids you need to survive.

Additionally, new research points to a key role that muscle metabolism plays in the prevention of many pathologic conditions and chronic diseases. Loss of muscle has been associated with weakness, fatigue, insulin resistance, fractures, and frailty. Thus, many of the degenerative conditions that are associated with aging are caused by poor muscle health.

The natural loss of muscle mass as a result of age is called Sacopenia, and it can begin in your 30s. Left unabated this condition accelerates with time as your body starts tearing down old muscle faster than it can build new muscle tissue. The good news is you can slow and in some cases reverse muscle loss as you age through regular weight lifting exercise, and getting the right amount of protein in your diet.

Scientific research is showing that weight lifting is one of the most effective ways of building and maintaining muscle mass as you age and here's why. Lifting weights is a method of overloading your body through exercise with a resistance that you are not accustomed to handling.  In response your body adapts to this overloading process by building stronger muscles to accommodate the new demands. Research says that by the time you reach middle age you should start lifting weights at least 2 times per week to retain your muscle.

Getting the proper amount of protein in your diet to maximize the results of weight lifting adds to the effectiveness of building and maintaining your muscle mass as you age. Protein is a necessary part of every living cell in your body. Next to water, protein comprises the greatest portion of your body weight. Protein substances make up your muscles, ligaments, tendons, organs, glands, nails, hair, and many vital body fluids. Your body uses the protein you eat for the vital functions of survival first before it devotes any for muscle building and repair. Thus if you are not consuming enough protein in your diet optimal muscle building and repair is impossible.

While 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight has been the old the normal recommendation for daily protein intake, new studies show that 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight may be more beneficial in building, maintaining, and reducing muscle loss. The goal of protein consumption should be to optimize muscle growth and repair and studies now reveal that consuming 25 to 30 grams of protein at each meal is necessary for this to take place.

Change the Way You Think and You Transform Your Life

A good mental practice is just as important and I believe more critical to your overall well-being than physical exercise alone. For, you are always creating the circumstances and conditions of your life via your thoughts and beliefs. What you believe to be true will always manifest in your life as a condition or circumstance. Behind every condition and circumstance in your life is an underlying thought and belief.   For example, if you truly believe that you are weak and sickly, then you attract conditions in your life to reflect that belief. On the other hand, if you believe you are strong and healthy, you attract conditions in your life to prove likewise.

If you want to know the sum total of your thoughts and beliefs, just look at the conditions and circumstances presently in your life. This is a very sobering exercise, but you must accept it if you want to create the life that you desire.

Most people allow their mind to aimlessly wander and so they allow random thoughts to be planted in their mental garden. Some of these thoughts are constructive and they bloom into constructive conditions, while others are destructive and they blossom into undesirable conditions. Consequently, most people believe the conditions and circumstances of their lives just randomly happen. They get some things that they want and other things they don’t want.

Thoughts are things and when you give a thought your attention you give it energy by allowing it to be planted in your mind. The more attention you give the thought the more you nurture and energize it until it becomes a belief and blossoms into a condition in your life. You are always thinking, and thus, always creating something and herein lies the problems and the solutions in your life.

You have the inner power to create the life of your dreams. The key to accessing this power is mastery of your mental activity and you can only do this through a conscious effort to filter which thoughts you allow to take root in your mind. I do this by a spiritual practice of sitting in silence periodically during the day and monitoring the thoughts that come into my mind. I allow the constructive and uplifting thoughts in, and I discard the negative and destructive one. I urge you to try this mental exercise for 30 days and see how your life is transformed.

Two of My Favorite Exercises For Developing and Strengthening Your Shoulders

Your shoulder joint has more range of motion than any other joint in your body, and your shoulders are involved in every movement of your upper body.  Thus, having strong shoulders makes the activities of everyday life easier to perform.  The video below demonstrates two of my favorite exercises for developing and strengthening your shoulders.

Breakfast Starts Your Day in Either a Fat Burning Or a Fat Storing Mode

Your first meal of the day is very important because it determines whether you start your day in a fat burning or a fat storing mode.  Most people mistakenly start their day in a fat storing mode by eating a meal high in carbohydrates such as cereal, bread, fruit, and juice for breakfast and very little protein.  Your body quickly converts all those carbohydrates to blood sugar, which causes your insulin level to spike and to store most of those calories your just consumed as fat.  Once all that blood sugar is stored, your insulin level hits bottom causing hunger pains and cravings for more foods high in carbohydrates.  This vicious sugar craving cycle can go on all day unless you do something to derail it.

