Strength training is one of the best anti-aging remedies that we can implement to keep our bones strong, our muscles toned, and our metabolism running at it’s maximum capacity. The following excerpt from Prevention’s Total Body Guide explains exactly how strength training works it’s age-defying magic.
Master Your Metabolism
Metabolism is all the work your body does that requires calories (energy): staying alive, thinking, breathing, and moving your muscles. Obviously it plays a major role in how much you weigh, especially with each passing birthday.
Sometime in your thirties, your metabolism starts slowing down by about 5% every decade. That means if you eat about 1800 calories a day and fit into size 10’s when you’re 35, you’ll be shopping for 12′s when you’re 45, even if you’re eating the same number of calories. By the time you’re 55, well, you get the idea.
The culprit behind this decline in calorie burn in muscle loss, says Steve Farrell, PhD, associate director of The Cooper Institute in Dallas. Every pound of muscle you lose can decrease the number of calories you burn by as many as 30 a day. In the years before menopause, you start losing about 1/2 lb of muscle a year, a loss that can double once you hit menopause (blame it on lack of activity and just plain aging). If you’re not careful, by the time you’re 65, it’s possible to have lost half your muscle mass and see your metabolism slowed by 200 to 300 calories.
Firm and Burn!
To keep your metabolism chugging in high gear, you need strength training. If you work your major muscle groups twice a week, you can expect to replace 5 to 10 years’ worth of muscle loss in just a few months. Lifting weights can literally reverse the aging process, so you look and feel years, maybe even decades, younger.
Lifting weights increases your calorie-burn in other ways too. In one study, 15 sedentary people in their 60’s and 70’s who strength trained 3 days a week for 6 months increased their daily calorie burn by more than 230 calories. Almost one-third of the increase was from a boost in their metabolism due to the muscle they gained. The remaining calories were burned as a result of their workouts, their increased daily activity, and something called “afterburn,” which is an added attraction of strength training exercise. Depending on how hard you work out, explains study author Gary R. Hunter, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, your metabolism can stay elevated for up to 48 hours after you’ve finished lifting.
“As a bonus, strength training builds bone,” says Dr. Farrell. That’s important because after menopause, women can lose up to 20% of their bone strength. “Though we tend to think of bones as ‘dead’, they are very alive and highly active. Strong bones use more nutrients, and ultimately they burn more calories than do weak bones,” he explains.