Do We Need To Build Muscle?

You NEED to build some muscle – especially if you’re over 40.

(Over 30 really.)

Why?

SARCOPENIA.

Or muscle loss.

You’ll lose between 0.5% and 1% of your muscle mass each year over the age of about 25.

So, if you sit on your butt all day in front of your computer for 50 years starting at age 25, you potentially could lose 50% or HALF your lean muscle mass.

What’s so bad about that?

Muscle is the machinery that burns calories.

So the less you have, the less calories you’ll burn.

And if you’re eating the same amount of food – or even an excessive amount of calories – you’re body won’t  be able to burn them at rest and you’ll store them as fat.

So…

Less Muscle = More [Potential] Fat over time.

Does that mean you should jump on a muscle building program with your KBs?

Not so fast, pardner.

Consider that most of America is overweight – 66% at last count.

That means that the average, or the majority of the US has excess body fat on them.

What’s “overweight?”

According to a research paper by Gallagher et al,  published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2000), men over 19% bodyfat and women over 33% are considered “overweight.”

So chances are better than good that you may fall into that average range too.

What does being overweight have to do with building  muscle or better yet – building muscle with your KBs?

When you’re overweight, your hormones don’t work optimally.

That means there’s an imbalance between your fat-burning hormones and your fat-storing  hormones.

Coincidentally, two of those fat-burning hormones are also muscle-building hormones –

Growth hormone (in both women and men)

Testosterone (in men)

In men, body fat contains an enzyme called aromatase, which converts your Testosterone into estrogens,  the main sex hormone in women.

Nice, huh?

So, get rid of your body fat, decrease your estrogen levels, and increase your T levels so you can build more muscle.

More –

Excess body fat leads to insulin resistance (in both men and women).

This condition is where your body secretes more insulin than normal to store fat or carbohydrate.

The tough part is, the more insulin your body releases the more you’re likely to store fat.

And it becomes a downward spiral –

The fatter you are, the fatter you get.

So first thing’s first –

In order to build muscle, you need to take a step back and strip off the excess body fat.

So there’s an actual scientific sequence for building muscle –

Get lean first.

Then build muscle.