In the 1980’s, the fitness rage was being skinny. The number on the scale was the No. 1 consideration when it came to measuring fitness. Your body weight was the total focus even if the “ideal weight” didn’t necessarily correspond to healthy metrics.

As fitness has caught up with science and medicine, we now know that the number on the scale is only part of the story. What that number is comprised of is a better assessment of health and wellness.

We are now seeing compelling research that demonstrates strength training is essential to health. Likewise, body composition is a more meaningful fitness metric than just Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI doesn’t take into account what your weight is made up of. It just says what your weight is compared to your height and in reference to your age and gender.

A smaller frame individual could have a body composition of more than 45% fat, but still be considered healthy, for example. A leaner person could weigh more at the same height and considered (wrongly) obese.

Why Muscle Matters

Muscle, in previous decades, has been perceived as a largely aesthetic attribute. The hunky guys with big biceps train-of-thought process. Muscle was considered attractive looking, but there wasn’t a whole lot of thought or research put into the health benefits of muscle itself.

Now we know that muscle not only contributes to health and longevity, but it also helps ward off disease and increases the quality of your life as you age.

Here are four reasons strength training to build or maintain muscle has value beyond how it makes you look.

1. Muscle burns calories

Your basal metabolism – the rate your body burns calories at rest – INCREASES with more muscle. Your body must expend more energy to take care of muscle than fat. Just having adequate muscle on your frame means that your metabolism is healthier.

2. Muscle helps combat disease

Resistance training is a vital, yet underhyped tool to offset risk for diseases like coronary heart disease and diabetes. Diabetes, a metabolic disease, specifically has muscle implications. Building and maintaining muscle can increase your insulin sensitivity and increase your body’s ability to metabolize glucose. A 2014 study found that women who with 150 minutes of strength training per week have a 40% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes than women who didn’t do muscle work. Building muscle can help maintain bone density, another aging disease risk.

3. Muscle increases calorie burn

As we age, we can lose 2-3 pounds of muscle every year. Keeping or building muscle gives us more of a canvas in which to burn calories. Without muscle, you can move your leg. With limited muscle, you are limited in how long you can exercise or how intensely you can exercise. You have to have it to burn calories, in other words.

4. Muscle Increases Quality of Life

If you have ever had an injury that prevented motion of some type – your ability to walk normally or lift your arm over your head, or twist your body from side to side, you know how important these basic functions are to doing things like taking a walk on a trail in a beautiful National Park is, or picking up a child who runs into your arms or passing a Christmas gift to a loved one next to you is.

Muscle and range of motion in moving them is the difference between being able to participate more fully in life’s joys and just being alive but not being able to move freely.

If you are interested in participating in group strength training or working with a personal trainer to gain muscle, please email [email protected].