Remember when you were a teenager and could eat everything in sight and not put on weight? Somewhere in your 30s, things changed. Now it seems as if just looking at food makes you fat. What happened?

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As we age beyond 35, we start to lose muscle (sarcopenia) and, if we’re less active than we were when we were younger, the process of losing muscle worsens. This loss of muscle tissue causes the resting metabolic rate to drop – i.e.  you burn less calories when your body is completely at rest. For example, if you lose 5lbs of muscle, the number of calories you burn in one day will decrease by approx. 25p calories. If you lose muscle but continue to eat the way you did when you were younger, you will gain a lb of fat in 14 days…over 20 weeks, that’s 10lbs of bodyfat. And, as for dieting alone, it can result in weight loss but only temporarily and…that weight loss tends to be muscle. You can’t afford to lose muscle. A 150lb woman who strength trains is more likely to wear a smaller pair of trousers than a 150 lb woman who doesn’t – i.e. proportions change with strength training. They won’t with only aerobic exercise or dieting.

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The key to getting rid of accumulated bodyfat is to get back your youthful metabolism by regaining your muscle mass. Because muscle burns more calories than fat - which means that the more muscle tissue you have, the more calories your body burns, even at rest.

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Many people believe that activities such as walking, cycling, running or swimming will be enough to keep their muscles strong, but these activities are not enough to hold onto your muscle mass.

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Adding resistance training (i.e. building muscle by using your own bodyweight, resistance bands and free weights) will help you regain strength, improve your appearance, balance, posture, improve cognitive functioning, sleep, lower blood pressure and help you lose weight all over. One of the leading causes of injury to older individuals is falling – if we maintain our strength and ROM (range of motion) we will be less apt to lose our balance and better able to recover if we do. Strengthening movements with free weights requires stability and therefore improves balance.

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