On the other hand,  having a breakfast in which you consume at least 21 grams of high quality protein such as eggs, low-fat dairy, and lean meats starts your day in a fat burning mode.  When you eat a breakfast high in protein your body to start a process called protein synthesis.  This is basically a biological process by which muscle cells are built and maintained and it is very energy intensive causing your body to burn fat as fuel to support it.  Thus, this process increases your metabolism, and levels out your energy until your next meal, which means you burn more calories, and you don't have sugar cravings.

I start my day by having a smoothie with a whey protein powder that is quick and easy to make.   When using a protein supplement, whey based or otherwise, make sure it has at least 21 grams of protein per serving because this is the threshold where your body starts the protein synthesis process.  Below is one of my favorite smoothies for breakfast, I call it my Blueberry Special.

• One cup of frozen wild blueberries
• One serving of vanilla whey protein powder (the one I use has 26 grams of protein per serving)
• One cup of unsweetened almond milk

This smoothie contains 249 calories, 3 grams of fat, 29 grams of carbohydrates, and 28 grams of protein. A quick and easy balanced breakfast that starts my day in a fat burning mode.

Carbohydrates Are An Important Part Of A Healthy Diet

Today people seem to equate eating carbohydrates to weight gain which is not all true.  While eating a lot of easily- digested carbohydrates from white bread, white rice, pastries, sugared sodas, and other highly processed foods may contribute to your weight gain, and therefore, interfere with your efforts to lose weight. On the contrary, consuming whole grains, beans, fruits, vegetables, and other intact carbohydrates promotes good health.  A healthy diet is about balance and moderation. A basic knowledge of what carbohydrates are and how you body uses them is essential to understanding how to balance them in your diet.

Carbohydrates are essential nutrients that are excellent sources of energy for your body; they are the preferred fuel for your brain and nervous system. Carbohydrates are found in an array of foods such as bread, beans, milk, popcorn, potatoes, rice, cookies, spaghetti, soft drinks, corn, and desserts. The most common and abundant forms are classified as sugars, fibers, and starches.

The basic building block of every carbohydrate is a sugar molecule, a simple union of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Starches and fibers forms of carbohydrates are essentially chains of sugar molecules, some containing hundreds.

As mentioned above, most carbohydrates come from plant sources and are in the form of sugars, starches, and fibers. Sugars, also called simple carbohydrates, include fruit sugar (fructose), corn or grape sugar (dextrose or glucose), and table sugar (sucrose). Starches, also known as complex carbohydrates, include everything made of three or more linked sugars. Starches include foods such as breads, cereals, grains, pasta, rice, and flour. Fibers are technically classified as a starch because they are complex carbohydrates that your body cannot breakdown into sugar molecules. Fibers are more abundant in whole grains, legumes, and vegetables.

Regardless of their source, your body breaks down all carbohydrates, except for fibers, into simple sugar molecules  These simple sugars are further converted into glucose, also known as blood sugar. Your body is designed to use blood sugar as a universal source of fuel for energy.

Fiber is the form of carbohydrate that your body cannot break down into simple sugar molecules. It passes through your body undigested. Fiber comes in two varieties: soluble, which dissolves in water, and insoluble, which does not. Although neither type provides energy for your body, they both promote health in many ways. Soluble fiber binds to fatty substances in your intestines and carries them out as waste, thus lowering your low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad cholesterol). It also helps regulate your body’s use of sugars, helping you to keep your hunger and blood sugar in check. Insoluble fiber helps push food through your intestinal tract, promoting regularity and helping to prevent constipation.

Here’s what happens when you eat a food containing carbohydrates. Your digestive system breaks down the digestible ones into sugar, which then enters your blood. As your blood sugar level rises, specials cells in your pancreas churn out insulin, a hormone that signals your cells to absorb the blood sugar for energy or for storage. As your cells soak-up the blood sugar, its level in your bloodstream begins to fall. Now, your pancreas starts making another hormone called glucagon, which signals your liver to start releasing stored blood sugar. This interplay of insulin and glucagon ensures that cells throughout your body have a steady supply of blood sugar. 

As you can see, carbohydrates are an important part of a healthy diet.  However, as with all foods, balance and moderation in your daily consumption is key.

Two Exercises For Developing And Strengthening Your Chest

Please see the video below for a demonstration of two of my favorite exercises for developing and strengthening your chest.  And remember, you can get stronger and more fit no matter your age.

Great Abdomnal Exercise Using a BOSU

Below is a video of one of my favorite abdominal exercises using the BOSU.  This exercise really hits all areas of the mid-section.