Muscle... The New Fat?
We don’t have a body fat excess epidemic, we have a severe muscle mass shortage.
For far too long we have obsessed over body fat. Overweight, obese, metabolic syndrome? Gotta get after that fat. When most people focus on losing fat IE weight, through low protein, low fat and long-term calorie restriction diets, they will lose both body fat and muscle tissue. And sadly, most people gain the weight they lost back in body fat. This begs the question, what if we have been focusing on the wrong tissue? What if the solution is muscle? Dr. Lyon - who studied geriatric medicine in pursuit of improving health and longevity- coined the new term Muscle-Centric Medicine. It’s the goal of getting after the root cause of our modern diseases (diabetes, obesity, cognitive impairment, frailty) and change the trajectory of aging.
If your muscles are strong, you live better. Having increased muscle, compared to fat, has profound implications for your metabolic function. Muscle is the metabolic sink of the body. It determines almost everything about your body composition and overall health, how you regulate your blood sugar, your ability to manage fats, and your fuel during times of illness.
Most health issues confronting adults are not a result of being “overfat” but being under muscled. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and many other chronic health problems begin with inactive muscles and poor metabolism. Muscles also serve as our amino acid reservoir. In times of stress your body can draw on muscles to protect other vital organs like the liver, kidney or brain.
There are two ways to stimulate and protect muscle; optimizing muscle tissue through resistance exercise and high quality dietary protein. The goal would be to take care of this tissue that declines and becomes more insulin resistant with aging. By correcting body composition through building muscle mass, the weight will come off.
DIETARY PROTEIN BUILDS MUSCLE VIA PROTEIN SYNTHESIS AND RESISTANCE EXERCISE ACCELERATES THE PROCESS.
Put simply, when you do resistance training, you stress your muscles, stimulating the processes of breaking down old and weak tissue and rebuilding new and stronger muscles. Resistance exercise plus protein yields repair, and you get stronger with more muscle definition. The more active your muscles, the more likely you’ll have lower blood pressure, better cholesterol, and better blood sugar. Not only that, if you make it a habit, you’ll improve your body composition with less body fat and be less likely to gain it back.
Muscle can help you manage your body composition and your body weight over a lifetime. Fad dieting, crash dieting, and yo-yo dieting put people in a precarious situation where they may lose massive amounts of weight in a short amount of time. Yes, participants lose body fat, but guess what else they lose in the process? If you said “muscle tissue” you would be correct. It stands to reason that each time you repeat this cycle, more muscle is lost and it becomes harder and harder to earn back. The result is increasing metabolic dysregulation.
HOW MUCH PROTEIN SHOULD I EAT?
There is a lot of debate happening from nutrition scientists arguing that RDA for protein at 10% is too measly. The potential benefits of higher daily protein intake, these researchers argue, include preserving muscle strength despite aging and maintaining a lean, fat-burning physique. The Institute of Medicine also established an Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range for protein of 10–35% of energy for adults. This range is associated with a reduced risk of chronic diseases, while providing adequate intakes of essential nutrients. Overall we generally recommend shooting for about 25% of your calories coming from protein, but Dr. Lyon even argues going up to 1g per ideal pound of body weight. That’s a lot of protein!
Further, the researchers observed protein’s role in healthy aging, Paddon-Jones et al. examined the hypothesis that the progression of sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) may be slowed or prevented in older healthy adults who consume adequate amounts of high-quality protein at each meal in combination with physical activity or exercise. Therefore, our protein needs increase with age, where we should try to eat 30-35% of our calories from protein, closer to that 1g per pound of ideal body weight.
WHAT TYPE OF PROTEIN SHOULD I EAT?
As you know, protein is a huge part of our muscle, but protein does SO MUCH MORE for us. For instance, antibodies, used in an immune response, are made of proteins. When a toxin or otherwise foreign substance, known as an antigen, enters your body, your antibodies protect you by fighting them off. In addition, many of your hormones, such as insulin, are made from proteins; and some like thyroid hormones, for example, are made from amino acids and transported by proteins.
Thyroid hormones help to regulate your blood glucose and metabolic rate, and can impact growth hormone secretion and bone health. Although all proteins are made of amino acids, not all proteins contain the correct balance of amino acids your body needs. Amino acids are the key to understanding protein needs. There are many reasons to eat animal meat, one of our main reasons is that like supports like. Animal tissues - muscle, cartilage, tendons support our muscle, cartilage and tendons.
Further, there are some critical amino acids that are primarily in animal sources like Lysine. Lysine plays a large role in synthesizing proteins within your body. Not only that, Lysine is also responsible for the proteins specifically in your connective tissues, tendons, which connect a bone to a muscle, and ligaments, which connect bones to bones at a section called a joint. Your tendons and ligaments are composed of a structural protein called collagen, and Lysine is instrumental in collagen formation. Lysine also forms the backbone of the molecule called carnitine essential to help your muscles burn fats for fuel. Lysine is extremely low in grain products and virtually absent in wheat.
Lastly, new meat substitutes are highly processed; the junk food of meat if you will. See what I mean by the image below:
