Book review: forever strong
With all our scientific insights, Dr Lyon asks, why are we still chasing obesity? And her answer is simple - the problem is not a ‘weight’ problem, but a muscle one; it’s not we have to lose but what we have to gain!
I love this! In medicine, in fitness, in society, we have been told to lose weight. But by focusing on fat, failure to get healthy no matter how hard you try, is inevitable. We’ve gotten the narrative all wrong.
Struggles regulating physiology leave you hungry - not just for food but for understanding too. Dr Lyon articulates so compellingly why a muscle centric life is actually a grossly underestimated resource to burn fat, drive metabolism and protect against disease:
We see near immediate improvements (measurable within 2 weeks) brought about by increasing muscle health include blood sugar regulation, hunger control and increased mobility
Longer term benefits include stronger body and bones and improved blood profile including lower triglycerides, metabolism protection, increased serviceability against nearly every disease and a better mood
That muscle is actually THE organ of longevity: it is the bodily system that will allow us to live our longest most capable fulfilling life.
That muscle is the key is metabolic health: by increasing your healthy muscle mass you not only change your body’s physical structure but also direct how your body uses both food and energy (specifically its biochemical magic at utilising circulating glucose WITHOUT the use of insulin!!)
That muscle is in fact an immune organ: training also boosts your immune function - peptides molecules composed of amino acids released during muscle contraction. Key peptides can send signals in the body that help fight off germs and reduce inflammation.
I love her analogy of unhealthy muscle as a suitcase. When you continue to eat the wrong foods in the wrong quantities you overstuff your suitcase until the excess contents spill out. In this case what spills out is excess glucose, fatty acids or amino acids, and all that substrate overflows back into the blood stream. Somehow the body must dispose of all these extras. That’s when initial disease processes begin. When muscle, your main metabolic (and largest so biggest effect!) organ, gets flooded and overwhelmed, it’s no wonder you gain fat.
We all have within us the powerful tools for improving our muscle health: you can reverse some of not all the damage to your muscle health. With adequate stimulus from diet and exercise you can move the needle from sarcopenic to strong at any age by regulating the multiple body functions far beyond simple locomotion.
To combat the effects of our obesity plagued world, we need to grow our muscles and turn them into mitochondrial manufacturing plants. And it is absolutely possible to optimise and restore proper meta function by building and maintaining healthy muscle. Thru specific targeted behaviours you can literally change your destiny by empowering your muscle to run the body’s energy producing and chemical messaging system in healthy ways.
Your quality of life correlates directly with your muscle health. If your muscles are healthy you live longer.
And you’d be shocked to learn just how much muscle you still have the capacity to build even if you’re struggling with long term illness or feel like you’ve missed the most in getting healthy and how big a role it will play in saving your life.
