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Men over 30, what contributes to weight gain besides slower metabolism when you get older? Is it really hard to stay in shape? (dormi.zone)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I read an interview about a year ago about the topic of starting healthy until old age. The main points were:

You start to lose muscle mass at 30 years and for the average person you lose about 1% per year. In the article, they said that this would mean 50% of muscle lost when you hit 80 so it must've been on average (otherwise you'd lose about 40% total).
If you need to make a choice between endurance and strength exercise because of whatever constraints, you should go with strength. Ideally, you do both. But strength is ultimately more important as it keeps your metabolism working long term and also prevents accidents. After all, it's what keeps you skeleton in place.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I know that people above 30 are still able to gain muscle mass--all other things being equal--but my speculation is that it slows down. That is, that rate of improvement compared to someone in their 20s will be slower, and it will be even slower in your 40s, etc., until you reach a point where you can no longer gain enough strength to offset your losses from age.

I also suspect that the use of illegal anabolic/androgenic steroids could counteract that, but at the cost of other, significant health risks (heart disease, stroke, liver damage, etc.).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Oh for sure. My comment was rather to add than to correct.

It's not a big problem to have less muscle with age. But having 90% of a once trained body is way better than 50% of a body that just sustained an unhealthy lifestyle.