BY GABRIELLE LYON, DO

We age every day. Every single one of us.

But the choices we make today will greatly determine the quality of our lives, now and in the future. As a trained geriatrician, I’ve seen firsthand that nothing determines life quality and longevity more than muscle health, especially skeletal muscle.

As we get older, so much gets better and stronger—our mental resilience, our problem-solving skills, the depth of our relationships—but at the same time, our bodies gradually lose strength, inside and out.

By intentionally planning for these natural, predictable changes—through muscle-centric nutrition and strength training—we can safeguard our health and quality of life.

It’s never too late to make a difference—and it’s never too early to start!

Start Young

Each of us is born with a certain number of muscle fibers, but whether we actualize our muscles’ potential by growing those fibers and creating new ones from satellite (stem) cells depends on our dedication to physical fitness throughout our lifetime.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, resistance (strength) training is both safe and beneficial for children and adolescents, enhancing overall health, fitness, motor-neuron function, and injury prevention.

Not limited to lifting weights, resistance exercise can incorporate a wide array of bodyweight movements, including frog jumps, bear crawls, crab walks, and kangaroo or one-leg hops.

Contrary to the outdated myth that kids can’t lift weights, resistance training is for everybody at any age.

Well-supervised, fun-focused training that emphasizes proper technique is a safe way to spark interest in exercise through adolescence and into adulthood. The key is to establish a strong foundation by ensuring a child can successfully perform the baseline movements before adding load.

More serious weightlifting, beyond five to ten-pound dumbbells, can begin during puberty. Because young people exist in a hormone-driven growth phase, muscle tissue is much more responsive at an early age.

Of note, the more physically active a child is, the greater their protein needs for optimal growth. Inadequate protein intake during these critical years can impede growth and cause fatigue during sports and active play.

On the other hand, a protein-rich diet fuels learning, growth, and resilience—empowering kids to thrive, push their limits, and build a foundation for lasting health while reducing the risk of age-related diseases.

Research-Backed Lifelong Benefits

Did you know that while your child is learning how to climb monkey bars or pull themselves up a climbing wall, they’re changing the nature and capacity of their muscle cells?

We often use the phrase “muscle memory” figuratively, but recent findings reveal how muscle really does attain and retain memory on a cellular level, through exercise-induced increases in myonuclei—the nucleus found within muscle fibers.

Specifically, research showing that previously trained muscle has a greater number of myonuclei suggests that starting resistance training early allows muscle tissue to obtain “cellular memory” through this increase. Muscle fibers that have a higher number of myonuclei grow faster, especially when exposed to resistance exercise in the future.

Contrary to what many assume, the aging we are talking about—the inevitable physiological changes to muscle and overall body composition—begins in our thirties.

Starting to build muscle while you’re young allows you to build your biological reserve—the effects of which will stay with you for a lifetime.

Twenties, Thirties, Forties: Power Up Your Skeletal Muscles with Protein

You may not have embraced a muscle-centric diet and lifestyle in your youth, but it’s never too late to start. Positive changes may not come quite as quickly but I promise you will see improvements. The steps you take right now—today—can rewrite your future.

Take the next decade to focus on building your body armor. In addition to resistance training, there’s another crucial element for defending against age-related decline—can you guess what it is? Protein.

All the tissues in your body contain proteins. Over the course of a single year, nearly every one of these proteins gets replaced. It’s mission-critical to ensure that you have sufficient and proper nutrients to meet—and exceed—these requirements.

A body trying to make do with a low-protein diet will prioritize the survival of the liver, heart, brain, kidney, and gastrointestinal tract. Given the body’s constant rebuild & repair cycles, these organs have high amino-acid demands, and your body will always work to take care of your organs first.

Eating just enough protein to sustain these essential functions won’t provide the amino acids needed for skeletal muscle growth and repair. By eating for muscle health, however, you will simultaneously meet all your primary biological needs while also optimizing for body composition.

So, how much protein do you need? On average, your goal is to take in at least 1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. Whether you’re trying to bulk up or lose fat, 30 to 50 grams of protein per meal will help maintain your skeletal muscle mass.

Keep in mind, every ounce of food from land mammals contains 7 grams of protein, while fish contains 5 grams of protein per ounce. (Gauging protein in terms of a percentage of diet is outdated thinking.)

While protein tends to be one of the more controversial macronutrients, extensive research shows that the highest-quality proteins come from animal sources, including meats—typically from gravity-bearing animals such as chicken, turkey, beef, bison, and lamb.

Also helpful are eggs, dairy, and fish. In addition to having optimally balanced amino acid profiles, animal-based foods are superior in calorie-for-calorie nutrient density.

Fifties

Getting older brings us maturity, perspective, and sometimes even wisdom! Plus, research conducted over a twenty-year span showed that many of us feel less stress as we age. Still, Father Time also challenges us with the loss of skeletal muscle mass.

After about age fifty, muscle mass decreases at an annual rate of one to two percent. Often, the lost muscle is replaced by body fat—reducing muscle strength and mobility while also disrupting metabolism.

The good news? Aging muscle remains plastic, meaning improvement is always possible—and RET is key!

The goal of RET is to increase muscle mass and strength through regular high-tension muscle contractions against a heavy external load. Because of the muscle breakdown-and-repair process, training at least three times per week is essential. Performed regularly with enough load (and safe, controlled progression), this training leads to new, stronger muscle tissue.

Sixty and Older

If your wellness habits have, so far, been less than stellar, the striking loss of muscle mass and other shifts in body composition might just be the wake-up call you need to execute real change—starting today!

Because this is a time when chronic disease and injuries can crop up and limit mobility, taking informed steps toward fortifying yourself is an essential part of building a foundation of healthy practices that will serve you the rest of your life.

For people older than sixty, quality of life becomes the primary consideration for any diet and exercise plan. I’ll say it again: the best way to safeguard your independence is to protect your skeletal muscle mass.

Research shows that a well-designed resistance-training program of two to four days per week successfully increases maximal strength, skeletal muscle mass, muscle power, and functional capacity among individuals older than sixty-five.

Other studies highlight the cognitive benefits of cardio and resistance training for people in this age group, citing the brain-boosting, body-awareness benefits of the feel-good hormones that the combination of these types of exercise releases.

Even if illness, injury, or just plain old life has left you less active than you should be, it’s not too late to start getting stronger and fitter and enjoy a burst of newfound energy. Even if you’re nursing an injury, there are countless workarounds to increase your activity level in a safe, controlled way.

As I tell my patients, it helps to take emotional negotiation out of the equation. Simply tell yourself today is the day you’ll begin training (for the first time or again).

Sure, you might not start out with the same strength and agility as you wish you had, or had once before, but do not let a defeatist attitude stand in your way. Instead, choose something doable that will make you feel good.

The goal is progress, not perfection, and in the face of challenges, you can still keep moving forward.

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GABRIELLE LYON, DO, is board-certified in family medicine and completed a combined research and clinical fellowship in geriatrics and nutritional sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed her undergraduate training in nutritional sciences at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lyon is a subject-matter expert and educator in the practical application of protein types and levels for health, performance, aging, and disease prevention.

She has continued to receive mentorship from Dr. Donald Layman, PhD, over the course of two decades to help bring protein metabolism and nutrition from the bench to the bedside. Find out more at DrGabrielleLyon.com.

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well by Gabrielle Lyon ©2023 Gabrielle Lyon. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.